Feel the love. "Russia's Muslim south triples sharia bride price," by Amie Ferris-Rotman for Reuters, July 7 (thanks to Twostellas):
The price tag on a bride in Russia's Ingushetia province has been tripled by the regional government, in a sign the Muslim North Caucasus region is slipping out of Kremlin control as sharia law eclipses Russian.
Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike.
The issue of the 'kalym', a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses to marry, is the latest example of a broader trend that has troubled the Kremlin.
"The increase of the kalym was decided by the residents themselves," the Kremlin-backed leader of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
At an Ingush conference for Muslim scholars and elders this week, attended by Yevkurov, the money a groom must pay the bride's family for her hand was increased from 12,500 roubles (265 pounds) to 40,000 roubles (851 pounds), the local government said on official website.
"It is time to raise the rates, and with them the responsibility of the groom," a statement on the site said.
Wary of the dangers of separatism after two bloody wars with Chechnya since the mid-1990s, the Kremlin has watched uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets in the region.
Polygamy, illegal under Russian law, is encouraged by local authorities in the region. Last month rights workers blamed police for paintball attacks on Chechen women for not wearing headscarves, and Islamist fighters in Ingushetia have gunned down kiosk workers for selling vodka.
During their meeting, Putin looked concerned as he told Yevkurov that the price rise for a bride did not correspond to Russian inflation.
Putin added he was not sure if the practice, widespread in the Caucasus and Central Asia, was Muslim in its nature.
"We have yet to thoroughly examine this," he told Yevkurov....
The price tag on a bride in Russia's Ingushetia province has been tripled by the regional government, in a sign the Muslim North Caucasus region is slipping out of Kremlin control as sharia law eclipses Russian.
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This, of course, has nothing to do with the "worth" of a woman. This is likely to render more young men unable to marry—never a good thing in a Muslim-majority region.
A young man in Dar-al-Islam, deprived of a wife and family, is even more likely to find his "fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Jihad" (with apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson).
It's yet another indication, as well, that there is no love in Islam.
What the hell is *the government* doing, in any case, setting bride price in a place like secular Russia?
Islam—the only creed so unspeakably awful that it can make aspects of *Soviet communism* look humane in comparison.
"We have yet to thoroughly examine this," (Putin) told Yevkurov...
Well, that statement could be made by any of dozens of national leaders on their understanding of Islam.
*** 9:3 ***
So Vlad shouldn't feel too bad. He's still got plenty of room to systematically destroy what little quality of life Russians had in the first place. For example, he could bring up a million more Moslems to St. Petersburg and Mosocow. Just think of the multicultural diversity that would mean.
Raise the kalym, and you apparently please Muslims.
Raise the kalym, and make marriage less affordable, and delay the age at which a Muslim man may marry, and hence you also make more likely that those gigantic Muslim families will not be quite so gigantic.
Who says there is no such thing as a Win-
win Situation?
Yes, you make the young men not be able to afford getting married, and also all those old men from Saudi, Egypt, etc, can buy some new young caucasian brides to add to their harem.
"Putin added he was not sure if the practice .... was Muslim in its nature."
He probably agrees with his American partner, that our Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, though.
From the article.
"a bubbling Islamist insurgency".
Reuters, Reuters, you are not talking about a kitchen.
Here's a suggestion, Reuters. Next time, just write "an ever-more violent jihad campaign".
Also from the article: "the money a groom must pay the bride's family for her hand".
Not her 'hand'.
He's handing over money for 'tilth', or to put it even more crudely, 'c***'.
Nonie Darwish, in her book on sharia, 'Cruel and Usual Punishment', explains:
"In the Qur'an, the dowry is often called ujur, the word ujur in Arabic simply means 'wage'. So to make the meaning less repulsive, dowry was given a different word from that of the Quran. It is now called mahr in Egypt. Mahr (dowry) is a technical term denoting the money that must be given to the woman in the marriage contract in exchange for enjoying her - it is simply payment for sex. And giving them their 'wage' is a faridah, meaning an obligation.
"Ibn al-'Arabi, a Muslim spiritual leader who lived from 1165 to 1240, confirms that the man's sexual rights by virtue of paying the dowry is grounded on the Qur'an. He went as far as saying that the payment of the dowry creates a master-servant relationship between the husband and wife."...(pp. 38-39).
Then on page 40 Nonie explains further, citing "statements made by some of Islam's most eminent scholars. "The dowry is given in exchange for the woman's sexual organs" [Ibn Kathir, Tafsir ibn Kathir, Dar Ussalam Publishers, 2000, comment on Qur'an 4:24].
"He who so gives two handfuls of flour or dates as dowry of his wife has rendered her (private parts) lawful" [Ibn Abdullah Tabrizi, Sheikh Wali-ud-Din Muahmmad, Mishkat ul-Masabih [Hadith collection], 2: 57, translated Abdul Hameed Siddiqui, Kitab Bhavan (New Delhi: 1990).
If by "dowry" you mean haqq-e-mahr? Mahr is paid to the WIFE, not to her relatives. This is insurance money for her, in fact, that's what it literally means. She is being paid (traditionally enough to feed herself for 1-3 months if her husband passes) a sum agreed upon by the BRIDE and GROOM, not an arrangement made by their families.
Bride price is arranged with the parents and is paid to them, not the wife.
It's fascinating how you have decided to turn this on its head though. You don't have any hadith or aya to back up this ridiculous claim.
This "kalym" is not an Islamic practice.
Qur'an 4:4 "And give the women (on marriage) their dower as a free gift; but if they, of their own good pleasure, remit any part of it to you, Take it and enjoy it with right good cheer. "