Posted on 04/10/2014 4:11:37 AM PDT by markomalley
Decades ago, in the years after Iraq gained independence, a tradition of child marriage persisted in its hills and plains. Upon their fathers’ orders, Iraqi girls were betrothed to strangers and rivals alike to resolve tribal disputes or incur favor.
But in the mid-1970s, such acts — called “fasliyah” — were prohibited as the nation moved toward secularization and modernity.
“This decree [banning fasliyah] constituted the first step toward a civilized Iraqi community,” reports the Middle East publication Al-Monitor, “which would put an end to the failures of the tribal… society.”
In the years that followed, rates of child marriage plummeted. By 1997, only 15 percent of Iraqi women were married as children, according to the Central Organization for Statistics. This figure was the same in 2004.
But as the country plunged into the darkest days of the Iraq War, traditions emerged anew — including child marriage.
In 2007, Al-Monitor says, 21 percent of young Iraqi women reported they were married as children. Six years later, the Population Reference Bureau determined that “the decline in early marriages has stopped.”
In fact, the rate had risen.
By mid-2013, more than one-fourth of females were married as children, and 5 percent had been wed before age 15. This rate of child marriage placed Iraq ahead of many nations in the region.
Now the Iraqi government is poised to legalize child marriage for the nation’s majority Shiite Muslim population. But the law, which some expect to pass before this month’s parliamentary elections, would do significantly more than that.
Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to their father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
In Saddam’s Iraq you could have been tried and jailed as a pedo just for such a proposal.
And we wasted how much of our blood and money over there?
And we allow these child molesters to immigrate to this country. How hideous.
I would expect nothing less from the followers of the pedofile Mohamud.
One more reason as to why Iraq was far better off with the Ba’athists in power.
One word, SICK.
These are the people that GWB thought he could democratize.
Might as well have tried to democratize a pack of horny dogs. What a waste of lives & money.
Translation: Iraq legalizes pedophilia.
As far as I can see it was for nothing ... our soldiers are brave, our military the best and the idiots making policy are fools. (And our State Department? Fools - evil fools.)
Yet one of his sons was a serial child rapist, raping girls as young as eleven years old.
And one year old for all goats and sheep.
All those dead Jedi. For nothing.
Dogs are more civilized.
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