Muslims can marry toddlers and have sex with 9 year old girls?

I know that this has been brought up before about Muhammad having a 9 year old wife. Often we're told that this was just something done in the past. Still, here it is again. A Saudi Marriage Officiant goes on the record to state the following:


I believe in the freedom of religion, but at some point you have to point and yell "Freaks!". A 9 year old? Isn't it obvious that children that age are not physically prepared for child-bearing. That's not even mentioning that they're not emotionally prepared. In the mean time they forbid young men from having any interaction, or even seeing other women. Oh, but pssst! If you kill yourself fighting "Infedels" you'll be going to heaven to get your own harem of virgins?

To me and a lot of other individuals, the focus of Islam seems to be on the ownership, manipulation, and abuse of women. That's what I get out of it. Yeah, I lived in Saudi Arabia for 4 months. Women are treated just as I described.

Comments? Please don't be the first fool to say ".. but Christians....". If this practice can't be defended without resorting to bashing another religion, then obviously it's a twisted religion indeed.

[edit on 24-6-2008 by dbates]

reply to post by dbates

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I completely agree. Age-wise and emotionally it is simply too young. The common excuse I hear is that it was another culture, another time. Well, this is the 21st century now. A man in his 20's, 30's, 40's or even older is simply going to have nothing in common with a child. So, yes, I feel it is nothing more than some form of sexual perversion. You can't have intellectual conversation or mature emotional bonding. I don't care about cultural differences- it is pedophelia.



I don't care what anyone thinks of me for saying this either but I get sick of that as well. You cannot discuss any religion on ATS without the topic being derailed with several people saying, 'B...b...but Christianity...!'

I'm not saying Christianity is immune to criticism because it is not. Christianity is dissected and insulted left and right around here. The difference is, I see Christians answering the questions and material- not just crying about persecution and bigotry or trying to deflect the controversy onto another religion. But any thread started about another religion be it Islam, New Age Mysticism, or even atheism and a currently odd thread about Buddhism, I always see two things occurring:

1) It is all turned around to Christianity, thus the topic is derailed.

2). The P.C. members come out of the wood work to say things like we can't judge the whole based on the few, the original poster is a bigot and hate monger, we shouldn't judge others, etc. For some reason I never see those same members saying such things in defense of Christianity in obvious troll threads or threads where it is mentioned that one person doing some stupid thing is supposed to be representative of all Christians everywhere.

Sorry. Perhaps I should have saved all of that for a rant thread but it does get old.

I suspect that many religions have had hideous practices that have had to be revised with time and their holy texts redacted.

In many, many ways Islam stands in a very uncomfortable spot where they must address these internal problems under the light of outside pressure and negative assessment.

Clearly, to enter into another human age the Muslims need to redact the Hadith to eliminate all references to Muhammed's private deviant behaviour as well as redact the Quran to remove the passages that justify murder, rape, warfare, and genocide.

It's disgusting to think it's in any way normal because it's not.

So if one part of their doctrine is tainted and flawed, then how can other parts of it be trusted?

I don't see how it could be.

Ancient India also practices child marriage as well:



I don't think its a "culture" thing. Its more like twisted religious belief in order to satisfy lust.

[edit on 6/25/2008 by amitheone]

The hadiths are 200 years of chinese whispers and lies created by people 200 years after mohammeds death, it's a shame so many follow it, when the quran says to only follow the quran.

Quran: Respects women, animals, equal rights, love etc.

Hadiths: hates women, hates dogs, loves cruelty, these people who wrote it created new rules not in the quran, for whatever desires they had, they could write ANYTHING they wanted and get away with it, mohammed wasn't around anymore remember, they created the lies to take "control" of people around them, and for political gains.

Now remember it is impossible to "change" 1 WORD in the quran!
Why? Well because a lot of muslims remember the quran off by heart, word by word, this is why the quran has never changed, one word, and people would notice.

So what could they do? they can't change the quran to what they see fit? So the hadiths were their answer! Vocal(not written, because that was not allowed) stories of mohammed, spread around by hundreds of people for 200 years, who knows how much truth is in 200 years of vocal stories spread around, why not add their very own stories too, new laws for whatever they want! Genius!

Chinese whispers is the perfect definition of hadiths, you see it everyday, someone tell's a story about something, another passes it on, another misunderstands it, another adds his own agendas to it and so on.

Following the hadiths as a way of life is CRAZY in my opinion. It's a shame people don't research this, instead of blindly following a trend.

The god of the quran and the god of the hadiths are totally different, I think that says a lot about the hadiths.

Mohammed even told people to burn all stories and hadiths about him, because he was worried about the spreading of false stories and people following it. THAT is why it took 200 years after his death for the first hadith to be written.


As you can see Mohammed was right, most of the problems in the muslim world now comes from these hadiths.




[edit on 25-6-2008 by _Phoenix_]

reply to post by dbates

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yep, it's a religion that still hasn't moved out of the culture of the time it was founded...in many ways

but in many countries that are predominately muslim, the marriage laws are a helluva lot more strict

so, in fact, most muslims cannot marry in that age range, even though their religion would have no problem with it...
but, there's a lot that religions have no problem with that people that follow those religions do
there's nothing in any holy book i've ever encountered that says much is wrong with marrying a 10 year old girl...it's actually a bit of a marvel that islam even mentions age...

but anyway, it's just another stupid remnant of a stupid era

It's been brought up before, but not conclusively proven. In fact, the surrounding evidence shows that it is probably untrue. While much of what the Marriage Officiant is saying is islamically unsound, I'm also suspicious about the convenient editing of the video, so I can't really tell all he said.

First off, that same guy says that it is okay to even marry off your children at the age of 1. This is definitely not true, because the according to Islam, the Marriage Contract requires the consent of both the husband and the wife.

Secondly, the guy says that there is 'no minimal age for marriage' in Islam. This is kind of dancing with words here, because Islam doesn't say that there is no minimal age of marriage. In fact, it doesn't explicitly mention marriage with respect to age at all. For example, just because Jesus or Moses didn't specifically mention that you can't marry off your 1 year old child, doesn't mean that Christians and Jews should rush off to do it.

Thirdly, (and the reason I'm suspicious about the editing of the video,) it's not the age that is of importance (although many critics of Islam will go on harping about '9 years old! 9 years old'), but the maturity.

I don't know how you spent your 4 months in Saudi Arabia, dbates, but I'm sure you've heard numerous times (even on this site, from it's muslim members), Saudi Arabia is not exactly the 'beacon for Islam', so it seems a little odd to say "it's done in Saudi Arabia, so it must be approved by Islam".

PS: It's not only 'Ancient India' that also practiced child marriages. It's modern India. And modern Pakistan. And modern Ethopia. And modern Bangladesh. And modern Sri Lanka, etc, etc. I'm certainly not defending the practice here, just pointing out, it's far from eliminated, even in the non-muslim parts of the world.

reply to post by dbates

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I always laugh when i think that maybe their harem of virgins are old grannies who never married and virgin men LMAO

Imagine their surprise if that happens

That would be Riyadh. Their capital city, along with a few other day trips to various places. As far as Saudi Arabia not being a beacon for Islam, I hope you're not forgetting that Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia. The country is the birth-place of Islam and the location of their holy sites. It's my only exposure to a country that's ruled by Islamic law so that's the basis I judge it on. Nice people, but their religion is wacked.

reply to post by dbates

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And Bethlehem and Nazareth is in Israel. And Kapilavastu is in Northern India. And Parsa/Persepolis is in Iran. That doesn't count for much. "Saudi" Arabia is barely 80 years old.

[edit on 26-6-2008 by babloyi]

Some comparison to Christianity is required but it in no way does this mean that someone should defend the actions that are described in the source article . Speaking in a broad sense those society's that came under the influence of Christianity have evolved two steps ahead of there Muslim cousins . Common decency has creped into western society's. Currently in elements of the western world western world we are seeing a more open , tolerant . This includes the drift away from churches to more individual or rather spiritual beliefs .

i was listening to the radio and the announcer was mentioning that opium production was so massive in the middle east that when opium farmers would lose their harvest to people against opium production that would sell children for marriage to whomever they owed debts too.

reply to post by Maybach Hanson

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Afghanistan is in the Middle East now?



....oh wait, it is. Yay Bush, I guess.

Anyhoo, they'd sell off their children in marriage for many reasons: stop some tribal feud, money, etc. But than again, that practice is prohibited in Islam, so I don't know what to say about that.

if I'm not mistaken, most people died at like, 25 in those days.

what's the rate of maturation?

as for emotional readiness, most people in their 30's aren't emotionally ready for sex.

is it pedophilia?

yeah.

they are all from the same group, Muslims, Jews, Christians. sons of Abraham.

they all did that stuff. does that mean it's right? no.

it also doesn't mean that their religion is 'twisted' or invalid.

even Satan has something to teach us.

read Job or the Gospels.

the Accuser and the Tempter is the Great Teacher. He gave us the Apple, and he separates the Wheat from the Chaff.

Satan is God's Test.

Do you have critical thinking skills?

use your head, not the book. the book only teaches, it does not think FOR you.

You are confusing "average" life spans with life expectacy of adults. Infant mortality was very high, if half died as infants, and half died at 70 the "average" lifespan becomes 35. Plenty lived to ripe old age back then.

Though way back in the 6th century people DID marry quite young. It was normal at that time, if they were old enough to bleed etc...

Fortunately Islam enforces a dowry system that ONLY benefits the female and prevents them from being used as monetary pawns (husband gives dowry to wife, any money wife inherits is hers alone, neither the husband or the brides family will receive money when she marries) so there was not as much incentive to marry females off young for financial gain.


[edit on 5-7-2008 by Sonya610]

dbates, all Abrahamic religions are wacked. Past that, it this type of thing happened all the time in the middle east, Europe Asia and wherever else.

Examples


And I think Marie Antoinette was like 14 when she got married to Louis the 14th?

Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous to call one out and not the rest? Might make someone believe that you have it out for Islam in particular. Not very becoming of a Mod to wear his prejudice on his sleeve.

reply to post by Rasobasi420

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14 is a huge difference from marrying toddlers and having sex with 9 year olds. At the age of 14 most are sexually mature (Not mentally) so that's a completely different story.

You can't reference royal marriages as a comparison. Royalty have always had strange marriage arrangements. I'm speaking of normal every day people who in Islam are told it's just fine to marry kids. Normal people in other religions don't do that sort of thing.

Can you prove that she was 9 when they married or had sex? People are keep to pointing to the Hadith about her age, when there are other Hadiths that place her age at much older when they married.

The video Memri uses is a translation done by them, where they mistranslate to dupe the viewer into believing a lie. They've done it constantly with almost every video they claim is an Arabic or Persian translation, including the Palestinian Mickey Mouse girl video, where they claim she is claiming to kill herself to kill jews. Her direct translation was that she is giving her life to Allah as his servant.



I would think that as often as that has been said on these boards a Super Moderator would at least do some research. Killing the "infidels" refers to the pagans who were attacking Muhammad, as the Surah prior to it even says to slay them if they enter the Grand Mosque, to show that it is refering to the Mecca Pagans. It is also followed with saying that if they desist and want peace, then create a peace treaty.

And about the virgins, you get virgins (sinless beings) that were created specifically for people in heaven. Everyone gets these, regardless of what their good deeds are, even Christians and Jews.



What you see is the Arab culture. You can see that when a country is invaded, "freedom" is replaced with "security."



Which part? Has the same treatment occured pre-Islamic times?



No one is defending having sex with a 9 year old. The only thing that needs to be defended is the truth about her real age, and not what people who have a bias against Islam keep pointing to.

[edit on Thu Jan 22nd 2009 by DJMessiah]

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I'm speechless.

I would enjoy haveing all pedophiles, rapists, lined up, and shooting them, or just lighting them all on fire, or putting them in siberia and nukeing them.


that would solve alot of problems.