Announcement
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Germany
June 27, 2011
Yesterday I read an online discussion about forced marriage in Islam. The Muslim girl who opened this discussion tried to explain that saying that forced marriage is part of Islam would be as wrong as saying "Well, there are a lot of prostitutes in Christian countries, so the Bible obviously tells women that they shall gain their money by prostitution." Of course this Muslim girl may be right, but as it seems at the moment she lost against some xenophobe user who indeed blames the situation in countries like Afghanistan etc. on Islam, thus I just decided to write my own argumentation. The following is a list of countries and cultures that practice(d) forced marriage.
Yemen: When she was still a 10 year - old child Nojoud Ali's parents forced her to marry a man who was 20 years older than her. She didn't let them to this to her. Soon after her marriage she - and after all she still was just a child - ran away from him, took a taxi, drove to the next town and asked them to divorce her. Nobody in Yemen reacted surprised to hear that she got forced to marry him, no Yemeni reacted surprised to hear that her husband raped her, but people all over Yemen were astonished to hear that she did something against this. At least in the big city where she got divorced the situation seems to be different, because when the judge decided that she shall no longer be married to him the whole courtroom applauded. Meanwhile she goes to school.Another girl however was less lucky: Her judge said that she was too young to get divorced, so she had to put up a fight before she could axchieve her aim.In Hadscha ( Yemen ) a girl also had to endure a forced marriage with a man of 50 years and - according to the newspaper article that tells about this case - she became pregnant at the age of twelve. Of course she was much too young back then and since the day of her child's birth she suffers from hemorrhage and none ever told her what to do about this. She got forced to do so...When she screamed as she saw her future husband for the first time, her father threatened her and said she shouldn't try to alert the police...He threatened to kill his own daughter in case he'd have to go to prison for this.So far all tries to enforce a law that makes it possible to punish people who force their kids into marriage failed, but they still keep trying...
Iran: Mahtaab Bezadl (name changed) was still a teenager when her parents forced her to marry. She tried to argue with them, since she absolutely did not want to marry this man, but in the end she didn't have any choice but to flee. Through Greece she finally reached Germany, but the latter didn't accept her application of asylum and told her to go back to Greece where she would be homeless. Presuming the article that wrote about this case is still current several human rights activists still fight for her right to stay here.
Afghanistan: In this country men usually get away with rape. Islam forbids any form of extramarital sex - just like Judaism and Christianity - and thus there are many cases in which unmarried girls got raped and later got forced to marry the man who actually did this to them in order to prevent them from going to hell.
India: Although forced marriage is illegal in this country, it happens especially in urban areas that young girls get forced to marry men they don't even want to marry. In these villages forced marriage is an accepted way "for a girl to become an adult woman" and thus nobody would do something if he realized that his neighbour's, friend's whatsoever daughter is going to get forced to marry someone. Since not marrying your daughter at a very young age involves the risk that she may loose her virginity before marriage, some villagers even consider it to be inadmissible if one doesn't force his daughter to get married as soon as possible. Especially the destiny of five year - old Rajani ( I read about it in a newspaper called National Geographic. ) really touched me. Of course she didn't understand what was going on and she didn't even get to know her future husband before. It was almost heart - breaking to read that she even was too young to pull off her shirt in order to pull on her wedding dress or how she wasn't able to stay awake till he arrived and fell asleep. To top it all the groom even was drunk when he arrived! However the same magazine also describes that this boy himself got forced into this. - At least you can guess so, since the author mentions that he wasn't adult either. - and that in a lot of cases these marriages aren't made for the wealth of their children, but for financial reasons or to settle a family feud. That also explains why they guess that each year over 10.000 living in developing countries get forced into marriage. Here girls who still live with their parents are called "paya". Literally -translated this means "the property of somebody else". They even call the idea of marriage out of love rubbish, since not only in villages, but in many parts of India marriages get arranged between Families and not the two fiancés. After all marrying your girl to somebody is much cheaper than letting her achieve good education that would make it possible for her to achieve something better not to mention that by keeping girls locked up at home they at the same time make it impossible that they could loose their virginity... One Indian girl the author told about even was so desperate that she saw no other solution than to threaten her parents at first by calling the police than by threatening to use physical violence.Also the way the author Cynthia Gorney describes the following story makes me think that the following marriage wasn't voluntary either: A sheik showed this reporter his daughter who already had 10 children with her husband. When she got asked whether or not she liked being married to her husband, she said that she was happily married, but judging by the way the author described the look the two Indians shared, this wasn't quite true. In addition the sheik told about what a rubbish all this talking about the risks of teenage - pregnancy was and that the whole situation just got overdramatized by foreigners. He said that of course his daughter had been afraid of her first night with her husband, but that things like these were usual and that after all life still went on. Here it should be said that this night back then this young lady's groom was drunk as this newspaper - article made me guess... Nepal: A 16 year - old girl named Surita got forced to marry. Where she was born this actually is rather normal, but still she screamed and cried when they brought her to her future husband's village. Tunisia: I even have a personal example to tell you.
When my friend and her family went to Tunisia her elder sister befriended a Muslim boy there and I guess what the latter felt for her was more than friendship, because one day he went to this girl's mother ( her father wasn't with them on this trip ) and asked her how much to pay to get this girl. He didn't even ask his "girlfriend" and of course she refused!
In Bukarest ( Romania ) a twelve year - old girl and a 15 year - old boy ( both Roma ) got forced to marry - although in Romania there of course is a law forbidding it. However this isn't just a single case. Just a couple of weeks ago I watched a documentation - My apologies, but I forgot its name - about this people. There they said that for a Roma girl it is unusual to marry as an adult and they even interviewed a man who said that where he lives girls aren't "too expensive" but that he hopes to get at least an acceptable price for marrying his daughter, because she was beautiful.
Germany: In the year 2007 there was a study saying that each year around 30.000 girls get forced into marriage. Of course there meanwhile is a law, but do you really think that within only four years they were able to reduce this number by 100%? Personally I don't! People who force their children into something like that may threaten their sons or daughters in order to keep them silent. In 2010 we even had a case in which a girl of fifteen who lived in Hambourg was to get forced to marry someone living in Berlin (kilometres away ). Of course the police was able to stop them immediately.
America: Among many tribes living all over America it was usual that the parents and not their children decided whom the latter should marry and if they should marry at all. Many people - amongst others the Inka - even seemed to treat girls like some kind of trade product. For example I know a tradition of the Inka that allowed a priest to choose some girls he considered to be beautiful, he brought them to a temple where they learned everything they would need to care for their future husband and later he gave them away to anybody he needed to please at the moment for any reason whatsoever. The fact that the culture of most of these ancient cultures already died, doesn't really excuse anything. Fact is that before Eurpeans defeated them, this was part of their culture.
USA: I once read the story of a fanatic Christian US-American citizen whom they arrested for murdering his own daughter. He wanted to force her to either marry her own cousin or to become a nun. When she refused to choose either of these two possibilities and converted to Islam to marry the Muslim man she loved, her own fanatic father killed her.
Africa: Some parts of the Massai people's culture can be considered as misogynic, too. For example there a marriage only is a deal between the groom's parents, the groom and the bride's parents. The bride usually isn't even asked if she wants to marry this man. In addition he even has to pay the bride's parents for giving him this girl which makes some non - Massai people think that here they make something like a trade product of her. Also it upsets many people living in modern cultures that a Massai man's value depends on the number of his cows and his wives, i.e. they say that here women kind of get equated with animals...However this isn't even the most extreme fact about these natives: When a man has to sleep in the house of another Massai for any reason whatsoever he has the right to ask the owner of this house to sleep with one of his wives. That means that the husband usually forces his wife to sleep with a man who is a stranger to her, because if he refuses, he is considered as a very impolite person by his tribe.
Result: There may not be a single country where practically nobody gets forced into marriage. You will find forced marriage in Islamic countries as well as in Christian countries or in cultures that belong to neither of them. The Muslim prophet Mohammed ( PBUH ) once said that neither young women nor elder ladies shall get forced into marriage. These women have to agree on the arrangement. Somebody asked him how a female shows whether or not she agrees and the prophet answered "By staying silent." In addition a written record that describes how the prophet once annulled a forced marriage still exists. Prophets are sent by God himself and thus you can't really say that the Muslim God doesn't forbid forced marriage simply because none of the suras written in the Koran says something like "Thou shall not force your daughter into marriage." I even remember a sentence quoted from an anonymious author that says "These things don't happen, because of people obeying the doctrine of their religion, but because of people staying ignorant towards it." So, why do most non - Muslims always think about Islam when they hear words like "forced marriage" or "human trade"? I guess a scspegoat just is every person's psychological need. The illusion that you won't find any person trading with human beings within the 357.111,91 km2 ( the size of Germany ) surrounding you, just makes people feel saver. However in Germany there is another problem - namely that you have to be careful when you talk about several ethnic groups. A lot of people - especially Germans - still are too afraid to talk bad about Jews, because of the antisemitism that got practiced in the 3. Reich. They fear that if they say racist parols about Jews they may get insulted as nazis and excluded. The Roma - people also got murdered when Nazi - Germany occupied East Europe, so here the situation may be the same. However Muslims weren't victims of this genocide which may make people loose their inhibition. When talking about Muslims nobody living in Europe chooses his words as carefully as when talking about Jews for example.
More entries: If you don't like historical subjects, dear Sir or dear Madam, please don't read this! (6), It All Started With My Israeli Friend Telling Me That He Likes Dogs and Ended With Me Posting This Advertisement For Dogs From German Pet Shelters (1), Advertisement (4), I Know I've Just Been Posting This Message Over and Over Again, Anytime I Found a Forum or a Photo That Had Something To Do With This, But... (28), Can't Wait To See You...In a Few Months / Serously! I Can't Accept Any Further Friend Requests!!! (6), Animals We Love and Torture (74), Klaus Kordon's "Mit dem Rücken zur Wand", Forced Marriage - A Comparison Between Islamic Countries and Others (17), My Class of Religious Education Had An Interview With "Ritter Sport" (9), A Letter I would Write If I Was More Courageous (1)
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