On Women’s day, can we please make child marriage illegal among India’s minority community?

Posted on by Chaiwallah

Here is a thought. Could we please make child marriage illegal in India? In fact, could we do it today? And this is not just because today is International Women’s Day. This is because banning child marriage is the right thing to do. And always has been.

You might be taken aback at my request. Isn’t child marriage already illegal in India? We have all heard that the minimum age for marriage in India is 18 for females and 21 for males.

Except, that is simply not true. A Muslim girl can marry legally as soon as she reaches puberty, which could be around 14 or 15. No, I am not making this up. This provision has been tested in multiple courts of law and always been found to be 100% legal. Most recently, in February this year when the Punjab & Haryana High Court ruled thus.

Read that headline and weep. This is our country in 2021. The courts have repeatedly ruled that a Muslim girl who has attained puberty is “free” to marry as per her wishes. What free choice and agency can a 14 year old kid have with respect to marriage? I cannot say. However I can tell you that with laws like these, it will be hard to look any other modern democracy in the eye.

And before you ask: this also applies to a minor girl who converts to Islam from some other community. Accordingly, the following scenario would be completely legal. A grown man, say 40 years old, approaches a 14 year old Hindu girl for “marriage.” If the 14 year old “decides” to become a Muslim, she can now legally marry her 40 year old suitor. This is our country and these are our laws.

Of course, you never hear about anyone raising this issue. Because doing so would be against woke feminism.

I have compiled here a brief wish list for Women’s Day. If anyone believes I am asking for something that is unjust or unfair, I would love to know.

(1) Ban child marriage: As mentioned above, child marriage is still legal for Muslim girls. Let us ban this.

(2) Equal inheritance rights for males and females: As per Muslim personal law, daughters receive only half the inheritance that sons are entitled to. Let us change this. For all other communities, the inheritance laws have been amended a long time ago to give equal rights to males and females.

(3) Ban female genital mutilation: Believe it or not, our Honorable Supreme Court is still sitting on a case of whether female genital mutilation should be allowed among baby girls in the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. The latest I have heard is that an entire division bench is trying to figure out whether this is right or wrong. Could we help them out by passing a law banning this?

As you can see, this is not a very long list. If we convene a special session of Parliament, we can sort out this matter today itself. And just in case these measures do not pass, we will have an official list of politicians who are in favor of child marriage, in favor of female genital mutilation and against property rights for women. It would surely help voters make good decisions if this list becomes publicly available.

I have a smaller, fourth item on my wish list. Show these three points to anyone who claims to be woke, liberal or feminist. And if you find that they are against any of the three items I mentioned here, never take them seriously ever again.

8 thoughts on “On Women’s day, can we please make child marriage illegal among India’s minority community?”

  3. Thanks for writing this one! How can Women’s day be celebrated when the law in 50+ Muslim-majority nations demeans women?

    The sharia law advocates and supports pedophilia, polygamy, instant divorce, marital rape, domestic violence and other forms of torture of women.

    “Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an.”
    (Tabari IX:113 i.e. from the last sermon)

    Narrated `Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).
    (Sahih al-Bukhari 7:62:64)

    Narrated `Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, “If a man invites his wife to sleep with him and she refuses to come to him, then the angels send their curses on her till morning.”
    (Sahih al-Bukhari 7:62:121)

    “Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and all Muslim women to draw cloaks and veils all over their bodies (screening themselves completely except for one or two eyes to see the way). This will be more conducive to their being recognized [as decent women] and not annoyed. But [withal,] God is indeed much- forgiving, a dispenser of grace “(Koran 33:59)

    Wife-beating in Islamic nations is more prevalent than one can imagine. The Institute of Medical Sciences has estimated that in Pak, a wife can be beaten for giving birth to a daughter or cooking an unsatisfactory meal. After the African country of Chad attempted to outlaw wife-beating, Islamic clerics in that nation deemed the bill “un-Islamic.”

    Honor killings are performed throughout the Muslim world. According to the Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani human rights organization: “At least 675 Pakistani women and girls were murdered during the first nine months of the calendar year 2011 for allegedly defaming their family’s honor.” Almost 77 % of such honor cases ended in acquittals.

    Mohammed was 49 years of age when he became betrothed to Aisha, the daughter of one of his closest friends. At the time, she was 6 years of age.3 years later, after she completed her first menstrual cycle, Aisha and Muhammad consummated their union. At the time, Mohammed was 52 and Aisha was 9. Unfortunately, the Islamic practice of marrying a child bride of the age of 9 is still practiced today.

    Almost 96% of Muslim women undergo FGM or female genital mutilation in which their clitoris is removed. Sometimes their vaginal lips are sewn(Infibulation or husband stitch). The husband removes this stitch only on the wedding night.

    Muta(pleasure) marriage allows men to marry temporarily for one night. Even in a normal marriage, the wife can be divorced if the guy says Talaq thrice. Yet Islamic countries do very little to bring in social reforms.

    Living in a misogynistic society, women under Islamic rule have internalized misogyny. Take the case of Rofayda Qaoud aged 13, a Palestinian raped by her brothers, aged 20 and 22.Her mother Amira then suffocated her with a plastic bag for dishonoring her family, then sliced her wrists and also hit her head with a stick. She killed her own daughter in 15 min flat. The reaction of Rofayda’s 9-year-old sister, Fatima, to all this: My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people. I love my mother much more now than before. Horrifying, isn’t it?

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    1. Pooja, you forgot one. When a divorced woman and her husband decide to re-marry, the wife will have to marry Imam first and then marry her previous husband again.

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      1. Oh yes! The nikah halala…One wonders which sadist came up with all these things. They cannot even leave their religion as both apostasy and blasphemy is punishable by death in many Islamic nations and also by civil liabilities such as seizure of property, right to custody of children, annulment of marriage, loss of inheritance rights. This is hypocritical for a religion that forces non-Muslims to apostatize from their current faith and convert to Islam.

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  4. If we cannot come up with the laws against years old Muslim tradition, the least we can say is we are following the rest of the world’s civilized countries in coming up with laws. How many civilized countries in the world have laws different for Muslims and the rest of the population? Recently, the Swiss government banned Burkha.

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  5. The biggest obstacle to the progress of the Muslim community has been the Congress party which has looked at the other way at every transgression of the community. The second biggest obstacle is Indian media which hides all their wrong doings and gives them a free pass to do whatever they want to.

    The third biggest obstacle is Bollywood. According to a recent study, Bollywood movies show Muslims in positive light 84% of the time. Even when the criminal is a Muslim, it shows him as religious with a heart of gold, a victim of his circumstances.

    Our judiciary has their hands full trying to deal with Dahi Handi, Jalikattu, Deepavali and other Hindu festivals. Who can blame them for not having the time for other important issues ?

    BJP abolished Triple Talaq and brought dignity and freedom to millions of Muslim women (the freedoom report card ofcourse conveniently forgot this). It has to carry forward the momentum from that and bring in the laws to implement the 3 wishlist points in the blog.

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