Posted on 04/16/2008 10:13:52 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
An eight-year-old Yemeni girl had the following to say after her big day in court.
"I am happy that I am divorced now. I will be able to go back to school," Nojud Mohammed Ali said… - AFP(15 April 2008)
The divorced husband, 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur, withstood it all like true champion of a man.…said he married the child "with her consent and that of her parents" but that he did not object to her divorce petition.
In response to a question from Judge Mohammed al-Qadhi, he acknowledged that the "marriage was consummated, but I did not beat her."
Faez Ali Thameur will encounter significant legal problems under codified versions of Yemeni Law. The minimum age of consent for Yemeni marriages is set by statute at 15. This is actually more conservative and protective of a female children than what you would find in Iran, but fairly primitive compared to the statute laws in most other Muslim Countries.
Thus, the Yemeni judge had far more on his mind than prurient curiosity when he asked the man about consummating a marriage with an eight-year-old child. So would an observer who wasn’t charged with ensuring the proper execution of Yemeni jurisprudence. UNICEF examined the disgusting phenomenon of early marriages in a March 2001 publication entitled Early Marriage; Child Spouses.
This study offers a perspective that is far more enlightening than it is pleasant. A sample of the gruesome conclusions follows below.
Yet many societies, primarily in Africa and South Asia, continue to support the idea that girls should marry at or soon after puberty. Their spouses are likely to be a few years older than they are, but may be more than twice their age. Parents and heads of families make marital choices for daughters and sons with little regard for the personal implications. Rather, they look upon marriage as a family-building strategy, an economic arrangement or a way to protect girls from unwelcome sexual advances. - UNICEF, Ob. Cit., March 2001.
This held partially true in the recent case in Yemen. Nojud Mohammed Ali was well prepubescent unless her onset of puberty occurred early by at least 5-sigma. Her spouse was not twice, but rather thrice her age. I can’t imagine the farce of a wedding ceremony this union would have entailed.
Nojud had her choice made for her by her father. He claims that he was penniless, and was afraid that another, even less amenable amorous partner would abscond with his precious daughter. Perhaps the presiding judge could also take a look at Dad’s assets and confiscate whatever he sold his child daughter’s virginity for on the auction block.
The Yemeni authorities deserve a measure of credit for actually putting a stop to this perversion of human justice. Many countries will subvert efforts to curb this practice and view it as an imperialistic surjection of foreign cultural morality into their lives. The UNICEF study sighted above describes the non-enforcement regimes adopted in many “emerging” nations.
In many countries, early marriage falls into what amounts to a sanctions limbo. It may be prohibited in the existing civil or common law, but be widely condoned by customary and religious laws and practice. This is common where marriages typically take place according to customary rites and remain unregistered.
It also bears examination that the proud and manful groom actually stooped to physically consummate the union. While churlish, putrid and reeking of emunctory moral turpitude, this detail actually serves notice of what happens in failed, primitive cultures. The daughter’s state of chastity impacts her bride price.
Mr. Thameur did not deflower the prepubescent Ms. Ali for the sake of base, despicable pleasure. He did it to imprint his brand. He marked her the way a rancher would trademark one of his cattle. This grotesque expedient rendered Ms. Ali a less attractive kidnapping target for other young men not fairing as well as him in the recessionary Yemeni singles market.
If there is a moral to this sordid descent into the modern abyss of “emerging world” social culture it would be this. What nations like the United States, Japan and those of Western Europe have achieved is a precious, fragile and easily extinguishable flame burning under a downpour. None of what we enjoy is automatically ours by birthright. It can be snuffed like an unwanted puppy.
Cultures are way easier to destroy than they are to build. Compare the time, cost and effort needed to build the Twin Towers with the investment costs required to execute 9-11. Even if the mighty US Army one day deploys FCS in its clenched, mailed fist; the barbarian will forever enjoy the same advantages of entropy that Gaiseric enjoyed against the Late Roman Empire.
Cultures exist in Darwinist, mortal competition. People always select among options. They can respect the fundamental dignity of their charming, seven-year-old daughter or they can turn her out into the street as a profit center. In our culture, this one usually doesn’t require much decision analysis to figure out. I’d personally prefer to have it stay that way.
People wonder why the US gets involved in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So what if the Dali Lama gets boned in the ear by China over Tibet? These 3rd World pick-a-ninnies, consigned to reeking, primitive dung heaps probably just want to trade unfairly with us and steal all of our jobs anyway. At least that’s what Senator Barack Obama tells us we are supposed to believe in all of our bitter resentment.
We go where we go with our culture because we are forced to. We must continue to compete economically, diplomatically, socially and militarily with a world that wants to see Western Civilization burn in Hell.
This world resents me telling them not to auction off their eight-year-old daughters to 30-year-old men. After all, they don’t tell me how to go about making the monthly rent payment.
Those of us who are disgusted by child marriages, seven-year-old soldiers and female genital mutilation aren’t grossed out by nature. We are grossed out because our forefathers have built a society that taught us as children to find such practices execrable. We fight against child marriages in Yemen today so that we don’t have to fight against them in Alexandria, Virginia in some hideous, dystopia of a future.
Cross-Posted At: THE MINORITY REPORT
With an eight-year-old girl??? How sick is that??!
As bad as two little boys kissing.
With an eight-year-old girl??? How sick is that??!
Sick enough for Rosie, and Jimmuhh to adore them!
This is a 28-year-old man talking about an 8-year-old girl and the Yemeni legal system simply granted the divorce... This is not some aberration. There is something wrong with these people.
And if we don’t straighten their sorry butts out, we may get contaminated with this and then all these can be wrong with us as well.
This is exactly what this man was doing. While there may have been some level of pleasure in the act of it, and I am loathed to understand that concept, this man was marking his PROPERTY. She is not a human being, or a woman, she is his property with any and all orifices to be used to satisfy any and all of his earthly desires.
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