Thursday, August 14, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

The rebellion of the child-brides

by Johann Hari - Independent

Thanks to Linda Ward Selbie for the link.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/08/the-rebellion-o.html#more

The rebellion of the child-brides

By Johann Hari

Late last year, a tiny little ten year old girl turned up alone at the court in Sana, Yemen, and declared: "I have come to get a divorce." This hadn't happened before. According to the Yemen Times, in some parts of the country the average marriage age is ten, and some 50 percent of marriages are to underage girls. But Nujood Ali was unique in escaping to a court door, pleading for help.

Nujood explained how her father had married her off to a thirtysomething motorcycle courier. On their wedding night, he ordered her to share a bed with him. She ran out of the room, so he dragged her back and raped her.

At first she was ashamed. "But I passed through that," she said recently. "All I want now is to finish my education. I want to be a lawyer� I want to defend oppressed people. I want to be an example for all the other girls." After saying this, she ran off to play hide-and-seek.

The court eventually dissolved the marriage — and awarded compensation to her husband in apology. But Nujood has spearheaded a national revulsion against child-marriage. The conservative Islamic mullahs have reacted by saying there is nothing wrong with child-marriage — because Mohammed did it. I discuss this in my column today. It is true Mohammed did this. If you are trapped in the fundamentalist mindset of Mohammed-is-our-moral-exemplar, you have no way to answer back. The debate is resolved; Nujood's "husband" was in the right.

To get out of this bind, you need to leave behind a fundamentalist reading of Islam. You need to accept that parts of it are metaphor — or, better still, abandon supernatural explanations for life altogether.

This is far from confined to Yemen. The excellent reporter Amelia Hill discovered that child marriages are happening here in Britain too. She met a young Muslim woman who at the age of fourteen was forced to marry her cousin in an unofficial "community ceremony." She explained: "They kept whispering in my ear to ask why I wasn't smiling. I told them I was terrified and desperate, that I was just a child and far too young to get married. I pleaded with them to help me escape, but no-one saw anything wrong in what was happening. I begged my husband not to marry me, but he told me I had no choice." She was raped that night. "It was disgusting, awful. I used to scream and cry all night. I was too young, too tender inside. It killed me inside. Life became meaningless� I had my childhood taken away and missed out on all my teenage years. Sometimes I still wonder if it's worth trying to have a future. Many days, I'm not at all sure it is." After two suicide attempts, she managed to escape, and when Hill found her she was living, alone, in a refuge.

Peter Cripps, head of the Community Safety Unit at my local police station in Shoreditch, told Hill these forced child-marriages "are happening and numbers are growing." Nobody is trying to figure out how many Muslim girls are suffering this way.

To call anyone who tries to help them "Islamopohobic" is an obscene betrayal of these young women. Some of the bravest critics of this barbarism are in fact British Muslim women: they staff and run a series of brilliant domestic violence refuges. But the fundamentalist literalist reading of Islam chokes their efforts. It will always tell the girls that child-marriage is acceptable, because Mohammed did it. If we can't criticize and reinterpret Mohammed without being threatened, then we may be unable — in the end — to cut away the intellectual justification for abusing these girls.

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1. Comment #230195 by Lana on August 14, 2008 at 12:18 pm

Uh, oh. Here we go again.

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2. Comment #230196 by cerad on August 14, 2008 at 12:18 pm

Would it hurt us to try and be just a little bit tolerant of other cultures? Sure, most of us think raping children is bad but remember these are God people and they have their own ideas about morality.

Edit: Darn it. Thought I had first post.

Other Comments by cerad

3. Comment #230199 by jenlaferriere on August 14, 2008 at 12:23 pm

It is appaling this this is happening enywhere in the world; Yemen, Britain, or in the US under some Mormom polygamist sects. This is just another silent epidemic... "le0ts keep it in the family, in the community" using religion as a "reasonable" explanation for the exploitation, rape and abuse of children and women is unfortunetely still accepted in so many situations. And the whole concept of calling someone Islamophobic... If you mean opposed, appalled, critical, repulsed... then maybe yes; maybe we need a little more religion-phobic individuals.

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4. Comment #230203 by movingshadow on August 14, 2008 at 12:25 pm

"Would it hurt us to try and be just a little bit tolerant of other cultures? Sure, most of us think raping children is bad but remember these are God people and they have their own ideas about morality."

This is some sort of irony, right?
Also, nobody cares who posted first.

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5. Comment #230204 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Perhaps bible criticism, made possible by the freedom of the press, and accessible by literacy (education) in the 17-19th centuries is what paved the way for the softening (de-fundamentalism) of Christianity. People like Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, David Strauss, Ernst Renan, Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer broke new ground much to the chagrin of the church, Once those lines are crossed and those doors are opened it's hard for even a powerful theocracy to resist progress towards the truth. Even Christianity's own protestant movement helped by inviting lay-men to read the bible for themselves and use their brains instead of letting someone else think for them.

I think the same tools/methods can be applied to Islam: It will take time, but a free press (which we have, but are too intimidated to use), secular education, and Koranic criticism will have the same effect on Islam as is had on Christianity. We need more folks like Sam Harris, Johann Hari, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and this brave little ten-year-old girl to get the ball rolling and of course media outlets not afraid to print/publish/show their works. I think it high time that we forget about "offending" Islam the way we've been ignoring the whinings of Christians for a few hundred years now. It's really sad how we've let a handful of extremists intimidate the vast majority of the rest of the world.

I wrote this for the other Hari article, but it seems okay here too : )

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6. Comment #230205 by Quine on August 14, 2008 at 12:28 pm

Comment #230196 by cerad:

Would it hurt us to try and be just a little bit tolerant of other cultures?

Yes, it would hurt. As a father of a daughter, I have no tolerance for this.

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7. Comment #230207 by Cartomancer on August 14, 2008 at 12:29 pm

I really do wonder what is going on here. The position of the women in the child marriage arrangement is relatively easy to understand - they're the victims, and usually the ones who perpetuate the cycle of abuse with their own daughters. But what of the men in these societies? Is it the case that those men who do this are all paedophiles, and their culture sanctions their paraphillia, or that they really aren't sexually attracted to children at all but go along with it because they feel they have to? How many men in these societies choose a post-pubescent bride instead? How many agree to child marriage but don't rape the girls thanks to their offended moral sense?

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8. Comment #230208 by Diacanu on August 14, 2008 at 12:31 pm

cerad-

Phew, good thing that was irony, or I would've eaten your skin.

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9. Comment #230209 by Friend Giskard on August 14, 2008 at 12:32 pm

If the troll comes back, can we refrain from feeding it this time, please?

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10. Comment #230215 by seqenenre on August 14, 2008 at 12:37 pm

bamafreethinker (5)
I agree

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11. Comment #230218 by Sleepyd104 on August 14, 2008 at 12:39 pm

FTA- The conservative Islamic mullahs have reacted by saying there is nothing wrong with child-marriage �" because Mohammed did it.

This brings up the obvious question: Why couldn't Mohammed have jumped off a bridge?

BTW- Everyone is afraid to offend people, what about me? I am terribly offended by people who rape and abuse children, and I know I CAN'T be the only one. Sad, sad, sad.

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12. Comment #230222 by HourglassMemory on August 14, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Another good text by Hari.
More! :)

If only there could be a way to put religious criticism inside their cities... *thinks of a plane flying over major islam-drenched cities and make pamphlets rain on their roofs and streets*

I would prefer criticism to come from the people themselves though. How wonderful it would be to see, say, the younger generation, generating some kid of historically significant revolution.
I dream of course. It would also be horrible to see a great number of those youths be killed for the most stupid, thoguhtless, insensible of reasons.

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13. Comment #230224 by Bonzai on August 14, 2008 at 12:51 pm

bamafreethinker

Perhaps bible criticism, made possible by the freedom of the press, and accessible by literacy (education) in the 17-19th centuries is what paved the way for the softening (de-fundamentalism) of Christianity. People like Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, David Strauss, Ernst Renan, Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer broke new ground much to the chagrin of the church..

But the freedom of the press would not be possible unless the Church's power has already been eroded.

I think Europe was able to break loose from Christianity mainly because of its political fragmentation. There were multiple, competing centers of powers coexisting in a stable configuration: the Church and the kings and princes. This created the cracks where free floating intellectuals could survive and florish.

This is a delicate balance, it wouldn't do if they were at constant, all out war, in that case you would get only destruction and carnage. It had to be some kind of "dynamic equilibrium".

In contrast, grand unifications always leads to stagnation and single track thinking.

We find that pattern in other civilizations as well. For example, China experienced an explosion of free thinking and a bloom of philosophical ideas during the "Spring-Autumn" period (around 7 - 5 BC). During that time "China" was fragmented but stable (as oppose to all out civil war) with multiple poles of power. Intellectuals would travel around to different kingdoms to sell their ideas to competing princes.

This vibrant intellectual scene ended after grand unification and the eventual establishment of Confucianism as the "official" ideology. I always think that the cause of the China's downfall was that it unified too early, and it had too much time to fine tune the state into a deeply entrenched monolith.

I think in Europe the stable but fragmented period lasted long enough to allow ideas and economics to grow to such a degree that they finally undermined the ideological hegemony of the Church irreversibly.

This is only a half baked theory, my knowledge of history is limited to only a very "big picture". I wonder what historians such as Cartomancer or Philip1978 have to say about it.

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14. Comment #230232 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:01 pm

Scenario A: A brave fringe media entity starts criticizing Islam: Extremist suicide bomber blows up said fringe media office killing the brave publisher of criticism: Awareness is heightened a small amount, but fear stomps out future progress: Little girls continue to be raped and mutilated.

Scenario B: Numerous mass media entities criticize Islam: Extremist suicide bomber blows up a random media office killing several innocent people: Awareness is raised to a much higher degree and people take more actions to improve the situation for all: Little girls are raped and mutilated on a steadily-declining frequency.

Scenario C: Everyone minds his/her own business and is afraid to criticize Islam: Extremist suicide bomber blows up random locations, killing innocent people anyway: Islam continues to thrive/grow: More and more little girls are raped and mutilated:

Scenario B seems to be the only moral choice to me.

We have freedom of the press �" let's use it!

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15. Comment #230235 by Szymanowski on August 14, 2008 at 1:08 pm

In contrast, grand unifications always leads to stagnation and single track thinking.

Well that's very interesting but I'm not sure about that sentence - it would surely depend on the type of unification. The United States of America and the European Union haven't got into single track thinking as far as I'm aware; rather, they are broadening in politics, religion and culture all the time (despite the rise in fundamentalist corners of the USA). [Anyway... I can't bullshit about history for more than ten minutes without revealing my ignorance...]

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16. Comment #230237 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:09 pm

13. Comment #230224 by Bonzai

I agree and much of that fragmented power (in Europe) was in the form of, and came from, protestant sects who resisted theocratic rule.

I agree with HourglassMemeory: It seems to have to come from within - and that is where our hands are so tied. Islamic women and girls seem to be the people we need to reach - but how?

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17. Comment #230239 by Bonzai on August 14, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Well that's very interesting but I'm not sure about that sentence - it would surely depend on the type of unification.

That is true. In the examples you gave the unifications are carried out under the idea of pluralistic democracy, which is not the same as most unifications in history. Historically, unifications always means a monopoly of power as well as ideology.

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18. Comment #230241 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 14, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Bonzai, bamafreethinker I am sorry, but it won't. Christianity could be reformed - after a truly hideous struggle - because of important fault-lines within it. These are:

1. The Bible is a vast and vague document. It necessitates interpretation and discussion. The Qur'an, Hadith and Sira are much more consistent.

2. Christ has always been seen as a pacifist. Reformers could legitimately claim that they were trying to return to his original teachings. Muhammad was, first and foremost, a preacher of hatred. Two-thirds of the Qur'an preach hatred of the kafir. Remove that and you will have reformed Islam. You will also have destroyed it.

3. There is a Church/State separation in Christianity. Islam is first and foremost a political doctrine.

4. The early Church fathers incorporated huge elements of the Graeco-Roman legacy into Christianity, forming the foundation stone on which the Enlightenment could build.

Even with that it took the full fire of the Enlightenment and the power of science, as well as the hideous thirty-years war to reform it. We don't have that time.

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19. Comment #230242 by mordacious1 on August 14, 2008 at 1:17 pm

This Johann Hari has to be one of the UK's best journalists. (ducks to avoid being hit by flying vegetables)

I'm sorry, I don't care if he is a hack, he's hacking in the right direction.

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20. Comment #230244 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:18 pm

When you think about it though, it doesn't have to be the women; change could come from the leaders/oppressors. If the leaders/men read Koranic criticism and change their evil ways...

if it trickled down from the top, fewer people would get hurt.

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21. Comment #230249 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 14, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Mordacious ever since we started singing 'Ding-dong, the witch is dead' you don't need to duck.

I agree. He may have been flat-out wrong in some areas - Mark Steyn, for example - but it is nice to see him learn.

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22. Comment #230253 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:25 pm

18. Comment #230241 by Fanusi Khiyal

Your points are well noted. I think it comes down to cherry picking: Christians can (and plenty have) construct pretty evil religions from the teachings of the OT and Jesus by picking lemons instead of cherries. I've never read the Islamic texts and if I may interpret your statement further - there seems to be few cherries to pick from in Islam?

Edit: And a free society, a free press, education, and science/philosophy/etc. are what equips us to know which are lemons and which are cherries.

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23. Comment #230256 by DalaiDrivel on August 14, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Here's a thought...

Mohammad did it?

Well, Mohammad was a child rapist and torturer.

Who in their right minds wants to be either of those?

'She explained: "They kept whispering in my ear to ask why I wasn't smiling. I told them I was terrified and desperate, that I was just a child and far too young to get married. I pleaded with them to help me escape, but no-one saw anything wrong in what was happening." '

That is astonishingly creepy. It's a perversion of the mind, I think, within the heads of those to whom she pleaded, in the same way that believing that Jesus sending unbelievers into the eternal lake of fire is a good thing is perversion.

Sam Harris referred to religion as a neurological disorder... Citing this as proof, I believe him- this is fanatical cultural rewiring of the mind. Again, creepy, horror film-esque stuff.

Who in their right minds wants to think like that?

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24. Comment #230258 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 14, 2008 at 1:30 pm

bamafreethinker may I suggest something? Over at Jihad Watch (jihadwatch.org) there is a Qur'an blog, which includes a section-by-section discussion of the Qur'an, including the important bits of the hadith, Sira and the commentaries (tafsir).

I understand not wanting to read the Qur'an. It's one of the most wrist-slittingly boring books in the world. Still, there's no substitute for the original text.

There are very, very few cherries. And those that do exist are cancelled by the doctrine of naskh in which the later verses (always more psychotic) cancel out the earlier ones.

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25. Comment #230259 by Mango on August 14, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Nobody is trying to figure out how many Muslim girls are suffering this way.

This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is railing against, right? That Western European nations are hiding behind multiculturalism, letting the fear of offending a particular "community" suffocate of their own liberal secular values.

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26. Comment #230261 by mordacious1 on August 14, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Fanusi

I was ducking you guys, because I might bring her back.

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27. Comment #230264 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:38 pm

Comment #230258 by Fanusi Khiyal

Thanks, I will mix some Crown/Coke one evening and hide all the sharp instruments in the house until I'm done. If I never post here again, you'll know what happened to me : )

Please tell me it's not as long as the bible?!?! And... is there a kinky Song of Solomn-esque porno break in the middle?

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28. Comment #230267 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 14, 2008 at 1:40 pm

No, it's actually shorter than the New Testament. Still, it is nowhere as well written. I can spend a very enjoyable evening just reading Ecclesiates. The Qur'an... Well, you'll see. Let's just say that when Churchill called Mein Kampf "the new Koran", it wasn't just because of it's hate, violence, and war.

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29. Comment #230269 by bamafreethinker on August 14, 2008 at 1:44 pm

Mt Hari has fired me up a little. I'm going to pre-order the controversial book/novel mentioned in another post to show my support. It's not much, but it's a start...

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30. Comment #230278 by Bonzai on August 14, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Fanusi,

The Quran is a horrible enough book, but my understanding is that many of the most outlandish Muslim practices actually come from the Hadith, while the Quran is supposed to be God's word, Muslims are not obliged to follow the Hadith, except for traditional reasons. There are also disagreements over the authenticity of books in the Hadith.

I do agree that there is much less room to cherry pick over the Quran than the Bible.

One thing I notice in my debates with liberal Muslims (I mean Muslims who are theologically liberal, not secular "Muslims" who couldn't care less about religion) is that they almost never come out to denounce certain Islamic practices such as stoning adulterers and killing homosexuals on principle. They would use some lawyerly sophistry to argue against the practices, but never the principle.

The argument may be that the Quaran makes it so difficult to convict that in practice these punishments should never be carried out if the true standards of Sharia are met, or that these punishments can only be meted out in a "true" Caliphate under the proper authority, but since such a thing never existed so it is a purely academic question. Another technique is hair splitting over Arabic words, like saying the Quran doesn't really mandate killing homosexuals, but only those who practice sodomy (homo and hetero), but that since you can't convict without witnesses, anyone should be scot free in practice if true Sharia is followed etc.They would add that Muhammad instructed Muslims to be obey the law of the land if they don't live in a "true " Caliphate, as a result, Muslims should be good citizens etc.

These are basically liberal minded, decent people and they mean well, but their arguments are weak and morally cowardly.

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31. Comment #230284 by squinky on August 14, 2008 at 2:02 pm

What is the legal marrying age in Britain? At what age does pedophilia or sex with underaged children end?

Fuck Sharia. The law is the law. Send newlywedded, older, creepy Muslim freaks to the slammer. That should send a cultural message to the mullahs and tell the world what civilized society thinks of Mohammed's precedent. What's Arabic for "when in Rome bitches!"?

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32. Comment #230286 by NewEnglandBob on August 14, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Bonzai and Fanusi:

Hitchens touches upon the origins of the Koran and Hadith in "God is Not Great". He tried to study it and learn it.

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33. Comment #230294 by Darwin's badger on August 14, 2008 at 2:16 pm

But he's a c...

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34. Comment #230319 by Fanusi Khiyal on August 14, 2008 at 2:34 pm

Okay, it's getting late and I still have ALOT of work to do, so I'll probably have to make this my last posts for the night.

Bonzai,

The Quran is a horrible enough book, but my understanding is that many of the most outlandish Muslim practices actually come from the Hadith, while the Quran is supposed to be God's word, Muslims are not obliged to follow the Hadith, except for traditional reasons. There are also disagreements over the authenticity of books in the Hadith.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that's not so. The Jihad imperative is rooted in the Qur'an, as is the status of dhimmitude, the lesser value of women etc.

There is a broader point though. Say I wrote a book, two thirds of which railed against blacks, calling them 'the vilest of creatures', 'perverse', 'the lowest' etc. Now, even if I didn't include any specific incitement to violence, I'd still be morally accountable for people using my book as a justification for violence towards blacks.

It's exactly the same thing. Two-thirds of the Qur'an preaches hatred and contempt towards the kafirs - not to mention the incitements to violence and evil it contains. There's no way to reform that.

It's also wrong to say that Muslims are not obliged to follow the Hadith. The Qur'an continually refers to Muhammad as the example to be emulated - he is uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, the Perfect Man, the Excellent Example. Muslims were usually called Mohammedans, and there's a reason for that - the figure of Muhammad, in Islam, is actually more important than that of Allah, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

There's actually a group that has preached the idea of "Qur'an Alone". They're pretty decent chaps, from what I've seen, but, theologically, they don't have a leg to stand on. The Al Azhar just declared them all apostates, and you know what that means.

I am sorry to be a voice of such gloom, but we have to get to grips with this.

Could I also suggest that you just take a look at sites like JihadWatch, FaithFreedom, or read the online writings of Ibn Warraq (best place to start is with "Islam, the Middle East and Fascism" - google it, & also his unoffocial website).

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35. Comment #230354 by BigJohn on August 14, 2008 at 3:05 pm

Attention all pedophiles: Excellent opportunity to meet with very young girls! Become a Muslim!

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36. Comment #230363 by Border Collie on August 14, 2008 at 3:18 pm

DalaiDrivel ... you are in agreement with the therapeutic community ... and most other people with more than a mustard seed of sense ...

We can call it what we want, we can give ourselves a complete and thorough politicallycorrectmulticulturalrelativistic enema about it to make ourselves feel better but in the end, raping little girls is life damaging pathology, no matter how well it's accepted in the "culture" ... and apparently the excessive energy of pathology drives this religion ...

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37. Comment #230365 by Donald on August 14, 2008 at 3:19 pm

Another excellent article by Johann.

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38. Comment #230367 by stereoroid on August 14, 2008 at 3:20 pm

This child marriage business confuses me somewhat, because I've had a (Sunni) Muslim friend tell me (paraphrased) "Mohammed (yadda yadda) was our Prophet, but he was still a normal person". They're not supposed to emulate him in every respect, I'm told.

So, it looks to me just like another case of "look for anything that justifies our desires". What Mohammed did is only important to those Muslims as a license to do what THEY want with children. I nearly called them a bunch of wankers, but: if only they were, it would be an improvement over their current status.

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39. Comment #230371 by Goldy on August 14, 2008 at 3:28 pm

Comment #230367 by stereoroid
Tell a Muslim they worship Mohammed and watch the reaction :-) After the vehement denials, ask them why they follow what he does.
They'll bring in Jesus - watch their reaction when you tell them he was actually God :-D
I love religious debate - one can use whatever nonsense that comes out of the mouth!

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40. Comment #230385 by J Mac on August 14, 2008 at 3:41 pm

The court eventually dissolved the marriage �" and awarded compensation to her husband in apology

COMPENSATION?! What fucking court compensates a rapist for not being able to get his rocks off before his victim runs away?

See what happens when they kill all the goats with upturned tails, they go around raping little girls. Best thing we can do is send them a bunch of goats in heat. If those sick fuckers need something to do...

Somewhat reminds me of the beginning of the RSPCA, they got all the dogs taken out of wheels and off of pulling carts. So the dogs were useless and got killed, and they put kids in the wheels and strapped kids to carts.

Fucking momo muslims have more respect for their goats than for their daughters.

Other Comments by J Mac

41. Comment #230387 by Vaal on August 14, 2008 at 3:43 pm

I see one comment on the above article by somebody called Yanabi about Mohammad...

We believe he split the moon in two and returned the sun after it had set now find me one person living on this planet who claims to do this let alone actually carry these acts out

You believe what?? Strange that nobody else in the entire world witnessed the Moon separating into two parts, and the earth's rotation changing direction. I would have thought that ancient literature would have been jammed full with these astonishing events, from China to Peru. Can't see any fault lines on the Moon showing it was cut in half, and then sewn back by Teddy Bear Mohammad.

For goodness sake, how credulous can you get? These guys beliefs are just insane. It is as if their brains turn to mush and they believe absolutely any old rubbish that is in their idiotic book, regardless of how deranged. I am convinced Mohammad was probably playing a practical joke, or he was on hallucinatory drugs.

Now we know where the world lunatic comes from :)

And these beliefs are supposed to be given respect? Religion is madness.

EDIT: Well, we DO actually have a dozen people living on this planet who have actually walked on the Moon, unlike poor old Mohammad's hallucinations.

Other Comments by Vaal

42. Comment #230414 by Wosret on August 14, 2008 at 4:27 pm

7. Comment #230207 by Cartomancer

I looked around but I can't find it...there was a study I read a few months ago that hooked adult males up to machines to gauge their level of sexual arousal, and then showed them pictures of little girls, 12 and under, and found that eighty percent were capable of becoming sexually aroused by girls 12 or younger. This was after eliminating anyone who admitted to being attracted to children in screening.

I think this partly explains why it is prevalent...but I would think that most males are at least against raping people they find attractive, and respect, and understand the concepts of informed consent. Most males capable of being aroused by very young girls, is of course part of it, but I really think that their disgusting religion offers them the justification to even consider acting on it.

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43. Comment #230440 by Shaka on August 14, 2008 at 5:08 pm

"awarded compensation to her husband in apology"

What?! The little girl that was RAPED deserved the apology. That bastard nearly ruined her life entirely for her. He deserves to rot in prison.

Islam = Religion of violence and barbarism.

Other Comments by Shaka

44. Comment #230484 by The Red Fox on August 14, 2008 at 5:57 pm

What is the legal marrying age in Britain? At what age does pedophilia or sex with underaged children end?

16 with parental consent for marriage. The legal age of consent for sex is 16, so anyone having sex with someone under the age of 16 is breaking the law.

The trouble is, most of these British muslim girls who are getting 'married off' are shipped to Pakistan or somewhere in the Asian subcontinent and once they're married, come back here. Usually these girls get married there because it's legal to do so. However, most arranged marriages are for some economic reason, it's a commodity, not a commitment to love in these cultures.

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45. Comment #230491 by Filius Nithardi on August 14, 2008 at 6:11 pm

41. Comment #230387 by Vaal

You believe what?? Strange that nobody else in the entire world witnessed the Moon separating into two parts, and the earth's rotation changing direction.

It's probably only an allegory for the fact, that Muhammad ended the worship of Hubal, a preislamic moon god in Mecca, whose idol was worshipped as the highest ranking god in the Kaaba - by smashing it to pieces (=splitting it) after he had conquered the city. It seems obvious, that Muhammad's contemporaries would understand this meaning, but like many literalist Christians Muslim literatlists cannot be bothered to research the contexts, in which their holy texts were written, and thus hilarity ensues.

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46. Comment #230492 by Greyman on August 14, 2008 at 6:14 pm

40. Comment #230385 by J Mac on August 14, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The court eventually dissolved the marriage – and awarded compensation to her husband in apology
COMPENSATION?! What fucking court compensates a rapist for not being able to get his rocks off before his victim runs away?

I also wonder how long that "eventually" took. It's a small step that little girls who escape to the court can get a divorce, but they still had to think about it?

At first she was ashamed. "But I passed through that," she said recently. "All I want now is to finish my education. I want to be a lawyer… I want to defend oppressed people. I want to be an example for all the other girls." After saying this, she ran off to play hide-and-seek.

I really hope she realises that dream.

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47. Comment #230508 by DalaiDrivel on August 14, 2008 at 6:55 pm

Border Collie,

Well, see it from this point of view:

Imagine that you knew that tonight, you were going to have sex against your will.

Now imagine that all of the most prominent individuals in your life were aware of this inevitability, but were indifferent to preventing it. In fact, they could not understand your aversion to this event and, incredibly, even saw the violation as warranted, indeed, proper... joyous...

Does this make your skin crawl? I hope so.

I for one cannot conceive of a better, more unsettling behavioral example of "creepy."

I'm sure those with in the therapeutic community are going, "What the flying fuck is going on here?!" witnessing the egregious, lasting results of such culturally-induced cognitive perversion and female degradation.

I see child marriage as little more (indeed no more) than institutionalised child prostitution, to the whims of sick, pimp-esque old men declaring assent from God.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuccccccccccck.... ugh... UGH!

Doug Wilson in his online debate with Christopher Hitchens kept attacking CH that atheism was no basis to establish morality.

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html

Of course it's not. Atheism is merely disbelief. It is not a humanism.

Wilson implied that atheism derives moral relativism, and religion offers necessary, non-wavering absolute standards of morality.

Well, it does- minus the "necessary" bit. Religion as opposed to atheism, IS a humanism and a self-proclaimed value system, and in its Judeo-Islamic-Christian form, condones child rape.

Doug Wilson, I presume, is not a child rapist. I wonder, when cornered to admit that Christianity does not influence his respect of children's innocence, where he would claim that restraint derives from.

And in doing so, he would render irrelevant his own non-argument to Hitchens.

On the topic of morality, I subscribe to Sam Harris' basis, outlined in The End of Faith, that defines morality as a matter of producing happiness and minimising suffering.

Or was he discussing Ethics? Are Ethics the same as Morality? I mean strictly speaking. I don't know.

Such an amateur...

Time for Dictionary.com... or Wikipedia.

Maybe both, to be sure!

Anyways, the advantage of Harris' basis, besides being totally reasonable, is that it counters the threat of moral relativism.

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48. Comment #230517 by dragonfirematrix on August 14, 2008 at 7:30 pm

...and from what I am reading here and elsewhere, there are those who say fundamentalism is on the rise. Oh, what hate and oppression shall be born again through religion...

All religions are cults. Some cults just recruit more members than others.

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49. Comment #230526 by Old Sarum on August 14, 2008 at 7:48 pm

That Western European nations are hiding behind multiculturalism, letting the fear of offending a particular "community" suffocate of their own liberal secular values.

Yes, but is this anything more than an oft-repeated Right-wing claim with no substance? Child marriages are illegal throughout Europe, & there's no suggestion that this is likely to change.

It's important to remember that those Western politicians who pour scorn on "multi-culturalism" are traditionally anything but "liberal" in their sympathies.

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50. Comment #230542 by Goldy on August 14, 2008 at 8:36 pm

The Rad Fox

The trouble is, most of these British muslim girls who are getting 'married off' are shipped to Pakistan or somewhere in the Asian subcontinent and once they're married, come back here.

Powers that be are cracking down on this...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2445165/Forced-marriages-crackdown-sees-teenage-brides-barred-from-UK.html

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