Yes, what the imam said is true. Actually under Islamic sharia law, six year old girls can be married. Mohammed married Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she reached puberty at nine. Allah in the Koran said over and over that Mohamed must be emulated so child marriages in Islam are permitted and, even encouraged.
A Muslim cleric at the centre of an illegal marriage scandal has stepped down after he allegedly offered to marry a 12-year-old girl to a man in his 20s.
Imam Mohamed Kassamali is said to have told an undercover reporter posing as a father that he could carry out a ceremony for his school-aged daughter.
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‘Under Sharia (Islamic law) there is no problem. It is said she should see her first sign of puberty at the house of her husband.
‘The problem is that we cannot explain such things (the marriage) if the girl went tomorrow (to the authorities).
‘The other thing is the underage thing and if tomorrow the girl is, let’s say coerced or forced into this, and she goes and reports it to the police then she will put all of us into the problems.’
Read the rest: Imam Caught Performing Marriages for Underage Girls in Britain.
Here’s Baroness Cox, a British feminist, reply to this problem:
The protection of children is one of the essential principles of civilised society. Yet the duty to safeguard the vulnerable seems in danger of being undermined out of sensitivity towards some minorities.
This disturbing trend has been highlighted this week by revelations that, during an undercover investigation, two imams from Islamic centres, one based in Peterborough, the other in East London, expressed their willingness to marry an under-age Muslim girl — aged just 12 — to a man in his 20s under the aegis of Sharia law.
It is right, of course, that we respect freedom of religion, but surely not when basic laws and morality are being flouted in this way. It is reported that one of the imams, in trying to justify his actions, said that he would not have married the girl unless she had given her consent.
But a 12-year-old cannot consent to a marriage. It is precisely because children lack the experience, judgment and maturity to make such decisions that we have laws against marriage and sex under the age of 16.
Any failure of the authorities to uphold these laws, because of an apparent clash with another culture, is an example of the politically correct establishment failing vulnerable children.
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This most recent case demonstrates once again how women’s and girls’ rights are subverted under Sharia.
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It’s a disturbing picture in a country in which equality for all is meant to be a guiding principle of the justice system. That great ideal stretches back centuries to the Magna Carta, requiring that everyone should be treated equally under the law, regardless of their wealth or status.
More recently we have enshrined our commitment to the ideals of gender equality and the eradication of gender discrimination.
In recent years, however, the concept of judicial equality has come under severe pressure, due to the increasing official acceptance of Islamic Sharia law. No longer do we have a single legal code in our society. Instead, alongside our own law, there is now effectively a parallel quasi-legal system operating within some Muslim communities.
Sharia law, imported from theocracies like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, first began to be used here in a strictly limited form, dealing mainly with narrow issues like Islamic financial contracts. But as the Muslim population has grown and the pervasive creed of multiculturalism has become ever more powerful, so Sharia law has rapidly grown in influence within some communities.
Please read her entire reply: British Feminist Speaks Out Against Islamic Child Marriages. (h/t to NewEnglishReview) http://www.newenglishreview.org
A teenage girl was beheaded by a relative in northern Afghanistan after she turned down his marriage proposals, according to reports.
