ELDER OF ZIYON: Old, rich Saudis "temporarily marry" young Syrian girls in Jordan

An Israeli TV reporter got into the Za'atari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and discovered that older Saudi men are taking advantage of girls as young as ten years old and their families.



The video shows a female "marriage broker" extolling the beauty of her virgin girls - the men only want virgins, and they want them young.

According to Palestine Press Agency's reporting of the story, for as little as $3000 the Saudis are "marrying" young girls, having their twisted ideas of "fun," and then divorcing the girls.

A 70 year old Saudi man married a 13 year old girl for a week. A ten year old girl complained on camera about marrying a 60 year old Saudi who beat her during their short "marriage."

The Za'atari camp has around 120,000residents, making it the fourth largest city in Jordan. Roughlyhalf the residents are children.

The UNHCR head of the camp readily admits that the camp is filled with organized crime.

ISRAEL MATZAV: Forced underage marriage continues in Hamastan

Hamas in Gaza is allowing the practice of marrying off children to older men. 

In 2012, of about 17,000 marriages were registered in the courts of the Gaza Strip, 35% were cases in which the brides were under 17 years old. These marriages are concluded without the courts knowing the girls’ real ages. Meanwhile, about 2,700 divorce cases were registered in the same year, and in 25% of these the wives were underage, Bakr Azzam, a lawyer specializing in Sharia issues, told Al-Monitor. 

Mariam explained that due to her young age she wasn’t capable of meeting the demands of married life.

“I was taken away from my small toys, taken out of my school forcibly and delivered to my husband whom I had only seen once, in front of the judge who officiated my marriage contract,” she added.

Mariam recently ran away from her husband’s house and returned to her father's, after concluding that she could not bear to stay with her husband. He dates other women under the excuse that his wife is young and thinks like a child, not living up to the intellect of a man of his age. Mariam’s husband also beats her whenever they have an argument.

“When I told my father about this, he told me, ‘This is normal and most young people are facing such a situation these days,’ but I did not accept it,” she said.

Mariam, who now wants a divorce, is not the only underage girl who was forced to marry despite her physical and mental unreadiness for marital life.

Sarah had a similar experience, but for different reasons.

As she spoke to Al-Monitor, Sarah looked at a photo of herself when she was still single. She had a bright face and childlike features. Today, however, she has become a girl with a scrawny body, a slim face and caved-in eyes that look very tired.

“I got married when I was 16 years old. My father and my brothers forced me to marry a 17-year-old boy so that they would not have to pay my living expenses and could get rid of my father’s accumulated debt,” she said, her face somber.

She pointed out that marital problems began only one week into the marriage due to the demands, made by both her husband and his family, that a girl of her age could not meet. “My family did not take into account the fact that I was still a child,” she said.

But I'm sure that if we give them a 'state' they will stop treating their daughters as property to be bought and sold. 

ISRAEL MATZAV: Viral video: 11-year old Yemeni girl runs away from home to avoid forced marriage

11-year old Nada al-Ahdal has run away from home because her parents are trying to force her into a marriage.

Here's an interview with her. Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.

That video has more than 5,000,000 hits in two days, which is pretty amazing. But what it doesn't say is to whom her parents want to marry her off and why. Is it money or something else?

The answers to those questions are not entirely clear, but this postimplies that it probably had to do with money, and that the suitor was at least an adult.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows an 11-year-old Yemeni girl called Nada al-Ahdal recounting how she escaped her parents who wanted to force her to marry. Nada comes from a modest family and is one of eight siblings. Fortunately for her, her uncle Abdel Salam al-Ahdal, a montage and graphics technician in a TV station, decided to take her in when she was three years old, to live with him and his aging mother, away from her parents.

Nada was not an only child at home. Her uncle had also taken his other nephew under his wing, as the boy’s own father couldn’t afford his son’s medical requirements. Abdel Salam was thus responsible for bringing up two children. He personally took care of keeping them, and his frail mother, clean and well-fed.

Nada grew up in this caring environment, went to school, and learned English during the summer vacation. She has her own Facebook page, was a gifted singer, and took part in musicals. However, her happiness was cut short when someone came to ask her parents for her hand in marriage. The man, a Yemeni expatriate living in Saudi Arabia, did not care about the girl’s age. Her parents were happy because the prospective groom worked abroad and was rich.

Abdel Salam tells NOW: “When I heard about the groom, I panicked. Nada was not even 11 years old; she was exactly 10 years and 3 months. I could not allow her to be married off and have her future destroyed, especially since her aunt was forced to marry at 13 and burnt herself. I did all I could to prevent that marriage. I called the groom and told him Nada was no good for him. I told him she did not wear the veil and he asked if things were going to remain like that. I said ‘yes, and I agree because she chose it.’ I also told him that she liked singing and asked if he would remain engaged to her.”

The groom recanted the engagement and told the girl’s parents he did not want their daughter anymore. Nada’s parents, looking forward to a hefty bride price, were disappointed.

Nada had an 18 year-old sister who had been engaged many times. Her parents accepted each new proposal and took a partial downpayment for a bride price. They would then postpone the marriage until the groom had enough money, eventually ending each engagement, not returning the money. The same story would start all over again with another suitor, and so it was that she had had nine fiancés.

After Abdel Salam succeeded in warding off Nada’s first husband-to-be, her parents came from Zubaid on a visit to Sana’a and asked for their daughter to stay with them until mid-Ramadan. Abdel Salam agreed only to learn from the parents days later that Nada had disappeared.

At one point Nada escaped and tried to return to her uncle. When she got back to Sana'a, she was scared he would take her back to her mother. He found out afterwards that Nada’s mother wanted to marry her off again but did not tell him as she feared he would “scare away” the suitor as he had done the first time around.

Read the whole thing.  

Marrying an 11-year old (unless you're under 13-14) is pedophilia. Nothing more and nothing less. These Islamic perverts ought to be called out.

ISRAEL MATZAV: This is Islam: 8-year old girl dies on wedding night

Mustafa Kazemi is an Afghan government official and war correspondent.

He posted the following story on his Facebook page.

WARNING: Story is extremely graphic (Hat Tip: Weasel Zippers).

The 8-years-old girl whose story you’ll read in coming lines did not make it to the 2nd night of her wedding nor did she make it to her 9th or 10th birthday.

Her name unknown, my source telephoned me last week at 9:30 pm to tell me her story. At the first I thought it’s just going to be a short conversation but later it was unveiled that the story is different.

The story came from a village in Khashrood district of Nimruz province in Afghanistan.

A medical doctor assigned in the main hospital in Zaranj city, the capital of the province, who wished to remain unnamed confirmed that he was “made aware” of the incident and that it was “too late to do anything for her” as well the “remote area didn’t allow them to do anything”.

The girl was one of the several daughters of a man in his late 30s. For an unknown reason he gave his daughter to the Mullah of their village for a big amount of money. It is also common in Afghanistan’s rural areas or 3rd level provinces/cities to marry young girls to old men, and trading their daughters for their debts or other items.

The mullah is in his late 50s and is the mosque guy of the village where this incident happened.
The mullah is already married and has many children too.

The two families hold a tribal meeting, agree on the price that the groom’s family pay to the bride’s family, and they set a date for wedding.

In rural areas like this here there are no engagements or any ceremonies beforehand like there are some in the metropolitan and urban areas.

The two families planned a wedding party, the wedding and Nekah (The religious process in which a woman is officially married to a man) took place and the 8-years-old bride became the 50-years-old Mullah’s 2nd wife.

The celebration party was over and the sun downed – the time to have sex (not make love) with the 8-years-old bride.

The girl was just 8 years old and everybody understands the fact that she knows nothing about sex or wedding or making love or virginity or sexual related topics; not even at a basic level for two reasons, one being that she’s just a child – not even a teenager and that in that part of the country, nobody knows anything about these things nor they are given trainings or education about a healthy sexual life.

Continue reading here. The story is shocking.... 

90-year-old Saudi Weds 15-year-old Girl

The recent marriage of a 90-year-old Saudi man to a 15-year-old girl has sparked condemnation from human rights and social media activists in the kingdom. On Twitter especially, activists criticized the parents of the girl for giving her to a man decades older than her. In an interview, the groom insisted that his marriage was “legal and correct,” and that he paid a $17,500 (SAR 65,000) dowry to marry the girl, who is the daughter of a Yemeni father and Saudi mother. 

The 90-year-old told the story of his first night with the bride. He said she entered the bedroom before him, and she locked the door from inside so he could not enter. This, he said, made him “suspicious about some kind of conspiracy” by the girl and her mother. He vowed to sue his in-laws to give him back the girl or return him the expensive dowry. 

Close friends of the bride’s family said she was frightened on the wedding night, and locked herself in the room for two successive days before fleeing back to her parents’ home. The member of the Saudi National Association for Human Rights (NSHR), Suhaila Zein al-Abedin, urged authorities to intervene “as soon as possible to save this child from tragedy.” 

Abedin noted that marriage in Islam must be based on mutual consent, and this was not satisfied, as demonstrated by the girl’s move to lock herself in the room. She said the girl’s parents were also to be held responsible for marrying their daughter to a man the age of her great grandfather. 

Abedin urged the establishment of a minimum age of 18 for marrying girls, saying this would pave the way for punishing violators, according to a report by al-Hayat newspaper. Jamal al-Toueiki, a psychologist, said forced marriage may subject girls to abuse and violence, and this could lead to their suicide if nothing is done to save them.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Arabs rushing to marry Syrian refugee children

From Albawaba:

It began with rumors of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Jordan and has spread across the Arab world. Syrian refugees, particularly those of the young and female variety, are becoming a commodity for Arab men, with many offering to marry those in need.

But don’t be fooled: this is not a purely altruistic gesture. Syrian women are known as the beauties of the region and having run away from the massacres of their own country they are left vulnerable and needy. Men who would otherwise have no chance with these highly sought after ladies have been opportunistically taking their chances.

The Egyptian Chronicles blog says:

Among the huge challenges and problems facing hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are in the Arab countries especially in Jordan and Gulf , a very nasty problem : Rich old men from Gulf offer to marry poor refugee minor girls for money.

At first it started as rumors some thought that were spread by El Assad regime regarding how men marry poor Syrian refugee minor girls using their families’ need for small amount of money but sadly enough it was confirmed by Jordanian Press. It seems that men from the Gulf head now to Jordan to find young cheap brides at the refugees camps. A Saudi writer called Mohamed El Assamy wrote about that disgusting practice in a Saudi newspaper angrily revealing that there are prices for the girls range between 500 SR and 1000 SR !!!!!!

These men are using the poverty and extreme need of those Syrian families mainly from working class seeking refugee in the worst conditions ever.

IRIN reports that many parents are marrying their children off to other Syrians:

Some Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan are opting to marry off their daughters at a young age believing that marital status offers a form of protection and insurance.

"In Maraq, we have come across around 50 cases of early marriages since the day we started helping out Syrians. Most of them are married to Syrians, especially cousins," said Khaled Ghanem, from the Islamic Society Centre (ISC).

Hana Ghadban, a volunteer with the Syrian Women Association (SWA), told IRIN that in the Syrian cities of Homs and Dera'a many girls are married at the age of 13 or 14. "We know of so many girls who got married after moving to Jordan. Most of them were engaged in Syria."

Difficult living conditions for Syrians in Jordan are also pushing families to marry their daughters off at a young age. Um Sarah, a Syrian refugee mother, arranged marriages for her daughters aged 15 and 14, because she could not support them. 

"As a single mother, I cannot support them. I cannot feed them. I wanted to make sure they are OK, so I asked around if people know of good Syrian men they could marry," she told IRIN.

"They rape girls who are as young as her in Syria now. If they raped a nine-year-old girl, they can do anything. I will not feel OK if I do not see her married to a decent man who can protect her," said the father of Hanadi, a pregnant child bride in Jordan aged 14.

There is a backlash and organizations are springing up to protect the young Syrian refugees.

Top Saudi Cleric: Ban Christian Churches in Arabia Let Girls Marry at 10

"How could the grand mufti issue a fatwa of such importance behind the back of his king?"

In late April of this year, the Wahhabi grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Abdullah Aal Ash-Sheikh, who controls all Sunni Muslim clerics in the desert kingdom, announced that girls could be forced into marriage at age 10 or 12, without their consent, by contractual arrangement between families.

Aal Ash-Sheikh delivered this opinion in an address to faculty at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh – known to ordinary Saudis as "the terrorist factory." Aal Ash-Sheikh said, "Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age."

The Saudi chief cleric then proceeded to conflict with repeated promises of the Saudi King, Abdullah, to foster interfaith respect and dialogue, by calling, in mid-March, for the destruction of all Christian churches in the Arabian Peninsula. Responding to a query in Kuwait by Muslim clerics affiliated with the "Revival of Islamic Heritage Society," favorable to Wahhabism, Aal Ash-Sheikh based his argument on a weakly-transmitted hadith, or oral commentary on the life of Muhammad, in which the Prophet allegedly mandated that there should not be "two religions" in Arabia.

"How could the grand mufti issue a fatwa of such importance behind the back of his king? We see a contradiction between the dialogue being practiced, the efforts of the king and those of his top mufti," said leaders of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Vienna, where, with the cooperation of Austria and Spain, Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal had inaugurated the "King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue" in 2011.

Aal Ash-Sheikh owes his position to his lineal descent from the 18^th century religious ideologue, Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, after whom the ultra-fundamentalist, ultra-exclusivist Wahhabi sect – the official and sole recognized Islamic interpretation in Saudi Arabia – is named. The family of Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab has, for generations, intermarried with the royal Al-Saud clan. Along with their claims to a "pure Islam" imitative of the Prophet Muhammad, Wahhabis are known for their violent hatred of spiritual Sufism, of Shia Muslims, and for their hostility to non-Muslims. It must be emphasized that Wahhabi shariah is new, representing a break with traditional Muslim jurisprudence and a radical innovation in Islamic law.

In Muslim lands and Muslim minority communities around the world, radical Islamist tendencies following, or imitating, Wahhabism have gained new energy in the aftermath of the faded "Arab Spring." As the pro-democracy mobilizations in Arab lands have resulted instead in victories for the radical Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, and with the increasing prominence of radical groups in Syria, Libya and Yemen, Islamist victories have coincided with a new offensive among South Asian Muslims by Deobandis, inspirers of the Taliban, and allied with the Saudi Wahhabis.

In Nigeria, a similarly extremist, Wahhabi-oriented group, the "Boko Haram" [literally, "Western Education is a Sin"] has spread terror, especially targeting Christians, across the Muslim north.

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, "Boko Haram" has murdered 1,000 people since its appearance in the country in 2009; is crossing Nigeria's borders into the neighbouring state of Chad, and threatening Niger and Cameroon – as well as having links with Al-Qaida in the regional branch of the terror-force founded by the late Osama Bin Laden, which claims the entire Islamic Maghreb, or western North Africa,

Nigerian Islamist fanatics have demonstrated two features in common with Saudi Wahhabism: hatred of Christians and contempt for women. The contempt for women is exemplified by marriages to underage females by the former governor of Zamfara State in northwestern Nigeria, and now a federal senator, known as Sani: Alhaji Ahmad Sani Yariman Bakura.

Representatives of two other Sharia states, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, appeared with Sani when he announced the imposition of a new legal system of Wahhabi law in Zamfara in 2009 [Radical Islam's Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari'a Law, by Paul Marshall, Freedom House, Washington DC, 2005]. Following the Saudi paradigm in focusing on standards for public conduct, Sani created a religious morals militia, the "Joint Islamic Aid Group" or "yanagaji," similar to the Saudi "mutawiyin" or morals patrols. The adoption of Wahhabi Sharia law in Zamfara included a ban on trade in alcohol, movie houses and video sales, a prohibition on women riding motorcycles, and gender segregation in public conveyances – all strictures enforced by the "yanagaji," who "arrest" alleged violators and hand them over to the police.

Sani, it was disclosed in 2010 – in violation of the 2003 Nigerian Child Rights Act, which bans betrothal or marriage of girls under the age of 18 – had also apparently paid USD $100,000 to marry an unnamed 13-year old Egyptian girl, reported to be the daughter of Sani's Egyptian driver, in a wedding celebrated at the national mosque of Abuja, the Nigerian capital.

Local media noted that Sani had divorced one of his four wives to make room for the Egyptian girl in a wedding that would have been illegal in Egypt, where the "bride" would be considered a minor.

"What we are concerned with," the President of the Women's Medical Association and Nigerian women's advocate, Mma Wokocha, told the BBC, "is that our minors, the girl child, should be allowed to mature, before going into marriage…. This very evil act should not be seen to be perpetrated by one of our distinguished legislators."

Representatives of the United Nations condemned the marriage; the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) told its Nigerian office it would conduct an examination of the case, and the Nigerian Senate was charged with investigating Sani's wedding to the Egyptian 13-year old. Sani had earlier been accused, in 2006, of marrying a girl of 15, but Nigeria's National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters announced in 2010 that it lacked evidence to file a complaint against Sani, and shifted responsibility for the inquiry to the country's attorney general. No legal proceeding against the Nigerian senator has been sustained.

Although Saudi Arabia is, of course, different from Egypt or Nigeria – notwithstanding the signatures of all three to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) – the Saudi chief cleric, Aal Ash-Sheikh, has apparently has had no comment on an issue raised in the case: the physiological and psychological capacity of female children to fulfill the demands of marriage. Islamic radicals simply claim that in approving such relationships they emulate Muhammad's marriage to the allegedly-underaged Aisha, although Aisha's age at the time of her marriage to Muhammad cannot be confirmed in any contemporary records. More importantly, various practices of the Arabs at the time of Islam's emergence have since been abandoned. With the coming of Islam to Arabia, the terrible habit of female infanticide was abandoned and the right of women to divorce was introduced.

Aside from condemnation by Christian representatives, Aal Ash-Sheikh's "advice" calling for the destruction of all Christian churches was rejected by the Kuwait Minister of Religious Endowments, Jamal Al-Shahab. The Kuwaiti official affirmed that "the constitution of Kuwait guarantees its citizens [freedom of] religion and worship… Demolishing churches and forbidding the members of the Christian community from worshipping [according to their belief] contravenes the state's laws and regulations." Aal Ash-Sheikh's stance was also condemned by Al-Azhar, the Sunni University in Cairo, and by Mehmet Görmez, head of the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).

Except for the closed Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina, the Arabian Peninsula has been shared with Christians and Jews throughout most of Islamic history. A shuttered Christian church and graveyard exist in Jedda, the Saudi commercial capital, near Mecca. Jews have a long history of residence in Yemen and Hadhramawt, in southern Arabia, as well as in Bahrain, where a synagogue still functions. Christian churches, Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines are found in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Yemen. Some 3.5 million Christians live in the Gulf countries, including indigenous Arab Christians, Catholic migrant workers from the Philippines, India, and South Korea, and Western expatriate technicians and business representatives.

Despite widespread claims that King Abdullah and Aal Ash-Sheikh are close, the Wahhabi clerical caste has always resisted even the most limited reforms. Rumors that Aal Ash-Sheikh's announcement was meant to undermine the position of King Abdullah cannot be excluded; however, to this day Aal Ash-Sheikh's opinion on Christian churches in the Arabian Peninsula has never released or publicized anywhere inside Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Grand Mufti: "Girls ready to marry at age 10"

Progress!

What's he daydreaming about?

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has reportedly voiced his support for the marriage of under-age females in the kingdom, while condemning those who seek to raise the legal marriage age.

A girl is ready to marry at 10 or 12 years of ageaccording to Islam, London-based Al Hayat reported Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh as saying, adding that Islamic law is not repressive to women.

"Those who call for raising the age of marriage to 25 are absolutely mistaken,"Al Sheikh said in a lecture at the faculty of Imam Mohamed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.

He added: "Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age."

The Grand Mufti’s statement came following discussions by the Justice Ministry to set a minimum age for marriage.

The conservative Kingdom is facing strong pressure to raise the minimum age for marriage, following international criticism of cases involving children forced into wedlock with older men.

In 2010, for instance, the Saudi Human Rights Commission, a government affiliated group, hired a lawyer to help a 12-year old girl divorce her 80-year old husband.

Hamas Shocking Mass Wedding for 450 Little Girls

Hamas Shocking Mass Wedding for 450 Little Girls