If he were 40, we almost certainly wouldn't be hearing about it at all. From Agence France-Presse:
RIYADH - An 11-year-old boy has married his 10-year-old cousin in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Mohammed al-Rashidi and his unidentified cousin will seal the marriage they contracted under the sharia laws of Islam and move in together after a ceremony to take place in the summer, Al-Shams newspaper said.
“I am ready for this marriage. It will help me study better,” Mohammed, who goes to primary school in the northern province of Hail, was quoted as saying by Al-Shams.
“I invite all my classmates to do like me,” the boy said, adding that he wanted to “crown a love story through marriage”.
The schoolboy’s father, Muraizak al-Rashidi, told the newspaper he was busy sending out invitations for a summer celebration to seal the marriage.
Dahim al-Jaber, the headmaster at Mohammed’s school, said marriage at such a young age was “inappropriate” but wished the couple a happy life together.
Getting married will make you "study" better?
Do what normal kids do: get some pretty pictures of beautiful women and have your own fun.
I don't think getting married will make him study better as they will probably end up arguing and he will have to beat her hard if she doesn't submit to his will.
"You are cordially invited to attend the molestation of a 10-year old girl by my 11 year-old son. Please bring your underage children for possible marriage arrangements, followed by a large feast. All dowry must be in the form of goats, chickens, rugs and dates. Anyone who insults me with lack of proper dowry will have their neck smitten. Imam Sheik Durka Mohammed will honor us with his presence and will perform the child-abuse ceremony."
“I am ready for this marriage. It will help me study better,” Mohammed, who goes to primary school in the northern province of Hail, was quoted as saying by Al-Shams."
He also added, I also will let my cousin, oops - sorry, my wife, use my colouring books and crayons.
How does one parody this - it just writes itself.
I guess the blushing bride's parents can breathe a sigh of relief knowing they won't be stuck with a spinster, a fate worse than death for muslimas. It's a good thing they got rid of her before her eleventh birthday or she might be too ripe for any prospects of marriage. Poor thing, she'll probably have to move in with her in-laws and scrub the toilets with a toothbrush, maybe her own, and will be treated like a slave until she bears a male child. How sad that these children, especially the girl, have been robbed of their childhoods. The only positive aspect of this hideous story is that the infant bride wasn't betrothed to a sixty year old man.
And this "culture" is equal to my own? I don't think so. When the politically correct, multiculturalists swoon and coo about the joys of diversity and insist that all cultures are equal, how do they reconcile the fact that numerous practices in certain cultures are illegal in our own? That in itself is sufficient evidence of the inferiority of certain cultures, and the culture spawned by islam is at the top of the list.
These folks can't eat bacon, but it's acceptable for an 11-year old to marry his 10-year old cousin???
Is this why islam is "better" than the other religions?
Hye wtf is wrong with you guys don't you know that this is just their culture?!?! We need to respect that geeze!!!
To me, this is substantially less repugnant than virtually anything else I've seen depicted on the site. Marriage of a child to a child may be a bizarre speeding-forward of the understanding we've got as to the appropriate age for marriage, and it probably won't bode well for these two children in later life, but it's not a moral evil, in my opinion. Whereas it would be if the husband were much older, as per the Muhammad-Aisha scenario.
well i guess it beats the girl marrying a 60 year old pervert following in islam s perfect man who married a 6 year old
I agree with Funky Child and Crusader - at least, their ages were compatible, and how different is it from Jamie Lynn Spears, except that she ain't marrying. Of course, the cousin marriage is gross, but that's on par for the Islam course. (Johnb's and No More Ham, Ed's comments were funny)
I used to be against child marriage, but given how kids these days seem to enjoy having sex while teenaged, I am re-thinking that right now.
Girl: "What's your problem? At least my kids will be out of the house when I'm twenty."
Its child abuse, simple as that.
Just when you thought Jeff Foxworthy was being just "funny", along comes this story.
Islam...what a plague on humanity!
Kissing cousins? No problem. But disregard the six-toes, web feet..It's all normal...
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy:
If you go to family reunions to pick up women,
... you might be an Arab Muslim.
And just as soon as she hits puberty, she can start pumping out deformed, mentally challenged little muslims for the ummah.
Will he be taking his second wife at 12? His third at 14, and another at the ripe old age of 16?
The ten year old primary school student proclaims he is ready for this marriage. How is he proposing to provide for his wife? An allowance? Inheritance?
And when things don't go as smoothly as his brainwashed dreams lead him to believe . . .
Kids at this age still 'play house'. Their tender imaginations cannot comprehend the reality of such responsibility. That any elementary school aged child is thrust into this situation is criminal.
You know, you just can't make this stuff up........
In order to for Western audiences to better understand Islamic culture, there should be a new TV series - I know! -
"The Arabian Hillbillies"!
Fatima - "Mom, Dad just killed another one of my boyfriends!"
Dad - "This is your fault, Fatima! If you weren't showing so much hair, this wouldn't have occurred! Besides, he was an infidel!"
Fatima - "Like duh, Dad. We live in Beverly Hills."
Mom (still recovering from last night's beating) - "This is true, my noble husband. There are infidels all around us. Now let us prepare for my son's wedding."
Fatima - "Mom! Adul is only 7 years old!"
Mom - "His bride is 7 years old as well. They will have so much in common!"
Fatima - "Ech!"
Announcer: Join us next week on "Arabian Hillbillies" when Dad launches a jihad against the 7-Eleven when he discovers they sell alcohol and pornography.
Slackers. They reached double digits in age before finally marrying? What bad Koranists!
When I was in 5th or 6th grade I don't recall fantasizing about "crowning a love story..." If Muslims weren't so cruel, greedy, wicked, backward, and lethally dangerous, they'd be cartoonishly absurd and really quite embarrassingly silly.
When I was 10 years old all I wanted was to ride my bike and play hide and seek.
Islam is a totally different world, all you have to do to understand that is to go to MEMRI and watch any of the videos.
We are not all alike.
I found it amusing that the newspaper reporting the story was called "Al-Shams"; because the notion of this being a real marriage is a total sham!
Can anyone still have any doubts that Islam is another word for "insanity"? I mean, people, we're watching an insane asylum in action here.
The sad part of all of this is that so many people take Islam seriously.
Speaking of studying better because of marriage: This actually happened to me. I was in college, seemingly forever, and I got married. My wife started kicking me in the pants to get me to hurry up and finish college. It worked!
Maybe the little girl will do some jihad on him to get him to study hard.
Announcer: Join us next week on "Arabian Hillbillies" when Dad launches a jihad against the 7-Eleven when he discovers they sell alcohol and pornography.
Posted by: tanstaafl at March 19, 2008 8:27 AM
I'll bet the owner of said 7-Eleven is a Muslim.
Not a very good Muslim or he would have launched his own jihad.
He'd better be talking about the boy, because otherwise he's on the verge of being executed as a heretic.
Robert, Marisol et alii
While I admire your work in uncovering issues about jihad and dhimmitude, I think that this marriage issue has nothing to do with jihad or dhimmitude. This issue is very secondary. In fact, "minors" getting married to "minors" is nothing exclusive to Islam, it happens among the tribes of the deepest forests of Africa or Southern America and it has been happening over thousands of years of human existence.
At 10 years old I used to make out with my stuffed teddy bear (can't believe I'm admitting this to you guys), because I was way too young for a boyfriend, let alone getting married. Good Lord!
I was married at 21 and everyone thought that THAT was too young, while 10 & 11 is ridiculous!
Re: why I posted this
I appreciate the feedback, but I still think this was worth posting: Sometimes the story itself is the reason something gets posted, and sometimes the nature of the coverage is worthy of attention.
This story is in the latter category; my reason for posting it is in the first sentence at the top of the entry:
The boy gets all the attention in the story, while there is not a peep about how routinely girls are married off at very young ages in Muslim countries, after the example of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha.
Berytius_Libanicus said
And the reason it will still be happening thousands of years from now in Islamic lands (if Islam still exists) is because of the example that Mohammad set 1400 years ago. He is the Perfect Man to Be Emulated For All Time. The rest of the world moved on, but Islam can never move on.
You put quotes around "minors". Do you think that 10 is not a minor when it comes to marriage?
Was the bride still a virgin?
What is it about islam and the obsession with children? I know mohammed was attracted to Aisha when she was six and raped her when she was 9 (I use the word rape as I do not believe a nine year old child has the maturity to consent, especially when confronted with someone believed by the majority of her people to be a prophet) but surely in the intervening time people have woken up to the fact that he was a very disturbed individual?
Whatever argument you put forward for Islam it just fails in the face of the fact that the inventor of this religion was attracted to a six year old. A paedophile is a paedophile in my eyes, and all the shouting and violence in the world won't change that. End of story.
Special_guest:
Child marriages are still going on outside of Islamic societies-they are still relatively common among the gypsies (Roma) in Europe, as well. They also take place in India (yes, amongst Hindus as well). That said, in all of these countries there are laws against child marriages (although they are apparently not always strictly enforced). And as you yourself said, the example of Mohammed and his marriage to Aisha will almost certainly render impossible any prohibition on child marriages in countries under Sharia law. In Iran the legal marriage age was reduced to 9 after the revolution. It has since been raised to 13--at least a small step in the right direction--thanks to the efforts of womens' rights groups and certainly not to the clerics.
I don't want to speak for Berytius_Libanicus, but I think that he probably used the word "minor" in quotations because it is technically a legal term, and the definition varies, depending on the legal age of adulthood.
Crusader wrote:
well i guess it beats the girl marrying a 60 year old pervert following in islam s perfect man who married a 6 year old
...................................
Yes, in many ways it coulkd be worse. But Marjane Satrapi--who created the graphic novel "Persepolis"--gives a sad account of one of these child marriages. I think this is in her book "Embroideries".
A man is married by his family to his young cousin when they are both children. He doesn't object--he and his cousin have always liked each other, and enjoy playing together. Neither, however, has any idea of what marriage means.
Later, the boy goes away to school as a young teenager. When he returns, he is expected to consumate the marriage. He realizes, though, that he in no way regards his cousin as his wife--he thinks of her rather as his sister. No surprise there.
He manages to put things off, and goes off to college. He meets a young woman there (this is pre-revolutionary Iran), falls in love, and manages to get his family's consent to marry her.
This leaves his poor first wife in a permanent limbo. The family would not agree to a divorce, and her husband is no real husband to her. She cannot have a romantic relationship, she cannot have children. She is pitied and regarded as an object of ridicule because her husband does not live with her, and because she has no children.
He does come from a well-to-do family, and is a decent enough person given his culture, so he makes sure that she has enough money to live on.
He visits her every so often--pretty rarely, because he feels guilty about her situation--rarely, also, because his second wife gets jealous.
Finally, after many years. he appologizes to her for the lonely life she has been forced to lead. She says she has forgiven him, and realizes that the plight of many women is worse.
The husband is actually quite a decent person, but he has committed a great cruelty because of his culture and his inability to consider any alternative to it.
I don't know what's ahead for these two young kids in Saudi Arabia, but such an unhealthy start does not bode well for them.