There is nothing wrong with “marrying the cousin from the village back home”, or someone else’s cousin from someone else’s village back home for that matter, and there is no reason why educational qualifications, lack of fluency in English or other factors should necessarily make someone unsuitable as a marriage partner. The problem comes when people are coerced into marriage against their will or judgment and the younger they are the easier it is to do that.

The raised age for marriage visas came in after the FMA was introduced - it is a rule, not law. However, I don’t accept the explanation given that there had been pressure from the anti-immigration lobby to make this change for some time, particularly after Denmark did the same, also for social engineering purposes aimed at Muslims, and it had the same effects on “innocent” white couples.

I do accept that there is a need to prevent forced marriages, but I don’t believe that these rules were necessary and neither did the victims of forced marriages that were surveyed before the rules were changed (as the report says). The rules could have been made so as to require fluency in English, educational qualifications or some other requirement that cuts out the “marrying the cousin from the village back home” nonsense (not just forced marriages) while still allowing genuine couples of consenting adults to live in the UK. Eighteen-year-olds are adults, let’s face it.

I’ve got to agree with Tim here. Tragically, there are those in our community (and others) who seek to abuse the institution of marriage and these laws were aimed at preventing that.

It was a major issues when I worked with a helpline serving the Muslim community a few years back. At that time Muslims were pushing for state intervention to curtail such marriages, which are both an abuse of the individuals’ rights and of our deen’s clear opposition to them.

I’m no expert on the matter, but it sounds a little flawed to say the laws are aimed at raising the marriage age of Muslims, since it is linked to a visa, not to permission to marry. But Allah knows best.

They may be inhumane and ineffective, but the “no recourse” laws are intended to stop people regarding marriage- any marriage, regardless of the suitability of the spouse- as a short-cut to the supposed cornucopia of a British passport. It is surely better to take measures to prevent forced or coerced marriages in the first place, rather than expecting the state to deal with the damage later.