Child Bride Magazine- Joke of the day

Actually not a joke at all, but you know what I mean.

Child marriage is a sickening practice that happens far too often in mostly Muslim countries, although some Mormon polygamists have a penchant for the young ones too.

Pakistani Child Marriage: 9-Year-Old Sold For Thousands

Another Pakistani pedophile paying off a family to marry their 9-year-old daughter, because child marriage is justified in the minds of some Muslims.

Although the pre-teen's uncles tried to delay the Rukhsati (when the groom takes his bride to his parents' house to live after the wedding ceremony), and  police were called to intervene, nothing was done since the 35-year-old groom, Zahid Zardari, is apparently a man of influence and riches, since he allegedly paid Rs1.5 million (about $24,000) and had armed guards at the ceremony.

Source: Pakistan Express Tribune

UPDATE: 8-Year-Old Yemeni Child Bride Bleeds To Death On Wedding Night

9/14/13:  UPDATE:  According to some in Yemen, the 8-year-old girl was never married let alone died.  But who to believe?

While perusing some of my Facebook pages of interest I saw a link to an article about a Yemeni child bride who died after sexual intercourse. It sounded familiar so I assumed it was an old story from several years ago, but no, it's recent, and just another case of a young girl bleeding to death because her reproductive organs were mangled by her much older pedophile husband. The story I remembered was actually 12-year-old Elham Mahdi Shuee who bled to death three days after her wedding night. She had been forced to marry a 20-year-old. This latest case involved 8-year-old Rawan, who was married off to a 40-year-old and bled to death on her wedding night.

Activists are calling for punishment for both the girls parents and the "beastly groom", and an end to child marriage, although that won't come easy. Yemen child rights activists have been desperately trying, for  several years now, to change the marriage laws to adequately reflect the emotional and physical age that a girl might be ready to marry. They believe the age limit should be 18. But they're butting heads with the Islamic extremists who believe a girl should marry at any age, after all their prophet Mohammad married one of his many wives when she was 10 years younger than the proposed age limit.

Sources: Gulf News, and  Israel National News

Girl, 10, Married Off To 50-Year-Old As Blood Feud Payment

There are some incredibly wretched customs in tribal Pakistan, like the one whereby blood feuds are resolved through 'vani' or forced child marriages, unless the family has enough money to settle the score. Although illegal in Pakistan, it is still a common practice in the conservative, tribal areas of the country.

Here's a true scenario: 

Even though he was married, Muhammad Akram decided he fancied Munawaran Bibi, so he kidnapped her (another common custom in Pakistan) and then married her.  So now he had two wives.  Pissed off about the abduction Munawaran's 50-year-old brother Falak Sher demanded vani, so the village court ordered Akram's 10-year-old daughter to be handed over to him in marriage.

The FIR filed by the girl’s uncle reveals that Falak Sher had barged into Akram’s house along with seven other men, including a prayer-leader from a local mosque, and performed a forced nuptial ritual in the presence of Akram’s first wife.

It appears the child managed to run away, back to her parents. But according to villagers, the police have been reluctant to do anything about the nine people that the uncle file a complaint against, including Sher, the village 'court' and the prayer leader.

She can thank her stupid dad for her predicament.

Bali Man, 40, Who Marries 13-Year-Old Reported To Police

And from Bali, we have the 40-year-old married man who gets a 13 year-old girl pregnant and marries her to avoid getting into trouble with the law for getting her pregnant out of wedlock, not because what he did should be considered statutory rape, at the least. He's a pedophile for sleeping with a 13 year-old schoolgirl , but who's quibbling. The man, Wayan Cidra, already has two kids of his own, who are probably around the same age as his new bride.

The girl was 7 months pregnant when they celebrated their marriage. Apparently his neighbours reported him to the police, and they are now "investigating the case". Cidra insists the marriage was not "forced", that they just "liked each other", because 40 year-olds have so much in common with 13-year-olds.

6 Year-Old Afghan Girl Sold As Child Bride

Combine ignorance with poverty and the selling and buying of child brides becomes a common occurrence in places like Afghanistan, even in spite of it being illegal to do so.

Taj Mohammed lives in the Qambar refugee camp near Kabul. He borrowed $2,500 from a distant relative to help his family during the long cold winter. The relative reneged on the loan asking for the money back, Mohammed didn't have it, so in lieu of repaying the debt, the distant relative gets Mohammed's 6 year-old daughter, Naghma, for his 16-year-old son.

He says he was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his three-year-old son and an uncle, both of whom died in the cold earlier this month, when the distant relative sent a message demanding his money back.

"He wanted his money back. But I couldn't pay. No-one would lend money to me," he says.

"Then a relative suggested that I give my daughter in lieu of money."

Naghma is too young to understand the ramifications of her father's decision.

"She only cries when we talk to her about it," Mr Mohammad says.

"If I can give my relative some money, then I can delay the marriage until Naghma is 14 or 16 years old."

The distant relative, Dost Mohammed, lives in the same camp as Taj and knows it's illegal.

"The government doesn't allow it," he says, but adds quickly: "I consulted the tribal elders and this is their decision."

Tribal mentality trumps

Saudi 90-Year-Old Suing Parents Of 15-Year-Old For Dowry

In the Middle East and parts of Asia, since women are nothing more than chattel, underage daughters are sold to the highest bidder even if that bidder is a 90-year-old man and the girl is only 15.

A lecherous old Saudi man of 90 paid $17,500 for the 15 year-old daughter of a Saudi woman and Yemeni man. Now he's suing the parents because the girl locked the old pig out of the bedroom on the wedding night, and then ran away several days later. Both the parents and the old man should be locked up. The parents for pimping out their daughter, and the old man for solicitation. The man could have been her great, great grandfather.

It did have Saudi activists a-Twitter:

A Mouhammad Khaled Alnuzha posted on his account: ‘Is this a case of human trafficking crimes punishable by law?’

Another Tweeted: ‘She is still considered as a product! A father sells his daughter without mercy, to be bought by money and status and power; all of it for the sake of fulfilling a desire.’

A member of the Saudi National Association for Human Rights (NSHR), Suhaila Zein el-Abedin urged authorities to ‘save this child from tragedy,’ adding that marriage in Islam must be based on mutual consent.

She also blamed the girls parents for accepting the dowry and marrying off their daughter to a man 75 years older than her, underlining the importance of establishing a minimum age of 18 for marriage in Saudi Arabia.

They have such a long way to go before they join the rest of us in the 21st century.

Saudi Grand Mufti Says Okay For 10-Year-Olds To Marry

If marrying a child is good enough for the Prophet Mohammad it's good enough for Muslims so says Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh (Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti). Well, he didn't quite put it that way, but it was certainly implied when he stated (in response to some woman's question about forcing underage girls to marry) that according to Islam 10 and 12 year-olds are ready for marriage.  Mohammad married his prized child-bride Aisha at the tender age of 9. He probably thinks 10 is ancient, in comparison. And he definitely does not support those who are trying to make the legal age for marrying 25.

"Those who call for raising the age of marriage to 25 are absolutely mistaken," al-Sheikh said in a lecture he gave at the faculty housing mosque of Imam Mohamed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.

"Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age."

Good upbringing? More like ignorance and lack of education.

Of course it matters not that Saudi Arabia is a party to the UN Child Rights Treaty which prohibits child marriages. Their religious laws and interpretations of those laws take precedence over anything else. At least young girls have a reprieve of one year.

Pakistani Police Raid Marriage of 5-Year-Old Girl to 18-Year-Old

Chalk it up to supreme ignorance and a religion whose prophet married an underage girl and you have people pawning off their own pre-pubescent daughters, in some cases no older than a toddler.

In Peshawar, Pakistan police raided the wedding of 5-year-old Ajwa to 18-year-old Amir Khan.

“They were informed that marriage of underage girls is illegal and they were shocked,” a policeman, who was part of the raid, told The Express Tribune. “They said we’re illiterate and do not know about the law.” The girl’s parents have been arrested.   [snip]

While the police arrested only the girl’s parents and not the boy’s, DSP Riazul Islam said that an FIR will be registered against not just the girl’s but the boy himself and his parents as well for attempting to marry an underage girl.

The marriage of underage boys and girls is a crime under the Marriage Restrict Act of 1929 as well as against the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child, said Imran Takkar, the operations manager at NGO the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child. Pakistan has ratified and signed the UN charter.

“Under the marriage act, no girl below the age of 16 can be married off. The UN convention says that any boy or girl below the age of 18 is a child,” Takkar explained.

5 years old? Whether they are just claiming ignorance of the law, or actually had no clue, is debatable. What isn't debatable is their stupidity.

The Child-Bride Problem In Iran- Over 716 Girls Under the Age of 10 Married Off In 2011

Mohammed's child bride Aisha (bint Abu Bakr) was only 6 years old when she was betrothed to the Prophet by her father.  She was still playing with dolls when they finally consummated the marriage when Aisha was only 9 and Mohammed was 52, and old enough to be her grandfather. Apparently, she was his favorite wife, that's probably because as young as she was she was malleable and controllable.

You'd think that with the progress of civilization, and the fact that we now consider sex with underage children 'pedophilia', the practice would have ceased.  But it's still thriving in many regions of the world, including Iran, because many believe that if it was good enough for their Prophet, it's good enough for them.

In fact, according to activist Farshid Yazdani (of Association for the Defense of Children's Rights) the number of child brides in Iran under the age of 10 has been increasing at an alarming rate.  They jumped from 449 in 2009 to 716 in 2011. But that's not all:

Yazdani added that the number of marriages for girls under 15 years of age has increased from 33,383 in 2006 to 35,931 in 2007, 37,996 in 2008, and 43,459 last year (please note that the dates are approximate as the statistics were given according to the Iranian calendar, which begins at the start of the Persian New Year).

According to Yazdani, the rate of marriages of girls under the age of 15 has had a 45% increase compared to marriages in other age brackets. He added that these figures are based on the statistics released by Iran’s Civil Registrations Office, and they should set off alarms for social activists and policy makers.

We can thank Sharia Law for the legalization of the practice in many Muslim countries.