Bethsmum wrote:^^you still didn't expain how young girls can be jailed in Afghanistan for objecting to a forced marriage if forced marriage is against Islamic law.
How about because Afghanistan, or more likely the Taleban's interpretation of Islamic law is incorrect?
-- Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:52 am --
shafique wrote:LOL - so herve is coming up with a new conspiracy theory and FD is trying to make me out as the one twisting!
Sorry guys, just like herve was wrong about the internet hoax, he's wrong now. I like the way he's running away scared from a simple question - cowardly actions from the guy with the weird theories. This time it is 54% of marriages are due to Islam, but no explanation as to the reasons for 46% non-Muslim marriages (is Islam to blame there too..
)
Facts and stats - not a loon's best friend.
Cheers,
Shafique
No kidding! I'm laughing here.
These nitwits think their stats are conclusive - no matter that the experts at ICRW (
http://www.icrw.org/who-we-are/experts ) crunched the numbers and concluded that "No one religious affiliation was associated with child marriage, according to a 2007 ICRW study. Rather, a variety of religions are associated with child marriage in countries throughout the world."
What would be ICRW's motivation for lying? They are not an Islamic organization. They are working to end child marriage, so if it was primarily a religious issue then they would be admitting it and tackling it.
Here is an example of one girl's story from Niger, found in the pdf child marriage fact sheet.
"Takia, age 12, married at age 9 in Niger
Takia lives in Niamey, Niger’s capital. Her father has seven children by three wives; Takia’s mother died in childbirth. Because of her family’s poverty, her father believed the only way to guarantee a secure future for his daughters was to marry them off.
“One day my father told me I was to be married. I was never asked how I felt. It was my duty to respect his decision.”
She is unsure about her husband’s age, but a local youth organization estimates he is around 50. He waited until Takia was 11 before consummating the marriage. She gave birth to a daughter, Layla, that same year.
“I would have wanted to wait and find the one
I love. But now it is too late. I prefer not to
think about it. It is difficult for me, and for the whole country.”
The father has too many children to handle and feels that marrying his daughters off was the way to secure their future. Would their future be secure marrying them off to another 9 or 14 year old? It is likely that older grooms are chosen because they are more economically secure than young boys. It is repulsive to me that much older men would want to take a child bride and sleep with them at such a young age, but that seems to be the way things are done there. In this case she was married at 9 and the husband waited until she was 11 before consummating the marriage. If he was a raging pedophile, why didn't he sleep with her already at 9? It looks to me like there is a pretty fuzzy line between pedophilia and normal cultural practice so long as the girl is married and menstruating. The reasons given for child marriage by so many parents and child brides seem independent of religion. I don't see any religious justifications given that parents, children, and older men are blessed by God or Allah if marriages like this are arranged.
Image if the families were more economically secure and children could study past high school. Would there be so much child marriage going on? I highly doubt it! So where is the religion driving forced child marriage?