Free Republic

Some child brides are living with older husbands in asylum centers in Scandinavia, triggering a furor about lapses in protection for girls in nations that ban child marriage. Authorities have let girls stay with their partners, believing it is less traumatic for them than forced separation after fleeing wars. These issues have caused unease in Scandinavia, where authorities risk complicity in child abuse. "Minors seeking asylum are in a difficult situation where they have left their homeland, family and friends, and the partner they have traveled with can be the only person they know and trust in Norway," said Heidi...

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan. In a first for the garrison city, sixty masked men carrying iron rods barged into a girls’ school in Rawalpindi and thrashed students and female teachers on Friday. The gang of miscreants also warned the inmates at the MC Model Girls High School in Satellite Town to “dress modestly and wear hijabs” or face the music, eyewitnesses said. Fear gripped the area following the attack and only 25 of the 400 students studying in the college were present on Saturday. The school employs 30 female teachers. Attendance in other educational institutions also remained low. After hearing about the...

Some time in the next few days, a Malaysian Muslim woman named Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno will be caned under Islamic laws for drinking glasses of beer in a hotel bar, and a number of political analysts say the country's increasingly fractious politics are partly to blame. The ruling National Front and the Islamist component of an opposition alliance are competing to place themselves as the guardians of a faith that has taken an increasingly political face in Malaysia over the last 20 years. The National Front accuses the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, of giving up some of its...

(Filed: 14/08/2006) A five-year-old girl's passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders. Hannah Edwards's mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country. The photograph was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France. Because of the way the camera was set up, the picture came out showing Hannah's shoulders. The family had it signed and presented it at a post office with the completed form but were told that it would not be accepted by the Passport Office....

KHARTOUM: Sudan's justice minister defended his country's application of Islamic punishments such as death by stoning and flogging, but said Wednesday that mistakes in their implementation will be avoided in the future. Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin also criticized an emergency court ruling in December that sentenced an 18-year old pregnant woman to death by stoning. He said the ruling was "excessive and cruel" and should not be passed on the elderly, pregnant women, or children. Abok Alfa Abok, a Christian member of the large southern Dinka tribe, was pregnant at the time she was tried for adultery in the southwestern...