Feminists are a strange breed of creature indeed. As they teeter precariously around the office water cooler empowerment zone atop their latest Jimmy Choos, their conversation rarely strays toward Islam’s brutal treatment of women. They are much happier when unhappily discussing why grim-booted Bob from accounts is routinely promoted ahead of them, despite his shameful ignorance regarding over-priced cobbling.

They are unconcerned about the truly important areas of concern, such as a religion imported into the 21st century West which treats women as mere chattels of men; denies them equal legal rights; carries a death sentence in the event of a spot of marital infidelity and allows the husband to add three more wives to his harem should he so wish. Another aspect of Islam which rarely crosses their minds is why do Asian/Muslim females commit suicide at a rate three times higher in the 16-24 age group than any other demographic?

But is it always suicide? The Islamic practice of Honour Killing is but a recent addition to the glorious diversity a previously mono-cultural Britain was hitherto unable to celebrate. Failure to marry the man chosen by your father is to bring shame and dishonour upon the family, doubly so if a girl is foolish enough to consider a relationship with a non-Muslim. This is why murdering your daughter is termed an “honour” killing. It is done to regain the honour of the family, and there exist in Britain many Muslims who really believe this to be true.

When Turkey passed life jail sentences for murdering daughters in 2005, previously immune murderous fathers asked them to commit suicide instead. The “suicide” rate rocketed in the aftermath of the new legislation. Girls told to kill themselves are usually given one of three options – a noose, a gun or rat poison. They are then locked in a room until the job is done.

Their fate is usually decided during a “family council”, when the extended family meets to discuss breaches of honour. In these meetings, it is agreed how the victim must be killed. If the girl rejects a forced suicide, a killer is chosen. The youngest member of the family is often ordered to kill, in the belief they will be treated more leniently if caught.

And the numbers are terrifying. When a Turkish girl states: “When I was at school, a few girls I knew were killed by their families in the name of honour” then simple mathematics point toward the numbers murdered across the entire country (Turkey) running into thousands. Such horrific statistics lend weight to a report in the Independent suggesting there are 17,000 victims of honour related violence a year in Britain.

The Independent does point out that murder is a very small percentage of this; the majority of cases being rape, kidnap and beating, but the point it makes is clear – there is little knowledge of what goes on in the murky world of Muslim honour violence, but what is known suggests it is only the tip of the ice-berg. In light of Turkish “suicides” perhaps we should look at the elevated suicide rate of British Muslim females from a new perspective.

Forced marriage of course, could bring about suicidal tendencies. The Telegraph reports up to 8,000 forced marriages took place in 2008, and in Bradford alone some 750 girls aged 13-16 were either subjected to a forced marriage at home, or taken abroad never to return. Sociologist Nazia Khanum spent a year investigating this issue in Luton before publishing her report, which estimates some 4,000 children are forcibly married and taken out of Britain against their will every year.

Worse still, the precedent set by the prophet Mohamed in marrying a six year-old girl enables modern day Muslims to do much the same, leading to horror stories about the government’s Forced Marriage Unit fighting cases concerning girls aged only eleven and in one case a girl of only nine.

While this is happening, women are being imported in their hundreds of thousands from Muslim countries, principally Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ex-Labour MP Ann Cryer, who represented Keighley, estimated that 1 million Pakistanis came to Britain over a four year period to work study or marry. Imported wives made up 80% of all marriages in her area.

Muslim women now outnumber Muslim men by a ratio 2:1 which has itself led to Muslim men taking multiple wives; all illegal of course under British law but permissible under Sharia law. On Newsnight two years ago, a representative of a British Sharia court claimed it would be discriminatory not to allow multiple wives as it would consign 50% of imported women to lives of unmarried, childless desolation. The British government agreed, and now provides welfare payments to multiple wives, providing the marriage was conducted in an Islamic country.

In addition to the Forced Marriage Unit, Britain now plays host to Project Azure another state funded specialist crime department of the British police, this one dedicated to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) a form of child abuse usually associated with Islamic African countries like Northern Sudan, but now growing in Europe as a result of immigration and refugee movement.

The procedure is traditionally performed by an older woman with no medical training. Anaesthetics and antiseptic treatment are not generally used and the practice is usually carried out using basic tools such as knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass, tin lids and razor blades. Often iodine or a mixture of herbs is placed on the wound to tighten the vagina and stop the bleeding.

This rarely happens within British borders. Young girls are normally taken abroad at the beginning of school summer holidays, thus allowing the wounds to heal before the victim returns to Britain. The Met Police inform us that consequences of this Stone Age Barbarity “include extreme pain, shock, infection, haemorrhage, infertility, incontinence, HIV and death.”

A study by the Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development estimated that 66,000 women living in England and Wales had been circumcised, most before leaving their country of origin. The government-funded research also found that more than 6,500 girls were at a high risk of being subjected to genital mutilation in Britain, with some 3,500 in London alone.

It has been proposed that teachers in certain schools receive specialist training to detect whether Muslim girls have been genitally mutilated, but it is unlikely Muslim fathers will allow their daughters to be subjected to the type of gynaecological inspection necessary to occasion proof positive. No one should be surprised therefore, that despite Female Genital Mutilation constituting a criminal offence, not one person has been prosecuted.

Although not as horrific as FGM, why will the sisterhood not broach the subject of the misery inflicted on Muslim women and children via the practice of first cousin marriage? 50% of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, and 10% of their children either die at birth or live with serious congenital disorders. People coming from agricultural villages in Pakistan are unlikely to understand why they have such problems, but our failure to educate them lest we upset their cultural sensibilities is bordering on a crime against humanity.

As is the behaviour of Labour politicians dependent on the Muslim vote in their constituencies. Jack Straw, for example, is fully aware of all that I have described above, yet he is also acutely aware that confronting it would mean being labelled a “racist” leading to the loss of his seat, his salary, his expenses and his John Lewis perks. So, like all hypocritical socialists, he finds it more convenient to ignore the savagery and misery his male constituents inflict on his female constituents, along with twenty other of his socialist colleagues representing safe Labour seats in Muslim areas.

I suppose politicians at least have an excuse. What I find really inexcusable however is the attitude of the feminists. If European men were behaving as Muslim men do, there would be a national outcry led by the Germaine Greers of this world. If feminism is to be taken seriously then the definition of female oppression simply cannot be corporate glass ceilings and the lack of sufficient bonuses required to fill a wardrobe with Manolo Blahniks. It must instead be redirected at the genuine suffering of Muslim women and girls in Britain, because the wilful refusal by feminists to recognise crimes against humanity is morally no less obscene than the committing of them.