Sanctuary, at Last

Her hands still tremble as she tells her tale.

Shahnaz, a 29-year-old with moon-like eyes, remembers meeting the man from America she had promised to marry. He had returned to his native Pakistan for a bride.

Despite the age-old tradition of arranged marriages in her culture, the thought of spending her life with an older man she barely knew frightened her.

Still, they wed, then settled into a traditional South Asian family arrangement in Encino with her husband, his parents and his three brothers.

But, soon, he turned on her. First came spits and taunts, she said, then slaps and full-force punches in the stomach when she was pregnant with their son.

His family provided no escape. Father-in-law ordered her husband to beat her, she said. Brother-in-law often helped. Mother-in-law smiled approvingly and neighbors simply looked the other way. The abuse continued for almost a year, she said, until Los Angeles police burst in and released Shahnaz from virtual captivity.

Experts say abusive marriages like Shahnaz’s, while certainly not the norm in the South Asian immigrant community, are occurring with increasing frequency as the number of immigrants grows. South Asian immigrants number about 2.5 million nationwide, and more than 200,000 live in Southern California.

Now, however, women like Shahnaz (a pseudonym) are finding refuge in Los Angeles at Niswa, a community organization that two years ago opened the first shelter in California serving primarily South Asian Muslims.

Founded by Shamim Ibrahim, a Los Angeles Unified School District psychologist, Niswa provides counseling, financial aid and social services to immigrants. Niswa joins a network of about 20 similar groups across the nation formed in recent years to combat domestic abuse in the South Asian community.

“It seems there were no checks and balances on our people here,” she said. “Our goal is to keep the family together and the culture intact.”

Experts say South Asian women who are abused frequently refuse help because of deeply rooted cultural and religious beliefs. The silent scourge has become so critical that advocates recently organized the area’s first South Asian and Middle Eastern Domestic Violence Awareness Conference.

In many cases, advocates say, men have taken advantage of immigrant women’s ignorance of American legal protections, threatening them with divorce, deportation or even death.

South Asian immigrant women who are victims of abuse are often deterred from seeking help because of cultural beliefs that involve strict observation of hierarchies and the woman’s identity as wife and mother. Family honor is held so sacred that divorce means a woman has disgraced herself and her family. Codes of privacy are so absolute that women reporting abuse are shunned by the community and branded as traitors to their culture. And nowhere in the South Asian community is the violence concealed under such careful wraps as among women of the Muslim faith, religious and community leaders said.

“We walk on a tightrope in these cases,” said Donna Edmiston, formerly assistant supervisor of the Los Angeles city attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit. “We want to prosecute offenders, but we don’t want to punish the victim. And we find there is more pressure on these victims than any other immigrant group we’ve dealt with.”

Precise numbers do not exist, but of the approximately 8,000 domestic violence cases, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office prosecutes every year, about 300 involve South Asian and Middle Eastern families--a figure that may understate the problem because abuse in these homes often goes unreported.

Settling in California, a Preferred Destination

South Asians first arrived in the United States in large numbers after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Steeped in tradition, newcomers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka brought with them more than 15 official languages and hundreds of dialects, as well as many religions, most notably Islam and Hinduism.

California became the preferred destination, according to the 1990 census, followed closely by New York, New Jersey and Illinois.

In the 1970s, South Asian immigrant communities formed in Artesia, close to engineering jobs, and eventually gave rise to the vibrant shopping district along Pioneer Boulevard now known as Little India. Other immigrants settled near aerospace employment in Anaheim Hills and Irvine in Orange County, and in the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Northridge, Chatsworth and Canoga Park, as well as Santa Clarita to the north.

The tightknit, private community adapted outwardly to American society, excelling academically and professionally. But as the community flourished, so did social ills such as unemployment, homelessness and domestic violence, and South Asians found that virtually no social services existed for them.

Then came Ibrahim.

A tall, slender woman with dark hair and a caramel complexion, Ibrahim came to Los Angeles from Pakistan with her husband in 1971, settling in the South Bay. As the South Asian community began laying foundations with temples, mosques and schools, Ibrahim assumed the role of revolutionary and became the first female board member of the Islamic Center of Southern California.

On a chilly December night in 1990, she invited four women to her home for dinner, where they drafted a set of bylaws and formed Niswa, Arabic for women.

“In terms of immigrants, we’re the new kids on the block, and I started seeing that there were so many problems going unattended. Other communities had help and we had nothing,” Ibrahim said. “So, I decided we had to do something, starting with the very mild ones and working our way up.”

Besides offering counseling and immigration assistance, Niswa acts as a liaison between the community and government agencies, aids ailing senior citizens and even helps resettle Bosnian refugees.

A year later, two other organizations were formed to serve the South Asian community--Sahara and the Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle East--yet neither group focused on the particular needs of Muslims.

A Need to Reach Out to New Immigrants

Through Niswa, Ibrahim bridges two worlds. Working with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, she organized several programs at neighborhood mosques where immigrants learn about the U.S. legal system. In return, the city agency consults Ibrahim for guidance on cases involving Muslim families, and refers victims and batterers to Niswa for counseling.

In December 1997, Niswa opened its shelter, which is funded by private donations.

At a secret location in Los Angeles, the yellow, two-family dwelling, which can house up to eight women and their children, stands as a haven for women of all races and religions, but especially Muslims. In the shelter’s common room, above the cozy green sofa, etchings from the Koran cover the wall.

Children’s laughter floats out of one bedroom, a woman’s prayers echo from another. In the kitchen, the refrigerator bursts with an array of lentils, spices and halal delights. For observant Muslims, all beef must be halal, slaughtered according to Muslim precepts. Pork is forbidden. “Assalaamu alaikum,” one woman says to another. “Hello, peace be with you.”

“I had been to a shelter before where they didn’t understand my religion or the dietary laws that govern my faith,” a shelter resident said. “Here, I was at home.”

As Niswa president and housemother, Ibrahim, 65, often brings the woman into the shelter and breaks the ice, acting both as a firebrand for women’s rights and a sorely needed friend. Exuding an air of elegance, she steps out of her black Toyota and enters dressed in a black shalwar kameez--a long silky blouse draped over matching pants--with a stylish white scarf around her neck. The stunning portrait presents a delicately divine balance between South Asia and Southern California.

Her task is complex, she says: educating her own community while shattering Western stereotypes that cast all South Asian men as wife-beaters.

“Our men are basically decent,” she said, pointing to her own marriage of almost 47 years. “But, there are charlatans in every culture, and some of the men are doing things to keep their wives under their control. For what reason, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Indian Women in U.S. Tolerate Abuse Longer

While studies show that American women who suffer abuse live with it on average three to five years, a 1996 study published in the Violence Against Women Journal found that Indian women in the United States remain in violent relationships an average of almost 7 1/2 years.

So what makes South Asians more willing to tolerate abuse?

According to the 1996 study of South Asians, women said they were taught as children to uphold family as sacred and accept their status as “secondary and subservient.” Those notions led them to believe their only viable roles were “devoted daughter, nurturing wife or sacrificing mother.”

“We are not raised as individualistic people,” Ibrahim said. “We have seen our mothers care for others first. Those beliefs make it harder for our women to leave.”

One former shelter resident recalled feeling so hopelessly trapped in her abusive marriage that she planned a group suicide with her two sons. Together, the three lay sleeping bags on the kitchen floor and prepared to swallow pesticide. They began to pray, asking forgiveness for their sins. They prayed and cried and prayed so much that eventually they fell asleep. The next day, she fled to a mosque, where someone told her about Niswa.

“There’s a deep socialization that if she leaves, she brings dishonor to both families,” said Sujata Warrier, a co-founder of New Jersey-based Manavi, the first South Asian women’s group in the nation.

“The burden is on her to maintain the family network. She’s the bearer of all these traditions, like Atlas carrying the world.”

The reason is simple, explained Bilkis Mayel, a Niswa board member: “In our culture, family problems stay in the family.”

Some South Asian men exploit those beliefs to control wives, experts say. Women at Niswa tell of marriages that become sinister games of manipulation, with the husband isolating the woman in the home, disconnecting the phone, locking the kitchen cabinets and restricting her every movement.

In some instances, men cite a 1,400-year-old verse in the Koran to justify their abuse, said Maher Hathout, a Muslim scholar and spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California.

The verse states that husbands may discipline or correct their wives if they commit nashooz, literally “perversion,” which could be defined as dangerous acts that harm the family. However, neither the verse nor the Koran ever condones abuse, Hathout says. But the meaning of nashooz has been twisted out of context through the years by men who use it as a license to beat their wives for all kinds of offenses.

“Such behavior is against the spirit of Islam,” Hathout said. “We are talking about abuse and this is not pleasing to God.”

Adds Ibrahim, “The whole process of sitting down and talking to the men--it hasn’t started. Maybe they will respect me as an elder, but we need to develop a base of men to deal with these problems. I can only do so much.”

The Abuse Began After Only Two Weeks

After Shahnaz and her husband married in 1995, he seemed excited about his new bride. In legal depositions, friends said he planned to add a bedroom to the family’s Encino house and had bought his wife a Lexus. But Shahnaz said his behavior changed just two weeks after she moved to Los Angeles.

“He told me, ‘You’re ugly. You’re English is no good. You’re not civilized. You can’t drive a car. Why don’t you just leave this house?’ ” she recounted.

Periodic physical abuse followed whenever she failed to fulfill her housekeeping duties, she said. On one unforgettable day--June 15, 1996--Shahnaz said she had an argument with her father-in-law while her husband was at work. When he arrived home, the family ordered him to beat her.

“I felt like, ‘He is my husband, let him beat me,’ ” she said.

Naheed Sheikh, of the Northern California-based South Asian women’s group Narika, said abuse by the husband’s family can be common.

“That’s why when a South Asian woman leaves a marriage, she often gets a restraining order not only against him, but against the entire clan,” she said.

For almost a year, the horror continued. Los Angeles police say they were called to the Encino home three times, but Shahnaz never reported abuse. Finally in her eighth month of pregnancy, she phoned her sister on the East Coast in tears and asked for help. Her sister flew to Los Angeles and called police to lead Shahnaz to safety. As Shahnaz walked out, her husband’s mother ripped the family jewelry off her body.

Shahnaz moved in with a cousin for about a month, who referred her to Shamim Ibrahim. Niswa found her an apartment and paid the first few months’ rent. Though still struggling financially, Shahnaz gets around by bicycle and finds comfort in her job at a neighborhood store. Yet, alone in her new home, Shahnaz blames herself for destroying the marriage. Her son has no father, she says, and she will never marry again.

“If I didn’t leave the house, then they would have tortured me,” she said shaking her head. “But, I had no intention of leaving the house. I don’t know why I left the house.”

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Times staff writer Margaret Ramirez can be reached by e-mail at margaret.ramirez@latimes.com.