British Minister of Food and Farming Jim Fitzpatrick and his wife have come under fire for walking out of a Muslim wedding after being separated into male and female areas.
“Jim Fitzpatrick’s actions look foolish and inappropriate,” Adrian Michaels, Group Foreign Editor at the Telegraph Media Group, writes in the Telegraph Blog on August 14. Fitzpatrick, also a Labour MP, walked out of a Muslim wedding last weekend at the London Muslim Centre after he was allowed to sit in a different hall away from his wife.
He accused the Muslim centre and the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), which owns the place, of threatening the community cohesion in the heavily Muslim area of Whitechapel, East London. “Barriers to integration are important to discuss, but I find Fitzpatrick’s actions incredible,” Michaels writes. “First, there seems to be some doubt whether rules on segregation have been imposed or were chosen by the bride and groom. Second, segregation of the sexes is common to many ceremonies of many religions.” The British editor also hit out at the government minister for offending the couples who invited him. “And third, for goodness sake, it was someone’s wedding day,” he said.
Muslim leaders also lambasted the British minister for his “offending” behaviour. “We are saddened to read that Jim Fitzpatrick MP did not like the arrangements at a wedding he attended with his wife at the London Muslim Centre,” the centre’s spokesman Mohammed Shakir told the Daily Mail. “Segregated weddings have always been popular in the Muslim community; the London Muslim Centre has facilitated them for over five years.” Shakir said many communities, not just Muslims, separate between the two sexes in wedding parties. “It is part of the attraction for Muslim families so they can celebrate their happy day in a religious atmosphere, a custom which is also found in other religious traditions represented in Britain.