Child marriage

Child marriage is a formal marriage or an informal union entered into by an individual before reaching a certain age, specified by several global organizations such as UNICEF as minors under the age of 18.

Quotes

As already noted, the church in Africa is facing a grim reality even when it comes to sex in marriage. According to UNICEF, teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages. That’s because young brides are acquiring HIV from their husbands, who tend to be many years older and were infected before marriage. Clearly, abstinence and fidelity prevention strategies will not reliably protect these women. ~ Marcella Alsan

The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication.... Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act. ~ B.R. Ambedkar

Child marriage was an accepted childrearing practice in sixteenth-century northern England. ~ Loretta A. Dolan

The The Clinton Foundation notes that child marriage "limits the full potential of girls" and "undermines health, education, economic opportunity, and security." Early wedlock is most common among the world's poorest children. ~ Olga Khazan

In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum legal age for marriage for women without parental consent or approval by a pertinent authority. However, in 146 countries, state or customary law allows girls younger than 18 to marry with the consent of parents or other authorities; in 52 countries, girls under age 15 can marry with parental consent. In contrast, 18 is the legal age for marriage without consent among males in 180 countries. Additionally, in 105 countries, boys can marry with the consent of a parent or a pertinent authority, and in 23 countries, boys under age 15 can marry with parental consent. ~ UNFPA.

• [C]hild marriage or marriage of the non-adults remain a dangerous practice in char-chapori areas. For the immigrant Muslims, girls are forced to get married at the age of 12–14, as if this becomes their main agenda of social reforms. Girls are forced to get married at an early stage and they become mother of two-three children at a very tender age. As a result their health never recovers. Majority of them suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. Their life cycle is also very less. Majority of the women are exploited, subjugated and neglected …
  • Ali, Illias. Jonobisfuronor Pom Khedi (in Assam). Guwahati: Maleka Foundation, 2015.Ali, Jonobisfuronor Pom Khedi, 85-90 quoted in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India) 272

• As already noted, the church in Africa is facing a grim reality even when it comes to sex in marriage. According to UNICEF, teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages. That’s because young brides are acquiring HIV from their husbands, who tend to be many years older and were infected before marriage. Clearly, abstinence and fidelity prevention strategies will not reliably protect these women.
  • Alsan, Marcella (April 2006). "The Church & AIDS in Africa: Condoms & the Culture of Life". Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics, and Culture. 133 (8). Archived from the original on 2006-08-21. Retrieved 2006-11-28.

• The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication. The Hindus have their social evils. But there is relieving feature about them-namely, that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act.
  • B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

• As for my two wives, what can I do about it? They married me off at thirteen, to my cousin. I was thirteen and she was twenty-three. I didn’t even know what it meant to have a wife, and when they tried to explain it to me, I went out of my mind with rage. With fury. I didn’t want a wife, I wanted to play cricket. I was very fond of cricket. To calm me down, they had to give me two new cricket bags. When the ceremony was over, I ran off to play cricket. There are so many things I must change in my country! And I was fortunate. They married my playmate off at the age of eleven to a woman of thirty-two. He always said to me, »Lucky you!«
  • Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, April 1972 interview to Oriana Fallaci, as quoted in Interviews with History and Conversations with Power (2011).

• “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).

• The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.
  • (Bukhari 5.58.234).

• Child marriage was an accepted childrearing practice in sixteenth-century northern England.
  • Dolan, L. (2017). Nurture and neglect: Childhood in sixteenth-century Northern England.

• Child marriage has rapidly gained international attention over the last decade with donors increasingly recognising the importance of child marriage and its links to a range of development priorities from economic development and poverty alleviation to health, human rights, and social justice. The body of evidence regarding child marriage prevention and response is now deep and wide, and it clearly shows that effective strategies require not only dedicated efforts to address child marriage, but also crosssectoral cooperation and integration. ... Child marriage disproportionately affects girls more than boys. According to UNICEF, 720 million women alive today were married as children, as compared to 156 million men. Some fifteen million girls are married each year worldwide, and across the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of 18, and one in nine girls before age 15.
  • Girls Not Brides and International Center for Research on Women, "Taking action to address child marriage: the role of different sectors: Economic Growth and Workforce Development brief", 2015; p. 2-3; as qtd. in Girls Not Brides, "Why does child marriage happen?".

• Hindu child brides in India are flogged, and sometimes burned alive, if the pathetic dowry they bring is judged to be too small.
  • Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, Chapter Four: A Note On Health, To Which Religion May Be Hazardous, p. 51

• The The Clinton Foundation notes that child marriage "limits the full potential of girls" and "undermines health, education, economic opportunity, and security." Early wedlock is most common among the world's poorest children.
  One study found that teen marriage in the U.S. increased by nearly 50 percent in the 1990s thanks to "the spread of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education at American schools, a shift toward cultural conservatism among some teens and a growing fear among youngsters of contracting AIDS through promiscuity," as the Chicago Tribune wrote in 2004.
  • Olga Khazan, “A Strange Map of the World's Child-Marriage Laws”, (Mar 9, 2015).

• As the legacy of this scenario, Indian girls are still being sold to West Asian nationals as wives, concubines and slave girls. For example, all the leading Indian newspapers... flashed the news of a sixty year old “toothless” Arab national Yahiya H.M. Al Sagish “marrying” a 10-11 year old Ameena of Hyderabad after paying her father Rs. 6000, and attempting to take her out of the country. Al Sagish has been taken into police custody and the case is in the law-court now. Mr. I.U. Khan has “pointed out that no offence could be made out against his client as he had acted in accordance with the Shariat laws. He said that since this case related to the Muslim personal law which permitted marriage with girls who had attained Puberty (described as over 9 years of age), Al Sagish could not be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Besides Ameena’s parents had not complained.” But this is not an isolated case. I was in Hyderabad for about four years, 1979-1983. There I learnt that such “marriages” are common. There are regular agents and touts who arrange them. Poor parents of girls are handsomely paid by foreign Muslims for such arrangements. Every time that I happened to go to the Hyderabad Airlines office or the Airport (which was about at least once a month), I found bunches of old bridegrooms in Arab attire accompanied by young girls, often little girl brides. “A rough estimate indicated that as many as 8000 such marriages were solemnised during the past one decade in Hyderabad alone.” In short, the sex slave-trade is still flourishing not only in Hyderabad but in many other cities of India after the medieval tradition.
  • Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7, citing The Indian Express, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India of 14 August 1991

• Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis... 18.8 million Afghans are unable to feed themselves every day.... starvation is not the only issue faced by children. As UNICEF warns “Afghanistan was already one of the toughest places on earth to be a child. Right now, the situation is desperate.” The situation deteriorates quickly as the country is on a brink of famine.
  Recent weeks have seen yet another trend: families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.... Some of these girls will become child brides... Child marriage... a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse...Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers... The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed.
  • Afghan Girls Being Exchanged For Food As Famine Nears, Ewelina U. Ochab, Forbes November 25, 2021

• Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage.
  • Robert Spencer, Frontpage Mag - Hamas-linked CAIR Rep. Arrested for Pedophilia (10 June 2015)

• One does not marry a three-year-old wife, as a donkey does.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection II at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum legal age for marriage for women without parental consent or approval by a pertinent authority. However, in 146 countries, state or customary law allows girls younger than 18 to marry with the consent of parents or other authorities; in 52 countries, girls under age 15 can marry with parental consent. In contrast, 18 is the legal age for marriage without consent among males in 180 countries. Additionally, in 105 countries, boys can marry with the consent of a parent or a pertinent authority, and in 23 countries, boys under age 15 can marry with parental consent.
  • "Marrying Too Young: End Child Marriage". UNFPA.

• Marriage before the age of majority is prohibited.... the age of majority for boys is fifteen lunar years and for girls nine lunar years... marriage before puberty by the permission of the Guardian and on condition of taking into consideration the ward’s interest is proper.
  • The Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran “The Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Article 1041, 32.Ibid., Article 1210 and Article 1041. www.alaviandassociates.com/documents/civilcode.pdf. quoted in Robert Spencer - The Complete Infidel's Guide to Iran-Regnery Publishing (2016)

• The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl; he was twenty-eight at the time. She became pregnant at age eleven, although that pregnancy ended with a miscarriage. Khomeini called marriage to a girl before her first menstrual period “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”
  • Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (Hutchinson, 1985), 90–91, 34. as quoted in Robert Spencer - The Complete Infidel's Guide to Iran-Regnery Publishing (2016)

• In February 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) stated that it was “seriously concerned” that child marriage was becoming more common in Iran, and that an increasing number of “girls at the age of 10 years or younger . . . are subjected to child and forced marriages to much older men.” It called upon Iran to “repeal all legal provisions that authorise, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”
  • UN Voices Alarm at Growing Number of Child Marriages in Iran,” Agence France-Presse, February 5, 2016.as quoted in Robert Spencer - The Complete Infidel's Guide to Iran-Regnery Publishing (2016)