Morning Star

Deeply unfortunate

Child marriages, always sanctioned under Islam, are increasing in Iran:

Farshid Yazdani, a member of the Association for the Defense of Children’s Rights, has raised the flag on the increasing rate of the marriage of girls under the age of 10 in Iran.  He stated that in 2009, 449 girls under the age of 10 were married off. The number increased to 716 cases in 2011.

Yazdani added that the number of marriages for girls under 15 years of age has increased from 33,383 in 2006 to 35,931 in 2007, 37,996 in 2008, and 43,459 last year (please note that the dates are approximate as the statistics were given according to the Iranian calendar, which begins at the start of the Persian New Year).

According to Yazdani, the rate of marriages of girls under the age of 15 has had a 45% increase compared to marriages in other age brackets. He added that these figures are based on the statistics released by Iran’s Civil Registrations Office, and they should set off alarms for social activists and policy makers.

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."

Of course, Muhammed set the example with his marriage to the child, Aisha. Devout Muslims use him as the example in all things, no matter what natural law, human psychology, or other external indicators might suggest.

"...spoiling family and social life"

That is what legislators were accused of doing by trying to make it easier for Muslim women in Egypt to initiate divorce. When a couple marries, the husband must give his wife a dowry of sorts, which she may use entirely for herself. Thus, if he subsequently divorces her (which is a simple thing to due under shari'a law) she will have a small financial cushion afterwards.

The law of khula had been introduced (based on a more moderate application of Islam) so that women also had the right to initiate divorce without losing that settlement, but the more traditional Muslims are now decrying the attempt, saying that khula contradicts shari'a. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood's "Freedom and Justice Party" has announced its intention to make sure all "personal status" laws in the country conform to shari'a, which doesn't bode well for any women--Muslim or Christian. (Presently, Christians are subject to their own marriage laws.)

Divorce laws are a matter of justice, sadly, in an imperfect world, and essential to guaranteeing the integrity of both parties to a marriage. A return to shari'a--which allows marriage contracts to be made without the consent of the bride,  male-initiated no-fault divorce, polygamy, and the demeaning status of divorced women--does not bode well.

Analyzing the nature of marriage, both St. Augustine and St. Thomas always identify it with an "indivisible union of souls," a "union of hearts," with "consent." These elements are found in an exemplary manner in the marriage of Mary and Joseph. At the culmination of the history of salvation, when God reveals his love for humanity through the gift of the Word, it is precisely the marriage of Mary and Joseph that brings to realization in full "freedom" the "spousal gift of self" in receiving and expressing such a love (John Paul II, "Guardian of the Redeemer," 7).

If Islamic family and social life are built without any concern for the fundamental dignity of women as equal persons; and if marriage ignores this metaphysical backdrop which makes it an exclusive and freely chosen union, then let it be spoiled. Divorce is a tragedy, but the unjust contracts that preceded them are worse.

The faith of Asia Bibi

While political events swirl about her, Asia Bibi, imprisoned in Pakistan since 2009 on blasphemy charges, awaits her trial that is still two years down the road. This dedicated Christian woman spends her days praying in a stifling, mosquito-infested cell. An interview has been posted on-line with the author of a book whose English edition will be released this fall. Anne-Isabelle Tollet has spent time with Asia's family, and her book tells the story of this devout mother-of-five whose trouble began when she tried to drink water from a bucket shared by her Muslim friends.

She spends the day praying in her bed. And she waits every week for Tuesday to arrive, when her husband goes to the prison to see her. Otherwise she kills time reminiscing, thinking about her children and praying.

A petition signed by 50 UN NGO's can be found here. Although she is alone in her cell, she is not alone in her predicament -- in fact another Christian woman has just been sent to jail on similar charges. As that news account reminds us, freeing the prisoner is not the end of the ordeal, for many are killed by "vigilantes" upon their release.

Unfortunately, Christian minorities don't have much hope when the Muslims themselves treat their own children like this. Fundamental human dignity and a sacramental view of marriage are entirely missing from such cultures.

Marriage in God's/Allah's Plan

[A second update below, given new testimony in this tragic case]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains marriage this way:

"The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage."The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."

God who created man out of love also calls him to love—the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it'" (CCC, 1603, 1604).

The term "mutual love" is important, because the free consent of both parties is essential, and the success of such a union depends on their mutual respect for the dignity of the other.

In that regard, what is the Muslim view of marriage that allows the Islamic penal code demand the following?

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the 'kidnapper' of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honour of the woman's family.

In particular, it was applied to a 16-year-old girl, whose family was pressured into it by court officials. The ensuing marriage would allow the rapist to evade his 10-year prison sentence, and although he balked initially, he only agreed to it when face with prison.

The family of the girl agreed to it because of the shame attached to rape, which makes it difficult for a girl who has been assaulted to find a husband. So there is the coalescence of family honour, a wider culture that values it, and a legal code that enables it. None of those three elements has any regard for marriage as the freely-chosen covenant between two mutually attracted people. And what is the result?

Amina complained to her mother that her husband was beating her repeatedly during the five months of marriage but that her mother counselled patience... [but that wore thin and resulted in] the suicide of Amina Filali, who swallowed rat poison on Saturday in protest.

At least there is an outcry of rage in Morocco, demanding a change in the code. But it is obvious that there will have to be a substantial cultural shift as well, so that family honour and feminine "virtue" are not fatally undermined by men behaving badly.

UPDATE: Robert Spencer explains the case to Michael Coren of SunNews:

 

UPDATE II: Amina's parents have just now come forward to reveal that their daughter said, with her dying breath, that she had not committed suicide but was forced to eat the poison -- but she didn't say by whom. Thus, her abusers have gotten away with rape, battery and murder.

Hassan Al Fillaly, Aminah's father, said he objected to his daughter’s marriage to the man who raped her at knife-point, but that he bowed to tribal pressure which puts pressure on a family's honor to be preserved. Under Moroccan law the rapist was granted immunity from prosecution by marrying his victim.

Well, tribal pressure is a fierce thing, and he must live with his acquiescence -- accomodation that cost his daughter her dignity, her hopes of marital happiness and, ultimately, her life.

Nigerian Christian women targeted

Boko Haram will be increasing its pressure on Nigeria's Christians, and is announcing their new strategy:

LAGOS: A Nigeria spokesman for the Islamist militant group Boko Haram told Bikyamasr.com on Tuesday afternoon that the group has plans to begin kidnapping Christian women in a push to “liquidate” the religious group from the country.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the spokesman said that “we are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.”

He added that they would not sexually assault or harm the women, “but we will demand as ransom that the families leave our Islamic areas.”

Of course the women are vulnerable because of their lack of strength, but they are also prone to kidnapping in the course of their day when they need to fetch firewood, water and run errands. The choice, then, is agonising: feed and care for your family, or hide inside and lose all mobility and normal life.

Interesting announcement in time for International Women's Day (a coincidence, no doubt) that underscores Islam's view of both women and other faiths. Perhaps CAIR would like to issue a statement about freedom and phobias?

Rick Warren's clarification

Earlier this week, I read with dismay that Rick Warren said he believed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, a view with which I heartily disagree. Insisting that his view had been completely misrepresented, he clarified his approach in a three page white paper today, stating firmly that he does not share that view.

When asked by [The Christian Post] about the [Orange County] Register's lead paragraph that states he "has embarked on an effort to heal divisions between evangelical Christians and Muslims by partnering with Southern California mosques and proposing a set of theological principles that includes acknowledging that Christians and Muslims worship the same God," Warren stated: 
"First, as I've already said, Christians have a fundamentally different view of God than Muslims. We worship Jesus as God. Muslims don't. Second, while we urge members to build friendships with Muslims and everyone in our community ("Love your neighbor as yourself"), our church has no partnership with any mosque. For example, I know that some of our members have led Bible study with Muslim friends, which I applaud. But I've never been to it, and it certainly isn't any kind of partnership or merger. It's crazy how a simple Bible study can be interpreted by some people as a plan for a new religion!"

While there is confusion over the fact that Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and that he was a legitimate prophet, the fact that they insist he was a Muslim, that he believed what is found in the Qur'an, that he didn't die on the cross but was taken to heaven, and that he will return at the final judgment to smash the cross and confirm Muhammed as the ultimate prophet indicates that Christians and Muslims worship two different gods.

The God of the Christians--the way, the truth and the life--is one who promotes humility and sacrifice, oblation and love of all; Allah--who is called the "all merciful"--is also called "the greatest of deceivers," endorses brutal killing of his "enemies" and tells his followers to love only Muslims and hate all others. Unless this one god is schizophrenic, they cannot be the same. And since the Christian God is simplicity and truth, Allah is something/someone else.

Confronting the myth of "islamophobia"

John Allen has some sobering words on who is really being persecuted today:

Stoked by historical images of the Crusades and the Inquisition, and even by current perceptions of the wealth and power of church leaders and institutions, it's tough for Western observers to wrap their minds around the fact that in a growing number of global hotspots, Christians today are the defenseless oppressed, not the arrogant oppressors.

Here's the stark reality of our times: In the early 21st century, we are witnessing the rise of a whole new generation of Christian martyrs.

Christians are today, statistically speaking, by far the most persecuted religious group on the planet. According to the Frankfurt-based Society for Human Rights, fully 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed against Christians. The Pew Forum estimates that Christians experience persecution in a staggering total of 133 nations, fully two-thirds of all the countries on earth.

As part of that picture, the Catholic relief agency "Aid to the Church in Need" estimates that 150,000 Christians die for their faith every year, in locales ranging from the Middle East to Southeast Asia to sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America. This means that every hour of every day, roughly 17 Christians are killed somewhere in the world, either out of hatred for the faith or hatred for the works of charity and justice their faith compels them to perform.

Perhaps the emblematic example is Iraq, where a strong Christian community that took two millennia to build has been gutted in the arc of a little more than two decades. Prior to 1991, the year of the First Gulf War, there were more than 2 million Christians in Iraq, while today the high-end estimate is that somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 may be left.

Mark Durie writes extensively on Islam, pointing out that their claim to truth is the attendant expansion of their numbers. In fact, the call to prayer heard five times daily includes the words, "Come to success."

Christianity makes no such claim. Those who follow Christ are called to pick up their own crosses and follow in His footsteps.  Just as Our Lord was persecuted, his followers will be as well. As difficult as this is, we know that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church, and our fidelity is what matters, not success. It sounds dark, but there is joy in such oblation, for we do not live by the spirit of this world. In fact, success in human terms might be a distraction, a temptation or a sign of compromise.

Persecution has a way of purifying our intentions, but that said, we pray for those being so mistreated.

Al-shabaab and "marriage"

Human Rights Watch has brought to light the terror waged against the girls of Somalia:

Gunmen from the Islamist al-Shabaab militia have routinely abducted teenage girls to work as servants on the frontline and forced them to marry fighters, according to a new report documenting the abuse of children in Somalia's civil war.

Girls who resisted capture can face the most appalling consequences, Human Rights Watch found. A 16-year-old girl who refused to marry an al-Shabaab commander who was three times her age was killed by his men and beheaded. Her head was brought back to the school as a warning to others.

A 19-year-old student from the Bakara district of the capital Mogadishu described how girls were taken from his school.

"Girls were taken at gunpoint. One girl said she could not go and al-Shabaab shot her in the forehead in front of my class. They said that she was a spy for the government. She was 19 years old," he said.

The forced marriage campaign by the al-Qaeda affiliate is part of its effort to impose its harsh version of Sharia on every aspect of the personal lives of women and girls, according to Human Rights Watch.

The report depicts a nightmarish world where the childhoods of boys* and girls are effectively ended at the barrel of a gun and in the short time it takes heavily armed fighters to force children from their classrooms and on to waiting trucks.

Shari'a is the legal code inspired by Islamic theology which clearly sanctions this behaviour, since the wife's consent is not integral to the union, nor is she ever an equal partner in the marriage. While the al-Shabaab version of "marriage" is extreme, it is not unIslamic. Muslim marriages only take on a gentler approach when outside influences appeal to natural law and the dignity of the human person.

[* the HRW report is likewise gravely concerned about the boys, who are also kidnapped at a young age. They are forced to fight in militia battles, and thus essentially provide cannon fodder, due to their inability to do anything of value on the front lines.]

Islam's charge against Saint Joseph

In this clip found on MEMRI, Sheik Abdallah Kamal makes a scurrilous charge against the Holy Family in his attempt to ward off criticism about the Aisha's marriage at age six. He suggests that it was not her first marriage (though she insists that she was a virgin before marriage). Furthermore, he makes the ludicrous charge that girls in warm climates mature around age eight, while those in colder climates mature at around age 21.  Furthermore, the fact that girls can have babies at age nine seems to justify child marriage, rather than providing an impetus for protecting them from such a tragedy.  And as a last point of defense concerning the case of Aisha and Muhammed, he reminds us that since it was "decreed," it stands beyond dispute--so there is no sense arguing against it using either natural law or reason. A shame.

But then the Imam wanders into Christianity, wherein he tries to show that Christians have done the same. He insists that our "holy scriptures" reveal that Joseph was aged 90 when he married Mary, who was aged 12. Isn't that the same thing? Ah, my dear man, no.

• The age of Jospeh, foster father of Jesus, was not known. Many think him older because he seems to have died before Jesus entered adulthood, but that doesn't justify drawing any firm conclusions about his age;
• The marriage of Joseph and Mary was celibate. She remained ever-virgin--even after their marriage, and after the birth of Christ. This is a dogma of our faith, which means that Christians are obliged to believe it--thus even if Joseph was significantly older, he never had relations with her;
• Part of the pious legend about Joseph's advanced age may be to help people believe that he remained chaste and was not unduly drawn towards Our Lady by his passions. There are many who are just as comfortable picturing him as a robust young man--in any case, he was a man of virtue and integrity.
• None of our "holy scriptures" have any details on this couple beyond the basic facts of the Nativity story. The other details are traditions and conjecture--so his admonition to look to them for this information is useless. What he insists is there is not.

Now, he never backed away from his defense of child marriage, because Mohammed, the Perfect Muslim, engaged in one. But for those who have not read the ahadith:

Narrated 'Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).  Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64

Narrated Aisha to Ummul Mu'minin: When we came to Medina, the women came to me when I was playing on the swing, and my hair was up to my ears. They brought me, prepared me, and decorated me. Then they brought me to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) and he took up cohabitation with me, when I was nine.

Abu Dawud 41:4917

Narrated 'Aisha: I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah's Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me.  

Sahih Bukhari 8:73:151

[As bad as this is, the other ahadith are very specific about their relations before she turned nine, and the activities which he enjoyed, which are now allowed because of his example. This does nothing to enhance the dignity of women or the purity of children in the Islamic world.]

"There is no compulsion..."

Prayers for our sisters, Sofia and Leila, who are suffering grievously for their Christian faith. First, from Somalia:

A Somali convert from Islam was paraded before a cheering crowd last month and publicly flogged as a punishment for embracing a “foreign religion,” sources said.
 
Sofia Osman, a 28-year-old Christian from Janale city in Somali’as Lower Shabelle region, had been taken into custody by Islamic extremist al Shabaab militants in November; the public whipping was meant to mark her release. She received 40 lashes on Dec. 22 while jeered by spectators.

“Osman was whipped 40 lashes at 3 p.m., but she didn’t tell what other humiliations she had suffered while in the hands of the militants,” an eyewitness, told Compass, adding that whipping left her bleeding. “I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.”

and then from Iran:

Leila Mohammadi, was arrested after a number of security agents raided her home on 30 July, 2011 at 10:30 P.M. in Kianshahr town, east of Tehran. The agents thoroughly searched her house and also confiscated some of her belongings.

Ms. Mohammadi was taken to Horr custody center which belongs to the Iranian police forces. From there, she was transferred to Evin prison. On December 28, 2011, she was released on a bail of $150,000 USD after 74 days in harsh conditions in solitary confinement in Evin prison.

Unfortunately, I don't think that five months counts towards the two years, and there is no telling what abuse was already suffered during that time--usually in an effort to break the will and have the person renounce Christ (such procedures are part of shari'a law).