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How they love to stereotype Asians

Hasan Suroor

The Molly Campbell case is a family dispute that has sparked off a media frenzy simply because of the religion and ethnicity of those involved.

NOTHING DELIGHTS large sections of the British media more than seizing on what they see as one more example of "barbaric" practices among Third World immigrants. Facts and restraint are, then, sacrificed at the altar of sensational headlines based on speculation and, often, plain gossip. Especially, if it is August — the famously silly season — when newspapers struggle to fill space and TV channels simply do not know what do with all that extra air-time.

In the last week of August, they got what they wanted: a story guaranteed to sell, and reinforce the Asian stereotype. And it lived up to its promise. The story of 12-year-old Molly Campbell being allegedly abducted by her Pakistani father with the aim of forcibly marrying her off in Pakistan has been running for nearly two weeks now with British journalists flying to Lahore to chronicle the saga of a white girl caught up in a "clash of two cultures." If it were a movie, it would be a blockbuster.

So, who is Molly Campbell and how did she come to dominate the headlines across two continents?

Molly, who insists on being called Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana — the name given to her by her Muslim father — is the youngest of four children of Sajad Ahmed Rana, a Pakistani immigrant, and his Scottish wife Louise Campbell. After their marriage broke up four years ago, while three children moved in with their father, Molly stayed with her mother who was given her legal custody. Mr. Rana and other children, including Molly's elder sister Tahmina, shifted to Pakistan.

The "drama" began on August 24 when Molly/Misbah, who lived with her mother and mother's partner in a remote and windswept island in Scotland, did not return home from school.

Instead she travelled to Glasgow where she met her father and Tahmina and flew out to Lahore with them triggering allegations — and screaming media headlines — that she had been "snatched" from outside the schoolgates and forcibly taken away to Pakistan. It was alleged that she might be pushed into a "forced" marriage — a practice which, we were told, was "common" among immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, especially Pakistanis.

For one full week, until Molly appeared with her father at a press conference in Lahore to declare that she had left Britain of her own free will, the media in Britain had a field day feeding alarming stories about her "safety" and the motives of her father. For the tabloids, in search of juicy immigrant-bashing stories, it was as good as it could get in a lean season. "Abducted!", "Molly or Misbah?" they asked while social activists grimly speculated about what could happen to her in Pakistan.

A spokesperson for a leading international child abduction centre explained how Pakistan was particularly notorious. "We deal with 300 to 400 new abductions every single year and the cases with Pakistan are actually increasing," she said.

Bloggers worked overtime to heap curses on "foreigners" who could abduct white little children with impunity. On the other side, angry Muslim voices waded in to describe the media reaction as "Islamophobic" and "racist."

"I wonder if there would have been such a media storm if it was Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana who had been taken to Pakistan rather than Molly Campbell. I confess to initially thinking — how awful, a poor little British girl suddenly plunged into a completely different culture by her cruel Pakistani father who wanted to marry her off to some 67 year old... But how much of that thought was because she was called Molly? I just don't think that most cases like this make the news when the children have names like Yusaf or Mohammed," wrote one blogger.

Then on September 1, Molly surfaced in Lahore to clear up the confusion. She said her name was "not Molly."

"It's Misbah and I ran away to be with my dad in Pakistan," she said.

Dressed in a salwar kameez and with her bearded father by her side, she said: "It was my own choice. I asked my sister if I could go with her. I knew that my mum would miss me, but I missed my family. ... I had pictures all over my walls of my family when I was in Stornoway (the island in Scotland). I always cried."

She said she had informed her mother, the police, and her school authorities that she was leaving of her own free will. "I'm not a runaway," she told The Guardian, adding: "And I'm not going back there. I told them in my letters I was going with my dad and my family, that I was safe and it was all my choice."

Meanwhile, her parents continue to fight for her custody.

But this piece is not about the merits of the case (certainly, Mr. Rana was wrong in taking the girl with him without her legal guardian's conduct) but about a climate in which a family dispute in a little-known island can spark off a national media frenzy simply because of the religion and ethnicity of those involved.

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