All Discussions Tagged 'Aisha' - The 4 Freedoms Library2024-03-29T08:00:05Zhttp://4freedoms.com/group/children/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=Aisha&feed=yes&xn_auth=noIslamic Child Marriage - collected articlestag:4freedoms.com,2013-04-27:3766518:Topic:1227852013-04-27T13:37:11.856ZJoehttp://4freedoms.com/profile/38DD
<p>Iran: 850,000 girls married under the age of 10. <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/04/sharia-in-action-in-iran-850000-girls-under-age-10-are-married.html">http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/04/sharia-in-action-in-iran-850000-girls-under-age-10-are-married.html</a></p>
<hr></hr><div class="asset-header"><h1 class="asset-name entry-title" id="page-title">Sharia in action in Iran: 850,000 girls under age 10 are married…</h1>
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<p>Iran: 850,000 girls married under the age of 10. <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/04/sharia-in-action-in-iran-850000-girls-under-age-10-are-married.html">http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/04/sharia-in-action-in-iran-850000-girls-under-age-10-are-married.html</a></p>
<hr/><div class="asset-header"><h1 id="page-title" class="asset-name entry-title">Sharia in action in Iran: 850,000 girls under age 10 are married</h1>
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<div class="asset-content entry-content"><div class="asset-body"><p>"The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)." -- Bukhari 7.62.88</p>
<p>Muslims take this seriously and imitate Muhammad in this. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: "Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed."</p>
<p>The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl "a divine blessing," and advised the faithful: "Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house."</p>
<p>The Qur'an also allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).</p>
<p>"Gender and Society In Iran – Part 1: The Debate Over Child Marriage, Including Child Brides Wed To Adult Men," by Y. Mansharof and A. Savyon for <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7147.htm" target="_blank">MEMRI</a>, April 24:</p>
<blockquote>...Under Iranian law, girls may marry at 13 and boys at 15, and children under 10 may marry with the approval of their guardian and the court.[1]According to official statistics, about one million children, even under age 10, are married. The statistics also show that 85% of these one million married children are girls – meaning that most of them are married to grown men.[2]<p>Child Marriage Is Growing, And Poses Great Risk To Society – But It's Permitted By Islamic Law</p>
<p>Public figures – sociologists, Majlis members, activists, and others – have warned that the number of children marrying is on the rise, and with it the great health and social risks this poses for society, and have called on the regime to tackle it with legal and cultural reforms.[3] According to one sociologist, arranging marriages for children, especially girls, is common among poor and uneducated urban families that seek a way out of dire financial straits; he adds that the girls themselves are severely damaged both physically and psychologically.</p>
<p>Regime spokesmen have denied the extent of the phenomenon, and have also shrugged off the matter, saying that child marriage is legal and that preventing it is against Islamic law.</p>
<p>The following are facts, figures, and main arguments in the debate on child marriage in Iran.</p>
<p>The Statistics On Child Marriage In Iran</p>
<p>Marriage At Ages 10-15</p>
<p>According to regime statistics, from March through June of 2012, 1,805 children under the age of 15 were married legally and with the permission of the court; that number for the period from March 2011 to March 2012[4] was 7,440.</p>
<p>Expressing concern about the increase, anti-child-bride activist Farshid Yazdani, a member of the Association for the Defense of Children's Rights in Iran, noted that while in 2006 child marriages constituted 2.3% of all marriages, by 2010 that figure had grown 45%, to 4.9%. He warned the regime about the ramifications of child marriages, including divorce and domestic violence, and noted that in 2006, statistics showed that Iran had 25,000 divorced children aged 10-15.[5]</p>
<p>Marriages Under Age 10</p>
<p>According to Islamic law, girls reach maturity at age nine; in 2011, in Tehran province alone, 75 girls and boys under 10 were married.[6] Warning about the increase in marriages of children under 10, Yazdani noted that in 2010, in all of Iran 716 children under 10 wed – twice as many as in 2007.[7]</p>
<p>In an attempt to explain the increase in child marriages in Iran, Amanollah Gharai-Moghadam, who heads the Sociology Association of Iran, pointed at the economic difficulties afflicting Iranian society. He said that in Tehran province many destitute families accept any marriage proposal for their daughters regardless of the girls' ages – and regardless of their rights – so as to reduce the family's expenses. He added, "In some cases, poor families are forced to sell their daughters; in others they are forced to marry off their sons and daughters after the children conduct relations that are forbidden... and in still others, the girl is given to an elderly man in lieu of payment of a debt... In a society rife with poverty, [large] gaps in status, inflation, and unemployment, people act crudely."[8]...</p>
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</div> The ‘Problematic Age’ of Aisha - an Islamic Rebuttaltag:4freedoms.com,2012-06-09:3766518:Topic:1036802012-06-09T04:03:12.837Z4F Memberhttp://4freedoms.com/profile/4FMember
<p class="metadata"><a href="http://prophetictimeline.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/the-problematic-age-of-aisha-ra/" target="_blank">Posted March 14, 2011 by Prophetic Timeline</a> in <a href="http://prophetictimeline.wordpress.com/category/polemical-rebuttals-misconceptions/" rel="category tag" title="View all posts in Polemical Rebuttals | Misconceptions">Polemical Rebuttals | Misconceptions</a>.</p>
<p>The age of Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, when she married the Prophet Muhammad is something…</p>
<p class="metadata"><a href="http://prophetictimeline.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/the-problematic-age-of-aisha-ra/" target="_blank">Posted March 14, 2011 by Prophetic Timeline</a> in <a href="http://prophetictimeline.wordpress.com/category/polemical-rebuttals-misconceptions/" title="View all posts in Polemical Rebuttals | Misconceptions" rel="category tag">Polemical Rebuttals | Misconceptions</a>.</p>
<p>The age of Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, when she married the Prophet Muhammad is something that has only recently become controversial. The traditional account is that the marriage was consummated when she was nine years old, which naturally appears strange, if not uncomfortable, to many in a modern, western context. Many have gone so far as to stir up despicable sexual misconduct charges against the Prophet, with even some recent Muslims (of varying levels of intellectuality, motivations and scholarly qualifications) revisiting the sources and reinterpreting the traditionally adduced narrations, to suggest that Aisha may actually have been older, even though there are four Ahadith in al-Bukhari and three in Muslim clearly stating that Aisha reached puberty at nine years old when her marriage was subsequently consummated with the Prophet.</p>
<p>The first most important point to note is that the controversy is a relatively recent one. The Prophet’s own contemporaries took no issue with the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha; it was not problematic in <em>their</em> eyes as puberty indicated maturity and maturity meant readiness for marriage. This includes both his disbeliever antagonists and his believing followers. Certainly, his antagonists were ever eager to discredit him, and the Qur’an itself records details of this. They accused him of being a sorcerer, a madman or a soothsayer. They objected to his marriage to Zaynab, remonstrating that (according to pre-Islamic Arab culture) a man may not marry the divorcee of his adopted son just as he may not marry the divorcee of his biological son. Yet they did not attempt to discredit him on the basis of his marrying a girl much younger than him. Neither in the Qur’an nor in any historical source is there any mention of such an objection having been raised, despite the fact that these sources do mention numerous other strategies used by the Prophet’s opponents.</p>
<p>The reaction of Muhammad’s hostile contemporaries implies that it was acceptable, in 7th century Arab culture, for older men to marry younger girls (even as young as 9), and moreover that it was a practiced norm of the society at that time. Instead of sexual promiscuity such as ‘dating’, honorable families instead chose the more respectable avenue of marrying their children off at a young age.</p>
<p>The general character of the Prophet, and his marital history, speaks clearly against claims of sexual misconduct. His first marriage, at age 25, was to a widowed woman (Khadijah) who was 15 years his senior, and he remained in a happy and solid monogamous marriage to her for a quarter-century; the marriage ending only with Khadijah’s death, aged 65. It was only subsequent to her passing away, and often under specific circumstances that he married other women; with all of them being either widows or divorcees. Aisha was the third wife of the Prophet and the only virgin that he ever married.</p>
<p>Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha must be read in context to early Arab culture, and to avoid viewing the veritable tapestry of human culture, across space and time, through the colored lenses of contemporary, western culture. A slight familiarity with anthropology is sufficient to convince one that there has been, and still is, remarkable variety in human cultural practices and norms. For instance the Catholic Encyclopedia observes about the Virgin Mary that, “it is possible that Mary gave birth to her Son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age.” In Shakespeare’s classic play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was only thirteen, yet her mother tells her that “ladies of esteem” younger than her are already mothers. According to the Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society, both Christian Canon law and European civil law considered seven years as the age of consent, but judges in medieval England would approve marriages based on mutual consent at ages even lower than 7. As recently as the nineteenth century, ages of consent of 13 to 14 were common in Western countries.</p>
<p>To conclude, Aisha’s biography attests to the fact that she had a wholesome upbringing and then blossomed to become a woman of high intellectual calibre, a poetess and a medical advisor. She had a sharp inquisitive mind and at times, as the Prophetic narrations show, would often daringly question the Noble Messenger.</p>
<p>She is one of the fore-ranking specialists in narrating from the Prophet. She was also a commentator on the Qur’an and knowledgeable in Islamic law. Much of this was due to her early marriage to Muhammad, which made her an eye witness to the personal details of his life. She became a beacon of knowledge for the succeeding generations and a role model for women for all times.</p>