Fitzpatrick walked out of a wedding for good reason

It is amazing how people make snap decisions on very little information. Over the last couple of days the news has aired a case of an MP who walked out of a Muslim wedding. Predictably people were ready to state their opinions about Mr Fitzpatrick (also the Minister for food, farming and environment) without knowing the full story. He is the the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, which is an area with a high proportion of persons from different ethnic communities. Particularly those who are of the Muslim faith. I expect part of if not all of his constituency is in Newham Borough, this is a borough. Just do a search on the internet for further demographics, then you will understand yourself. As I sat listening to this program it was called Any Answers and was aired by Radio 4, the general consensus of callers was Mr Fitzpatrick was rude in walking out of the ceremony. With intonations he did not respect Islam and did not understand this religion. If men and women were segregated into different groups for a marriage ceremony, most of the callers accepted this was OK. The next thing which vexed me was how the broadcaster did not explain the situation further to callers, he basically let them come forward with snap judgements and so make it seem Fitzpatrick was a bad man who did not respect Islam.

A day earlier I had heard an interview with Fitzpatrick also on Radio 4, on the Today program. In this he was able to give his reasons why he walked out and explain he did so very discretely. This man revealed he went to between 2 and 4 Islamic weddings every month. Sometimes more sometimes less therefore for people to cast doubt Fitzpatrick new little about Islam is a spurious point. It seems to me those who said such things actually knew a great deal less. Mr Fitzpatrick stated in 15 years of going to such weddings, so he must of notched up quite a few, this was only the second time he had experienced segregate guests by gender. Doing the rough maths, lets say he goes to about 30 weddings in a year so 15 times 30 is 450 weddings in all. Now putting this little figure into the picture now shows his reaction in a somewhat different light. Fitzpatrick was in fact highlighting this is not the normal procedure for an Islamic wedding. It is in fact abnormal and is tending towards how a more fundamental version of Islamic preaching, which is trying to seep into the world. He explained the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) were responsible for this version of Sharia and the wedding was taking place in their building. When the honourable MP left the wedding he did so discretely, not making any fuss or drawing any attention to himself. At the same time his wife who was in a different part of the building had also come to the same conclusion and she left. The whole incident was not a case of disrespect to religion or Islam, it was a case of a man who had made an informed decision on previous experience. Perhaps he believed gender segregation is discrimination towards the female sex, especially if we are to understand in the context of the different versions of Sharia. Of which I know one type states the wife will always walk behind the husband. To some people in the Western world this does not constitute freedom, but is rather a sign of oppression.

So in light of a few additional facts I wonder if those phone in callers who thought Mr Fitzpatrick was rude would change their mind. I wonder how many of them had been to as many Muslim weddings as he had, and I expect there would of been very few.