AN ISLAMIC LEADER in southwest Dublin has given the okay to child marriage – once the girl gives her consent and the practice complies with state legislation.
Commenting on a recent case in Nigeria in which a well-known Muslim politician, Senator Sani Yerima, allegedly wed a 13-year-old Egyptian girl, the chief imam at Tallaght Mosque, Monsuru Somide, commented: “What Sharia states is that a girl can marry after the puberty... Islam makes this law to makes things easy, [so] in Islamic countries there is not this problem of unmarried people, it’s not too much common.”
Imam Somide, who hails from Nigeria, said he would not support such a practice in Ireland as its criminal and civil codes differ from those in northern Nigeria, where Sharia or Islamic law is in place.
“I’m under Irish law, and even the Qur’an says the law where you are staying is more superior... Our Prophet said you have to respect the law of the people that welcomed you to their own land.”
In Ireland, the age of sexual consent is 17, and people must be at least 18 years to legally marry.
However, the religious leader supported the prospect of a Muslim family in Ireland sending their 13-year-old daughter to a country where Sharia is practised in order to wed – if the proposed husband had the means to provide for her, and it was not forced.
“Yes it would be all right if they are staying in northern Nigeria where there is Sharia law, it is all right,” he said, when presented with such a scenario.
He added that the girl would have to consent to this. “If the girl doesn’t want to, they cannot force her,” he commented, adding that forced marriages are nevertheless common in northern Nigeria.
Of Senator Sani Yerima’s situation, he said: “The former governor is a wealthy person; he can provide housing for the girl, cloth her and feed her.”
Asked of sexual relations, he said “yes, if she’s a mature girl,” noting that she must have commenced menstruation.
Laws in the girl’s homeland of Egypt prohibit juvenile marriage.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Minister for Women’s Affairs Josephine Anenih has condemned the practice and vowed to take action.
“I will call a stakeholders’ meeting to deliberate on it and find a lasting solution to it,” she said. “Men who abuse vulnerable children, men who marry 13-year-old children, I think such men should not be spared. They should be made to face the wrath of the law.”
Senator Yerima is the former governor of Zamfara State and was influential in the introduction of Sharia law across Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated northern states. The 13-year-old girl is believed to be the fourth of his current wives.
According to Unicef, the practice of girls marrying at a young age is most common in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. However, in the Middle East, north Africa and other parts of Asia, marriage at or shortly after puberty is commonplace among some groups.
The organisation says that in countries like Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Niger, more than 60 per cent of women “entered into marriage or into a union” before their 18th birthdays.
A French Muslim under threat of his passport being revoked for allegedly practicing polygamy says he has only one wife but several mistresses.
Lies Hebbadj was born in Algeria but became a French citizen through marriage in 1999. His situation came to light after his wife Anne was fined for driving while wearing an Islamic veil, deemed dangerous by French police.
The country’s interior minister has asked the Minister for Integration to look into revoking Hebbadj’s French nationality as information he possessed showed the man was a polygamist married to four women with 12 children.
However, Hebbadj denied having more than one wife, saying the other women were his lovers.
The French government, meanwhile, is pursuing plans to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public.
