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With Muhammad's marriage to nine-year-old Aisha, and the Qur'an's approval of wife-beating (4:34), what is to prevent there from being many, many more Gulsomas? From The Hotzone, with thanks to JE:
KABUL, Afghanistan - Eleven-year old Gulsoma lay in a heap on the ground in front of her father-in-law. He told her that if she didn't find a missing watch by the next morning he would kill her. He almost had already.Enraged about the missing watch, Gulsoma's father-in-law had beaten her repeatedly with a stick. She was bleeding from wounds all over her body and her right arm and right foot had been broken.
She knew at that moment that if she didn't get away, he would make good on his promise to kill her.
* * *
When I meet her at the Ministry of Women's Affairs I'm surprised that the little girl, now 12, is the same one that had endured such horrible suffering. She is wearing a red baseball cap and an orange scarf. She has beautiful brown eyes and a full and animated smile. She takes one of my hands in both of hers and greets me warmly, without any hint of shyness.
"She looks healthy," says Haroon, my friend and translator. I nod. But she looks older than her years, we both agree. In orphanages — first in Kandahar, then in Kabul — she has had a year to recover from a lifetime's worth of unimaginable imprisonment, deprivation and torture.
In one of the ministry's offices she sits in a straight-backed wooden chair and tells us the story of her life so far. She is stoic for the most part, pausing only a few times to wipe her eyes and nose with her scarf.
Her story begins in the village of Mullah Allam Akhound, near Kandahar.
"When I was three years old my father died, and after a year my mother married again, but her second husband didn't want me," says Gulsoma. "So my mother gave me away in a promise of marriage to our neighbor's oldest son, who was thirty."
"They had a ceremony in which I was placed on a horse [which is traditional in Afghanistan] and given to the man."
Because she was still a child, the marriage was not expected to be sexually consummated. But within a year, Gulsoma learned that so much else would be required of her that she would become a virtual slave in the household.
At the age of five, she was forced to take care of not only her "husband" but also his parents and all 12 of their other children as well.
Though nearly the entire family participated in the abuse, her father-in-law, she says, was the cruelest.
"My father-in-law asked me to do everything — laundry, the household chores — and the only time I was able to sleep in the house was when they had guests over," she says. "Other than that I would have to sleep outside on a piece of carpet without even any blankets. In the summer it was okay. But in the winter a neighbor would come over and give me a blanket, and sometimes some food."
When she couldn't keep up with the workload, Gulsoma says, she was beaten constantly.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at March 21, 2006 9:03 AM
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Actually, Mohammed married Aisha when she was six but didn't consumate the marriage until age nine...nice of him.
Posted by: blondeinarabia![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 21, 2006 9:42 AM
What is the mind set of these people? I think a 4 year old girl, should be climbing trees and skipping rope, not be somebodies wife. Pure insanity.
Posted by: mustang65 at March 21, 2006 9:42 AM
This is nothing but child abuse.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at March 21, 2006 9:51 AM
I once had an internet discussion with a Left-wing dhimmi from South Asia who insisted that discussions of Muhammad's pedophelia were insulting to Muslims and therefore a non-starter in terms of establishing a fruitful dialogue. I disagreed strenuously, for the following reasons.
1) Even if one allows for historical context - perhaps the child-bride was not unusual in the 7th century, even in the Christian world - one must deounce this "relationship" because of its persisting sociological ramifications. After all, Muhammad is deemed the "examplar for all humanity" by Muslims; therefore, his defiling of Aisha has become embedded in Islamic custom and law. Gulsoma is a living example of this. In Iran today, the age of marriage for a female is 9 years old, based on Aisha's age when Muhammad "consummated" his marriage to her according to the Hadith.
2) If one accepts that the world is locked in an epochal schism...that two mutually antagonistic social systems exist side-by-side today in perpetual conflict, then one must accept that the resolution of this conflict is dependent either upon the destruction or the conversion of one side or the other. Muhammad's defiling of Aisha should be deeply offensive to anyone with contemporary sensibilities, including many Muslims. This can and should be used to awaken them (and gullible non-Muslims) to the pronounced moral failings of the Prophet. Perhaps no other issue resonates so powerfully in terms of revulsion than the exploitation of a child.
There is a direct correlation between the circumstances of Aisha and those of Gulsoma; between those of Zainab (the wife of Muhammad's adopted son Zayed, whom the Prophet appropriated because of her beauty) and the subsequent Islamic prohibitions on adoption (giving legal sanction to this unseemly usurpation); between those of Safiyah (who became the Prophet's "wife" after her husband, father, brothers and uncles were executed by the Muslims after the 'Battle of the Ditch') and the systematic rape of Hindu women in Bangladesh back in 1971.
It is morally and strategically necessary to expose the moral failings of the Prophet Muhammad, for they have had a lasting impact on Muslim behavior through the centuries.
Posted by: Cornelius at March 21, 2006 9:57 AM
The beginning of this child's life is heartbreaking. These people are so uncivilized.
Posted by: freewoman at March 21, 2006 10:25 AM
Whats striking is the fact that neighbors knew about the gross abuses yet did nothing about it. contrast this with our western and far eastern cultures. If you see a little girl abused like this you would call the police or social services. This is the cult of Islam however and muslims don't rat out fellow muslims for any reasons.
Posted by: desidude at March 21, 2006 10:27 AM
This heart-breaking story offers some hint of a silver lining. This little girl wants to study human rights and help other people in such situations! Human rights directly conflict with any society that would accept such abuses to children, starting with Aisha and most recently with this child.
How many women and children in the Western Moslem immigrant communities are suffering in like manner, in silence, isolated? These people need to be reached, cultural relativism be damned. They must be protected, educated and encouraged to open their hearts and minds to the possibility that their own life is as valuable as anyone else's. The counterjihad will be led by the innocent victims of Islamic culture.
Posted by: Chatillon at March 21, 2006 10:44 AM
The people involved in her abuses are worse than uncivilized or even sick. This is downright evil, perpetrated by evil people. They tortured this little girl between prayer session? Did they shout Allahu Akbar while beating her with wires and sticks?...disgusting...
Posted by: duh_swami at March 21, 2006 11:21 AM
If you didn't read the whole story, go to:
http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs2986
It has pictures of this beautiful girl as well as the scars of the hideous things done to her.
Although there are monsters in every corner of the world (think Jessica Lumsford's torturer and killer), I cannot imagine, as I look at my own five-year-old daughter, giving my child away as that mother did, knowing what lied ahead for her. Moral relativists want to think all cultures are equal.....what kind of culture produces a mother so desperate or so heartless that when her husband dies, she discards her own flesh and blood, the outcome of her union with her husband?
If ever there was a story to illustrate the innnocent victims of Islamic/tribal culture,
Gulsoma is it. We need to continue to not turn our eyes from the horror, but shine a light on this darkness, Islam, that allows this to take place.
at March 21, 2006 1:20 PM
I don't believe that Islam can be blamed for all of this (other Muslims helped her out of the situation, and the family who looked after the girl appears to be exceedingly brutal), but we can blame some of it on Islam. As Robert notes, verse 4:34, along with long-standing traditions, permits physical punishment of the wife. And we can blame adherence to verse 65:4, which opens the door to such marriages of child-brides.
Verse 65:4 states rules regarding the divorce of wives, including those who are too old and those who are too young to menstruate (this is understood according to tafsir of at least Ibn Kathir, al-Jalalayn, Ibn Abbas, Maududi--all of whom, I gather, understood the Koran's Arabic to a high level of ability and who would have understood the historical context, not just Mohammad's example of marrying the 6 or 7 year old Ayesha). The translations of Shakir, Yusuf Ali, and Pickthall simply refer, in the critical phrase in question, to wives who do not have courses, whereas other translations (Arberry, Dawood, Sher Ali) refer specifically to wives who do not yet have courses (i.e., because they are too young). I don't read Arabic, but the textual and historical context favours the "too young to menstruate" interpretation, and I don't see why the expert Koranic commentators above, not to mention Islamic jurists, would misinterpret the phrase's intended meaning.
Note that the Koran sets no lower age limit for the female in a marriage; also see 4:3 which talks about marriage to female captives who were orphaned due to war. Again, there is no lower age limit, even though, assuming Allah is a wise and fair deity, should have been put there explicitly.
Sam Shamoun’s article addresses this (also cites numerous reports from the Hadith regarding Ayesha's young age at marriage.
http://www.martyrdomoperations.com/page6.html
Also see James Arlandson’s article.
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Authors/Arlandson/women_fields.htm
at March 21, 2006 1:47 PM
So, according to the koran, if she's old enough to bleed, she's old enough to breed.
Sick.
Posted by: freewoman at March 21, 2006 1:55 PM
It was Beslan which brought me to this site in September 2004, but one of the very first stories that stuck in my mind was this one. I know that there are child abusers in all cultures, but Islam is the only one which actually sanctions it.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/003957.php
This is the horribly similar story of Pekay whose father sold her at the age of 9 to the landlord in lieu of rent. I hoped to hear how her case ended but never saw another news item about her, not here or elsewhere.
at March 21, 2006 2:12 PM
This story is really distressing me - on top of Blair's and Prince Charles's stupid statements and all the other bad news.
Islamism is the the new fascism. Only we seem capable of understanding and facing that fact.
at March 21, 2006 3:59 PM
The Religion of Peace strikes again ...
Posted by: Daisytoo at March 21, 2006 4:13 PM
The plight of this little mite has been haunting me for days too!
at March 21, 2006 4:33 PM
desidude: "Whats striking is the fact that neighbors knew about the gross abuses yet did nothing about it."
Yeah - that's exactly what struck me most about the article too. After all, we know that individuals can be extremely sadistic. We have stories of sadism and abuse towards children here in the west as well. But it is impossible to imagine any westerner only going so far as to put a blanket over a small child forced to sleep outside in the winter for years. And how hard did it actually turn out in the end to get this child some help? Not hard at all. She crawled under a rickshaw (how far could she have traveled with a broken foot anyway) and the rickshaw driver took her away and she got help. The glaring question is - why did it take so many years for someone to do something so simple for this girl? The neighbors saw what was happening. So in my mind that is what suggests something deeper and sicker about the society as a whole.
Posted by: Caroline at March 21, 2006 8:53 PM
mekkarekka,
That little girl's eyes are dead. If eyes are the window to the soul,....damn
To think that there are places on this planet where you can climb the highest hill, and in all the vast expanses that your eyes can take in, no girl is safe, no girl need not be afraid, no girl can be a child, or hope, or thrive, or blossom into a proud, secure, and fulfilled woman.
Somebody explain to me again exactly why we should engage this cowardly dogsh!t in "meaningful dialogue" instead of handing them their festering subhuman asses in a bag. Or why we should, in the spirit of "di-gag-versity", respect their"culture" as equally valid. I've seen more advanced cultures in petri dishes.
Time to thin the f*cking herd. This isn't culture, this is a cancer of the body of mankind.
Dismiss it as internet bravado if you like, I couldn't care less, but I swear, I could kill this bastard with my bare hands, slowly, and then go home and sleep like a baby.
As I've said before, Modern, Rational Man is the exception rather than the rule in this world. He is the rider strapped to the back of the beast, and he must stay on and tame it or be ground into the dust of history. When the world was a bigger place, both realities could exist. But now the world has shrunk, and this feral dark-side can no longer be hidden from civilized people, no longer conduct business as usual, no longer perpetuate this malignant construct undisturbed. The epic battle approaches, and it is up to us to decide whether Enlightened Man will triumph, or be sent spiraling back into the Hobbesian abyss.
Some would say there are no universal truths, that there is only equivalence and relativity.
I say that those who would state this are only exposing their own moral cowardice, their own inner decay, the fetid stench of their rotting humanity.
We have a job to do.
Posted by: t-ham
at March 21, 2006 8:56 PM
"But now the world has shrunk, and this feral dark-side can no longer be hidden from civilized people, no longer conduct business as usual, no longer perpetuate this malignant construct undisturbed."
t-ham - apparently you missed the memo. You know, the one explaining that WE are the Great Satan...
Posted by: Caroline at March 21, 2006 9:04 PM
"So in my mind that is what suggests something deeper and sicker about the society as a whole." (from my own post above)
I mean, even above and beyond the obvious depravity of marrying off 4 year old children...
Posted by: Caroline at March 21, 2006 9:39 PM
Dear Robert et al
Thank you so much for this site. While I am on the other side of the Pacific to you - your site is invaluable.
Today I learned that a typical left wing educator (and yes - she has told me outright that she always votes for the left wing parties - no matter what damage SHE even admits that they do), has been teaching my students that Islam is all PC.
Above all she has been teaching that women are treated with equality and respect under Islam.
Rather than choking on my own vomit, I have given the students a copy of this article, along with the Afghan Christian man one, along with my only (and very hard to get) copy of the Koran (Rodwell). I have pointed the student in the direction of all the "treat women equally bits".
I have told her to speak the truth. I have also warned her that she will be failed by this do-gooder educator. She told me that she will speak the truth! Three cheers to young people like that!
Your site is invaluable. Keep up the good fight.
Posted by: 3rdtimelucky at March 21, 2006 9:55 PM
Caroline,
Tha sad fact is that islam and koran incourages the abuse of girls and women. If the most perfect man ever born, muhammed would not give asecond thought to proposing marriage to a 5 year old girl, then why shouldn't these muslims can't marry young girls?
if the koran commands muslims to kill infidals why would these people turn in fellow muslims who are trying to kill, infidals? We have seen clips of palastinian terrorists preparing roadside bombs in full view of hundreds of fellow palastinians yet none of them will warn the isrealis or even palastinian police. We have seen iraqi terrorists preparing bombs and suicide bombers yet no one will turn them in. We have seen the horrible torture and murder of a kidnapped jew by arab french muslims in Paris, you know that neighbors used to drop by to incourage and take part in these torture sessions yet not a single one of these good muslims turned in the kidnappers.
So for these people, abuse and torture of girls or for that matter any infidal is allah sanctioned, and who are they to go against the words of allah?
Whats worse is you have our bleeding hearts here in the usa crying crocodle tears over the fact that the feeling of these Afghani terrorist in Gitmo, were hurt by maybe, a dropped koran or maybe they got served a generic ice cream instead of a Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Yes, these afghani terrorists , who think it's perfectly ok to use girls and women as doormats and as punching bags. Who would think nothing of torturing and killing an american if they got their hands on one. These prisoners must be given all the rights and privlages due to americans convicts.
The only solution for afghanistan and iraq is for us to spread secularisim, and keep religion out of their politics and government. But I see no efforts in that direction, instead we get the usual dribble about fighting terror and that islam is peace and that islam is a noble religion.
I do hope this this girl gets out of afghanistan and comes to a decent country with decent loving parents.
at March 21, 2006 10:29 PM
Islam needs about a thousand Charles Dickens' to begin to document and eradicate their 'cultural' depravity.
"Bleak House" times 1.2 billion.
Posted by: profitsbeard at March 22, 2006 2:09 AM
Hi Caroline, how have you been?
re "the memo";
What WAS I thinking? The ROP and their helpful little quisling dhimmis go to all the trouble of pointing out just how much we suck, and how, despite all the carefully documented history passed down to us over more than a millenium, everything from butchered 13 year old schoolgirls to the birdsh!t on your windshield is actually the fault of the West and those godless bastards holding the marionette strings, the Jews, and what do I do? I don't pay attention. Someone should teach me a lesson and behead me. I bet I'll think twice before letting my mind wander the next time.
I know, I'll pay for a mosque. That should set things right.
Posted by: t-ham
at March 22, 2006 7:09 AM
dont it say something about aisha lossin all her hair,then when he grew back mohomid wanted her?so he probly would have "took"her before she was 9,guess haveing sex with a little girl is o.k,if she has hair?I didnt see in the story of this little girl if she was raped,hope not,let her give it to somebody out of love
Posted by: patriot2 at March 22, 2006 1:16 PM
I hope she's getting the help she needs now, and some LOVING parents.... cult...
at March 22, 2006 1:21 PM
desidude - yes. Thank you for those other examples of Muslims turning a blind eye in the face of torture and atrocities being perpetrated upon the innocent. Right after I posted above, the Ilan Halimi case occurred to me as an example of the same thing so you must be reading my mind. Even the link that mekkarekka provided, showed evidence of the same thing - a neighbor heard the screams but did nothing.
One thing should be abundantly obvious by now about the workings of the long 1400 years march of Islamic jihad, which is ultimately the story of a minority infiltrating and turning itself into a majority everywhere. It simply couldn't happen without the passive collusion of Muslims turning a blind eye to atrocities against innocents occurring all around them. While neither the case of this little girl nor the Ilan Halimi case are directly applicable to the question of, for example, how Turkey went from being the seat of eastern Christianity to being 99% Muslim (a story that has been replicated around the world and is continuing today as Christians, for instance, are being squeezed out of every place where Muslims have congregated), from an anecdotal point of view as evidence of passivity in the face of evil, these stories are still very instructive in terms of understanding the kind of mindset that permits that to happen.
It isn't enough for so-called moderate Muslims to claim that they are not individually committing the atrocities associated with jihad. Or even enough to claim that they aren't directly financing it. Rather civilized people everywhere need to make clear to them that is incumbent upon them to STOP atrocities occurring in their midst. Otherwise THEY ARE responsible. They are colluding just as Europeans in their passivity colluded with the holocaust. This sort of thing simply cannot happen if people actively intercede. It is high time that Muslims everywhere are called to account on this, otherwise infidels should rightly hold them collectively responsible...
Posted by: Caroline at March 22, 2006 8:15 PM
Actually, Mohammed married Aisha when she was six but didn't consumate the marriage until age nine...
If you believe the Hadiths. We do know that the lazy-ass Mohammed was seen laying around in bed with her when she was six years old. Hell, he even proclaimed to his Moslem followers that he had his best private converstations with Gabriel and God when he was under the sheets with Aisha.
Islam is a religion and I believe the Hadiths as I gallop along the horizon on my Tunisian-bred Unicorn.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at March 23, 2006 12:34 PM
If the Muslims want to know why so many non-Muslims hate and fear them, all they have to do is examine crimes like this. Only when the Islamic world stops such barbaric practices will there be true peace between Muslims and the rest of the world.
Posted by: Christian at March 23, 2006 9:00 PM
APF,
The Hadith is very explicit in reporting that Muhammad's marriage to Aisha was consummated when she was 9 years old. This is damning in-and-of-itself. We don't have to start stretching the truth.
Posted by: Cornelius at March 24, 2006 9:14 AM
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