8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband

CAIRO – 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.

A court in the central Oneiza region previously rejected a request by the girl's mother for a divorce and ruled that the girl would have to wait until she reached puberty to file a petition then.

There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage. Though a woman's consent is legally required, some marriage officials don't seek it.

But there has been a push by Saudi human rights groups to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon.

One Saudi human rights activist Sohaila Zain al-Abdeen was optimistic that the girl's divorce would help efforts to get a law passed enforcing a minimum marriage age of 18.

"Unfortunately, some fathers trade their daughters," she told The Associated Press. "They are weak people who are sometimes in need of money and forget their roles as parents."

It was not clear if the man received money for the divorce settlement. The man had given the girl's father 50,000 riyals, or about $13,350, as a marriage gift in return for his daughter, the lawyer said.

The 8-year-old girl's marriage was not the only one in the kingdom to receive attention in recent months. Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or young boys including a 15-year-old girl whose father, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate.

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.

There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty marriage gifts or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_saudi_child_marriage

 

Damn, just damn. What the fuck?

 

Unbe-fucking-lievable.:smt009

 

Just another reason I'm glad I live in the United States and NOT in Saudi Arabia.

 

While I try to be accepting of other religions, the extreme elements of any religion are usually the root cause wherever there is extreme suffering, injustice, and tragedy.

 

Actually, it is not considered "extreme" in Saudi Arabia...which is kind of the point, unfortunately.

 

sad!!!

but she should have a tight-ass 9th birthday party wit da loot!!!

 

What a world we live in.....

 

No wonder they are backwards.

 

that's exactly the reason WHY they are backwards. oh, they r not THAT backwards, btw.

 

I whish the girl the best and hope she will make the best out of her life in this society.
There was also a eight year old girl in I guess Yemen or Oman who did the same.
I found her so unbelivingly strong, to opose as a child and a woman against this in some parts so cruel muslim societiy.

What gives me hope is that those girls are getting help, and there are people in those societies who want changes and who are working for it, even when thier life is in danger.

 

There is probably no anthropological record to support this, but I'd be curious to know if the first instances of marriage were met with grudging acceptance from women? An institution they had no control over and robbed them of the sexual freedom to mate with whomever they pleased.

Of course today it is largely celebrated by women, after centuries of conditioning with the emergence of romantic love (c.f. medieval troubadours). Perhaps we need to see examples of these culturally unacceptable unions (by western standards) to understand how the institution has evolved and subtle ways it still seeks to control female sexuality.

 

This is an interesting point, Saty. You could ask this same question about many aspects of society as we know it. And, as you acknowledged (via inference), it's all academic fun anyway, as we have no idea of knowing.

I assume that the concept probably grew over time as a result of changing requirements of the community/society, then became entrenched within the ritual and framework. I would ask, in addition, to consider whether it was a chicken or egg type thing? IE - did marriage evolve as a way to control female sexuality? or did it become easier for females to have a single partner and marriage came from that? And didn't it, in theory, control human sexuality? Not just female?

Also - we may have evolved with the concept such that we are now almost incapable of living (as a whole) without it? A lack of identified framework may have been fine 10,000 years ago, but maybe not now? Just a thought.

 

I DEEPLY love you both and I wish I could write such great posts

 

Well, I can't speak for Saty, but I think you're pretty awesome TS...And sure, you do write great posts. If this forum were in Italian...then you'd be kicking ass!

 

Thanks adorable girl

 

We dont have to go back 10,000 years to have an example of a flourishing society without marriage.

Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World by Yang Erche Namu describes her Chinese Mosuo culture where there is no marriage. Men and women decide daily who they will sleep with that night.

 

Fascinating!

Youtube won't let me embed this clip of the Mosuo culture, so here is a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoTrARDa8BU

They have a matriarchal culture and there is no word for "father."

 

Yes, I believe marriage as an institution and monogamy as an idea evolved to initially resolve the issue of paternity in tribes and clans. Men wanted to know with greater certainty who the biological father(s) of local children were, which created the need to limit women's sexual choices. While is is true that marriage is supposed to limit men sexually as well; as an institution, it originates from patriarchal assumptions about the role of women in a given society.

Human societies seem infinitely malleable, so we can likely exist without marriage.

 

Yes you can.