Rape of Innocence
September 26th, 2008
It’s not an award ceremony for distinguished students. It’s not a youth program. It’s not a library.
It’s a public discussion by civil society organisations in Yemen on child marriages, and the pictured girls (aged 8, 10 and 12) are child brides.
Child marriages occur worldwide, from Yemen to Mali to Nicaragua. While religions are frequently cited as justification, poverty and lack of education, coupled with cultural traditions that discriminate against women allow the practice to live on.
In my adolescent years, a question that constantly plagued me was the legality of child marriages in Islam. With the advent of Islam, several practices were either gradually banned during the lifetime of the Prophet (alcohol consumption for instance), or a legal framework was set up to allow its eventual eradication from society (slavery for instance). “Why hadn’t God provided a similar framework for the abolition of child marriages? Wouldn’t an Omniscient God know that there would be a day when societies at large would would decry the practice? And wouldn’t the marriage of the Prophet – the ‘best of creation’ – to a 9 year old ensure it would continue to be justified? “
Over the years I began to see flaws and loopholes in my manner of thinking. Firstly, and most importantly, by accepting that “that’s the way Islam is”, I’m concluding that Islam is an immutable faith and consequently assuming that we’re but mindless drones whose faculties of free and critical thought serve no purpose.
And despite what the religious sources I was exposed to at the time claimed, there is no “one Islam, one true path”. Islam is open to a wide array of interpretations, and the age of Aisha at the time of consummation is subject to debate.
Regardless, can we apply the norms of seventh century Arabia to our modern societies (and let’s face it – if we were to judge our legendary heroes by today’s standards, many would fail)? When a religious text is in contradiction with the rights and welfare and children, why should the former be prioritized?
What would follow is a lengthy debate others more proficient than me have already addressed, and lawyers, activists and even clerics have begun decrying the practice. But even if it were stripped of its religious justification, the rampant poverty and illiteracy n our societies would continue to fuel the problem.
Meanwhile, thousands of girls are buried alive annually. Not physically – that has been prohibited in Islam – but emotionally and mentally.
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These news to me are like Kanafa. Very delicious. This faith deserves it, because of all the fun things it robbed me of.
Regardless, can we apply the norms of seventh century Arabia to our modern societies (and let’s face it – if we were to judge our legendary heroes by today’s standards, many would fail)?
This quote is what interested me most in this post. So often, the decisions that countries make are based on laws that were long ago, or in this case, a holy text from the seventh century. The question is, where is the middle ground? Can you respect the needs of people today while keeping the holy text in mind? How do the many interpretations of Islam allow for this kind of interpretation? Or, how do they allow for the practice of child brides?
I am very interested in what the general feelings on this are in your country and also what the usual practice is. You say that the civil society organized in Yemen, but what is it like in Sudan?
I would love to hear your opinion on this.
Hmm, well, aside from the monstrous evil of robbing a person of the right to choose who to spend their lives with from an age where they are helpless and dependant on their elders for protection, aside from the blatant pedophilia, aside from the crushing of any sort of personal freedom, dignity, and romantic inclination, and aside from the implications this has on the rights of half of the population, I guess I have no problems with this practice.
E Onady,
According to UNICEF, 42% of women under the age of 20 in Sudan are married. Overall, the average age of marriage has increased in the past few years, particularly in the less-impoverished North. In rural regions, torn by poverty, illiteracy and conflict, early marriages pose a larger problem, and one in every five adolescent girl in Southern Sudan for instance is already a mother.
Just as in other countries, recent years have brought about a shift in attitude towards early marriage in Sudan, but unfortunately, that was not accompanied by a shift in laws and policies. There is no defined minimum age of marriage, and the only requirement is that a girl reaches puberty (puberty is largely regarded as the age of maturity in Islam). With regards to post-pubescent girls, most schools of thought agree that her consent is a requirement for the marriage contract to be drawn.The situation differs with prepubescent girls, where many jurists state that she can be married without her consent.
Any campaign to end the practice in Sudan and elsewhere would be met with criticisms as it would be viewed as going against Islamic law. Even though scholars of today don’t encourage the marriage of young girls, many continue to defend the laws, saying any changes would mean a shift towards secularism.
The subject of Islamic laws and their reform is vast, and my casual reading in no way makes me proficient in the field (and it’s too large an issue to address in such a small space), but while some would argue that Islamic laws are valid for all times and ages, some would say that laws can change with time, and some see only the spiritual side of Islam. I guess it can be explained in terms of the Orthodox/Conservative/Reform Judaism.
Personally, I refuse to accept God is a misogynist.
I hope my response has answered your questions!
Hi Kawthar
Thank you projecting this bewildering issue. I see these beautiful young girls. I can see the faces of tomorrows activist, strong and detirmined activists who will not cease to leave this issue till they make sure that in our times, it is not practiced as before. So I wouldn’t want to call them victims, they are the saviors of tomorrow. In fact, we have ladies from countries like your and like mine, who are opposing the pracitce, and this wasn’t the case some decades back. Well, maybe some 14 hundred years back things were different, perhaps if a girl was married that age, she would be safe and secure, that some one would care for her, we should remember, it was the time when girls were being burried alive. Well girls are not being burried alive any more, thanks to the efforts of religion and society. Banning child marriage would not mean fighting the religion, it is rearranging the set of rules and its applications to meet the demands of today’s life. Perhaps we need to take more seriously the essence of religious call, one of them is meeting the neighbor, meeting and helping people in need, in case we do that, we get more involved in their lives and perhaps we can help stop practices that would otherwise harm people of today.
I didn’t know Yemen has such beautiful young ladies, their faces bring much happiness into the hearts of our Middle Eastern minds, you can see mothers of tomorrow, physicians, teachers, mothers of tomorrow. G-d bless your people Yemen
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