Militant atheism
Simon added a link to his delicious feed yesterday to a sad news story from Yemen.
His comment with the link was ” Not to worry - God says it’s OK.”
I read the article carefully, and it appears that the father believed it was ok to give his daughter in marriage because he was destitute and possible had mental health problems.
The Guy receiving the girl beleived that he was perfectly entitled to a wife so young, and nobody seems to explain why he thinks that.
The law that says it’s ok to marry off your children below the age of 15 is part of Yemeni civil law.
So far I find nothing in this article that suggests that anybody was doing this for religious reasons.
In fact Yemen is primarily Muslim, with small numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu as well (According to the CIA world factbook).
IslamAwareness.net says
“Woman has the right to accept or reject marriage proposals. Her consent is a prerequisite to the validity of the marital contract, according to the Prophet’s teaching. It follows that if an “arranged marriage” means the marrying of a female without her consent, then such a marriage may be annulled if the female so wishes:”
and the Sunni body has said
“Marriage in Islam is regulated by certain rules, namely, children must reach puberty and maturity so that they can get married”
So I totally fail to see a religious angle on this story, but Simon as an avowed atheist wanted to make a snide comment about religion, using a non-supportive story as the basis.
Shame on your Simon, that kind of behaviour is normally restricted to the religious bigots that you hate so much.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Militant atheist? Yes, and proud of it. For too long, we atheists have been far too timid, too scared of offending anyone. Enough. I’m solidly with Dawkins on this.
“Nobody seems to explain why he thinks that”? It’s bleenin’ obvious why he thinks that. It;’s ‘cos his spiritual leader married a six-year-old.
Granted, you’ll find other bits of his holy book that says the opposite. This is ‘cos the holy books are all just made up, and made up stuff usually isn’t self consistent. Only the truth is necessarily self consistent.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
It’s a hilarious double-standard that you actually have to pick up a gun and kill somebody to be considered a ‘militant’ believer, but all you have to do to be considered a ‘militant’ atheist is write a blog post.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Well, technically this isn’t based on religious reasons. However you could argue that the Prophet of Islam set a rather bad example marrying a child. Or you could argue that religious beliefs about women and girls being subservient to their parents, husbands and wives are the cause. The beliefs aren’t always religious, but religion tends to be the trump card in alot of cases.
However, the most adequate explanation is that Yemen is a dirt poor country. It has absolutely no oil, the majority if the popiulation is stoed most of the time (the drug they take is called quat), it was the only Arab country to even have a communist civil war… it is basically an odd ball, and extremely poor and backward.
It isn’t as much “bad religious practice” as bad cultural practice. Different problems, same solution. Reason, individual freedom and wealth seem to be the key.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Firstly, I currently sit next to Simon B, and he knows that I’m not being serious about ebing offended.
I use the term militant in the same sense that Simon would use the term to mean someone who attaches their “truth” or meaning to any news story. A militant christian is someone who always tries to remind you that you are going to hell for example.
Anyway, I thought it was interestingly funny that Simon disclaims what Christians do, but then goes and does the same himself
Must go, pub is calling