In a case that could spur the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to set minimum age limits for marriage, a girl who was wed at age 11 to an 80-year-old man has been granted a divorce.
In exchange for a dowry of about $22,000, the girl, now 12, was forced to marry her father's cousin last year.
Part of the difficulty in imposing marriage age restrictions in this strictly religious society is attributable to the fact that Islam's most revered figure, the Prophet Muhammad, himself wed a 9-year-old girl.
In January, however, Sheikh Abdullah al-Manie, a senior Saudi cleric, said Muhammad's 7th-century marriage could not be used as justification for today's child marriages, the Indian Express reported.
2 comments:
yuck.
yuck, indeed.
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