Italian television looks like fun. (Video thanks to Frank.)
"The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)." -- Bukhari 7.62.88
This behavior by the man whom hundreds of millions of people regard as the exemplary standard of conduct (Koran 33:21) has brought suffering to untold numbers of women and girls.
One Islamic land where child marriage is common - in fact, more common than anywhere else in the world - is northern Nigeria, where Sharia is in force. The Nigerian government has tried to act against the practice, passing a law in 2003, the Child Rights Act, that set the minimum age for marriage at eighteen. Islamic clerics have been the fiercest opponents of this law: Imam Sani, a Nigerian cleric, explained: "Child marriage in Islam is permissible. In the Koran there is no specific age of marriage." Consequently, "the Muslim clerics have a problem with this Child Rights Act and they decried it, they castigate it, they reject it and they don't want it introduced in Nigeria." If the government imposed the law, Sani said, "There will be violent conflict from the Muslims, saying that 'no, we will not accept this, we'd rather die than accept something which is not a law from Allah.'"
Nigeria is made up of 36 states, of which 18 have passed the Child Rights Act; however, only one majority-Muslim Nigerian state has passed the law, and that with a change that set "puberty," rather than the age of eighteen, as the minimum requirement for lawful marriage. The result? As many as 800,000 Nigerian women are afflicted with fistula, a disease resulting from early intercourse and pregnancy.
Nigeria is not alone, either in the prevalence of child marriage there or in attempts at reform the practice. In September 2008, Moroccan officials closed 60 Koranic schools operated by Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui - because he issued a decree stating that marriage to girls as young as nine was justified by Muhammad's example. "The sheikh," according to Agence France-Presse, "said his decree was based on the fact that the Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to his favourite wife when she was that age."
It should come as no surprise, then, given the words of the Koran about divorcing prepubescent women and Muhammad's example in marrying Aisha, that in some areas of the Islamic world the practice of child marriage enjoys the blessing of the law. Time magazine reported in 2001 that "in Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys," and notes that "the law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move." The New York Times reported in 2008 that in Yemen, "despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad's marriage to a 9-year-old." (The Times doesn't seem fazed by the fact that "conservatives" in the U.S. are not generally advocates of child marriage.)
And so child marriage remains prevalent in many areas of the Islamic world. In 2007, photographer Stephanie Sinclair won the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition for a wedding photograph of an Afghani couple: the groom was said to be 40 years old but looked older; the bride was eleven. UNICEF Patroness Eva Luise Köhler explained: "The UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007 raises awareness about a worldwide problem. Millions of girls are married while they are still under age. Most of theses child brides are forever denied a self-determined life." According to UNICEF, about half of the women in Afghanistan are married before they reach the age of eighteen.
I dont see what the big deal is...
Mohammad was a pig, I mean pedophile.
Awesome video - hope it goes viral.
Death to P.C.
Let us be clearly understood by the words we speak, and not be vague by the words not spoken for fear of being non-PC and offensive. No one has the right not to be offended.
Jew Lover
Brava Daniela!
Superb! Thank you for the translation jdamn.
Muslims are always lecturing us about respecting their culture. Well, Western culture says that a middle-aged man having sexual intercourse with a nine-year old girl is wrong on its face and that a man who would do such a thing is a pedophile. Respect that, Muslims. And my compliments to the Italians for airing this.
Wait... wait, did I just see a few little Italian ladies kick some Muslim guys butts? How could this happen? Do you mean to have me believe that WOMEN - who are supposed to have only half the value of a man - could stomp a mud-hole in the butts of these pitiful Muslim males? Oh, Oh! I get it... without their AK-47's or RPG's.... maybe these guys ain't so much... ya THINK? No Machete no Vendetti, right? Where is their superior logic? Where is their superior power of ideas? Where is that wonderful Middle Eastern Male charm? Why didn't 'ulluh-hu qWahksmoor' intervene with 'mighty flame' (or something). Could it be that all of this supposed 'religion' is nothing more that empty idolatry? ISLAM IS TOTAL IDOLATRY. ISLAM IS A LIE. Ya Think? I'm just askin'....
YouTube link for future reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpdCfbSsNzQ
Comments are not P.C. - Some excerpts:
Abdul1425: Daniela is wrong,Mohammad married aisha at the age of SIX and raped her at the age of NINE.
pigsmellfrommecca: it takes a Sexy Italian lady to insult Pisslam!
SaxonLadyUK: Well said, Daniela. It's about time more people had the guts to stand up and speak out.
mohammed WAS a paedophile. As well as being a schizophrenic, psychopathic, women hating, murderer!
Pray tell - could it be that people have finally had enough of islam?
Jew Lover
Brave woman.
Obviously these bearded fools know nothing of Italian women, because when the arms start pumping and the hands start doing those finger thingies, the descussion is over. Best just to listen, or leave the room at that point. Married to one. It is genetic. Good to see the Italians holding their own.
.
Vogliamo parlare di questo! moHAMedo era un pedofilo!
hahaha!!
Molto bene detto!!
.
I first got a whiff of Santache from one of the other sites a couple of days ago, from a story about what she said, not the video. So, I sent her a nice thank-you email. Man was it tough navigating the Italian government sites to get an elected rep’s email – nothing like the US or Canada.
From the youtube site, one poster asked about the lack of translation from the guy in the suit. Jdamn explained it was mostly a shout over saying “lies.” One Italian poster stated something that requires an answer however:
“i`m italian and i`ve know this woman for many years.She upsets everyone just to be on tv that`s why she`s famous for.She hates gays,transexuals,blacks etc.She`s a fascist.She`s one of the most hated women in Italy like Alessandra Mussolini.She doesn`t care about women that wear the veil.she just hates everybody”
Anyone here follow Italian politics and know if any of these allegations have any truths to them a-la-BNP? Or is just a taqiyya troll?
Kaffir Kanuck - ask Hugh Fitzgerald. I think he'd know. He has longtime 'contacts' in Italy - over at New English Review he occasionally annoys people by posting articles from the Italian press, untranslated.
I don't constantly annoy people at NER. I annoy one or two.
As to the attempt to blacken the name of Santanche across the board, it just won't do. She has for years been opposed to the wearing of the veil, has received death threats from Muslims, and now, I believe, is usually accompanied by guards.
The last time she came up at JW, I wrote something about a similar attempt, this one by The Guardian, to preemptively mold the opinions of readers against her.
Here's what I wrote then:
Hugh | October 29, 2006
"an MP for the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance..."
-- from the article in The Guardian above
That little phrase is put in, by The Guardian, in order to blacken the Itallian MP in question, Daniela Santanche, in the minds of its readers. But the Alleanza Nazionale under Fini distanced itself in a thousand ways from Fascism, not least in Fini's declared disgust for the "racial laws" (legge razziali") of 1938 and for any form of antisemitism. Mussolini's granddaughter left the party in a fury a few years ago at its clear new direction. It is not "neo-fascist." Real fascists have gone elsewhere.
The Guardian has no history of using any Homeric epithet to describe, and therefore "place" in the reader's mind, any political figures or writers whom it likes, whom it approves of, whom it finds "on the left" but never needs to say that, because the "left" is the "center" and there is no need to describe the previous positions, left or right, of those it approves of, if it would harm them.
A newspaper such as "The Guardian" -- it bears the name, but nothing else, of C. P. Scott's Guardian, could, with reason, routinely describe a certain German political figure as "the former Baader-Meinhof sympathizer Joschka Fischer" or a certain LSE professor (despite the best efforts of Donald Watt and Kenneth Minoque to stop it) as "the former Trotsykite Fred Halliday" or a a late French prime minister as "the former Vichy collaborator Francois Mitterand."
But why stop there? George Galloway deserve a Homeric epithet to spare readers the effort of finding out all about him -- "the louche George Galloway." Or what about inventing a new adjective -- eurabisant, on the model of marxisant, so The Guardian could helpfully describe Solana and Patten and others of that ilk as "so many former or presesent members of the eurabisant E.U. which poses a threat to the continuance of the nation-states of Europe and that intelligent interest and love for the national and local that helps to immunize against the menace of pan-national Islam"?
The Guardian could do all kinds of things. It could begin to see that it is a defender, not of "neo-fascism" -- what it accuses the Italian MP above of being connected to -- but of outright Fascism. For that, in the end, is what the Total Regulation of LIfe, and Complete Explanation of the Universe, that rejects or limits almost every form of artistic expression, and every kind of free and skeptical inquiry -- that belief-system or as Bush and Rice would have it, that "religion" with all that word's ----- called Islam."
I am not endorsing Santanche in every respect. She has been too fond of Berlusconi, an impossible leader (see the Youtube disucssions of Berlusconi by Marco Travaglio and Alexander Stille). I don't care for the Moratti "reform" of education. But on Islam...there she's fine, and I notice that at Magdi Allam's site she has been the subject of praise on this matter of the veil, and more generally, on the subject of Islam. And that, right now, is what, in Italy, as in the rest of Western Europe, is the first question to ask of any political figure: where do you stand, what do you make, what will you do about, Islam? one cares most about
I would love to see somebody do what she did on American television. If islam is a religion of peace, why do all of its public critics require an army of bodyguards? Muslims are such frightened, insecure cry babies. If they truly believed that islam was the "only true religion", they would encourage scrutiny and criticism. They would be confident and self-assured, not belligerent, pugnacious jerks. I wish muslims would take their vile, nasty religion and go away, back to wherever they call home. They never identify with their adopted countries anyway so who needs them?
He sez: "we don't demand the crucifix be removed from schools"
typical Muslim liar....Muslims absolutely demand all non Muslim symbols be removed from where ever they are found..Muslims even want total removal of non Muslim churches....In many countries Muslims are sacking and burning churches...it is only a matter of time before they start doing it in Europe and other places...
If I remember correctly while married to muhammad didn't Aisha start to have eyes for another man? I can't remember
his name right off the top of my head this very moment but I know this happend. She really didn't love Muhammad at all.
Yes, I recall reading that somewhere, too, but don't have time just now to track it down. Aisha was nine six when she was "married" and only eighteen when old Mo croaked at age 62. I imagine she was a rather hot chick! There must have been many a muscled, scimitar wielding honcho her hormones would have stir for. I never understood why she never remarried, but suspect she found other ways to cater to her womanhood. Hollywood is missing a great opportunity here - a film about Aisha would have it all - sex, violence, betrayal, war with the inlaws (e.g., Battle of the Camel against her stepson Ali) - all the things you'd want in a story.
Yes, I recall reading that somewhere, too, but don't have time just now to track it down. Aisha was six when she was "married" and only eighteen when old Mo croaked at age 62. I imagine she was a rather hot chick! There must have been many a muscled, scimitar wielding honcho her hormones would have stir for. I never understood why she never remarried, but suspect she found other ways to cater to her womanhood. Hollywood is missing a great opportunity here - a film about Aisha would have it all - sex, violence, betrayal, war with the inlaws (e.g., Battle of the Camel against her stepson Ali) - all the things you'd want in a story.
Sorry for the double post...Am I the only one who would like to see IntenseDebate (sans bugs, of course) reinstituted here? It was easy to keep track of multiple comments across stories with ID, nearly impossible with TypePad.