Respecting women 139
Here are three recent news stories:
From the Mail Online, a display of criminal ignorance by a UK judge:
A judge lambasted a rapist for claiming his victim was a liar – then commended him for becoming a Muslim. Judge Anthony Goldstaub QC sentenced Stuart Wood for seven years for the attack, then told him: ‘You have turned to Islam and this promises well for your future, particularly as you are now an adherent of a religion which respects women and self-discipline.’
From The Daily Star, Bangladesh, an example of how Islam respects women:
A septuagenarian moneylender has married a 13-year old girl in Muladi upazila [district] of Barisal after her poor father failed to repay him the borrowed money. The marriage between Akhinur and 75-year old Lokman Sikder was solemnised on September 4, as Azhar Bepari, father of the girl, could not pay Tk 4,000 he had borrowed from Lokman after cyclone Aila hit their Banimordhon village in May this year. Locals said Lokman took advantage of the financial crisis of the poor family and forced Akhinur’s parents to marry off their under-aged daughter to him in default of non-repayment of his credit. When The Daily Star correspondent visited the remote Muladi village after the marriage, there was literally no move to catch the moneylender, who coerced the Bepari couple to marry off their daughter to him [against her will] and also against the will of Lokman’s first wife Ayesha Bibi, 53.
And here’s an AP report giving another example from Yemen:
A 12-year-old Yemeni child-bride died after struggling for three days in labor to give birth … Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding on Friday while giving birth to a stillborn in the al-Zahra district hospital of Hodeida province, 140 miles (223 kilometers) west of the capital San’a. Child marriages are widespread in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, where tribal customs dominate society. More than a quarter of the country’s females marry before age 15 … Youssef was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia …