If my memory serves me correctly, the Prophet Muhammad married a nine year-old girl. As a result, these hard-line Muslims who follow the Quran literally feel it is acceptable to marry a child.
By the way, this is not exclusive of Muslims. Fundamentalist Christians, who follow the Bible literally, believe in its archaic nonsense as well. Proof of this is the recent claim to “finding” Noah’s Ark, the one described in the fairy tale story of the Flood in Genesis; the first book of the Bible. And how many thousands if not millions of Christians have traveled to the location where the imaginary Virgin sightings supposedly occurred?
Isn’t religion the best cocktail for making people ignorant? TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
ABUJA (AFP) – Cairo’s embassy in Nigeria said Thursday a 13-year-old girl at the centre of claims that a Nigerian senator had taken the minor as his fourth wife is still at school in Egypt.
The senator, Ahmed Sani Yerima, 49, meanwhile denied in an interview with the BBC that the girl was 13 and said that as a Muslim he had not broken any law by marrying the teenager.
“The girl is still in school in Egypt and nobody has complained to the embassy in respect of the girl,” Egyptian embassy spokesman Mohammed Saber told AFP.
He said however that the embassy “will follow the issue” because it is illegal in Egypt to marry an underage girl.
The Nigerian senate on Wednesday ordered an inquiry after claims by rights groups that Yerima had paid a dowry of 100,000 dollars to marry the girl.
Women’s groups protested outside parliament on Tuesday to urge the senate to investigate the claims.
In a telephone interview from Egypt with the BBC’s Hausa service on Thursday, Yerima defended himself.
“I don’t care about the issue of age since I have not violated any rule as far as Islam is concerned,” he said, describing those complaining as “detractors”.
“History tells us that Prophet Muhammad did marry a young girl as well. Therefore I have not contravened any law. Even if she is 13, as it is being falsely peddled around.”
A petition delivered to the senate by the rights groups said the marriage violated Nigeria’s Child Rights Act of 2003 forbidding marriage with anyone under 18. Violators face up to five years in jail.
It said Yerima “is in the habit of marrying minors and has gained notoriety in enticing girls to marry him, having contracted (a marriage) in 2006 with a 15-year-old girl called Hauwa?u, who the senator allegedly caused to drop out of school, as his fourth wife”.
It claimed the senator divorced Hauwa?u, when she was 17 and nursing his child, so that he could marry the Egyptian.
The petition urged the senate to investigate the allegations and to establish the name of the child-bride, her age and the circumstances of her entry into Nigeria.
Yerima was governor of Nigeria’s northwestern state of Zamfara when it became the first of 12 Muslim-dominated northern states to introduce Sharia law in 2000.
The National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons on Wednesday ordered the senator to appear before it to answer the allegations.
