Today I read an article about the child marriages in the countries such as Malawi and Mosambik, where the girls under the age of 18 are forced to marry men from the only one reason: parents don't have enough money to feed so many kids -> so logically one hungry kid out of the house can make their situation more bearable. To be honest I hardly can understand such behavior from my parental view and I keep on asking myself: How can parents do this? How can they throw own daughter to the lions??? Don't they care about her happiness? Hard to answer but I wouldn't be able to live with the feeling I gave my own kid against her will to some stranger who gave me big money! In fact it is like business but do we breed the kids to sell them???!!!!
As you can see this situation is very alarming! Have you ever known that every 2 seconds a girl becomes a child bride?!! As I came to know - if people don't start fighting against it 140 million girls will become child brides till the year 2020!!! Where the hell is this going on??? In fact the worst situation is in Africa and south Asia..
Unfortunately the negative impact of the child marriages influence rapidly quality of life as such bride won't get proper education. Besides the babies born to young mothers often dies or are born with low weight. How can be a body of 13 years old girl prepared for giving a birth? I also don't believe that such girl is mentally ready to become a mother. So to sum it up from the early age such child bride has to start living sexually, might get abused, injured, is uneducated - so what's her role in such society? Just to give a birth to babies like some machine and take care of them, right? However ... to have many kids will lead to -> bad economical situation of her family.. so sooner or later even her own daughters might get into the situation she used to be several years ago!!!
Why aren't there any laws that would make such marriages illegal??? Why aren't there any punishments??? What kind of the perverts are dying to have a wife, who is 12 or 15 years old??? Why something like family planning can't start working???
I know I have even more questions but I just feel so desperate when I am reading about this issue and I won't ever forget the video - confession of the 11 years old girl from Yemen, which is very touchy and impressive and which also made me realize how mature these kids can be just because of the situations they have to face.. just because of the situations that stole their sweet childhood!
Btw you can check this video here:
Comments
So,to being a Muslim i'd like to say even in Islam marriage is a contract and the Quran [4:21] refers to marriage as a mithaq, ie, a solemn covenant or agreement between husband and wife, and enjoins that it be put down in writing. Since no agreement can be reached between the parties unless they give their consent to it, marriage can be contracted only with the free consent of the two parties,which makes it clear that such a contract cannot be entered into by children. How a child can be expected to go into a lifelong contract when he or she is not expected to drive and/or vote? Marriage is a lifetime contract and a child who does not even understand what a contract is cannot be expected to choose her or his life partner and based on this fact chid marriage cannot be Islamic at all.
It does happen even in my native country mostly in villages areas where country law is almost ineffective, and the law of the feudal lords prevails.
That's something incomprehensible to any normal mind. I'll refrain from other comments.
I have no words:'(
How can people be so cruel and brutal
Dear Luci,
I greet your bravery dear!
Most of the times hearing such tragedy stories from Yemen and mostly some of the Islamic countries. A few days ago I heard 8 years old Yemen girl had died at her wedding night.I can't believe how people become barbaric that much, that the child cannot be recognized.
Many thanks for sharing this eye-opening post.My wish the whole world should pay attention, against child marriages.
https://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/yemengirl.asp
Btw, talkin' about laws, few days ago I pointed out some crazy laws (in my complain about unfair laws and how 'law' is not synonymous of 'fair' or 'sacred') Your blog reminds me some of these laws:
- A Man can rape his wife if she's over 14 (Bahamas)
- Women can't leave home unless given permission from their husbands (Yemen -but probably many other 'muslim countries')
- Husbands are permitted to punish their wives using physical force for the purposes of “correction”, so long as the offense doesn’t result in “grievous hurt.” (Nigeria)
- A Husband who catches his wife committing adultery and kills her on the spot will be just punished with detention instead of stricter penalties prescribed for other murders. (Egypt)
Not to mention countries that allows child marriage, as you point out...
that is sad , but maybe they are forced to do that in order to feed their children by legal way as they think , those countries are too poor and to save a family they have to sacrifice one member ( their daughter ) I am fully against that but we can't blame them because hunger can make u do anything especially when u have kids and u need to feed them.
Great blog.
You better don't read the stories of the Bible... It's full of stuff like this and even worse things :X