According to Islam, the Prophet Muhammad was “the greatest of all Allah’s creation”, whom all Muslims should try to emulate, in all ways, as best they can. This is why the Hadith (records of the sayings and doings of the prophet) and the Sira (biographies of the prophet) are two of the three pillars of Islamic scripture (contrary to the mistaken belief of many non-Muslims that the Koran is sole Islamic holy text).
The only problem is what the Hadith and Sira actually tell us about Muhammad. Slaver. Warlord. Bandit… and that’s just the best spin the compilers can put on him. The earliest known Sira, that of ibn Ishaq, survives only in heavily edited versions whose authors admit that they excised “things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people”. The mind boggles.
These facts have consequences. Few more so than the circumstances of Muhammad’s “favourite wife”, Aisha. By her own account, “Allah’s Messenger married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house [i.e., the marriage consummated] at the age of nine.
”Now, there are some scholarly arguments that these accounts are false, and that Aisha was in her early teens. Be that as it may, Aisha’s supposed account is regarded as an “authentic” Hadith by most Islamic scholars. As such, nearly all Muslims believe it.
These facts have consequences.
Women’s rights activists have raised the alarm after a dangerous bill resurfaced in Iraq’s parliament which could increase underage marriage.
The bill would allow citizens to choose either religious leaders or civil judiciaries to ‘decide on family affairs’ – and could effectively lower the age for girls to marry to as low as nine […] in Iraq, 28% of girls are married before the age of 18, according to UNICEF. 22% of unregistered marriages in the country are with girls below the age of 14.
The law change is yet another step in dissolving the relatively secular state that existed in Iraq for decades, first under leftist Abdul-Karim Qasim, then Arab socialist Ba’athists. Iraq is slipping ever-deeper into full-blown Islamic theocracy (what did the West expend 20 years of blood and treasure for, again?)
The changes are specifically to Law 188 of the Personal Status Law of 1959, long considered “one of the best laws in the Middle East” concerning women’s rights.
It sets 18 as the legal age for marriage for both men and women. It also sets curbs on men being allowed to take a second wife. The law lets a Muslim man marry a non-Muslim woman without any pre-conditions.
Now the law is about to get a whole lot more Islamic.
It allows girls as young as nine and boys as young as fifteen to be married
The change would let “the offices of the Shiite and Sunni endowments” to sanctify marriages instead of the courts.
The draft bill requires Shia and Sunni endowments to submit a “code of legal rulings” to Iraq’s Parliament six months after ratifying the amendments.
It states that the Shia code would be grounded on “Jaafari jurisprudence.”
Jafaari law, named after the sixth Shiite Imam Ja’afar Al Sadiq, governs marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption.
It allows girls as young as nine and boys as young as fifteen to be married.
And, just like that, activists are finding out that Islam is decidedly not, as the ludicrous words of Islamo-foghorn Yassmin Abdel-Magied would have us believe, “like, the most feminist religion”.
Campaigners have branded the proposal degrading and barbaric, with activist Suhalia Al Assam telling The National on Wednesday: ‘Would politicians let their nine-year-old daughter get married? I’m sure not but they would allow the oppressed Iraqi population to do so.’
Hmm. Does she want to take bets on that?
Iraq’s law changes are just the pointy end of the Islamic predilection for child marriage.
Earlier this year, Payzee Malika wrote about her experience when she was married at the age of 16 – while living in South London.
Marriage with ‘parental consent’ was previously legal above the age of 16 in the UK – meaning that without her knowledge, Payzee’s parents arranged for her to get married to a 30-year-old man.
Well, she was practically an old maid, at 16.
It’s an open secret that child marriage is widespread in, ahem, “certain communities” in Australia – but authorities are too often willing to turn a blind eye. Two-tier policing ain’t just a British thing.
