http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6201769.ece




Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}An eight-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia has won a divorce from her 50-year-old husband at the third attempt.
The girl, who has not been named and who has been living with her mother in the city of Onaiza, was given to the older man in marriage by her father to pay off a debt. Neither his wife nor the child were told that the marriage had taken place.
A previous judge, Sheikh Habib al-Habib, refused twice to annul the marriage but said that he would look again at the case when the child reached puberty. He had also imposed a condition that the marriage should not be consumated until the girl reached puberty. The case was dismissed because the judge said that the girl’s mother did not have the right to file for divorce on her behalf.
Abdullah al-Jeteli, the lawyer for the girl, said that he had reached an out-of-court settlement enabling the divorce to go ahead.
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The case has reopened the debate in Saudi Arabia on whether a minimum age for marriage should be introduced. After the first two petitions failed, the Saudi newspaper columnist Amal al-Zahid wrote: “The trafficking of child brides — a most reactionary practice that takes us back to the days of concubines [and] slave girls” should be outlawed. She added that the country was incurring “behavioural abnormalities and problems of which only Allah knows”.
Human rights groups in Saudi Arabia and abroad have condemned the practice of child marriages. The divorce rate in Saudi Arabia has risen from 25 per cent to 60 per cent in the past two decades. Ann Veneman, director of Unicef, said: “Unicef joins many in voicing concern that child marriage contravenes accepted international standards of human rights.”
Some attempts are being made to strengthen women’s rights. The Justice Ministry is reported to be considering reforms to impose a minimum age for marriage and to end abuses of the system by fathers of girls.
In February King Abdullah appointed Norah al-Fayez as the Deputy Minister for Women’s Education, the first woman minister in the kingdom. It has also signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Despite such efforts, many traditionalists in positions of influence in government and religious life are becoming more strict in their observance of Islamic law. The country’s highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh, has said that it is not against Islamic law to marry girls under the age of 15.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6201769.ece

It is a very sick mind, that justifies sexual lust for a child, by calling it love, no matter what society they come from.

Without equal maturity, and equal ability to make informed consent, the simple fact is that the 'power person' is manipulating the 'weaker person', for their own perverse sexual gratification, and only filthy sick pervs would ever consider the 'love' defense as anything but a further display of their aberrant mental function.

Paedophiles are sick, but their sickness can never be accepted as justification, or even mitigation for their wrongful behaviour, and any person who recognises themselves as having sick desires should be seeking full psychiatric, and medical help, before they ever act on it, and destroy the lives, and trust and innocence, of any child.

Chemical castration is available for the incorrigible, who have any conscience, and a length of barbed wire is available for those who don't, with a long list of volunteers to assist them to self assess.

I'm sorry Aussie Nationalist. It's just those gosh darn American values of mine kicking in.

You know, the ones that think you have the free right to do pretty much everything you want save for killing, stealing, vandalizing... if it doesn't infringe on the life or property of another. Then no crime has been commited.

But maybe I'm just too oldschool for your brave new Ayran world...

Polygamists. Don't you think that's mental manipulation? Don't you think that if a woman is willing to degrade herself, and "share" her man. That maybe she is emotionaly unstable, and this man is taking advantage of her to get some extra pussy?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. That's hard to say. And even if it wasn't. Should it really be the government's job to police us so harshly? I don't believe it's government's role to police us for being assholes. Just immeasurable crimes with physical, tangible, results. Not abitary results of mental abuse. If that were the case, give my smacking ex the chair!