UK: ‘Alarming Number’ of Muslim Girls as Young as Nine Years Old Forced Into Marriage

Child Brides in Gaza

By PAVAN AMARA – “AN alarming number of under-age girls – some as young as nine – are being forced into marriage in Islington, according to a leading campaign group.

The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) claim that at least 30 girls in the borough were forced into marriage in 2010.

The practice was condemned by the Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, who said such marriages were against Islam and ‘unacceptable’.

He pledged to invalidate any marriage which he said were carried out by ‘back-street Imams’.

IKWRO, which made headlines last month when they revealed there had been almost 3,000 ‘honour-based’ violence cases in 2010, has shown the Tribune records which revealed at least three 11-year-old girls and two nine-year-olds had been forced into marriage with older men within Islington. The oldest girls involved were 16.

They have warned that hundreds of Islington girls could be suffering sexual, emotional and physical scars as a result of the child marriages every year and are calling for teachers, social workers and police to be better trained to spot and manage the abuse.” Read more.

Flashback: New Saudi Fatwa Defends Pedophilia as ‘Marriage’ – “Muslim ‘child-marriage’ — euphemism for pedophilia — is making headlines again, at least in Arabic media: Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, just issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married ‘even if they are in the cradle.’ … Fawzan insists that nowhere does Sharia set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relies on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam’s role model, married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, ‘consummating’ the marriage — or, in modern parlance, raping her — when she was 9.” Read more.