Oh they don’t mind, they’re used to it
Young people are so spoiled these days. They just want to fritter away all their time in school when they could be sold into slavery I mean ‘marriage’ to pay off their fathers’ gambling debts. Why, when I was growing up, four year old girls were sold so their fathers could buy an ice cream cone, and they were thankful for the opportunity. Kids are so selfish now.
Shabana, a pretty Afghan teenager with a modern haircut, was 12 years old when she was forced to marry a man 38 years her senior to settle her father’s 600-dollar gambling debt. Two years later, she is unhappy and angry. She doesn’t like her husband, 52-year-old farmer Mohammad Asef. “He is wild – he destroyed my hopes,” she said in their humble mudbrick home in the northern province of Balkh, speaking out only when Asef went into another room to take a call. She doesn’t get on with her husband’s first wife, who is aged 42 and lives with them. And she is disgusted with her father. “He sold me,” she told AFP.
Hopes? Her hopes? What hopes could she have, the ungrateful little brat? To get an education? To decide for herself whether and when to marry or not, and whom to marry or not? What to do with her life? Pfffff. She’s a girl; girls don’t get to hope things like that.
“When I came back, my father-in-law had gambled away all the harvest,” he said. “He promised me to get my money in one month but he couldn’t find it. I knew he wouldn’t because he is a very poor man. It was about 600 dollars. When he couldn’t find the money, I married his 12-year-old daughter in compensation.”
Well, obviously. Because if a man owes another man a lot of money that he doesn’t have, obviously it’s the nearest twelve-year-old girl who is the compensation. Obviously twelve-year-old girls aren’t people (let alone people with hopes, people who ought to be in school), they’re livestock, with a cash value, to be sold whenever their fathers are a little short of the ready.
Shabana, who likes to wear jeans and read novels and newspapers, was taken out of school. Now she spends most of her time doing chores in the simple house for which Asef cannot yet afford doors. The illegal practise of exchanging girls to settle debts, including those owed to opium farmers, or to settle disputes between clans persists around the country…[M]en hold sway and often break the law with impunity, including by marrying underage girls or using them to settle debts or feuds…Between 60 and 80 per cent of all marriages are believed to be ‘forced’ – a term that covers a range of practises including marrying off girls to repay debts or without their consent, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. This is one of the main factors behind girls and women running away from home or committing suicide, including by setting themselves alight by dousing themselves in fuel and igniting it with a match.
I can’t see why. Why would a normal right-thinking young girl not want to leave school in order to move in with a 52-year-old man and his wife to be the man’s sex toy and to spend most of her time doing chores? I can’t see anything unappealing or irksome in such a prospect, can you?
To be able to afford his own wife, Abdul Raheem, also from Balkh province, says he wants to marry off his 12-year-old sister as soon as he can. The family of the woman he has set his heart on wants 6,000 dollars for her. Raheem, who earns 60 dollars a month as a cleaner in a police station in Mazar, has saved 2,000 dollars. “It’s very difficult for me to find 4,000 dollars,” he said. But if he could marry off his sister, “then I can marry my girlfriend,” he told AFP.
Well, whatever works for you, Abdul Raheem. Enjoy your $6000 dollar wife, and give my regards to your sister.
Being an excellent gambler, I once had a sweet run at baccarat, and won myself four and a half 12-year-old girls, the last one being the bottom half only — the most valuable half. Very tasty, that! I reckon if I play my cards right, I can parlay them into as many as a dozen 8-year-olds. And then it’s onto the futures markets in 12-year olds. A fortune in female stock!
For 600 U.S you think someone would have the decency to buy this poor kid her freedom?
Good point, Richard. I’m not a rich man, but I’d easily spend $600 to save a girl from a fate like that. Trouble is, a bidding war might start.
Disgusting, indeed. It is very telling that a large majority of marriages are ‘forced’, considering the young age of the girls.
On another note, notice that there is a first wife in the picture. My muslim friends tell me only the very poor or very rich have multiple wives. It doesn’t work if you need to supply each with the middle-class standard of living that they have a right to expect, with larger housing and so on. A ‘better standard of living’ ought to include liberation of women from more-or-less slavery to marry older, get more education, have a choice about family planning. Fundamentalism stops that hope dead in these societies.
We just saw that article about a similar situation here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/evolution-of-the-theses/2007/04/19/1176697005064.html?page=fullpage
“For every extra woman possessed by a high-status man, some less fortunate or less formidable Greek lacked a wife. Comparative anthropology shows the results of such a situation are all but guaranteed. Wherever there are “missing females” – from modern China and India to ancient Greece – there will be strife over women and fierce competition among men for the wealth and prestige needed to attract them.”
Losers, young males without prospects for good marriage… recipe for strife? This is a part of the attraction of fundamentalist VIOLENCE, too. Could taming terrorism be as simple as being able to fix up the young guys with a date?
And it ties also with the understanding of amok killings and mass shootings in the ‘comfortable’ western societies. The perps are losers without prospects, and their blowouts may be understood as a twisted and hateful degrading of a strategy for loose males in a hunter-gatherer environment without a strong rule of law.
I think you are probably right re the bidding war Doug!if this could ever be done it would have to be like(I cant remember the name)the charity that buys back slaves in the Sudan,quietly and localy in other words.Maybe we could look it up they may deal in that part of the world?
I just did a google on slave charitys cant find any thing specific to Afganistan yet?
I rather think you would just inflate the market…
And then, what about the Zimbabwean girls who haven’t made it to be note and commented on. Perhaps the UN could set up a broking agency in 12-year-old girls under the auspices of the World Bank?
“I can’t see anything unappealing or irksome in such a prospect, can you”?
Not at all, sure when the fifty two year old tires of the twelve year old, sure. Can he not dispense with her services and send her off packing to a similar type village as that of the Ghana women and children. Nothing, whatsoever erroneous about that! Sure – is it not after-all a man’s world? It is his world alone to do what he likes. If he wants to have sex with a child sure what is wrong with that.? He lives in a world, [that belongs entirely to his species.] which does not think there is anything wrong with that. Sure are they not all at it.? What a wonderful appealing prospect to have a child as a bride to do with her what he will? Maybe the next time – sure, he just might decide to have an eight/nine year old. What a great idea. Yeah, indeed! And if that bothers him after a while maybe just maybe a seven year old will do the trick. What a another appealing great prospect indeed, yet again. Sure what the blazes are all the western nations on about with their paedophilia lark sure haven’t we have the life of Mohammed since time began when it comes to child sex brides/ownership. THE WORLD BELONGS TO US AND CHILDREN/WOMEN ARE IN THIS WORLD FOR ONLY ONE PURPOSE THATTO SATISFY OUR SEXUAL/EMOTIONAL /MOTHERLY/BABYISH/NURTURING/WORKING NEEDS. She is a chattel, a harlot, a slut a whore, a frump, a stupid idiot, a rural village, a creep a harpy. Whatever we decide she is. She is. SHE IS OUR PROPERTY. IF WE WANT TO SLAY HER – WE WILL. IF WE WANT TO BEAT HER, WE WILL. IF WE WANT TO CUT OFF HER NOSE, WE WILL. IF WE WANT TO STONE HER, WE WILL. IF WE WANT TO KILL HER, WE WILL. WE WILL, WE WILL. There is after-all nobody to stop us. it is our very own world. PERIOD.
See: B&W ‘In focus’ SAD Ghana article and others. Well worth reading!
Paedophilia stinks no matter what country it is practiced in whether it be under the guise of marriage throughout Asia or underground in America/Europe. It is about time that women started weeding out the paedophile perpetrators of this world.
The catholic Chuch who have had an abominable record in Industrial Schools throughout Ireland have been somewhat held accountable.
Meanwhile, in Italy, bishops are busy railing at a BBC documentary about papal cover-ups of paedophilia. Fancy that.
Clerics everywhere have got the bit between their teeth; they’re all intent on telling everyone what to do (and protecting themselves and shoving past crimes under the carpet).
OB: “Clerics everywhere have got the bit between their teeth”
The holyIrish/American/Austrialian
Canadian/Catholic/Cassocked/Clerics got more than ‘the bit’ between their teeth. Crikey, they purportedly by all Industrial Schools/religious/ accounts habitually got it between their unchristian, unchristlike uncharitable unchartered crooked crickety crawly decrepit ungodly legs “and protecting themselves and shoving past crimes under the carpet)”. There are a lot of cassocks out there which held more than credo legs behind them. Perhaps cabins in the past should have been built around them to stop their unclerical caper movements.
“There are a lot of cassocks out there which held more than credo legs behind them. Perhaps cabins in the past should have been built around them to stop their unclerical caper movements.”
A+++
+MEN to you as well – with Credo in unum Deum, legs on! MEA MAXIMA CULPA!
Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope.
It instructs bishops on how to deal with allegations of child abuse against priests and has been seen by few outsiders.
Critics say the document has been used to evade prosecution for sex crimes.
Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae …[E]t in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum.
MEA MAXIMA, MAXIMA, MAXIMA CUPLA. ++++?
And yet he doesn’t hesitate to tell everyone else what to do, from Rome to Sao Paulo and back again. It’s an outrage.
And as if all this weren’t enough, gambling is against Islam. As in haram. As in sinful.
Some consolation follows, it would seem, in thinking that if Islam is true then this poor girl’s dear old dad is going straight to hell.
He is hardly going to air his grimy MUCKY SMEARED TARNISHED MOTTLED FLECKED GROTTY SMUDGED ENCRUSTED CAKED Vatican linen out on any of the Vatican verandas let alone from the balconies of SAO PAULO, Brazil.
Whilst in Brazil Pope Benedict castigated popular culture for promoting sexual immorality
Yet he can get his own house in order. See: SEX CRIMES AND THE VATICAN CITY @ PADDY DOYLE’S GOD SQUAD WEBSITE
He also canonized Brazil’s first native-born saint before hundreds of thousands of faithful and a sea of flags in the world’s largest Roman Catholic country.
Brazil is a lucrative market. A very strong catholic stronghold. He would have to be seen to canonize someone from there. Holding up Friar Antonio de Sant’Anna Galvao as a model of rectitude and humility “in an age so full of hedonism,” Benedict said the world needs clear souls and pure minds, adding; “It is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage.”
Canonizing, preaching powdery brainwashing bunkum – and ridiculing/threatening those who see through him and those who do not toe his sacred line will be by him excommunicated was also undoubtedly on the agenda. As well, as – I might add -lifting babies up in the Brazilian air.
B&W DEBUNKING THE VATICAN RULES OK!
‘”in an age so full of hedonism,” Benedict said the world needs clear souls and pure minds…’
I would love to hear a coherent explanation out of these godmongers for once as to what is bad about hedonism. Not enough suffering in the world? What inherently is there in pleasure-seeking that inevitably causes harm?
What’s better? Painism? I’m against that. (Anybody know the Greek for “pain”?)
‘Pathos’ is suffering. The pope probably favours pathism. Typical.
If these religious bigwigs are so against hedonism, and believe that suffering is so good for the “soul” (I guess that’s “character.”), then why does it seem that they all live in palaces and take long vacations?
And it’s a safe bet that they don’t live on gruel and treacle.
Hedonism without responsibilty is a heck of a problem Doug!
Richard:
*Anything* without responsiblity is a problem. I just don’t see what’s special about hedonism. Of course people ought to look to the consequences of their actions and evaluate them. That principle applies no matter what strategy they pursue.
Fair point Doug!increasingly people are not looking at the consequences of their actions though,also other people seem un willing to hold them acountable.
“Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope”.
“Cardinal Ratzinger also instructed that all cases should now be referred to his office directly and that he would maintain ‘exclusive competence’ over the handling of allegations. This is the Catholic Church’s policy to this day and Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI.
The policy laid out in the above document has led to systemic failure by the result that a significant number of priests have, in effect, been allowed to abuse again, and further children have been put at risk”.
Christian Brother’s who ran Ireland’s Industrial School’s were allegedly notorious for sexually abusing young boys in their care. At the ongoing Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Dublin [2006] one of its leaders ascertained that the organisation was not cognisant of the effects of SEXUAL ABUSE on children. A discovery was read out to him by a shrewd woman barrister which contradicted his claims. The leader thus had to concede.
This had occurred at the late stage of the hearings but up till then he had tried to pull the wool over the judge’s eyes.
HE WAS BASICALLY CAUGHT out.
THE RELIGIOUS SISTERS OF MERCY WHO RAN GOLDENBRIDGE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL WERE ALSO FOUND WANTING. They TOO tripped up once to often.
See FERNS REPORT.
Regarding the BBC film that Colm O’ Gorman made….I read in the Irish Independent today that the Italians have gone absolutely stark raving mad over it. Surprisingly, though right-wing parliamentarian Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy’s wartime dictator said the film should be shown to the people if the producers and others tried to use it to attack the Church.
The BBC documentary examined what it described as secret Vatican documents setting out procedures to deal with general abuse of confessional secrets by priests to silence their victims.
The original document, written in 1962 was updated in 2001 to deal more specifically with paedophilia as the Church around the world became embroiled in a string of sexual abuse scandals.
Taken from: B&W section
“The head of the parliamentary committee that oversees RAI, Mario Landolfi of the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, said yesterday that he had written to the director-general urging him not to allow screening of the documentary. To do so would be to turn the public network into an “execution squad ready to open fire on the church and the pope”, he said.
The row has blown up at a time when the Catholic Church in Italy is bringing its weight to bear in public life more than at any time since the demise of the country’s Christian Democrat party“.
Christine Buckley who was in Goldenbridge was the first to highlight “abuse” that occurred in Goldenbridge Industrial school. See: Dear Daughter. 1996
A local parish priest in Co Wexford allegedly abused Colm O’ Gorman [who was never in an institution ] – when he was a boy of fourteen. See: Ferns Report.
Colm O’ Gorman some years ago out of nowhere stepped into the “abuse” [for want of a better word] world that was initially set up by Christine Buckley et al. All the groundwork was by her et al done. There was deep antipathy; as it was reckoned by all accounts that the government wanted to hide behind its sackcloth’s and ashes vis-à-vis institutional abuse. AS IT WAS THE CRUCIAL principal CARER Secular clerical abuse would be the very screen to hide behind.. Colm was treated with kid gloves. The media could not get enough of him. Various governments including the opposition vied for his person to join their parties, of which he subsequently chose The Progressive Democrats. Yuk! A very bad decision , in my humble estimation. He was also just newly made Senator. Victims/survivors while very pleased about his Senator-ship feel are very cut up about the fact that Christine Buckley. They/I earnestly believe that she [Christine] should not have been by the government ignored. She, too at one stage tried to get into politics. But failed by a small margin. It is all very manufactured. The government knows that victims/survivors are not in the main educated and will not notice the machination.
[Angela Bonavoglia is the author of the book Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church (Harper-Collins/ReganBooks).]