Said one doctor: "The case of Fawziya illustrates the tragedy of those whom we call 'the brides of death', who are little girls...."

That makes Muhammad's wife [1] Aisha one of those "brides of death" herself. And he set the disastrous precedent -- as a "beautiful pattern of conduct," per Qur'an 33:21 -- that leads to cases like this. That is the ultimate reason that child marriage has persisted so stubbornly across the Islamic world.

"Yemen child bride dies giving birth: rights group," by Hamoud Mounassar for [2] Agence France-Presse, September 13 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SANAA -- A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, has died during a difficult delivery in which her baby also died, a children's rights organisation said on Sunday, demanding action to stop Yemeni men taking child brides.

"The child, Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, died on Friday September 11 in western Yemen at the age of 12 due to a complicated delivery," the Yemeni Organisation for Childhood Protection (Seyaj) said.

The organisation said its volunteers had confirmed that doctors had been unable to save Fawziya's life after she suffered complications from the delivery.

Raised in an impoverished family with a father suffering from kidney failure, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off at the age of 11. She got pregnant a year later, the group said.

"The lack of a statutory minimum age for marriage makes it impossible for local officials to ban child marriages, especially among girls, or to punish their parents or spouses for the disastrous consequences of such marriages," Seyaj said, adding that such marriages are widespread on Yemen's Red Sea coast.

"The case of Fawziya illustrates the tragedy of those whom we call 'the brides of death', who are little girls, less than 15 years old, forced into marriage, mostly due to financial reasons," Seyaj director Ahmed al-Qorashi told AFP.

"The proportion of little girls and teenage females married before 15 is nearly 50 percent" in rural parts of Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries despite its proximity to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

The zakat check must have gotten lost in the mail again.

"These marriages are the result of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy, and lead to the destruction of the lives of these young girls, whose opinion is not taken in consideration," Qorashi added....