Why is this human rights abomination so common?
Islamic apologists in the West routinely claim that Muhammad did not marry a child and that child marriage is not permitted in Islam, but actually, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage. Islamic tradition records that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:
“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).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.
Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:
The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.
Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.
“In Jordan, Ever Younger Syrian Brides,” by Rana F. Sweiss, New York Times, September 13, 2014 (thanks to Daniel Greenfield):
MAFRAQ, Jordan — The bride-to-be was so young and shy, she spent her engagement party cloaked in a hooded robe that swallowed her slim figure but could not quite hide the ruffled pink dress her fiancé’s family had rented for her.
As the Syrian women celebrating her coming wedding to an 18-year-old cousin chattered around her in the Zaatari refugee camp, she squirreled herself in a corner, perking up only when a photo or message from a friend popped up on her cellphone. The girl, Rahaf Yousef, is 13.
Speaking wistfully of her days at school, she declared herself throughout the day to be “indifferent” to the marriage she says will keep her from finishing her education. But no one seemed to be listening.
For many Syrians stuck in Jordan’s squalid and sometimes dangerous refugee camps, marrying girls off at younger and younger ages is increasingly being seen as a necessity — a way of easing the financial burden on families with little or no income and allaying fears of rape and sexual harassment in makeshift living spaces where it is harder to enforce the rule of law. As a result, Unicef says, the number of marriages involving girls younger than 18 has ballooned since the war in Syria started.
“The parents feel a man can protect” their daughters, said Ola Tebawi, an official at Jordan Health Aid Society, a nonprofit that provides primary health care for refugees with United Nations support. “These families feel marriage would be the best option for a girl growing up as a refugee.”
But the trend — even among displaced Syrians who live outside the camps — is increasingly worrying international aid groups and women’s advocates who say that the Syrians are simply trading immediate dangers for longer-term ones. They tick off a laundry list of threats for women worldwide that accompany marrying before they are 18.
High on the list, they say, are increased risks of being the victims of domestic violence and an abrupt end to the young women’s education. The aid workers also worry about pregnancies among girls whose age makes them more vulnerable to certain life-threatening complications like eclampsia, which is characterized by seizures.
During the first six months of this year, 32 percent of all registered marriages of Syrian refugees in Jordan involved a girl under the age of 18, according to the Jordanian government. That percentage was up from 25 percent during all of 2013 and, according to Unicef, more than twice as high as the 13 percent of marriages in Syria just before the war that included girls younger than 18.
A majority of the Syrian girls marry into Jordanian families, Unicef reported, ensuring themselves a place in Jordan outside the refugee camps, and a new home country for the long term.
Although the marriage of girls as young as 13 is not unheard-of in parts of the Middle East, including rural Syria, that practice has not been common in areas of Syria or Jordan with higher levels of education. Jordanian law allows marriages for girls and boys 15 to 18 years old, but it requires that a chief justice of a Shariah, or Islamic, court determine that all sides agree to the match.
In an attempt to ensure the same level of scrutiny for Syrian marriages, the Jordanian government — which has struggled to accommodate more than 600,000 of the more than three million Syrians who have fled their country — has opened a Shariah court in the Zaatari camp. But the minister of social development, Reem Abu Hassan, said that it was difficult for judges to say no to early marriages given the circumstances — and difficult to ensure even that all the marriages were registered….
mortimer says
Pedophila…normative Islam, rather than an aberration.
mortimer says
Cousin marriage is the other evil (along with uncle-niece marriage) that should be eradicated by the civilized world.
Over 900 genetic defects have been identified in the Arabian Peninsula stemming from COUSIN MARRIAGE…50 generations of cousin marriage.
It is argued that the veil’s chief purpose is to keep non-family men from seeing a woman so she can allow her first cousin the right of first refusal.
Aardvark says
Do you have any links for that, Mortimer?
Beagle says
Search term: “Arab consanguinity birth defects”
One result: http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7573/831
Quote:
Available evidence suggests that congenital and genetic disorders are responsible for a major proportion of infant mortality, morbidity, and handicap in Arab countries.1–3 The population of the region is characterised by large family size, high maternal and paternal age, and a high level of inbreeding with consanguinity rates in the range of 25-60%.1 2 4 w1 Certain disorders are common throughout the Arab world, including haemoglobinopathies, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, different congenital malformations caused by recessive genes, and several metabolic disorders.1 2 Other recessive disorders cluster in certain groups and subpopulations.1 2 5 Genetic services vary in extent and coverage in different Arab countries, but mostly they remain patchy, selective, and inadequate.2 5 6
mortimer says
Islam would disintegrate without pedophilia and cousin marriage.
ECAW says
Why is a seventeen year old girl marrying a human rights abomination? Even in the West in plenty of places I think 16 or 17 is the allowable age.
Pre 15 would be bad. Pre 13 would be an abomination.
Jay Boo says
16 or 17 not unusual especially under those desparate circumstances escaping from Syria.
Over 3 million refugees suffering in the name of Allah.
Yemen might be worse
I hear that old men are listed in Yemen’s Kindergarden Bridal Registries
gravenimage says
ECAW, the stat is “girls under 18”. Assuming that this means that they are all 17 years old seems either naîve or disingenuous.
Here’s an article from Al Jazeera, featuring a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old forced to marry older men.
“The trauma of Syria’s married children”
http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2014/07/trauma-syria-married-children-201472214545541515.html
Moreover, child marriage has *doubled* in Syria since the Jihad there began three years ago.
Of course, Al-Jazeera acts as though this has nothing to do with Islam, and is just a result—somehow—of the war. But the fact is that Syria, already Muslim-majority, has been further Islamizing since the Jihad began.
ECAW says
gravenimage – Indeed, it would be naive or disingenuous to assume it meant the girls were all 17. Fortunately I did no such thing, as I’m sure you will see if you reread the headline, the first line and my post.
gravenimage says
OK, ECAW—thanks.
Salah says
Mufti Fazlul: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.”
Nothing is putting the moral character of Muhammad into controversy and challenge more than the Qur’an, the Hadith and the Sira. Read your books!
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/12/perfect-man-of-islam.html
Aardvark says
“It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old”
These are lunar years, which are 11 days short of the solar year used in the civilised West. Aisha was not yet 6 when the contract was made, and about 8 and 3/4 years old when Mohammed first raped her.
harbidoll says
he returned her when her hair fell out (defective bride.) he then picked her up when her hair grew back. tho not considered old enough even for those times! By the way, what terrible thing made her hair fall?
Western Canadian says
Sudden hair loss can have several causes…. one of them being an allergic reaction to an extreme toxin….. Suggests that the young girl was allergic to dirty and degenerate old swine…. and I apologize to swine everywhere for the use of their name…
Angemon says
Surprising no one who knows what islamic orthodoxy teaches regarding it…