Pakistan’s Senate has struck down legislation last week that would have increased the minimum age girls to marry from age from 16 to 18. We have previously discussed various cases of child brides being forced into marriage under the medieval Islamic traditions and laws governing much of Pakistan. However, there was hope that the legislature would be more supportive of the basic rights of these girls. That hope was dashed when the chairman of the Senate Standing Committee, Rehman Malik, explained that such an age limitation on marriage was deemed “Un-Islamic” by clerics who control much of the legislative agenda in Pakistan.
Not only does the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child support a minimum age for marriage of 18, but the rejected Child Marriage Restraint bill stated that “[i]n developing countries, the leading cause of death for young girls between the age of 15 and 18 is early pregnancy.”
After the Child Marriage Restraint Bill was rejected, Rehman Malik explained that Islamic scholars found the protections to conflict with the Koran. He said that they “believe that girls can be married before the age of 18 according to Islam, so these kinds of bills cannot be passed.”
This is not the first time that Islamic clerics have blocked the bill. However, last February, the Parliament did succeed in passing an important bill imposing mandatory five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to one million rupees ($10,000) for those caught marrying any girl under the age of 16.
Notably, the legislation was rejected on the International Girl Child Day.
Paul and others — Neuroscience and other physiological studies demonstrate that full maturity arrives only at age 24.
Perhaps that very Christian country, Vatican City, should be a model for Pakistan. Their age of consent is 12.
if you haven’t yet, read Christopher Hitchens god is not great and religion poisons everything that’s my “bible”
In watching the conversation unfold for a bit, I do think we could all say ” there should be a law for that ” at the same time we do have personal choice. I do not condone stupid but what is one to do? There is no answer here other than how you walk along.
[b]N.H. House Kills Bill That Would Raise Minimum Marriage Age to 18[/b] (Concord (N.H.) Monitor, March 9, 2017)
http://www.concordmonitor.com/bill-on-whether-minors-can-marry-8581515
[i]”It’s not often middle-schoolers get married in New Hampshire. But it’s still perfectly legal, after the Republican-led House killed a bill Thursday to raise the marriage age to 18.
The rejection leaves intact a state law that lets girls get married as young as age 13 with parental consent and sign-off from a judge. Boys a year older can marry with the same approvals. . . .
Though the bill had unanimous backing from the House child law committee, it was toppled after a last-minute push from a handful of Republican representatives.
They argued the age increase would block young soldiers from getting married and providing military benefits to their partners or children. Others said the change could lead to more single-parent households.
‘If we pass this, we will ensure forever that every child born to a minor will be born out of wedlock,’ said Republican Rep. David Bates, of Windham.. . .”[/i]
My point being that when you really want to do something (or in this case NOT do something), you’ll find any excuse to support it.
“After the Child Marriage Restraint Bill was rejected, Rehman Malik explained that Islamic scholars found the protections to conflict with the Koran.” That’s the problem. The Koran does support underage marriage. And since it is supposed to be written by Allah, it cannot be contravened. This is different from the Bible, in which the New Testament completed the Old Testament. And there could always be a Newer Testament written. That is why Christians do not tend to burn a bull on the Sabbath anymore.
Islamic countries are stuck in Puritanism. It no longer has its Greek scholars driving its intellectual revolution. It’s all theology all the time, and that theology is oppressive, especially to women, gays, and apostates.
I am so very sorry for the girls of Pakistan.
One of the reasons why young girls die from pregnancy is that they develop a fistula. It’s a tear between their anus and reproductive tract, so their insides get flooded with urine and feces, which drip from them in a noxious, infected mess constantly until they get septic or some other even worse complication and die. It’s really just as bad a way to go as it sounds. Some of them persist for months or years, dripping human excrement everywhere, and are shunned by the people who forced them to marry a much older man in the first place. The other reason is that they cannot deliver the child if they are really young. Their bodies are just not developed enough.
This is what real oppression looks like.
https://www.fistulafoundation.org/what-is-fistula/
Right. Here we are: “An obstetric fistula is a hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, leaving a woman incontinent of urine or feces or both.
For women with obstructed labor, labor that goes unattended, the labor can last up to six or seven days. The labor produces contractions that push the baby’s head against the mother’s pelvic bone. The soft tissues between the baby’s head and the pelvic bone are compressed and do not receive adequate blood flow. The lack of blood flow causes this delicate tissue to die, and where it dies holes are created between the laboring mother’s bladder and vagina and/or between the rectum and vagina. This is what produces incontinence in a fistula patient.”
About 75% of women with fistula labored for at least 3 days. Adolescents and younger girls labor for unbelievably long periods of time trying to give birth, and many of them end up with dead babies, a fistula, and ostracism or death.
Maybe Hollywood could make some really cool SNL skits, Oscars acceptance speeches, or PSA in order to help combat real oppression of women globally.
Karen, can you focus? The question at hand is whether the penal code in Pakistan should make it a criminal offense to contract a marriage at age 16 or 17. We in our house have an aunt and uncle born in 1934 who were married in 1951. It’s atypical. It’s not something from the other side of the moon.
The quality of adolescents today makes that sort of thing sorely imprudent, but that should tell you that the standards here are contextually specific.
sure, i’ll try REALLY,REALLY hard to focus but all i can see is something that wrong anytime under ANY circumstances
You mean you’d like to get in touch were her, her three married and now elderly children, and their children, and their grandchildren and tell them that it was ‘wrong at any time under any circumstances’ for the matriarch and patriarch of this crew to marry in 1951?
uh,yeah just because it’s lawful & deemed ok almost 60 years ago, does’t make right or healthy i wonder what unspoken thoughts the bride had about it
It’s still lawful.
The bride in question is now 83. She had 45 years with her husband, a man remembered quite fondly by her, by her children, by his family. She’s a congenial Southern woman so likely to not tell you in plain language to your face her thoughts about you trashing her marriage which you fancy was ‘unhealthy’ because unusual in whatever agglomerations of suburban tract developments your rancid little mind came of age in.
with all the support/using historical references/excuses to have sex w/ female CHILDREN by the male bloggers i thought i’d logged onto a pedophile web site ! what a nasty gross group of ” gentlemen” you all are!
Karen, the New York Penal Law sets the age of consent at age 17. You fancy the state legislature is a collecting pool of paedophiles?
Anthony Weiner ! nuff said !
Pakistan’s Senate has struck down legislation last week that would have increased the minimum age girls to marry from age from 16 to 18.
I was surprised to learn they had a minimum age already. I’m curious to know how the clerics deem 16 as Islamic and 18 as unIslamic. I would expect proposing a law that clearly violates the Koran would bring a death sentence, at least if the clerics had solid proof and the culture was supportive of it.
You probably shouldn’t take your caricatures as literal.
There’s a lot of things I probably shouldn’t do. I’ll consider adding that to my list.
The minimum age to contract a marriage in New York law is 13 (if you can obtain the approval of a superior court judge) and 15 (iirc) if you can obtain parental approval. I had a co-worker who was first married at the age of 15 (in 1958). I’m not understanding why they’re Darth Vader in Pakistan if family law there does not require you to be 18 to contract a marriage.
How many people in New York are actually marrying at that age versus how many in Pakistan? Which of the two, New York or Pakistan, enshrines protective rights for the female spouse in their law and which prejudicially favors the male spouse?
Oh, it’s quite unusual. Turley’s complaint concerns positive law. If he wishes to make a complaint about social practices, he can do that without reference to positive law.
Interesting, the parallels between Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood and these Islamists isn’t it.
What a hypocrite Turley is! He pretends that he cares about the “human rights” of little girls, yet he defends Islam on the grounds that it is religion, when the laws of the Islamic cult REQUIRE the subjugation of women and little girls. What’s next? Is Turley going to object when a male Islamic adherent chooses to practice his “religion” by “thighing” a little girl until he achieves orgasm or by ejaculating into the corpse of his late wife? You can’t have it both ways, Turley–in reality. Only in the insanity that is known today as Leftism.
You have a button in the upper right corner of your browser with an “X” in it. If you don’t like the content, you can click on that button and presto, you are good to go.
Newsflash! Jonathan Turley is not Sam Harris. (Because no one of sense is like Sam Harris).
Paul C Schulte — The world was a different place at the time of the War of the Roses. In the nonce, medical history has noted the extra hazard to mother and child before mother’s age 18.
Arranged marriages is a distinct topic.
Walk along the line of honor killings and village or tribe embarrassment. I think there is a look down on a basic survival instinct that tells a village or tribe to kill it’s own. It would be Kinda convenient to be able to classify all of that into a particular way of talking or acting. Predict that and you have the marketing world at your door.
Gobbledygook.
David Benson – the whole concept of adolescence is an artificial construct that has been invented since we demanded (Unions demanded) that competitive labor is taken out of the market for as long as possible.
If you spent a day with my students you would see how worldly and mature they are at 16. They probably wouldn’t have missed a step getting married at 12, they certainly would have known the facts of life and at least some of the better parts of the Kama Sutra. At 12 you probably couldn’t find a virgin of either sex to sacrifice. They were early adopters.
i cannot begin to express how creepy you come across describing your 16 yo students as ” mature” while blogging on this particular topic it sounds like a pathetic excuse a man would give to a judge when brought on charges of statutory rape. i’d get my daughter away from you ASAP
Karen – I usually worked until all the students had left the building and most of the teachers. Often, I was the last out the door, then my wife would pick me up. Your daughters would be lucky to have me as a teacher because I was good at it and took it seriously. I expected my students to learn, not coast. And I had no interest in my students sexually, I liked my women older 40-50s. My taste in women aged with my age. Besides, you can go to jail for screwing one of your students. I can’t teach if I am in jail.
well, isn’t that special ! however on this PARTICULAR topic you still sound like a creep w/the term “mature”
Karen – when a significant portion of your female population gets pregnant each year and you have to make arrangements for it, I would call them mature. When you have a 14 yo with her 2nd child, I would call that mature. When you know the way they jump in girls to the gangs is to roll dice and the number that comes up is the number of guys who gang-bang her (willingly), I would call that mature. None of this makes me a happy camper, but I made sure my girls took care of their babies, that the guys were good fathers, etc. It was the best I could do under the circumstances. When you are working with inner-city kids it is a whole different lifestyle for them. I had kids who were the first to graduate high school in their family. Some would go no further because it was their turn to get a job and bring money into the household. Many of my students did go on to college. And I still keep in touch with several of them. A few went into the service. Some I have lost touch with.
sure, i’ll try REALLY,REALLY hard to focus but all i can see is something that wrong anytime under ANY circumstances
Karen – when I was growing up, the age of consent for girls was 14 in New Jersey. Do you think that was wrong? They keep it at that age for quite a while.
yes,yes & YES!!!!! i’ll take wild guess & say that was an all male legislation. you can cite chapter & verse on anything you want you’re still defending the indefensible & i can find nothing of worth in your arguments as hard as you try
WHAT!? “MY girls” you just keep on digging that hole,teach! don’t look but your misgony is showing.
Karen – I was very possessive of my students and defended them to the death. I do no not apologize for my protection of my students. After the end of the semester, they were no longer mine and they could free range. They were someone else’s problem.
if you say so, because i certainly value the ESTEEMED opinions of a man who brands women HE finds unattractive as medusas, i bet i wouldn’t find you any herucles, sorry, old timer you’re just wrong
Karen – did your little feelers get hurt? Have you been triggered? Good,
you are incredibly blind if you think that a 14yo girl who let’s her self be GANG RAPED is mature, what I see is an incredibly lonely girl w/ no sense of self, no family structure, unbelievably lousy home life desperately wanting a group to belong to, @ any cost
paul, i just knew if i peeked you be there! enlarged prostate keeping ya up? sorry no “triggers” to pull and dismissing my opinions as”feelings” to be hurt, confirms you have no cognitive arguments left i imagine you sound like the last trex sinking in the tar pits olny you’re sinking in the ” tar” of your chanuvisim, irrelevance, pomposity sorry, i got a life show us all what a real man you are after i sign off w/this post i guess being a little b is b isn’t exclusively a trait that is only ascribed to women while you sit in the, alone, in the glow of your computer al l night
Karen – I multi-task. I am currently taking a course in in Classical Archaeology while I am blogging. And it is only 8:25 pm here. I will be up until at least 10 pm, which is just after JT posts his threads for the next day. So, I get to be one of the first ones to respond to the thread.
screwing!? nice talk! i bet your mature gal pals just get their depends all in a twist when you’re around.
T rump groping those under age beauty pageant girls is creepy enough.
The topic is not President Trump. Are you capable of commenting on anything other than him?
If you live in the Anime world and have an avatar girlfriend….
I am not sure that 16 is a not a reasonable age for a girl who makes her own decision.
Too many negatives for me to follow after all this wine…
David Benson – assuming the girl is making her own decisions, I do not think 16 is too young to marry.
If she is well aware of the hazards. That seems to be the sticking point.
Other than it is not her own decision, the usual case in those benighted places…
David Benson – I just finished a good book on the War of the Roses and they were marrying girls at 12 who were having children the next year. These were all arranged marriages, which many of them found very happy. Some did not. Sounds like today’s marriages.
I am not a fan of arranged marriages, however, in some cultures, they are very important. I would not want to stop that culture for that practice. My brother-in-law is in an arranged marriage and it has worked out fine for him and his wife. My wife almost ended up in an arranged marriage but made the mistake of marrying me. 😉 We had to go to Vegas to do it, though.
See the work of Angus Maddison. Early adolescent marriage has never been particularly common in occidental society and the peculiarity of early adolescent marriage was the most salient feature distinguishing occidental societies from Muslim and East Indian societies. To take one example, I’ve seen data from colonial Massachusetts which put the median age at first marriage for women at 20 years and for men at 28 years.
TSFS – you should see the anecdotal evidence from the women who went to the gold mines. They got their pick of the litter and were throwing out men suitors left and right until the right ones started appearing. And these women were not stunners, their pictures make them look like Medusa’s half-sister. It was clearly a case of supply and demand. Many a pioneer family in the old West has a prostitute as an ancestor. And many of these started on the streets of NYC at or before age 12.
Did it occur to you to try quantifying this statement?
this site is the BEST for mansplannin !
hey paul, it’s great to hear you call women medusa, i’m sure YOU’RE a hot babe yourself! btw just how drunk did you have to get the Mrs to say i do in Vegas? what with your witty & hot self i just can’t imagine ANY woman turning you down!
Karen – I am sure that eventually even you would have done well at the gold mines.
When I read a translation of the Quran I didn’t notice anything about this topic.