Saudi Arabia: Eight-Year-Old Girl Wants Divorce
This practice would probably be easier to stamp out if only it were permitted for Muslims to say "Not everything Muhammad did was right, and just because Muhammad did it doesn't mean we should today." That, however, is difficult in a religion that considers even visual depictions of Muhammad to be blasphemous, never mind criticism. It's good that most Muslims around the world reject marrying little girls, but it's only in spite of Islamic traditions.
"In my opinion, old men who want to marry girls at the age of their granddaughters are mentally sick and need psychological treatment," Nourah al-Khereiji, a columnist in the English language daily, Arab News, wrote at the weekend. ...
Child protection groups say girls are often given away in return for substantial dowries or as a result of old customs in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships. ...Ms Khereiji wrote: "Fathers like these consider their daughters to be slaves, selling them to the highest bidder."
Source: Scotsman
Khereiji reveals another reason why this practice is tough to stamp out among traditionalists in Islam: the failure of traditional Islam to treat women as fully equal human beings. Little girls are effectively sold off as property, but not little boys, because little girls lack basic human value to the male heads of patriarchal households. They are worth what another man will pay for them and to the buyer, they have value insofar as they are sexual toys (it's not like they can do much in the way of cooking, cleaning, or heavy labor at that age).
Once again, it's good that most Muslims around the world don't take quite such an extreme view towards female inequality, but too few actually go so far as to treat women as fully equal. Those who do, do so once again in spite of Islamic tradition — but to be fair here, Islam is not unique or unusual in treating women as property. You don't have to go back too far to find other religions behaving in basically the same way.
Islam is like this because all human cultures have been like this and religions help preserve patriarchal, misogynistic practices which should have been abandoned because religions enshrine those practices as following divine will. This means that religions effectively retard the ethical growth of cultures on several fronts. Traditionalist Islam has fallen behind other cultures, like the West, and even behind traditionalists in other religions, like Christianity, for a variety of reasons but the most important may be the absence of strong secular alternatives.
Secularism and secularization have helped the West make progress because they create a sphere of political, social, cultural, and familial activity outside the control of ecclesiastical leaders of institutions — i.e., where it's harder to impose upon them practices and standards which should have died off by now. Not only does this provide greater freedom for those oppressed by religion, but insofar as this freedom makes them and others around them more successful, pressure is placed on religious leaders and institutions to change as well.
For example, Christian institutions in America may still be deeply patriarchal and misogynistic, but they wouldn't have moved as far as they have if it weren't for the fact that women are successfully acquiring and wielding so much power in secular contexts. How likely is it that the Mormon Church would have received a convenient "revelation from God" to treat blacks equally if it weren't for the fact that blacks were making such strides in the surrounding secular culture? There is no reason to think that Muslim societies and cultures can't make similar progress, but it's unlikely that they will without secularism and secularization — as demonstrated by the Muslim society which has probably made the most progress and which is also the most secularized, Turkey.
Such unions have been denounced widely by local human rights activists who say they harm children and undermine the institution of marriage. Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the Kingdom's top cleric, recently joined in the condemnation.
"Islam has stipulated that both parties agree to the marriage contract," the cleric said. "The woman must express real consent to the suitor, and a guardian must not impose his choice of husband on her … or force his son to marry someone he doesn't want."
But some clerics have warned that such marriages could lead young girls into adultery to satisfy sexual urges that their elderly husbands cannot satisfy. Saudi Arabia's divorce rate has soared to 60 per cent from 25 per cent in the past two decades.
Although it's nice to see Muslim clerics speak out, their words are not as strong as they should be. Take Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, Saudi Arabia's top cleric, for example: does he mean to imply that perhaps an 8-year-old can consent but just shouldn't be forced into a marriage by her father or guardian? He isn't quoted as recommending a minimum age for marriage, which suggests that he still agrees with traditional Muslim standards that eight isn't too young to marry. The other clerics referenced only seem to object because eventually the girl will want sex which the husband provide and will thus be tempted into adultery.
None are quoted as saying what they really should be saying: Young children can't consent to marriage or sex, so anyone who marries and has sex with them are rapists. Fathers and guardians who sell their daughters into marriage are guilty of human slavery and abetting the rape of their daughters. None of this would be happening if females were valued as highly as males, so only a change in how women are perceived will ultimately lead to real changes. If clerics aren't saying this, it's hard not to think that it's because they really don't believe it and anyone who doesn't believe it is dangerously immoral. Clerics who use religion to justify these practices are much like — and about as complicit as — clerics who used religion to preach the inferiority of blacks while they were being whipped by white masters in the American South.
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Just to note that there is no age limit for marriage in Christianity, either. Here in Texas, we recently had a Mormon group raided. There were definitely errors in the way the raid was handled, but that should not be misconstrued as a statement that underage marriage was not happening. CPS just needed to handle it case-by-case and not en masse. So, now they’re going back and doing it right.
But when the mothers of the child brides were interviewed on a national morning show, I was watching. They were asked at what age the girls could marry. And the mothers kept hedging with statements like, “Well, every family is different. But you have to talk to your daughter…” Basically, they kept stating that it should be determined in a conversation with the child–which left it pretty open-ended.
They had an attorney present at the interview, representing the mothers. Finally their attorney was asked what the age was of consent in the group. He stated that there really isn’t one–the child’s maturity just had to be assessed by the parents, and consent could be given. Well, that’s pretty much not legal in the U.S. if you go below a certain age–but these particular Christians are using a Bible as a guide (and probably some of Joseph Smith’s literature), and so they don’t have any authority from god to impose any age restrictions on how young their daughters can marry.
So, while we gasp at the 8-year-old Muslim bride, we need to remind ourselves that “there but for the grace of our secularly imposed statutory laws go we.” Left to Biblical authority, there’s no reason we couldn’t have the exact same situation here in the U.S.
Islam teaches that a girl who has gotten her period is a woman and at that point is marriagable. Marrying off a pre-pubescent girl is not Islamic but tribal. Mohammed’s 9-year-old bride (he made exceptions for himself from what he taught in more than one area) apparently was willing and never expressed regret. She would brag to his other wives (all widows of various cronies) that she was his favorite because she was the only virgin he married.
If there’s a lesson here it’s that teachings and traditions are easily confused. Religion is a lot easier when we see it is man-based with all of mankind’s flaws.
well, as to Mormon’s recognizing “blacks” as fully human, because of the reality of their being successful in society, it is also interesting to note that the original “Mormon” documents revealed with Smith’s magic glasses were “discovered” at the very time when enslavement of blacks was being challenged in America…convenient revelation to have “god” sanction the slavery.
But to get back to the main theme, old men marrying children, someone once told me, when I remarked on the requirement that women be covered with burqas as being symbolic of slavery, the politically correct admonition was that I must think that (muslim) women are all stupid, for after all, they “choose” to cover, and that anyway, “wearing a burqa is the LEAST of their problems” (implying I believe that wearing a burqa and being relegated to chattel status is infinitely less oppressive than having to deal with US Imperialism). However, now I think that perhaps that “least of their problems” statement means something else entirely, that is, it’s nothing to have to cover yourself up in a black bag from head to toe everytime you stick your foot outside the door of your home, infinitely less of a problem than being married off at eight years of age to some old, wattled, hairybacked old fart, or worse, being buried alive (as happened recently in Pakistan) for wanting to marry a boy of your choice, your own age, instead of some other old, wattled, hairybacked old fart. And, as to blaming these barbarities on “tribalism” instead of “islam”, do I hear islamic clerics making a loud ballyhoo to vigoursly condemn these “tribal” customs, do I hear them admonishing the attendees at mosque with denounciations of these barbaric “tribal” practices and forbiding the congregation to collaborate with the same?. Not likely.
oh yes, as to Christianity having being guilty of similar hippocrisies and even barbarities, when it comes to girls and women, well, christians had their witch-torturing and witch-burning days in the sun, but i don’t seem to recal any historical record of christians denying the source of the barbarism in their religion and sluffing the blame off onto “tribal” customs (it’s not CHRISTIANITY that requires the burning of the witch, but it’s those backward, heathen tribal druids who are expecting her to burn). Nope, at least Christians owned up to the barbarity by righteously asserting that “god” (the god of THEIR magic book of course) REQUIRES the burning!
Oh well, what do I know, I am just a non-believer!