There's that number again: 9. And while the authorities have intervened, this case demonstrates how the adherence to Islamic law and the example of Muhammad regarding the "acceptable" age for marriage undermine civil laws aimed at protecting female citizens even in an "Islamic republic."
Sharia Alert from the Khaleej Times: "Pakistani police rescue bride aged 9 wed to pay debt"
KARACHI - Police in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province have rescued a nine-year-old girl who was married off by her father to clear a debt for 400 kg (880 lb) of rice.
Both the father, Jan Mohammad, and her husband of four days, Abdul Sattar, a man of around 60, have been arrested and will appear in court on Saturday, a senior officer said.
“The marriage has taken place but the girl is underage,” police officer Masroor Ahmed Jatoi in Jacobabad district, 480 Km (300 miles) north of Karachi, told Reuters on Friday.
“She was given as compensation by her father, so we are treating it as a criminal case,” said Jatoi.
The girl, Wahida, has been sent for medical examination, and would be transferred to a care centre until a court decides where she will be best looked after.
Her father had stood as guarantor for a friend who bought the rice on credit, but when the debt put at 50,000 rupees ($833) was not paid, the trader demanded that Mohammad give his daughter in marriage to his elder brother as compensation, Jatoi said.
Human rights activist and lawyer Rashid Rehman said the law bars marriages of girls under 14 and boys under 16.
“The law has defined the ages clearly. There is also a law that prevents children and women from being given in any form of compensation to settle a dispute or blood feud,” Rehman said, adding that the court could declare the marriage void.
The government says it promotes the rights of women, but it is still common in rural areas, where feudal and tribal ways hold sway, for girls to be given as compensation to settle disputes.
Earlier this week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court stopped five minor girls from being handed over as compensation in a double murder case and ordered the police to conduct an inquiry.
Can this culture be any more abhorent than it already is? Yes. After the father gets his daughter back, he, the wife, and the uncle will cut her clitoris off with a rusty knife.
Well, apparently Jan Mohammed couldn't lead Pakistani troops into 80 battles against Indians, so why not follow in the footsteps of Uswa Hasana the easy way - marry a 9 year old when he is 60. Actually, Jan Mohammed is better - he's marrying the girl when she is 9, rather than when she is 6. Then again, he may not be that willing to wait 3 years before consumating the marriage, so it's probably a wash.
Isn't Pakistan an Islamic country carved out of Infidel India for the explicit purpose of being a Shariah state for the Muslims? In that case, what's their problem? Someone ask Mullah Omar to intervene, since MQM is obviously not going to do squat.
Abu America/Khalid bin Waleed/Salahuddin, won't you condemn the Paki regime for behaving like Infidels, arresting this poor groom? All he wanted was a submissive wife for his 880lb rice.
Also, where has Naseem disappeared the last week? Attending to her shor Anwer having his period?
Id like to know how he managed to eat 880 lbs of rice before having his debt called. Those muslims, they'd rather stuff their faces than keep their children. Actually, to them, a child is just a mouth to feed anyway, a liability. So for him, this was a win/win situation. Of course, he would never sell his son. The son needs to be intructed in the way of Allah so he can become a suicide bomber. The girl is just a mouth to feed and a vagina to be sold to pay a debt.
This poor girl has probably already gone through FGM and when she gets sent back home, if they can't wait for her to be married at a proper age, they'll do an honor killing.
Give the father, the trader and the groom life in a paki penitentery so they can understand the misery this child would have endured if not for intervention.
I'm wondering the same about the Naseems. They may have been suicide bombers somewhere.
Guys,
this is a similar story to the plot line of a movie called "Osama".(It has been mentioned here before.)
The girl in the movie goes off with an old f### because in order to help her mother and grandmother financially she dresses like a boy and gets her first period in a madrassa.
It is hard enough to read this kind of stuff and comprehend it. Then to see it represented in an Afgani movie makes it all the more horrible.
It is hard to imagine that anyone, other than dirty old men, would want the taliban back.
What those women have endured is beyond belief.
Islam=baby rapists.
Well, it's a horrible story, but the police of Islamic Pakistan have rescued her, apparently.
I'm confused. Why would the Pakistani authorities care about this?
well certainly now that the father has been arrested everyone will see this as the girl bringing dishonor and shame upon her family...
after she's given back to her family, I give her a week to live.
JC Supercop-
The rice monger probably didn't fork over a big enough bribe to the Paki police.
Ten lbs. of Uncle Abu Ben's oughta do it.
9 eh,
I guess this guy liked em mature.
This sorta stuff really needs to get main stream coverage, show the world how sick muslims are.
How about starting to deal with this sickness by limiting not the age of the girl for marriage but instead - the age of the groom? I'm not sure which is worse - the fact that the girl was 9 or the fact that the groom was 60. Actually its the complete mismatch which makes it disgusting. It might not be half as bad if the 9 year old girl was married to a 10 year old boy. Then they both might both just sit around giggling for a few years, while watching eachothers' pubic hair grow.
That's by way of saying - how old was Muhammad when he married Aisha? It's still a disgusting proposition but Muslims ought to at least observe the maximum age of Muhammad, inasmuch as they observe the minimum age of Aisha. I bet this 60 year old guy could be executed on those grounds alone. Not on the grounds that the girl was too young, but on the grounds that he was too old.
(Look, for any folks who would get the wrong impression from that post - this is called "grasping at straws in the face of insanity"...)
On the subject of Pakistan in Pakistan, a UN Humanitarian Affairs Dept article seems to state that only the Bohra Muslims, found in the largest cities of Sindh and Punjab provinces, practice it. It also tells you far, far more than you ever wanted to know about FGM.
http://www.irinnews.org/webspecials/FGM/default.asp
scrolldown to section headed 'Prevalance of FGM'
On the subject of FGM in Pakistan, that is!
from the wallyUK link: “Discussions, conducted for the purposes of this report, with women who have undergone the procedure, revealed that penetration was almost always difficult and painful, even for the man, when women had undergone the more extreme forms of FGM.”
Well no s**t Sherlock! It stands to figure that if the woman ain’t enjoying it, it’s gonna detract a bit from the man’s pleasure too. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face (no pun intended)! No wonder Muslim men fantasize about those 72 virgins in paradise ( with their clitorises intact I presume).
Here’s a general rule of thumb for all you Muslims out there. If God (okay Allah – whatever) – didn’t WANT you to have a particular body part – he WOULDN'T HAVE PUT IT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Comprende? Is that so hard to understand?
BTW- That goes not only for clitorises – but also for hands, tongues, feet, and most especially for HEADS - and the inquisitive brains that just so coincidentally happen to fit perfectly inside them!
Caroline, Mohammad was a middle-aged pervert when he "married" Aisha.
Caroline wrote:
from the wallyUK link: “Discussions, conducted for the purposes of this report, with women who have undergone the procedure, revealed that penetration was almost always difficult and painful, even for the man, when women had undergone the more extreme forms of FGM.”
Well no s**t Sherlock! It stands to figure that if the woman ain’t enjoying it, it’s gonna detract a bit from the man’s pleasure too.
........
Actually, removal of the clitoris and its attendant lack of pleasure for the woman during sex, horrible as it is, is often the least of FGM. Removal of the clitoris is only the simplest of many types of FGM.
In other types, in addition to clitoris removal, the labia are also removed. In its most severe form, infibulation, the entire vagina is sewn shut, leaving room for a tiny reed through which urine and menstral blood must flow. As you can imagine, there is a common occurance of infection.
With infibulation, intercourse is not merely lacking in pleasure, it is actually acutely painful. In addition to the horrible affect on women, it also serves to brutalize men. Even the most decent man has to hurt his wife, often quite severely, if he wants to consumate his marriage.
If all this wasn't hideous enough, the biggest danger occurs during childbirth. Often the baby cannot fit through the artificially narrowed vagina, and rates of both mother and child deaths are high. Another grotesque phenomenon is fistula--when the baby cannot fit through the birth canal, the vagina will sometimes rupture into the bowel. At best this leads to lifelong incontinence--often it leads to infection and sometimes death. In addition, most husbands abandon wives who develop fistulas--even when they don't want to, often family and community pressure to do so is intense.
Some westerners have set up "Fistula Hospitals" in Africa to treat this problem. Fistula does occur in non-infibulated women, but it is astonishingly rare.
Islamic sexual practices, like much of Islamic customs in general, are premised upon the infliction of discomfort or pain upon women. Why else would the reward for mighty Muslim warriors be eternal virgins in Paradise -- a consummation demanded on earth to be proofed by pain and blood? Why else would wife beating be encouraged by the Koran? The same can be said for FGM, the rape of prepubescent girls in "marriage," the forcing of uncomfortable and unhealthy costumes on women, multiple wives and "temporary wives," to the evidence that certain Muslim countries prefer anal sex. It is not too far from the truth to say that the core of Islamic culture is based upon the systematic physical and spiritual torture and dehumanization of women.
This is one case that has come out. There are a hundred that go unreported. No one really knows what goes on in mosques. And the minimum age of girls for legal marriage is 14, for god's sake. There are a lot of girls that are sold to saudis as sex slaves. Most are in their puberty. When you are in the middle east (excluding Israel) and you see a sheik with 2 or three of his harem, some are kids from pakistan, bought by giving meher (money) to their parents. It is all perfectly legal in muslim society. The odd case that comes out, is not even the tip of the iceberg.
This is a brilliant point. In their Tu Quoque sessions (we saw it last week with Khalid when he was batting for the Aisha and Zainab marriages), Muslims are too happy to point out how prevailent child marriages were then. Point they conviniently ignore - in those days, while children did reach puberty earlier and marry, and there was a gap between ages of boys and girls, usually, it was 5-10 years. In other words, one might have a 14 year old girl marry a 24 year old boy, or a 19 year old. But a fully grown man marrying such a minor was unheard of.
About the upper limit on marriages, I'm not so sure. What if the man was 60, and his wife was 55? Instead, why not have a certain maximum age difference law, like 5 years?
I agree with Supercop as well - why would the Pak police care, given the precedent that was being followed?
Infidel Pride,
The pak police do not care. Some smart reporter stumbled upon this probably, and this story came out. But, like I posted above, 99% don't come out. Ever.
What reason did this 60 year old man give for wanting a 9 year old girl in payment? She'd hardly be much use for domestic chores at that age. If it was for the obvious reason, did that not concern her parents just a little bit?
No, it does not bother their parents. Read my postings above. Paedophiles are an accepted part of any muslim society.
Pedophilia is muslims god given right.
Now I will go vomit.
Blatantly copied from Gravenimage's post...
"If all this wasn't hideous enough, the biggest danger occurs during childbirth. Often the baby cannot fit through the artificially narrowed vagina, and rates of both mother and child deaths are high."
I may seem horrendously callous here but in the longer term isn't this such a bad thing? Seeing how they treat their Koran as a manual of terror, you know, "strike terror into the heart of the infidel and all that, would it not be somewhat of a blessing for the rest of us when many of them die before the breed any more. I mean, they breed like flies don't they?
IceDragon, I much prefer birth control to hold down birth rates. FGM is just an insanity. So how do they know their women will be promiscuous if they don't practice it? Hmmmm....maybe those males think women would act the same way THEY do.
Ooooohhhhh noooooooooooo!!!!!!
Infidel Pride - For adults I wasn't recommending age limits of any sort. I don't think it's necessarily bizarre for a 30 year old woman to marry a 50 year old man if they fall in love.
I was just noting that its interesting that Muslims think its OK to marry a 9 year old because Muhammad did it but they never look at Muhammad's age - which I believe was 51 - and set a maximum age for the man wedding the 9 year old on that basis. Obviously that's still not OK but 60 is even worse. Since Muhammad was 51, on what grounds could it be considered Islamic for the groom to be even one year older than that, if this whole thing is based on literally following the example set by Muhammad?
That aside though, if they're going to marry 9 year olds then I think the maximum age of the groom should be something like 17. That way, within a few years, the age gap wouldn’t be so strange, nor would the girl be widowed by the time she reaches adulthood. Also, I don't think the practice would then meet the formal definition of pedophila because the groom wouldn't be an adult either.
Arjun, thanks for the insight. Naseem?!?!?!?! Where the hell are you? Oh, that's right, you are in Hell, you're in Pakistan. How old were you when you were sold into slavery, I mean marriage? Funny that you and the other little dogs of your cult never come out to howl when there are topics like this.....
Caroline-
You're trying to square the circle by rationalizing the irrational.
Arranged marriages between 9 year olds girls and 10 year old boys (your best case scenario) are still a form of psychological pressure and ontological contempt for these children's souls which would be better called spiritual terrorism.
But between a 9 year old girl and a 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old man is an ignoble, shameful and debased dogma.
You might as well argue about the size of rocks permissable for use in stoning to death those caught in adultery.
Would 5" stones be extreme, but 3" acceptable?
"Caroline- You're trying to square the circle by rationalizing the irrational."
Guilty as charged...:-)
It's tempting to try to untie the Gordian Knot of Islamic illogic, but, just as Iskandar (Alexander) proved himself wiser that all of the fumble-fingers who failed before him with that entwined conundrum, sometimes you have to "cut to the chase" and accept that only a clean blow will get through the impossibly-snarled Hadithic b.s.
Here's the only Conundrum I like.
Meanwhile, when oh when will Islam finally have its own 9 year old Loreena Bobbitt?!
Icedragon wrote:
Blatantly copied from Gravenimage's post...
"If all this wasn't hideous enough, the biggest danger occurs during childbirth. Often the baby cannot fit through the artificially narrowed vagina, and rates of both mother and child deaths are high."
I may seem horrendously callous here but in the longer term isn't this such a bad thing? Seeing how they treat their Koran as a manual of terror, you know, "strike terror into the heart of the infidel and all that, would it not be somewhat of a blessing for the rest of us when many of them die before the breed any more. I mean, they breed like flies don't they?
................
Sorry, Icedragon--I understand your frustration, but I cannot condone this view. A lot of these girls are mutilated as small children, some even as infants. Many of the victimes of Islamism are, as always, other muslims.