I feel so sad for all women in those oppressive countries. I feel sad for little girls that have to walk around entirely covered, as if their bodies were inherently impure and evil, as if the sight of their naked baby skin was somehow insulting. It's so, so sad.
There's got to be a judge in Saudi Arabia who will see reason/possess basic human decency. Once it's seen by one judge, do they have to have it appealed to him, or can they switch to another court/circuit?
@gobblegirl: Arg. I don't know what's going on now...first, that first comment showed up as a reply to mine on the next page, which is why i made the second...sigh.
We should offer amnesty to the women and children of Saudi Arabia, and let the men over there enforce Sharia law on each other. I question why we are allies with a nation where woman can't even drive, and apparently can be married off at the age of EIGHT.
Oh wait, now I remember why...it's something that's black, shiny, and found in the ground.
Some of those assholes use the excuse that Mohammed married a 6-7 year old and consummated the marriage when she was 9. At THAT time, women didn't live very long and it did make more sense. I am in no way justifying his act, but if you put things in the context then it makes more sense. It's the same reason I refute anyone who calls Mohammed a pedo.
Now, it does not make sense, we know why so many died in childbirth back in the day.
@DutchessOfDork: I think you're generalizing the statistics. Before modern medicine, life expectancies were, of course, much lower. But life expectancy is measured with averages. So it includes the children who die, and the women who die in childbirth, etc. Once a person passed childhood, their life expectancy shot up. Same thing if they managed to have babies/go to war (both things that tended to happen when you're in your teens/twenties/early thirties) and not die. Once you passed the big hurdles, people could live into their eighties, even.
So in no way does that justify marrying a child. If you want to defend Mohammed, you're going to have to fall back on cultural/historical relativism, the distortion of texts, and turning a blind eye. And frankly, that's okay by me-it's your religion (or not) and I don't think that you need to believe everything literally, or agree with all of it. Plenty of stuff in the Bible is equally fucked up, trust.
@gobblegirl: Yeah, wasn't Mary only 13 or 14? I always thought marriage/sexual activity began at menarche, which as we know can vary between age 8 --14 or whatever. if marriage is intimately linked with reproduction it makes sense. our concept of childhood is so new.
@gobblegirl: Very nicely worried. Life expectancy does not explain why someone would marry a 6 year old or have sex with a 9 year old. 13 and 16? Ok, sure. But not 9. Everyone didn't have sex with 8 year olds because they thought they would die earlier so needed to all reproduce as young as possible, in really any society at any time.
"Her husband was also forced to sign an agreement that he will not have sex with her until then."
Y'know, if you're a decent person and you're asked to sign something like this, wouldm't you be like hella offended? Like, fuck that shit, my reputation if worth more to me - i'm not a paedophile!. That is, if you were in a normal country. Clearly, abnormality reigns where the House of Saud does.
The very very religious men I know tend toward the docile, submissive, passive types. GENERALISATION!! It makes perfect sense for the Mufti to advocate younger girls, thinking there's a correlation. I can only hope that these young women forced into these 'marriages' fight like HELL!
Sometimes I wonder how much I'd be worth were I not fortunate to grow up in a relatively liberal culture.
I am also disturbed by the second level of sexism - that a man can marry off his 8 year old daughter against his wife's wishes and without her consent.
Things I have heard 10 year old girls complain are unfair: - not getting a pony - not being allowed to pierce their ears - not being allowed to stay up to watch Moonlighting (ok maybe that was justME at 10)
Things I have never heard an 8 year old girl complain are unfair: - "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."
Something tells me the explaination for the discrepancy is not "cultural differences"
@little_engine_that_could: "But MOMMM! Susie is only 8 and she got a marriage for her birthday! I'm already 10. I'll NEVER get a marriage!" :picks up teddy bear and storms off to room:
I don't get why human trafficking is called anything other than slavery if it is considered a religious issue. The trade of a human being (amazingly even aside from the fact that this is a small child, for god's sake) in exchange for money or services rendered is slavery. Either we take a stand on what is moral and ethical or we don't. It really is that simple.
@SomeAuthorGirl: Because religion makes EVERYTHING ACCEPTABLE! Genital mutilation, murder, childbrides... just say you're doing it "for religious reasons" and no one is allowed to argue with you: it's AWESOME!
This poor example of a "Muslim" country is not operating under Islamic laws or beliefs. It makes me so angry that these half assed "muslims" are perpetrators of a good religion.
These aren't the ruling of Islam but of a bunch of spoiled ass princes and judges who have way too much power in the lives of Muslim women. Saudia Arabia is NOT considered a Muslim country by most Muslims but a country run by supposedly Muslim men.
@ImperfectLit.Womanhasbeenstarred!!!: They're Wahadists, which is certainly a form of Islam, but in the same way FLDS is a form of Christianity. They've gone so far from the mainstream they can't even see it anymore...
@ImperfectLit.WomanhatestheGRE.: A lot of conservative Muslims would probably point to Muhammad's marriage to Aisha (age 6) to justify this practice. She was known as his "favorite wife", and they consummated their marriage when she was around 8.
Muhammad apparently received most of his revelations while in her presence and was very fond of her.
I question if it's a coincidence that Sunnis are known to be especially fond of the story of Aisha - and countries with high rates of child marriage like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia are majority Sunni nations.
@truckasaurus: It may not be as cut and dried as some sources suggest that Ayesha was 9 (or 6!) when she married Muhammad. The Quran was written over a period of 40 years (I think) based on revelations (if you choose to believe this) to Muhammed by a set of scribed, during his lifetime. The other major source of Islamic coda is the Hadith. There are a few Book of Hadith, said to have been written in the years following Muhammad's death, some as late as hundreds of years after. The reason I'm going to teh trouble of saying all this is that there might be interpretive lenience re how old Ayesha was. Contextual evidence, like her fighting in the Battle of Uhud, also indicates she may have been older as anyone participating in battles had to be older than 15.There are various examples like these. One suggests the age difference between Ayesha and Fatima, Muhammad's oldest daughte, to be something like 5 years. This would mean that Ayesha was 16 or 17 at the time of her marriage. There is no proof, these are all interpretations. Some interpret her to have married at 14, which is still a bit young, no?
What I'm trying to say is this. As a Muslim woman struggling with my faith, my humanism, my feminism, my belief in justice and all such things, I get seriously creeped out when I have to consider that muhammed married a 6 or 9 year old CHILD. Seriously, this fucked with me when I started examining what it is I want from my life. You do some online research and alot of us who've left the faith cite this reason; Muhammad as a paedophile.
What I'm finding is that it may not be so very simple. Like I said, there is evidence that suggests a range of years wherein her marriage might have taken place. Some even say the common interpretation of 6 or 9 is down to a calligraphy error. I do believe though that the West has not done a good enough job of understanding Muhammad (the same can be said of Jesus), the man, not the prophet - He married a woman 15 years his senior, an independent merchant, someone who gave him status and a profession. And by all accounts it was a devoted and successful marriage. So. I think we need to not be so hasty in assuming what we know - frack's sake, I grew up in Islam and I still now very very little.
@whatsergem: Wow, very well put! And thank you for pointing out the breadth of the historical disagreement regarding Aisha's age. I certainly hope she was closer to 16 than 6 when she wed Mohammad.
I suppose my biggest issue is with the fact - truth aside - that she is widely *known* as his child bride. If I remember correctly, the older woman Mohammad married was the daughter of a powerful bazaar owner who conferred that power to Mohammad after the marriage. However most people primarily remember Mohammad's love for Alisha and credit it with really bringing out his compassionate side. It is upheld as a romance story, with his other and older wives largely forgotten. What I really take issue with is the romanticization of the "innocent child bride" symbol.
I guess what I'm saying is that I have less objection with what is actually written in the Koran and more objection to the warped stories and lessons people seem to pull from it. This goes for ANY religious text (believe me, if this was a post about LDS or the quiver-fulls or the Catholic church, my beef would be the very same!).
@whatsergem: I mean, this is my whole thing about why I have yet to find a religion that I don't find totally fucked. Any system that tries to make humans (or facsimiles of humans) out to be gods/god-like/paragons of virtue will fail, unless you conveniently jump from age 12 to age 30 (a la Jesus). The old testament is totally fucked with men who rape, sell their daughters, rape some more, justify the rape of their enemies, do all sorts of fucked up shit. And has anyone ever read any of the early christian fathers? Oh holy hell those motherfuckers were crazy. They had a serious, serious hate on for women. And also were insane. Muhammad may or may not have been a pedophile, at any rate he was cool with killing people he didn't like. Not unlike the Hebrews and the Christians. I say: fail.
But obviously not all jews, christians, and muslims are pro-killing of "heathens" (the definition of which is basically "anyone who isn't us"), pro-raping of enemy's daughters, pro-swimming in blood through the holy land, pro-giving away your daughters to the hordes to keep the angels safe (hello, Mr. Lot), pro-slaying your enemies with the sword of righteous justice or whatever it was that the crusaders said that jesus said. If you're a thinking-religious person, then you have to recognize that jesus, muhammad, the hebrew fathers, they are either symbols of their religion or fallible humans (...men, it must be pointed out) who sometimes fail. Either the specifics don't matter because they're symbols and so you use the good stuff, or they are men and the specifics don't matter because you can't expect a person to be perfect. And then you move on. And pick the good bits of the religion to listen to, and decide not to follow the absurd rules from 2000 years ago that have no place in this world.
@truckasaurus: You're right that its romaticised, him and Ayesha. Yet in my equivalent of Bible study classes we heard lots of tales of Muhammed and Khadija (the older wife). And that when she died after he was 50 he entered into marriages to secure support amongst Arab tribes and spread the religion. I guess what I'm saying is that I grew up hearing that Mohammed and Khadija as the romantic fable. No doubt he adored Ayesha - some say it was her wit and mind that intrigued him. And this makes sense too because she was one of the main scholars who retold his Hadith.
Trust me, I GET what you're saying re what whackadoos pull from the religion. I have no blinders on to the facts that religion is a tool of the status quo, and that the status quo is the patriarchy.
@whatsergem: I wish I could friend you all over again for this.
And I always thought that the real romance, if that's the right word, was with Khadija. And that it said a lot about the respect and admiration that he had for women's potential and individuality, which can get lost today when this story above is the face of Islam to so many people in the West.
This from a super WASP-y atheist who was a religious studies major.
@whatsergem: Ah! Yes, thank you - I couldn't remember her name. It's been a long time since I read the Koran or the Hadith so please forgive me for that slip up!
I was once told by my friend, who is Pashtun, that Sunnis learn a lot more about the Aisha romance than the Khadija romance. It's amazing how two different sects of the same religion can take the same story in two different directions. I remember being really, really confused as a child as to why my friend said her minister had a wife, but I knew my priest wasn't allowed to get married :)
@truckasaurus: Go figure. Technically I'm Sunni, though had anyone asked me that ten years ago i'd have said "er...wha?", meaning that I didn't even know there was Shia and Sunni Islam- but thats a whole other story about political divisions which now is not the time for. Anyway, strange then that the Khadija story was emphasised to us - considering that my teacher studied in Saudi. Shias fascinate me though - its almost like a ruling clergy they believe in. Which is...weird, imo. They don't like Ayesha much, as you say, mostly because of disputes around the caliphate succession (and how dare a woman be an authority). Ayesha aslo fascinates me because I share a name with her.
@portia_sue: yeah, its that, the ability to not be afraid of a forceful, independent woman, in that context and time, that I am fascinated by. And then trying to square that with the possibility of him being into little girls. Idk, just doesn't gel on some level. Interpretation: its not just a plot device for a Nicole Kidman movie.
@Cimorene: I have this sneaking suspicion that the men behind the demi-gods that are Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and the like were probably just okay with being just that. plain old simple dudes with a special connection or a special wisdom.
I have beaten my head against a brick wall many many times when I ask my family the hated question: "Why?". This goes for religion and culture, which in my case are two somewhat different things. Most times the answer is 'er, i don't know...stop with the queries this is how we do things, OKAY', followed by a look as if to suggest that i'm in league with the devil and Dubya. ;)
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Oh wait, now I remember why...it's something that's black, shiny, and found in the ground.
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Now, it does not make sense, we know why so many died in childbirth back in the day.
04/14/09
So in no way does that justify marrying a child. If you want to defend Mohammed, you're going to have to fall back on cultural/historical relativism, the distortion of texts, and turning a blind eye. And frankly, that's okay by me-it's your religion (or not) and I don't think that you need to believe everything literally, or agree with all of it. Plenty of stuff in the Bible is equally fucked up, trust.
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I am not justifying marrying the child at all. I specifically said that I do not. I am at work (gurgh), but I have some notes somewhere.
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Y'know, if you're a decent person and you're asked to sign something like this, wouldm't you be like hella offended? Like, fuck that shit, my reputation if worth more to me - i'm not a paedophile!. That is, if you were in a normal country. Clearly, abnormality reigns where the House of Saud does.
Wahhabis scare me. Seriously.
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Sometimes I wonder how much I'd be worth were I not fortunate to grow up in a relatively liberal culture.
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- not getting a pony
- not being allowed to pierce their ears
- not being allowed to stay up to watch Moonlighting (ok maybe that was justME at 10)
Things I have never heard an 8 year old girl complain are unfair:
- "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."
Something tells me the explaination for the discrepancy is not "cultural differences"
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:picks up teddy bear and storms off to room:
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/idiocy.
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These aren't the ruling of Islam but of a bunch of spoiled ass princes and judges who have way too much power in the lives of Muslim women. Saudia Arabia is NOT considered a Muslim country by most Muslims but a country run by supposedly Muslim men.
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04/14/09
Muhammad apparently received most of his revelations while in her presence and was very fond of her.
I question if it's a coincidence that Sunnis are known to be especially fond of the story of Aisha - and countries with high rates of child marriage like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia are majority Sunni nations.
04/14/09
What I'm trying to say is this. As a Muslim woman struggling with my faith, my humanism, my feminism, my belief in justice and all such things, I get seriously creeped out when I have to consider that muhammed married a 6 or 9 year old CHILD. Seriously, this fucked with me when I started examining what it is I want from my life. You do some online research and alot of us who've left the faith cite this reason; Muhammad as a paedophile.
What I'm finding is that it may not be so very simple. Like I said, there is evidence that suggests a range of years wherein her marriage might have taken place. Some even say the common interpretation of 6 or 9 is down to a calligraphy error. I do believe though that the West has not done a good enough job of understanding Muhammad (the same can be said of Jesus), the man, not the prophet - He married a woman 15 years his senior, an independent merchant, someone who gave him status and a profession. And by all accounts it was a devoted and successful marriage. So. I think we need to not be so hasty in assuming what we know - frack's sake, I grew up in Islam and I still now very very little.
04/14/09
I suppose my biggest issue is with the fact - truth aside - that she is widely *known* as his child bride. If I remember correctly, the older woman Mohammad married was the daughter of a powerful bazaar owner who conferred that power to Mohammad after the marriage. However most people primarily remember Mohammad's love for Alisha and credit it with really bringing out his compassionate side. It is upheld as a romance story, with his other and older wives largely forgotten. What I really take issue with is the romanticization of the "innocent child bride" symbol.
I guess what I'm saying is that I have less objection with what is actually written in the Koran and more objection to the warped stories and lessons people seem to pull from it. This goes for ANY religious text (believe me, if this was a post about LDS or the quiver-fulls or the Catholic church, my beef would be the very same!).
04/14/09
But obviously not all jews, christians, and muslims are pro-killing of "heathens" (the definition of which is basically "anyone who isn't us"), pro-raping of enemy's daughters, pro-swimming in blood through the holy land, pro-giving away your daughters to the hordes to keep the angels safe (hello, Mr. Lot), pro-slaying your enemies with the sword of righteous justice or whatever it was that the crusaders said that jesus said. If you're a thinking-religious person, then you have to recognize that jesus, muhammad, the hebrew fathers, they are either symbols of their religion or fallible humans (...men, it must be pointed out) who sometimes fail. Either the specifics don't matter because they're symbols and so you use the good stuff, or they are men and the specifics don't matter because you can't expect a person to be perfect. And then you move on. And pick the good bits of the religion to listen to, and decide not to follow the absurd rules from 2000 years ago that have no place in this world.
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Trust me, I GET what you're saying re what whackadoos pull from the religion. I have no blinders on to the facts that religion is a tool of the status quo, and that the status quo is the patriarchy.
04/14/09
And I always thought that the real romance, if that's the right word, was with Khadija. And that it said a lot about the respect and admiration that he had for women's potential and individuality, which can get lost today when this story above is the face of Islam to so many people in the West.
This from a super WASP-y atheist who was a religious studies major.
04/14/09
I was once told by my friend, who is Pashtun, that Sunnis learn a lot more about the Aisha romance than the Khadija romance. It's amazing how two different sects of the same religion can take the same story in two different directions. I remember being really, really confused as a child as to why my friend said her minister had a wife, but I knew my priest wasn't allowed to get married :)
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@portia_sue: yeah, its that, the ability to not be afraid of a forceful, independent woman, in that context and time, that I am fascinated by. And then trying to square that with the possibility of him being into little girls. Idk, just doesn't gel on some level. Interpretation: its not just a plot device for a Nicole Kidman movie.
04/14/09
I have beaten my head against a brick wall many many times when I ask my family the hated question: "Why?". This goes for religion and culture, which in my case are two somewhat different things. Most times the answer is 'er, i don't know...stop with the queries this is how we do things, OKAY', followed by a look as if to suggest that i'm in league with the devil and Dubya. ;)
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I want to crawl back into bed and cry.