Great: Iraqi Faction Drafting Law Detailing Rules of Divorce for 8-Year-Olds, as a Backdoor Way to Say that Adult Men Can Marry 8-Year-Olds

The law doesn't say that 8-year-olds can marry, per se, but the fact that it encodes the law as to how they may be divorced seems to be a sneaky way to legally endorse the unthinkable.

The law actually specifies 9-year-olds, but, due to the vagaries of the Islamic calendar (which is shorter than an actual year), "9-year-olds" actually means, at their youngest, girls 8 years and 8 months old.

The current law in Iraq says that girls of 18 or older may marry at will, and those as young as 15 may marry with their parents' permission. And 15 seems young, but we've got laws like that in some states of the USA, too.

This new draft law, on the other hand, is unspeakable.

The proposed new measure, known as the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of a Shiite school of religious law founded by Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shiite imam. Iraq's Justice Ministry late last year introduced the draft measure to the Cabinet, which approved it last month despite strong opposition by rights groups and activists.

Of course, when they say "parental permission," they only mean the father: Only the father has the power to bless or refuse an underage marriage.

And they've got even more good stuff in there for women (or 8 year old girls, as the case may be) too:

Also under the proposed measure, a husband can have sex with his wife regardless of her consent. The bill also prevents women from leaving the house without their husband's permission, would restrict women's rights in matters of parental custody after divorce and make it easier for men to take multiple wives.

Well that's just special.

Meanwhile, feminists in America are deep in their own struggle: Bossily demanding that people stop calling bossy people bossy.

posted by Ace at 02:43 PM

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