This, Too, Is Culture Affirmed by Islamic Hadiths

Child Marriage in the Qur'an

• It is clear the verse 65:4 is given as a command to be followed (Jussive mood).
• The verse itself refers to those women who did not menstruate(in all of past time until the present time), which can include children or girls before puberty or attainment of menarche (first period).

Therefore, the exact translation of this portion of Quran 65:4 is "Not menstruated yet" ( لَمْ يَحِضْنَ ). In Arabic, the menstruating process is called HAIDH ( حيض ). It is possible to turn this noun into its verb form. Like we do it with menstruation, "menstruate" is YAHIDH ( يَحِض ). But it is LAM ( لَمْ ) that appears before YAHIDH and the NA ( نَ ) associated with YAHIDH and this puts Islamic apologists in a quandary because it cannot have any other meaning than “Not menstruated yet”. This is the appropriate English translation.

This verse 65:4 should be read as a continuation of Qur'an 33:49. If a woman who has not been used for sex should not have to observe any Iddah at all, as mentioned in 33:49, what is the reason for the prescribed Iddah for those women who have not yet menstruated? This is a clear indication marrying pre-pubescent girls and having sex with them is sanctioned by the Qur'an.

The phrase found in Qur'an 65:4 as "Wallaee Lam Yahidhna" is sometimes mistranslated by apologists. Exact meaning of the phrase is available in Tafsirs (Quran interpretations). 

The Noble Qur'an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: "And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women - if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated" [Qur'an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur'an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet (PBUH) entered into a marriage contract with A'isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.

Is it permissible to restrict the age at which girls can marry?

Submitted by Ahmad, IslamOnline, December 24, 2010

WikiIslam 

"Day by day, the numbers are increasing of families selling their children."

Lack of food, lack of work, the families feel they have to do this."

Mohammad Naiem Nazem, human-rights activist, Badghis, Afghanistan

"[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money."

"She will be working in my home. I won't beat her. I will treat her like a family member."

Qorban, 55, Afghan buyer of 9-year-old Afghan girl

"We are eight family members. I have to sell to keep other family members alive."

"This is your bride [Qorban]."

"Please take care of her -- you are responsible for her now, please don't beat her."

Abdu Malik, father of 9-year-old Parwana

The moment Parwana Malik, 9, is sold as a child bride. Image / CNN

 

The purchaser of this 9-year-old girl speaks of her working in his home. The agreemnt of the sale was valued at several t housand dollars; the exchange was a mixture of sheep, land and cash. Parwana, Qorban said, would be in the care of his wife, treated like one of his own children. Bought as a slave, to be worked as a slave, and without any doubt, to be a child-bride. This is a wealthy man by Afghan standards, he owns a vehicle, he is able to afford to buy a slave child who he will also use as a sex slave. 

 

The little girl's father spoke of desperate straits in the displaced persons camp he and his family live in, with the diminishing of foreign donors' generosity in humanitarian support leaving them adrift, since the Taliban overtook the legally elected government of the Republic of Afghanistan to re-introduce in its stead the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Child sex slavery is customary in many Islamic countries, considered legal under Sharia interpreting both the Koran and the Hadiths.

 

 

The sale of his 9-year-old little girl was not the first; Abdu Malik had previously sold Parwana's 12-year-old sister months earlier. Living in the Badghis camp for the displaced for four years, his family survived on his meagre wages as a labourer along with humanitarian aid. Both have since disappeared; he can no longer find work, even travelling to another nearby town in the rural district. His story is by no means rare, repeated time and again with families under duress.

Parwana held herself back, unwilling to move toward the man who now claimed her as his property. Like any normal child she yearned to remain with her family. But she was no longer any normal child, but a child owned by a stranger who had designs on her future. The man, considerably older than her own father, white-bearded and firm about his rights to ownership, grasped her arm and led her from her home. She must go with him, however reluctantly, to his waiting car.

Other destitute families have their own stories to tell in an atmosphere of dashed hopes with the United Nations warning that before long 97 percent of the population would be living below the poverty line. The Taliban's emirate is a broken country. Itself an acknowledged terrorist group, it must grapple with other Islamist fundamentalist groups whose dedication to cold and deadly Islamist conquest is more brutal than its own; Islamic State in Khorasan Province and al-Qaeda alongside. The country's economy has entirely floundered.

Afghans face a "tsunami of destitution" in the words of the UN, requiring $200 million monthly in international aid to avoid starvation and catastrophe. The nations that could once be relied upon to financially support the government that the Taliban had cowed into submission through its constant deadly raids, bombings, attacks on the country's national police, its military and on its foreign aid presence, have no intention of giving financial support to the Taliban via financing life for its desperate population.

In Qala-i-Naw, capital of the western province of Badghis, Sabehreh, 25, ws responsible for the food she had bought for her family on credit at a grocer's. She faced prison by the Taliban for failing to repay the businessman. Finally it was agreed that Sabehreh's thre-year-old daughter Zakereh's betrothal to the grocer's four-year-old son would defray her debt. A far more humane solution to a seemingly intractable economic trap than what had befallen 9-year-oldParwana.

"I'm not happy to have done that", said Sabehreh, "but we had nothing to eat or drink. If this continues, we'll have to give up our three-month-old". In neighbouring Ghor province, Ibrahim was preparing to sell his ten-year-old daughter Magul, to a 70-year-old man as the only way open to him to pay off his family debts. $2,700 had been borrowed from a neighbour. Ibrahim had been arrested and threatened to by imprisonment in a Taliban jail. Selling his daughter to repay the loan was his only option.