Female 'Marriage Mediator" Gets Jail And Lashes In Saudi Arabia

"Temporary marriages" are popular in the Muslim world as a means of legitimizing sexual relations between men and women in the eyes of Allah. It really is nothing more than a form of prostitution, but heck, they don't see it that way. Most, anyway. In Saudi Arabia, however, a foreign woman who was allowing meetings between men and woman on her premises, and claiming she was arranging misya marriages, has been handed a 6 month jail sentence, 50 lashes, and will be deported when released. She was charged with "immoral and unlawful activities and acting as a pimp."

She wasn't the only one arrested and sentenced to jail time.

Three other women were arrested at her house were also sentenced. One of the women was found to be in possession of hashish.

All three were sentenced to four months in prison and 50 lashes because they agreed to meet men for marriage without the presence of their male guardians. According to Saudi law, women are not allowed to marry without a legal marriage contract and they also cannot meet strange men even for discussing a marriage relationship.

They were caught after someone tipped off the police about the woman's little business venture.

A police officer called the woman mediator and claimed that he wanted to marry two women at the same time.

The mediator allegedly told him that she could accommodate his request, even if he wanted three women at the same time.

She then gave him the number of another marriage mediator who asked him to visit her house to see the women.

When he arrived at her house, she brought four women for him to choose from and told him that their dowry was between SR15,000 and SR20,000. Her commission was SR1,000 for each woman. The officer then signaled a security team waiting outside and they arrested everyone.

One of the women was married and was a legal resident, while the other women were illegals.

It's hard to tell if they were arrested simply because there was gender mixing, which is illegal in backwards Saudi Arabia, because temporary marriages are sanctioned under Islam, or whether she really was acting as a pimp for a bunch of prostitutes.

Source: Al Arabiya

Mali Islamists Using Rape As A Weapon Of War- UN Study

According to a study commissioned by UN Women, when the Islamists took over the northern part of Mali they began raping women some as young as 9, others as old as 70. The Islamists call it 'marriage' or Nikah Mut'ah- a temporary marriage which is allowed in Islam. These so-called 'marriages' are nothing more than a form of Islamically sanctioned prostitution, and in the case of the women in Mali, rape.

Interviews with Malian women revealed:

Throughout the occupied regions, girls are forced into marriage. When an Islamist marries you, you can be sure that, at night, you will be visited by at least four or five people, and that every night, you’ll receive a visit from a different man, a “new husband”. One girl told me: “it was by the smell that I knew that it was a different man coming to me every time. Every time, I was aware of a different smell than the last time.”

The Islamists perform religious marriages in order to escape the clutches of international criminal justice. They carry out a form of “marriage” so that, at night, you can be treated as a sexual slave. During the day, you are there to serve tea to the men and attend to their every need. This is why I always say that what’s happened in Mali is unprecedented.

It’s true to say that rape is being used as a weapon of war.

Imagine, in Gao, armed men bursting in on a family. The husband is there. They seize his wife, rape his wife and his daughter. I warn you, what I’m going to say is hard but they force him to rape his daughter. It’s dreadful. When you do that to a man, it takes away his humanity. Even if he wants to resist, he can’t. It’s to be expected, it’s human.

Anyone who turns a woman’s body into a trophy of war, he’s already won the battle. He doesn’t need any other weapons. He’s already won.

The rest here.

Polygamy in British Muslim Community "Rife"

According to this BBC article, polygamy is far more prevalent in Britain than most Muslims over there are willing to admit. Dr. Zabina Shahian, a 40-something GP, was "devastated" after she discovered (through detective work) that her husband still had a wife and three kids in Pakistan. She's now doing her best to help other Brit Muslim women who are dealing with the same issue, though many in the community are not looking kindly upon her efforts.

"When I go down to my parents I get all the neighbours looking at me.

"As a Muslim woman I'm supposed to keep a low profile. I feel like I've committed a crime here although I'm the victim.

"You're supposed to keep your mouth shut and you're supposed to just carry on. It is impregnated into our culture."

Her 54-year-old husband, former conservative party politician Pervez Choudhry, claimed that he had no clue his Pakistani marriage would be valid in England. It's doubtful that an educated man would have no idea that if you don't divorce your spouse you are still legally bound to that person regardless of where you wind up living.

Though most women don't have the means to do anything about a suspected bigamist husband, Shahian did. She hired a detective and spent two years and a bundle of money to track down information on Choudhry's second family. They discovered that his first wife was the result of an "arranged" marriage in 1986.

Her case against Choudhry, however, is not the norm, since polygamy in the UK usually goes unpunished.

This is because they are able to avoid having their second or third marriages registered in the UK by having a Nikah ceremony instead - an Islamic non-registered marriage contract not recognised under British law.

For a Nikah wedding to be recognised in the UK, the marriage needs to have an accompanying civil ceremony.

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of think tank The Muslim Institute, said men could exploit the "cruel loophole" of the Nikah, allowing them to have more than one wife under Islamic law but not having to register the marriage in the UK, which means the woman would have no spousal rights if the marriage were to fail.

"They dump their first wife and simply go to Pakistan, Bangladesh or wherever and marry again," he said.

Leading family solicitor Annemarie Hutchinson, who represents Muslim women, said no official statistics were available but that Dr Shahian joined thousands of Muslim women in the UK who were victims of polygamous marriages.

"There are lots and lots of second marriages and second wives - it's rife."

But in cases where prosecution would be possible, she said there would be no case "unless the first or second wife pushes for it".

"It's bigamy but the police won't prosecute because there would be thousands of cases," she said.

Siddiqui says that polygamy

"...is so widely spread they don't blame men having a second wife or a third or fourth wife. They accept this is their lot."

It's hard to believe that it's so prevalent in a Western, non-Muslim country- then again, we are talking about Britain that does allow Shariah law.