Child marriage

[FruityPops]

Why are so many imams in the UK willing to force fourteen year old girls to marry against their wishes? Don't ordinary muslims know what's going on?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2447720/Clerics-18-mosques-caught-agreeing-marry-girls-14-Four-imams-investigated-undercover-operation.html

hi crescent to you or silver, do you think this may happen over the generations I think it is a perfectly reasonable question.

Have I mentioned Muslim's in my last post!! I mentioned forced marriage regardless of religious beliefs.

This is exactly why you cannot have a debate easily. People get defensive and start pointing fingers at other issues.

I responded to your question at around 9 o'clock this morning, alemci.

thanks for answering crescent I appreciate your answer. yes maybe my posts are a bit insensitive at times.

Even if it is left to 16 is it really OK to not question the girl who is been taken to another country to get married to a man double her age whom she has never met.

We're running around in circles.

We don't get to set marriage legislation in other countries. How they contract marriages is their problem.

There is existing legislation to deal with people being coerced into marriages abroad, with Prohibited Steps Orders the outcome. The legislation is fairly effective in dealing with removal from the country. The changes to the immigration legislation probably reduce the benefit to the perpetrators, too. So as things stand, someone can be prevented from being taken overseas to be married, or for any other purpose, up until the age of 21 and the marriage can be made ineffective for immigration purposes (both because of the "21 and £20k" rule, and more forcefully via the "primary purpose" test).

The case I cited is of a non-legal "marriage" conducted in the UK by someone who is not an agent of the state, which has no legal force or standing, where the participant in question is the subject of a prohibited steps order, but is also over 16 and claims to be a willing party. The issue of whether a prohibited steps order applies, or can be enforced, is a matter for the courts. But it's an incredibly invasive measure to injunct people to not hold a private ceremony which looks vaguely like a wedding, and the threshold for preventing that necessarily has to be high. It's perfectly legal for a sixteen year old to sleep with a man. If she refuses consent it's rape. No legal marriage was being contracted. All the rest is, to a great extent, window dressing.

We routinely hold thirteen year olds Gillick/Axon/Fraser competent to consent to, or refuse, potentially life-altering medical treatment, and we don't worry too much about checking that they're making those decisions in some sort of idealised bubble of perfect information, free from undesirable influences, mostly because we can't.

So I'm not sure what it is we want to protect people against. Being taken overseas for forced marriage? Prohibited Steps Order. Being married against their will in the UK? Plenty of legislation. Being slowly convinced over a period of years that they really want to do this, even though an external observer says it's bad for them? Well, we can stand around being outraged, but do we really want the courts intervening?

thanks silver been mega busy today

handcream my point is that you simply cannot open a conversation the way the OP has and then expect a reasoned debate.

I never said you mentioned muslims in your last post either. I questioned your earlier deliberately obtuse position of Its NOT Muslim bashing tbh.

Ipanema - These are reasonable questions. Many more people in the UK are asking the same questions. This issue is in the papers at the moment and is the subject of a tv programme to be aired tomorrow night.

I have realised that muslims are not one homogeneous mass in the UK, and that some advocate child forced marriage while others abhor it.

A very small 'some' as well. Very very small.

Didnt know there was a documentary tomorrow. Still, some will come on saying whoever is the frame for investigation will have been 'picked on' and what about this, that and the other.

If you had written "I have realised that Christians are not one homogenous mass in the UK, and that some advocate blowing up abortion clinics while others abhor it" how magnanimous do you think you sound? Did you seriously believe previously that child marriage was (a) prevalent or (b) approved of by anything other than the fringiest of fringe nutters?

I would certainly like to see a lot more of the muslims in the Uk who do not cover their head argue their points vocally - women in particular, that there is no requirement in Islam to use a headscarf at all and that women can have careers etc etc.. The UK is full of full time working muslim women who don't cover their heads but they never seem to get heard in public, plenty of them are feminists and want women's rights. We need to hear their voices an awful lot more.

What has that got to do with this?

I would certainly like to see a lot more of the muslims in the Uk who do not cover their head argue their points vocally

Another Test Act. Why? You're essentialising: you're assuming that women who work and raise families and post on MN but happen to be Muslim are Muslim first and foremost, and should be concerned about all the ills of global Islam. Perhaps they're more interested in glass ceilings at work, or breast feeding provision, or nuclear disarmament, or getting funding for their local Sure Start centre, or getting the Tories back into (or back out of) office, or just spent all last year failing to get onto #gbbo. Why should they, just because they are (or were raised) Muslim be concerned about that particular issue?

Immigration has a lot of safe guards in place already, when I was getting married, I had an interview with an imigration official. It was done in the privacy of a seperate room, she was really lovely. I'm pretty sure if I'd expressed fears to her or been even a little upset or agitated she'd have helped me.

This was a long time ago, presumable the checks have become more strignent not less over the years.

How on earth can anyone even tell from a computer screen which one of us covers their head? Or is sitting draped in a veil or is stark staring naked, why does sartorial choice even matter when entering into this discussion?

And now Muslim women without headscarves don't get heard?

Really?

And why should these women tell the women who choose to cover their heads that they shouldn't?

It's like islamophobe bingo here.

In my above post I was explaining that Mohammed is alleged to have married a child and consummated that marriage. This is used by lots of muslims around the world for justification of child marriage. That's why I asked the questions in the opening post.

Did Mohammed not really do this?

I don't know why my earlier post got deleted - the info is on Wikipedia.

Fruitypops, the age of his wife is debated and in those times and in that place the age of marriage was not the same as it is here and now. She was past puberty.

If the marriage had been anytihng but normal then the enemies of the Prophet would have used it against him right then, but they never did because it was the way of those times it was normal.

You have not yet actually shown us where a single Muslim under age child has been forcibly married on this thread.

And Pixie Karma Nirvana founder is Sikh so her sister who committed suicide was Sikh, not Muslim.

I'd say it's because you link that to 'lots of Muslims around the world use that for justification' - which is hogwash.

Fuzzy, HOUSE!

Cat - Hogwash?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/25/middle-east-child-abuse-pederasty

Here's another one. There are loads of other articles like this:

thenigeriatoday.net/child-marriage-our-right-as-muslims-dokubo-tells-critics-says-it-is-not-your-business/