Afghan Father Sells Eight Year Old Daughter Into Marriage

We have yet another horrific case of a girl being treated as chattel — one more girl among an estimated 10 million forced to marry worldwide. Her father, Abdul Momin, sold her for $2000 in a small village near the border with Tajikistan. Child brides remain common in Afghanistan under Sharia law and local custom. The girl, Mina, was forced also to drop out of school. After all, she is now married. She had dreamed of becoming a teacher.

Afghan media showed the girl being married off to a boy of 12. When sold away into such marriages, these girls generally lose any opportunity for education — if it even exists for girls.

The wedding was reportedly attended by the local Mula Imam (religious leader) who insisted that the marriage was absolutely moral and right with Islam. We have seen other cases where girls this young have been married off to middle aged men under the same sense of morality.

The Imam noted that “[t]here is no ban for under age marriage in special conditions in Islam.” The “special condition” in this case appears to be that the father needed the money and could not afford the girl. However, Muslim clerics have defended such marriages as not “underaged.”