Violations of women’s rights must stop

In the United Kingdom, paragraph 277 of the new Immigration Rules for both foreign spouses and their sponsors stipulates a minimum age of 21, instead of 18, before the foreign spouse can be granted a visa to enter as a spouse or partner. This is about child brides, a universal problem most prevalent in the Middle East and many Muslim countries.

Men’s obsession with marrying younger women sometimes borders on paedophilia. This is socially unfair, because women generally outlive men by five years and if they are say six years younger at marriage time, they can expect to spend 11 lonely years towards the end of their lives, unless they happen to have enough caring children and grandchildren. This is where Arab and also Chinese and some other cultures are kinder to the elderly. But with the western universality of co-ed education, spouses have become increasingly of equal age, simply because they frequently meet in the same lecture room or laboratory. But even in the West, one keeps hearing of elderly wealthy or famous men taking “trophy wives” after the dissolution of long marriages, around that “middle age crisis”. A huge number of such men, I would hazard to guess, have affairs of which only a few come to light. Among filmstars, it seems to be a pandemic, keeping several gossip magazines in business.

In Muslim culture, men take more wives, justifying that by invoking sharia, which permits up to four wives, and reminding us that it is halal and that the children would be “legitimate”. In some Shiite communities, there is also the marriage of mut’aa (pleasure) where it is pre-agreed that for a sum of money, the contract is temporary and ends amicably on a set date.

One could have a debate on the demerits of the different systems. What is not for debate, however, is the barbaric custom of marrying under-aged females, sometimes even before their menarche, and justifying it by saying that Prophet Mohammad [PBUH] married Aisha when she was a child, and what was good for Prophet Mohammad [PBUH] is now good for anyone else. A classic example is offered by the heartbreaking tale I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.

But, the world has moved on in the past 1,500 years. It is for that reason that we no longer cut off the hands of thieves. It is also why we no longer stone Muslim adulterers to death. It is indeed gratifying to learn that you can get married in the UAE if you are 18 years old. However, if you are less than that legal age, a judge will have to decide whether you are competent enough to wed and not leave the decision to your father or brother. The UAE seems, once again, to be way ahead of the rest of the Arab pack.

The inhumane custom of child-marriage is often related to the abject poverty of the girl’s family, who literally “sell” the daughter in order to survive. This is by no means specific to Muslim or Arab society. Another cause is the well known issue of honour and shame which does plague Arab and Muslim society. Obsessed with the fear of sexual misconduct by the girl, parents seek to transfer responsibility to the husband as soon as the girl is “ripe” for sex, or even before that; ignoring the well-known medical fact that chances of maternal mortality are very high if one bears children before full physical maturity is achieved. In addition, the risks of wear and tear in the girl’s sexual organs can even make a girl bleed to death in the absence of adequate medical facilities, as was reported in Yemen last week. The Yemeni husband, who had forced himself on a terrified child bride who saw her body being violated by a brutal stranger, claimed that the reason for her death was poor health — yet another example of blaming the victim when it comes to assaults on women.

Most girls survive such trauma, but can suffer permanent physical damage, something that is manifest in the other barbaric custom — female genital mutilation.

Asma Malik (Gulf News, June 15, 2012) stated that female genital mutilation still occurs with more than 90 per cent of women in Egypt. The proponents of this medieval custom sell it as something that makes girls clean, chaste and therefore good, when in fact its only purpose is to eliminate sexual pleasure in women.

If only men would keep all this in mind, every time they conspire to subject their coerced and pinned-down daughters to the blade.

Dr Qais Ghanem is a retired neurologist, radio show host, poet and novelist. His two novels are ‘Final Flight from Sana’a’ and ‘Two Boys from Aden College’. He lives in Canada.