Attention, Marcello Mastroianni – you career is not over. There is no reason you could not play an aging Saudi sheik in this remake of your and Pietro Germi’s masterpiece. [Oh, come on, you know there's a very good reason.-ed Haven't you read Calder Willingham's masterpiece, New Hope for the Dead?]
Anyway, stop being a cynic, Simon. This is good news for a Monday. Progress in Saudi Arabia. According to the AP article linked above:
An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.
Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages. The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a “clear and unacceptable” violation of human rights.
The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.
[Snip]
Saudi Arabia’s conservative Muslim clergy have opposed the drive to end child marriages. In January, the kingdom’s most senior cleric said it was permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who believe they are too young are doing the girls an injustice.
But some in the government appear to support the movement to set a minimum age for marriage. The kingdom’s new justice minister was quoted in mid-April as saying the government was doing a study on underage marriage that would include regulations.
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19 Comments
1. ricpic:Islam is an obscenity.
May 18, 2009 - 8:36 am 2. Lynne:I find it interesting that when Saudis marry 8-year-olds to 50-year-olds it’s a sign of the obscenity of Islam, but when the FLDs marries 12-year-olds to 50-year-olds it’s question of religious freedom and nobody’s business.
May 18, 2009 - 8:42 am 3. Dale Weeks:They’re both obscene and indefensable.
May 18, 2009 - 9:11 am 4. Good Ole Charlie:And where are the feminists on this one?
Covering their butts…literally?
Or perhaps they approved of statutory rape, as long as the rapist comes from the right “Kulture”.
May 18, 2009 - 9:36 am 5. David Thomson:“was doing a study…”
Famous last words. This often means the issue will be “studied” until the end of time. The Saudi royal family wants to ignore this form of child molestation. There is even a good chance that a number of the princes engage in such behavior.
May 18, 2009 - 10:43 am 6. David Thomson:I could be wrong but the molestation of young girls could be widely practiced in the Mid East. There are a number of “Islamic scholars” who argue that a man can marry a female for the evening—and then divorce her the following morning. Gosh, how convenient.
May 18, 2009 - 11:02 am 7. tim maguire:Lynne, I haven’t the slightest clue what an FLD is but I assume it’s an American group since you reference religious freedom. Can you provide a link to someone arguing that the first amendment allows for FLDs to marry children? (You use that abbreviation like we should all know it but a google search turned up so many FLD’s that it was no help.)
May 18, 2009 - 12:07 pm 8. glenn:Git um whn thier yung.
May 18, 2009 - 12:28 pm 9. hermie:Lynne references an obscure group and then claims that we ‘right-wing religious fanatics’ approve of a practice which is illegal under state laws. It’s a way to deflect from a hard truth: that Islam is not the oh-so harmless movement that liberals try to ignore. Instead, the Left turns it into an attack on Christianity. The Texas group was accused of numerous offenses. Some may be true, and then some may be bogus; but they were not ignored. Otherwise, there would have been no raid.
May 19, 2009 - 6:33 am 10. Lynne:Hermie, I’m not deflecting from anything. I’m simply pointing out that polygamy and child marriage are already taking place in the U.S.
May 19, 2009 - 9:07 am 11. hermie:The FLDs is not an “obscure” group- unless you consider religious enclaves that are featured on Oprah (I believe it was last month) “obscure.”
The raid, unfortunately, took place after a phoney telephone call, and was roundly criticized as nanny-statism and trampling on invidual rights. It was also splashed across front pages and blogs for months this time last year, and was in no way obscure.
My point is that in their eagerness to defend what they saw as a violation of the rule of law, many conservative commenters eventually resorted to trying in some way to marginalize or excuse the alleged abuses. As I said earlier, if you don’t believe me, scout around and read the comments yourself.
My point is that there are hard lessons to be learned from this experience that ought to be applied to the discussion about Sharia, child marriage and Islamic Polygamy in the U.S.
However, was any proof presented that there were forced marriages in violation of state law?
Oprah sensationalizes what she thinks is the ‘hot button’ topic, like a lot of tv shows. If she would’ve had shows on this group in previous years, then you might have a point about them not being obscure. Nobody really knew about them until after the raid, which has been rightly debated as possible overreach by the state.
May 19, 2009 - 9:17 am 12. Lynne:“However, was any proof presented that there were forced marriages in violation of state law?”
Well,there’s the question. Women who had left the group and written about their experiences (there had been a number of books and articles well before this) claimed there were abuses, etc. But now the current FLDs leadership is trying to block all possible evidence of this by saying anything taken in the raid must be declared inadmissable.
So you just got to what I’m trying to bring up: We in this country need to have an urgent, detailed discussion about how claims and counterclaims of underage marriage and abuse are handled wrt religious enclaves. All kinds of things went wrong technically with this raid, things that point to unsolved problems in law and society.
There are groups now campaigning for the legalization of polygamy and pointing to this raid as proof that legalization is the only solution. How we as a country handle this debate *now* will determine a lot of what happens with other relgious groups in the future.
May 19, 2009 - 9:47 am 13. Nancy Lopez:Lynne #12… What does FLD, an obscure cult with about 200 members, have to do with the oppression of women under Islam, which affects over a billion people. I have been reading this blog for five years and have not encountered a single post by Mr. Simon even remotely in favor of polygamy. I don’t understand what you are talking about. To compare the problem of some minor whack jobs with FLD to the horrifying condition of women under Islam, currently the world’s second greatest and growing, is simply idiotic. As a woman (assuming you are a woman – this is the good old anonymous Internet), you should be completely ashamed. Enough already.
May 19, 2009 - 10:22 am 14. hermie:It’s the old ‘moral equivalency’ move. Take an obscure and totally out of the mainstream faction and apply it to all religions, but be sure to ignore the original object of this article: The practice of forcing children into marriages which is accepted and encouraged by senior clergy of a major world faith.
May 19, 2009 - 10:35 am 15. Lynne:Actually, the 200-member group you are thinking of is only one branch that has enclaves all over the U.S. and into Canada.
I really don’t get why everyone is so appalled here. All I’m saying is that we have alleged examples of aspects of Sharia taking place on U.S. soil right, only under a different name. It’s an opportunity to legallly and socially address these issues.
What does the ‘minor group’ charge have to do with anything? Are you saying that if there are few enough people, it’s ok for them to break the law with child marriages and polygamy? That if the alleged oppression is small it doesn’t count?
Stop calling me ‘leftist’ and telling me to be ashamed and explain to me why it’s ok for just a few people to do these things and not ok for a larger group. Child marriage is child marriage no matter who does it. What in the world is your problem with me saying that somethings are wrong for everybody, not just Islam?
‘Moral Equivalency’? When, in any comment, did I attempt to defend child marriage,etc.? Quite the opposite.
And when in the world did I mention Mr. Simon? I mentioned commenters. Period.
Well, whatever. Enjoy your hissy fits.
May 19, 2009 - 11:21 am 16. hermie:“I find it interesting that when Saudis marry 8-year-olds to 50-year-olds it’s a sign of the obscenity of Islam, but when the FLDs marries 12-year-olds to 50-year-olds it’s question of religious freedom and nobody’s business.”
Nobody here defends the practice. It’s your point that we ignore it. Hardly the case, but we do expect that the law be applied equally and within the rules of evidence, etc. If there is something illegal going on with the case of forced marriages, then the leaders of the group should be prosecuted.
‘Moral Equivalency’? When, in any comment, did I attempt to defend child marriage,etc.? Quite the opposite.’
Again, no commenter here that I have seen has ever defended child marriage. It is your insistence that we need to look at our ’sins’ here in the US (by ‘ignoring and ’supporting’ child marriage.) if we are going to criticize common practice in Islamic countries, which is supported by influential Muslim clerics. I haven’t read where any US relgious institution of any great size and influence has come out in favor of child marriages.
May 19, 2009 - 2:01 pm 17. Question:Lynne:
I am curious as to the basis for your opinion. First, as I understand it, you believe that there are those who claim that a 12 year old marrying a 50 year old is a matter of religious freedom. I am sorry, but I am not aware of anyone (other than the perps) who takes that position.
I believe there are those who consider the not so recent Texas raid to have “issues” regarding the basis for the raid. [Side note: much of this comes from the way that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has developed over the last 50 years or so; that is, we went down a pro-defendant path, and now some unpopular defendants are using that against us.] There may be some question about the actual “marital” status of several of those girls, and also about some of the girls’ ages, that is, some may have been 18, not 14. There are also a considerable number of people who take the position that polygamy ought not be illegal, claiming that it is a fundamental right to marry whomever you would like (as I understand their position).
However, to my knowledge, no one (again, other than the perps) takes the position that marrying an underage girl is anything other than a crime, polygamous marriage or not. Are you aware of an exception to this? Because I interpret your statement as indicating you may be aware of such people or organizations.
May 19, 2009 - 10:50 pm 18. qrstuv:Lynne, I think you’re forgetting which group killed 3000 people for the crime of not belonging to their group.
Hint: it wasn’t the FLD.
May 20, 2009 - 6:03 am 19. Anne B.:The FLDS are the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, or rogue Mormons who still practice polygamy – think Warren Jeffs and his crew.
(This info courtesy of my daughter who lives in Salt Lake City.)
May 22, 2009 - 7:54 am