By Johann Hari
Late last year, a tiny little ten year old girl turned up alone at the court in Sana, Yemen, and declared: "I have come to get a divorce." This hadn't happened before. According to the Yemen Times, in some parts of the country the average marriage age is ten, and some 50 percent of marriages are to underage girls. But Nujood Ali was unique in escaping to a court door, pleading for help.
Nujood explained how her father had married her off to a thirtysomething motorcycle courier. On their wedding night, he ordered her to share a bed with him. She ran out of the room, so he dragged her back and raped her.
At first she was ashamed. "But I passed through that," she said recently. "All I want now is to finish my education. I want to be a lawyer... I want to defend oppressed people. I want to be an example for all the other girls." After saying this, she ran off to play hide-and-seek.
The court eventually dissolved the marriage – and awarded compensation to her husband in apology. But Nujood has spearheaded a national revulsion against child-marriage. The conservative Islamic mullahs have reacted by saying there is nothing wrong with child-marriage – because Mohammed did it. I discuss this in my column today. It is true Mohammed did this. If you are trapped in the fundamentalist mindset of Mohammed-is-our- moral-exemplar, you have no way to answer back. The debate is resolved; Nujood's "husband" was in the right. Read more ...
Late last year, a tiny little ten year old girl turned up alone at the court in Sana, Yemen, and declared: "I have come to get a divorce." This hadn't happened before. According to the Yemen Times, in some parts of the country the average marriage age is ten, and some 50 percent of marriages are to underage girls. But Nujood Ali was unique in escaping to a court door, pleading for help.
Nujood explained how her father had married her off to a thirtysomething motorcycle courier. On their wedding night, he ordered her to share a bed with him. She ran out of the room, so he dragged her back and raped her.
At first she was ashamed. "But I passed through that," she said recently. "All I want now is to finish my education. I want to be a lawyer... I want to defend oppressed people. I want to be an example for all the other girls." After saying this, she ran off to play hide-and-seek.
The court eventually dissolved the marriage – and awarded compensation to her husband in apology. But Nujood has spearheaded a national revulsion against child-marriage. The conservative Islamic mullahs have reacted by saying there is nothing wrong with child-marriage – because Mohammed did it. I discuss this in my column today. It is true Mohammed did this. If you are trapped in the fundamentalist mindset of Mohammed-is-our- moral-exemplar, you have no way to answer back. The debate is resolved; Nujood's "husband" was in the right. Read more ...
Source: The Independent
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