Wealthy tourists from the Persian Gulf are paying to marry under-age Egyptian girls just for the summer, according to a report.
These temporary marriages are not legally binding and end when the men return to their homes in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
The tourists pay a 'dowry' to poor families through intermediaries with prices ranging from £320 to £3,200.
On a related note, I read statistics recently that said over 90% - 90%! - of Egyptian women have been mutilated through Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), the female form of circumcision, where a girl's clitoris and labia are cut away by a local midwife; my apologies for the gruesome truth, but in some cases her vaginal opening is stitched to make it smaller, so as to make sexual intercourse painful for her so "honor" will be preserved.
 |
| She deserves better. |
Sadly, it doesn't seem to prevent rape, statutory or otherwise.
Dr Hoda Badran, who chairs the NGO Alliance for Arab Women, told the Sunday Independent that she believed poverty was the major cause of the trade.
She said:'If those families are in such a need to sell their daughters you can imagine how poor they are. Many times, the girl does not know she is marrying the husband just for the short term.
'She is young, she accepts what her family tells her, she knows the man is going to help them. If the girl is very poor, sometimes it is the only way out to help the family survive.'
Poverty is not solely to blame. What no one will say is that it is the cultural morals, or lack thereof, of a fundamentalist Islamic society. A society that places little to no value on women, and believe that the sexual exploitation of the young is normal. Let us not forget that the prophet Mohammed took a 9-year-old as his wife.
By the way, note the origins of these men - our alleged allies. Filthy pederasts, one and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment