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

Can I bring this back on track. Do some on this thread believe that child marriage doesnt exist in this country and there is no proof that it has ever occured?

You the Cat

where did you get the idea that Mary was only 11/12 when she had Jesus? I have never heard that. teenage mum maybe but not as young as that.

I didn't get the idea. I googled it and looked at a few different sources and just about all reckoned she'd be about 11/12 years old.

Does Slug think that Mohammed set out with some career plan to become the head of a major religion? That's a really feeble argument. You do realise this all happened nearly 2 millennia ago, don't you?

If Mohammed did, then Jesus must also have set about with the intent that he was going to begin a new religion.

Do any of the people refuting the idea that Jesus's mother could have been 11/12 actually understand how different a rather major factor like life expectancy was back then? An ordinary person wouldn't have lived past about 30/35 if they were lucky. So people started getting married and having children much much earlier because they didn't have the luxury of time that we have now. By 12 you would be a woman in society's eyes.

I am in no way condoning child marriages just pointing out how different things were such a long time ago.

Yemen used to have 18 as the minimum age for marriage - UK has 16 and then they abolished a minimum age entirely. Some people are trying to get it back to 18.

There are huge numbers of sexually active 13 - 15 year olds in the UK of course on every council estate and indeed many a rich area in the land.

yes you cat had a look too. anywhere between 12-16. I just hadn't thought about it before.

I think most adults think there is a huge difference between sex with someone before the age of puberty and sex after. Whether you put the age at 14 or 16 may not be that relevant in my view and plenty of 14 year olds in the UK want to be and are sexually active even if their protective mothers and fathers are not very keen that that is so.

I must admit my comment about 'God being at it' was me being tongue in cheek.

But still you can't judge one religious figure but today's cultural norms and not another.

by not but

not sure about Joseph being that old crescent. thought this link was interesting

www.libertygospeltracts.com/question/prequest/josephmaryages.htm

Most girls from that time would have been married by age 12, according to Jewish custom.

Here we go again with all the crocodile tears. Alemci what a surprise to see you here.

Well lets see here I see most people have all the most pertinent points. That most biblical scholars put Mary at age 11 when she gave birth to Jesus (pbuh) (dont even think about 16 thats just christians who want to whitewash the history of their own religion). Joseph in the earlier church was depicted in paintings as being an old age pensioner. Well how else would early christian leaders shake off the the accusation that he was the father of Jesus (pbuh). But since we are dredging up history from over a millenia ago and judging it with todays moral standards why dont we go further hmm.

Lets see Prophet Solomon according to the bible had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Now in those days Im sure concubine was not really a career move most would take so how do you think he acquired them. According to our day and age what would he be considered? Many of the Jewish prophets similarly had a harem full of concubines and many wives.

Prophet Lot PBUH, a pivotal prophet in both the Jewish and Christian faiths according to both their holy books had sex with his daughters (I dont know what age they are said to have been). And you want to point the finger at the Muslim faith for something that may or may not be true (its not in the Holy Quran and as far as I know the hadiths differ on exactly how old she was.

But lets go even further. Romeo the most famous romantic hero in English Literature. Rapist. Why? Well Juliet was only about 13/14 years old and you know in our day and age that would be illegal and abhorrent. You see where your stupid game playing gets everyone. Many British people don't even want to be judged by what their empire did 100 years ago and you want to make all Muslims take the blame for what happened 1400 years ago.

My aunt got married at 14 to a man more then 10 years older then her. 60 years down the line they are still happily married and had 7 kids. Now would I want that for my 14 year old daughter. No. Would I want to be married at 14. No. Did my aunt get any of her own daughters married at 14. No. But at that time, in that place there were little or no options for women besides marriage. My aunt did not like school and was not doing well so to guarantee her future my grandfather thought the better option was to marry her to a good person who would give her a stable and happy life and that was exactly the outcome. Im sure over 100 years ago people in the UK would have barely batted an eyelid to a 14/15 year old marrying a much older man but that definitely would not be the case today.

You need to stop being such arrogant, hateful, cultural imperialists and grow up and look at your own damn history before your start pointing fingers at a man who lived 1400 years ago.

chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230

Excellent post, Peaceful.

Hi Peaceful

haven't spoken to you before.

Interesting post. I would say that this was a long time ago.

Do we want it to be happening now?

To be fair Peaceful

I haven't said anything about the prophet or his wife if you look at my posts. All I stated was that I wasn't aware of the things that You Cat said about Mary and Joseph and tbh I don't think it is that important because we weren't there and we will never know.

Paintings aren't always accurate and they are just the painters spin on it.

Did you see the link I posted earlier?

I just don't think young girls under age should be forced into marriage if they don't want it or to be pressurised into having sex if they are not married whatever their culture

I think I have been tactful on here and fair.

Alemci, so far there's been no proof that it is happening now in England amongst British Muslims. Which is the whole premise of this thread.

That's not to say its not happening anywhere in the world in all sorts of religions and cultures. There are massive on-going governmental campaigns trying to stop it.

Even in the UK, we have the 'let children be children' campaign to stop the overt commercialisation and sexualisation of children, the UK not being a Muslim state this is clearly not a Muslim scourge.

I agree Fuzzy about the over sexualisation of children in our society and the pressure on teenagers.

A while ago I went to a Stop the Traffic fundraiser and it was shocking about how girls were treated as a commodity and one British girl had gone travelling and fallen prey to this situation.

Did anyone watch Exposure: Forced to marry on ITV last night, at 10.35pm?
www.itv.com/news/2013-10-06/uk-imams-agree-to-perform-underage-marriages/

Oh really SilverApples shall we really go there.

NSPCC statistics on child sexual abuse October 2013

18,915 sexual crimes against children under 16 were recorded in England and Wales in 2012/13.

In 2012/13 the police in England and Wales recorded:

5,156 offences of rape of a female child under 16

1,138 offences of rape of a male child under 16

4,171 offences of sexual assault on a female child under 13

1,267 offences of sexual assault on a male child under 13

6,634 offences of sexual activity involving a child under 16

176 offences of abuse of children through prostitution and pornography

373 offences of sexual grooming.

I think we have much bigger problems in the UK then 18 Imams who were theoretically willing to marry a 14 year old girl and thats assuming they fully understood what they were being asked as many Imams in the UK are foreign nationals/new immigrants so may not have even understood it. Smell your own s* before you complain of how bad someone elses stinks.

Look Alemci I apologise for targeting you specifically there are obviously worse offenders then you kicking about here but I just remember reading one of your posts on another one of these types of threads.

I just don't think young girls under age should be forced into marriage if they don't want it or to be pressurised into having sex if they are not married whatever their culture

After briefly reading through this thread I have to say I don't see anyone disagreeing with you. But lets deal with the root causes of it as I have already established and many others before me that this is not to do with anyones 'culture' as child marriage was not long ago prevalent here in Judeo-Christian European culture.

The root causes are not religion or culture they are poverty and lack of education. If I go back to the example in my own family, my aunt did not get any of her daughters married as teens (in fact two of them are middle-aged now and still not interested in marriage) because by that time the situation for women had markedly improved. They had access to a quality education they were able to work. In fact from my mothers generation to my generation the situation completely reversed with most of the young women getting married later on in life and that is all as a result of the fact that opportunities for women had vastly increased.

I watched a programme the other day where a Kenyan woman who was part of the Masai Mara tribe talked about how she had narrowly missed becoming a child bride. However she didnt blame her mother and father who got her bethrothed at age 5/6 to a much older man and were planning to get her married at 11. She explained on the show that they knew nothing else. Her mother had got married at that age all her own peers were getting married at that age. She explained that people were just not educated about the effects of child marriage and even though they could see the consequences for some of the young girls giving birth at such a young age they could not put two and two together and work out that it was because they were married so young before there bodies were physically mature. But she managed to persuade her parents to instead let her continue with her education and get married later on. In India, Yemen and Kenya where do you find child marriages occuring and amongst who? Amongst the poor, the uneducated, those living in deprived areas, villages where there is little access to education or jobs for men let alone women.

In these countries parents who take part in child marriages do not necessarily hate their children. On the contrary they may think they are doing the best thing for them. Until the main causes, such as lack of education and poverty, are addressed we will not be able to eradicate this problem.

Wow, you are very aggressive for a peaceful optimist!
You are saying that we should look to our own issues and problems first, those that directly impact our own families and culture, and leave the rest alone?
That sounds very similar to all the reasons given by the NF, EDL and the anti-immigrant groups for not supporting 'others,' or bothering with issues affecting other countries such as Syria. We should spend our time and money fixing problems in our Anglo-Saxon communities?
What about the female British citizens of south Asian origin whose rights are being abused?
Where do they fit in your world view?

thanks Peaceful :)

and what you are saying does make sense.

Your purpose and others of your ilk is not to help those who are suffering the consequences of child marriage. Its about cultural imperialism. Its about saying look how much better we are then them. Promoting and maintaining this us and them mentality is not going to protect British girls here of White/ Black/ Asian/ Chinese origin from being sexually abused. You want to help end child marriage? Put your money where your mouth is and go do something to support this charity

www.plan-uk.org/what-we-do/campaigns/because-i-am-a-girl/get-involved/take-the-vow/

who are working to end child marriage wherever it occurs not just in South Asian communities. But if like most of your other predictable posts on threads such as this one you are just here to mouth off about how bad those mozlims are then I am going to be aggressive. To borrow a phrase from my christian cousins 'don't suffer fools gladly'.