In a single article, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) managed to cover two very different bankruptcies—one being that of Muslim culture and the other being of any sense of morality the vaunted state-run British media giant may once have had.
A Destitute City
Much of the article focused on seven men who live in Chaghcharan, Afghanistan. Without question, their economic outlook is dire. The article points out that three out of four people cannot earn enough to support their families. A severe drought makes the situation even worse.
The article’s details are typical. Men cannot find work; wives and children suffer. The Taliban government, which took over after US troops withdrew in 2021, does nothing. The Taliban blames the West, especially the US, a refrain that the BBC is happy to echo.
“The US—once the top donor to Afghanistan—cut nearly all aid to the country last year…. Current UN figures show that the aid received so far this year is 70% lower than in 2025.”
An Abhorrent Practice
Abdul Rashid Azimi is among the unfortunate seventy-five percent. However, he makes one statement that takes the article into a whole new realm.
“‘I’m willing to sell my daughters,’ he weeps. ‘I’m poor, in debt and helpless.’ As he hugs one of his daughters, he continues, ‘It breaks my heart, but it’s the only way.’”
Then, the article discusses another man who sold his daughter, claiming that he used the money to pay for surgery that she needed. She recovered, but in five more years, at the age of ten, the relative who bought her will claim her.
Curiously, the article says nothing about the girls’ prospects after being purchased. There is only a brief paragraph saying that marriages for girls that young are common in Afghanistan. The article then quickly returns to its main point, the poverty of that region and the need for aid.
Why Don’t the Liberals Care?
There is no alarm for the fact that this informal slave market exists, operating openly without fear of the authorities. Where is the BBC’s concern that these girls will, in all probability, lose all rights for the rest of their lives?
Remarkably, these are the same liberals who cry over the ill effects of colonial hegemony. They bitterly castigate the patriarchy’s ill effects on women of all ages. They enthusiastically leap to agree that slavery is the “original sin” of the United States.
Yet, these Afghani “marriages” openly mock everything that the modern left professes to believe. Yet, this paragon of the liberal news media says nothing.
Slave Markets
Determining the exact number of enslaved people in the Muslim world is difficult. Many of these countries have ineffective governments. Concrete figures are unobtainable. Nonetheless, their culture obviously protects slavery.
The Walk Free Foundation, headquartered in Australia, dedicates itself to ending modern slavery. They define two types of slavery, forced labor and forced marriage. They calculate that there are fifty million total people in slavery as of 2023—27.6 million in forced labor, and 22 million in forced marriage. Of the ten worst offenders on their Global Slavery Index, eight (in descending order—Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Tajikistan, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan and Kuwait) are majority Moslem countries. The other two are North Korea (#1) and Russia (#8).
The Foundation estimates the number of enslaved people in Afghanistan at 505,000.
A Chain of Inconvenient Facts
These statistics raise an important question. Why did the BBC not include them in an article describing the motivations of men selling their own daughters? A four-point explanation springs to mind.
First, the article’s writer, Yogita Limaye, clearly wanted to paint the Afghanis as an impoverished people driven to take desperate actions. She eagerly blames Western nations, notably the United States. (In September, 2025, the same author wrote an article titled “My Wife Died Giving Birth After Trump Cut Funding to Our Clinic.”) Including statistics like those from Walk Free could lead some readers to blame the Afghanis and Muslim culture.
Second, the BBC is “publicly owned.” Its funds come from the British public through television license fees. The government maintains that it has no ownership stake in the BBC, giving it “independence from political control.” Of course, that explanation is a chimera. The government assesses and collects the license fees and sends them on to the BBC. To assert that providing money isn’t a conduit of control is a socialist fairy tale.
Third, Moslem immigration has remade the political framework of Great Britain. In 2001, the Moslem population was roughly 1.6 million. Twenty years later, that number stood at 4.0 million, roughly six percent of the British population. Discord over immigration and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that allowed it was a primary factor in the UK’s withdrawal from it. However, “Brexit” did not stop the Moslem immigration. The Pew Research Center projects that the Moslem population will be between 9.7 and 17.2 percent of the population by 2050. As in any representative democracy, an increased population increases political power.
Fourth, most Moslems support the Labour Party. The current Labour government, that of Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer, is openly pro-Moslem. On March 3, 2026, Sir Kier received a standing ovation from a Moslem crowd at a Ramadan event in which he labeled Moslems as “the face of modern Britain,” describing the UK as “a community of communities where Muslims are at the forefront of Britain’s story.” Maybe his words are sincere, maybe they are mere pandering. Regardless, the result is the same.
Sharia Law in Britain?
So, it is logical to conclude that the BBC’s avoiding any condemnation of daughter selling is part of a political structure which avoids any condemnation of Moslem culture, even selling children into slavery. This attitude begs an important question. Does such behavior take place in the UK itself?
Official Britain leaps to assure questioners that Sharia law has no legal standing in England. Those who follow this code, they say, do so voluntarily, observing the customs of family and community.
However, the line is not nearly so clear as that statement indicates. According to Legal Clarity, a law-oriented website, “Roughly 30 Sharia councils currently operate across England and Wales. They are advisory bodies, not courts…. English law provides two narrow avenues through which a Sharia council decision can acquire legal force. The first is contract law. If both parties consent to a council’s decision on a financial matter, that decision can be treated as a binding contractual agreement…. The second avenue…allows parties to refer disputes to private arbitrators and choose which rules the arbitrator applies, including religious law.”
Although this sounds innocuous, the possibility that some of the “contracts” sell children exists. Giving a Moslem tribunal legal authority represents a dangerous precedent, no matter what the circumstances. It creates yet another crack in the structure of Christian civilization.