Monday, February 9, 2009
8 year old Marriage
In today's news, a 8 year old girl is married off to a 47 year old man in Saudi Arabia. The extreme marriage deal was a result by the young girls father, who sold her daughter off to resolve his debt problem. According to CNN and Saudi Arabian Human Rights organization, these arranged marriages occur very often and girls as young as 10 are married off. According to Human Rights commissioner Turki Al Sudieri, organized marriages are perfectly legal. In addition, the highest Saudi religious authority the Grand Mufti, approves the organized marriages, making the effort to change the law almost impossible. What is your take on this situation in SA? How does anti-organized marriage groups combat this problem?
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Some of the things that happen in different cultures are just so outrageous to me that its hard to figure out what really is going on over there. They claim they have their reasons for doing these things that our culture does not, but how does an 8 year old girl married to a 47 year old man make ANY sense what so ever. These are the things that really confuse me about other cultlures and make me think that some of the things they do are so wrong
ReplyDeleteAlthough many cultures have different customs, I think that marrying and 8 year old to a 47 year old in order to pay a debt is disturbing. Its like how can an innocent 8 year old girl compete with the wisdom of a 47 year old male.
ReplyDeleteOn another note the usage of life as a form of repayment reminded me of how many English men and women would become indentured servants in order to come to America. So I guess that in a small way history seems to be repeating itself today.