America has invested a lot to secure Iraqi freedom and a bill in their parliament amending their marriage laws is set to prove that democracy and Islam is a reprehensible combination. A bill in Iraq’s parliament that would lower the marriage age from 15 to 9 passed its first reading.
If the amendments are approved, Iraqis would have the option to adhere to religious laws for regulating marriage and family issues. Specifically, the revised law would give Muslim clerics the authority to formalize marriage agreements without involving the court, which could potentially lead to the legalization of child marriages.
The Personal Status Law of 1959, which remained in effect during the Hussein regime, governed matters related to marriage, divorce, and inheritance. This law was a mix of Islamic jurisprudence and secular provisions, and it is this law that would be amended by the bill in the Iraqi parliament.
In Islamic tradition, the concept of child marriage can be traced back to the marriage of Muhammad to his third wife, Aisha, who was reportedly around 6 or 7 years old when the marriage contract was signed, and 9 or 10 years old when the marriage was consummated. This has been used as a precedent to justify child marriages in some Muslim-majority countries and communities.
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Do keep in mind that the legal age for girls to marry in America and much of Europe was 10 years old up until the early 1800s. Those were Christian nations. 14-16 years old was the most common ages until the 1900s. People typically stayed with the same person their entire life back then also. It’s amazing how that works when people don’t sleep around with a dozen people and then finally marry one of the many at 25 or 30… only to eventually divorce and sleep around with a few more. For whatever reason, Christian girls are now encouraged to go along with the world’s model of waiting until 25 or so as well. Then we wonder why there are just as many people not waiting until marriage to sleep together and then getting divorced as the world.
“Do keep in mind that the legal age for girls to marry in America and much of Europe was 10 years old up until the early 1800s. Those were Christian nations.” – this is insincere. most of these child marriages were between royalty for reason of diplomacy and were not consummated until much later. indeed many times the bride would not even remain in the same country as the spouse until they were an adult. 14-16 is also incorrect. look up “Hajnal line” which is research which demonstrates that in western europe the average age of marriage was in the 20s during the medieval period for both parties, and there was often very little age gap.
Sorry, the 14-16 year range was the pre-early 1800s America. It was common even into the early 1900s. In fact, up until about a decade or two ago, the vast majority of those who had marriages that made it to their 75th anniversary married when the wife was in her teens. Nearly all those I have personally spoken with that made it to their 75th married in their teens, and some of those were in the 14-16 years range. Medieval Europe was a different dynamic in many ways. Marrying a girl that a man was left to take care of was often not a moral necessity like it was in the states, but marriage was available as a legal option throughout the vast majority of both continents nonetheless. Let’s not rewrite reality and history to accommodate modern narratives. People do this with the Bible all the time as well.