[Miu-Miu]

Link - Not the Daily Mail.


"

Those who call for raising the age of marriage to 25 are absolutely mistaken."

That's what Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh said when asked about marrying minor girls without their consent, according to The World Observer.

He also insisted that girls are ready for marriage by age 10 or 12.

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

Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, told The Huffington Post that al-Sheikh's comments show he is out of touch with modern Islam.

"The Mufti's quote is disastrous on so many fronts, namely because it removes the element of consent from marriage, (no 10-year-old girl can reasonably be expected to give her consent to marriage to an adult)," Safi wrote in an email. "It is yet another indication of the way in which the Saudi religious authorities are out of touch with their own populations and the emerging consensus of Islamic norms worldwide."

Arabian Business reports that Saudi Arabia is facing international pressure to set a minimum age for marriage after "cases involving children forced into wedlock with older men."


The Christian Science Monitor notes that, in 2009, Saudi courts declined to nullify a marriage between a 6-year-old girl and a 58-year-old man.

According to Reuters, the Saudi ministry considering the minimum age "was still in discussions over what age the limit should be," but that, as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, Saudi Arabia considers anyone under the age of 18 to be children.

Things to keep in mind:


1. The Grand Mufti is the highest official of religious law in a Muslim country. This is not a poor country bumpkin waging war against Israel for taking his land. This is a man who has studied his religion for decades amongst other prominent scholars. Is he "misunderstanding" his religion? Okay, I can accept that the Prophet might have married Aisha for political reasons. She might have matured earlier and gone through puberty faster.


That was 7th Century Arabia and those things happened in the East and West. FINE! This, however, is 2012. Little girls do not need to be sex dolls and housewives to elderly Saudi men.


2. There are zero Muslim protests over this. Zero. People were beheaded, embassies were set on fire and entire streets pillaged and looted over a cartoon. The rape of little Muslim girls by adult men? Not a peep. Where is your outrage? Why aren't you screaming at the top of your lungs?



Opinions plz.

[Sgt.Incontro]

Disgusting.

Any men in any Muslim country with such a relationship with a girl at that age should be tried for paedophelia at the very least.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z715e using Student Room App.

[squishy123]

He's a fool. How can he disregard one of the most fundamental rights Islam gave women which it used to differentiate and distinguish Muslims from pre-Islamic Arabia? This is the statement I have issue with:

"That's what Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh said when asked about marrying minor girls without their consent,"

[AverageExcellence]

I understand the horror from a person with western ideals but when you put it in to context the prophet muhammad (PBH) (with all due respect) married a 6 year old girl. Regardless of your views to that he is their image of a role model and therefore restricting the age implies that what muhammad did is wrong.

Maybe many muslims can except that islamic norms have changed but many conservative/traditionalists muslims will reject this view.

[Alexandra's Box]

(Original post by AverageExcellence)
I understand the horror from a person with western ideals but when you put it in to context the prophet muhammad (PBH) with all due respect married a 6 year old girl. Regardless of your views to that he is their image of a role model and therefore restricting the age implies that what muhammad did is wrong.

Maybe many muslims can except that islamic norms have changed but many conservative/traditionalists muslims will reject this view.

How weird.

[AverageExcellence]

(Original post by Alexandra's Box)
How weird.

maybe my grammar wasn't the clearest there. I meant to put brackets around with all due respect to avoid people having a go at me for mentioning it or incorrectly assuming im undermining him because he did it. Im not implying i respect him BECAUSE he married a 6 year old which now i read it back it sounds like that

[Miu-Miu]

(Original post by Sgt.Incontro)
Disgusting.

Any men in any Muslim country with such a relationship with a girl at that age should be tried for paedophelia at the very least.

Agreed. My problem is the glaringly painful hypocrisy. If there are so many peaceful, kind and moderate Muslims: why is there complete silence on this issue? When a bomb goes off in a city centre, they come out of the woodwork to remind us that it's a minority of extremists. That Islam is actually peaceful! One of the most influential men in Islam says sex with children is okay... you could hear a pin drop. It's pathetic.



Yesterday: Girls have boyfriends in the West? HARAM! CORRUPT! INFIDELS!


Today: Hey, we're not saying we want to have sex with schoolchildren... we're just saying we want to marry them and then have sex. Paedophilia is okay if you put a ring on it.

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Miu-Miu)
Link - Not the Daily Mail.


"

Things to keep in mind:


1. The Grand Mufti is the highest official of religious law in a Muslim country. This is not a poor country bumpkin waging war against Israel for taking his land. This is a man who has studied his religion for decades amongst other prominent scholars. Is he "misunderstanding" his religion? Okay, I can accept that the Prophet might have married Aisha for political reasons. She might have matured earlier and gone through puberty faster.


That was 7th Century Arabia and those things happened in the East and West. FINE! This, however, is 2012. Little girls do not need to be sex dolls and housewives to elderly Saudi men.


2. There are zero Muslim protests over this. Zero. People were beheaded, embassies were set on fire and entire streets pillaged and looted over a cartoon. The rape of little Muslim girls by adult men? Not a peep. Where is your outrage? Why aren't you screaming at the top of your lungs?



Opinions plz.

I'm Muslim............I actually IGNORE everything any Saudi government related scholar who makes any rulings in Islam. Simply because they can't be trusted and have lost credibility due to their 'monarchs' influence on them and their and certain other groups of people's influence over them. Hence why the Egyptian Al-Azhar school is now increasingly at odds with them.

[Miu-Miu]

(Original post by AverageExcellence)
I understand the horror from a person with western ideals but when you put it in to context the prophet muhammad (PBH) (with all due respect) married a 6 year old girl. Regardless of your views to that he is their image of a role model and therefore restricting the age implies that what muhammad did is wrong.

So raping little girls is okay because, if you disagree, it might imply that Mohammed was not perfect in every sense?


I don't have "Western ideals". I have humane ideals. My values tell me that children should play and enjoy their childhoods. Not have sex with impotent abusive husbands five times their age. Beggars belief that I have to explain this.

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by AverageExcellence)
I understand the horror from a person with western ideals but when you put it in to context the prophet muhammad (PBH) (with all due respect) married a 6 year old girl. Regardless of your views to that he is their image of a role model and therefore restricting the age implies that what muhammad did is wrong.

Maybe many muslims can except that islamic norms have changed but many conservative/traditionalists muslims will reject this view.

No such thing as a conservative/traditionalist Muslim in all honesty................they forget that to get married you need to have reached puberty, and puberty reaches children much later than at the time when the Prophet pbuh got married to her. If you reach puberty at different ages now, doesn't mean what's happened was wrong because the rule's condition behind marriage causes the age of marriage to vary. Regardless people have a choice in Islam to say no to marriage.

[Miu-Miu]

(Original post by Iqbal007)
I'm Muslim............I actually IGNORE everything any Saudi government related scholar who makes any rulings in Islam. Simply because they can't be trusted and have lost credibility due to their 'monarchs' influence on them and their and certain other groups of people's influence over them. Hence why the Egyptian Al-Azhar school is now increasingly at odds with them.

Glad you agree. But Al-Azhar is the same school that issued that disgusting breastfeeding fatwa. They are only a little less perverted than the Saudis. Isn't Egypt also mulling over a bill that would allow husbands to have sex with their dead wives? Yuck.

[JongKey]

(Original post by AverageExcellence)
I understand the horror from a person with western ideals but when you put it in to context the prophet muhammad (PBH) (with all due respect) married a 6 year old girl. Regardless of your views to that he is their image of a role model and therefore restricting the age implies that what muhammad did is wrong.

Maybe many muslims can except that islamic norms have changed but many conservative/traditionalists muslims will reject this view.

We have to understand that back then what was acceptable was completely different. There wasn't a problem with marrying a young girl back then, there is now. People used to kill their daughters as they wanted only sons, nobody spoke out on this - obviously now this would cause an outrage. Times change and what becomes socially acceptable changes. What Muhammad PBUH did wasn't considered wrong then and it wasn't against Islam either. Now the views have changed on marrying young girls - that doesn't mean he was against Islam and that doesn't necessarily mean we consider him wrong, it's just now this isn't acceptable.

The main thing is marrying a girl without her consent - Islam completely detests marriages which does not involve consent. Maybe a young girl can give full consent but the vast majority of them can't or aren't able to understand what marriage actually is, so something or the other needs to be done but these perverts in power aren't helping anything. A law that nobody can get married before 18 i think would solve this but again - backward perverts in power

[JongKey]

(Original post by Miu-Miu)
Agreed. My problem is the glaringly painful hypocrisy. If there are so many peaceful, kind and moderate Muslims: why is there complete silence on this issue? When a bomb goes off in a city centre, they come out of the woodwork to remind us that it's a minority of extremists. That Islam is actually peaceful! One of the most influential men in Islam says sex with children is okay... you could hear a pin drop. It's pathetic.



Yesterday: Girls have boyfriends in the West? HARAM! CORRUPT! INFIDELS!


Today: Hey, we're not saying we want to have sex with schoolchildren... we're just saying we want to marry them and then have sex. Paedophilia is okay if you put a ring on it.

Are you kidding me, every muslim i've ever met finds this disgusting, it's a major problem in some areas and the people there strive to fix it but it's only because these people don't get put on the news for doing something good that nobody knows they're there. There are plenty of organisations trying to help underage girls who are forced into marriages, i see many of the adverts when i'm watching asian shows. There are people helping but until the people in power in the country don't stand up, or stop beign so backwards, this will still be a problem.

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Miu-Miu)
Glad you agree. But Al-Azhar is the same school that issued that disgusting breastfeeding fatwa. They are only a little less perverted than the Saudis. Isn't Egypt also mulling over a bill that would allow husbands to have sex with their dead wives? Yuck.

"One of Sunni Islam's most prestigious institutions is to discipline a cleric after he issued a decree allowing women to breastfeed their male colleagues.
Dr Izzat Atiya of Egypt's al-Azhar University said it offered a way around segregation of the sexes at work.

His fatwa stated the act would make the man symbolically related to the woman and preclude any sexual relations.

The president of al-Azhar denounced the fatwa, which Dr Atiya has since retracted, as defamatory to Islam.

According to Islamic tradition, or Hadith, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers."

Read the article properly....the fact is that they are very reliable, especially how they disciplined him straight away.............nor has it to do with anything with sex. In Islam if a women breastfeeds another child, etc they become 'mahram' someone whom she can't marry which allows her to talk to him and show her hair, etc, which relates to making segregation at work easier, which went at odds with the school and the rest of the clerics.

Another thing is that the Egyptian thing started off with a rumour and has many floors, another thing is that if it is true, it has nothing to do with the school but the government.

[Perseveranze]

Lol, he's nothing like the pope, and no where the "highest authority" as far as Islam is concerned (only the Caliphate has that power, in which even he can be revoked to removing a ruling if it's contradictory to Islamic theology). The grand mufti also thinks four witnesses aren't required to adultery, which you don't need to be a "modernist" to reject. Much of his rulings go against Orthodox Islam. The guy's accused of being an agent of the west and is hated by Muslims around the globe.

I've also refuted child marraige critisisms here (including the marraige with Aisha(ra)); http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/show...1#post37356351

And summarised/proved the following constitutes a marraige to be valid in Islam;

1 – Menstrual Maturity. (Puberty)
2 – Balaghah – Physical Maturity
3 - Capability (ie. No harm is caused in any way and they can handle marraige)

Make of it whatever you like, we have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.

[Voleva]

Idiocy of islam and the muslim world proven. Btw 10 is kinda old compared to their afghani and pakistani sisters.

[Voleva]

(Original post by Sgt.Incontro)
Disgusting.

Any men in any Muslim country with such a relationship with a girl at that age should be tried for paedophelia at the very least.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z715e using Student Room App.

By whom, since there is no such thing as paedophelia in islam?

[quavers]

Well, here in the UK, it appears girls are ready for sexual intercourse at the age of 13 since we're going to start providing pills to them.

[Ayshizzle]

Is this the same douche who said if women are allowed to drive they'll lose their virginity?

I think it takes a special type of moron to be a Saudi cleric/ruler/whatever.

[BonjournoDeano]

I dont condone it but this practice has been taking place for hundreds of years.
It has only become the general concensus to think it wrong.
The age of 10 is considered wrong in the west and becuase we feel it it is wrong, they must abide by it aswell?
Can we just leave them alone and focus on ourselves. If it is taking place here then be my guest and send them to jail but its their country, they can do what they wish.