updated
March 28, 2009
(4-29-10) Reem Al Numery: 2010 TIME 100 Most Influential People
Reem Al Numery, Nujood Ali re: 13 y/o Elham Mahdi’s murder
2009 International Women of Courage Awardee
(State Department website – emphasis added)
Reem Al Numery, Yemen
“I thought of ways to set fire to my wedding dress.”
In June 2008, at the start of her school vacation, 12-year-old Reem Al Numery was forced to marry her 30-year-old cousin.
“While my hair was styled for the ceremony, I thought of ways to set fire to my wedding dress,” Reem told Embassy officials in an interview. “When I protested, my dad gagged me and tied me up. After the wedding, I tried to kill myself twice.”
Reem is part of a recent cadre of young Yemeni girls who have defied their families and threats of violence to stand up for their rights. The legal age of consent for girls to marry in Yemen was recently raised to 17, but a combination of tradition and widespread poverty ensure that younger girls are often forced into matrimony in order to relieve economic pressure on their families. Customary practice dictates that the girls’ grooms wait until their bride is post-pubescent to consummate the marriage. [Why get married then?] This was not the case for Reem. She described to BBC reporters how her husband raped her: when she resisted sex, he choked and bit her and dragged her by the hair, overwhelming her by force.
The activism of Yemeni pre-teens sold into wedlock began with Nujood Al Ahdel, (Nujood Ali) another courageous child, who, at the age of ten, walked out of her forced marriage and successfully initiated divorce proceedings. Her inspiring story focused international attention on the plight of child brides.
Reem Al Numery shares the same lawyer and same circumstances with Nujood Al Ahdel, but faces additional obstacles. Reem’s father will not consent to her divorce, leading the judge to decree that, because she is a minor, she must remain married until she can make her own decisions at age 15. Reem’s lawyer is appealing the verdict, and Reem is currently living with her mother.
Since she is still legally married and since Yemeni law has no provisions for sexual abuse charges within a marriage, this 12-year-old is still at the mercy of her husband and her father. “My dad said he’ll kill me for defying him,” Reem told reporters in August 2008, “but I want to go back to school.”
“She told me that she wants to live a normal life, like any other girl her age, and I am afraid that is not possible yet,” Reem’s lawyer told the Yemen Times. “Sometimes she just wants to play and enjoy life like a young girl, and other times she is talking about things like a mature woman who has been married for long. This marriage experience has made her neither a girl nor a woman.”
Yemeni judges, hesitant to grant divorces to pre-teens, have been exposed to international pressure by the cases brought by Al Ahdel and other girls. The personal bravery of Reem Al Numery expands that focus to more complex and difficult cases of enduring paternal complicity, and challenges the Yemeni legal system to put an unequivocal end to this crime that robs girls of their childhood.
***
She is married – sold basically to her cousin. The age of consent is 17 and yet she is 12. And even though she is married – she is a minor and unable to make decisions until age 15. So by the judge’s own decree she has never had legal consent to anything – marriage and rape included.
No provisions in Yemeni law for marital rape.
How can these arab savages expect the West to take them seriously?
Madame Secretary Clinton: Women’s History Month
2009 International Women of Courage Awards
Poem presented to Madame Secretary Clinton: “Leaders”
2009 International Woman of Courage:
Wazhma Frogh, Afghanistan
Mutabar Tadjibayeva, Uzbekistan
Norma Cruz, Guatemala
Suaad Abbas Salman Allami, Iraq
Reem Al Numery, Yemen
Veronika Marchenko, Russia
Ambiga Sreenevasan, Malaysia
Hadizatou Mani, Niger
April 29, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Hello Christian.
[edited]
Thank you for your thoughts.
This seemed missed:
It does not exist in Sharia law.
Something has to exist before it can work. Or fail.
Yes, rapes, pedophilia, sex slavery, human trafficking, murder, arranged marriages, polygamy and violence against women occurs in the US and it is not relegated to one religion or demographic.
The difference is it’s against the law. Not so with Sharia where women and children are allowed to be treated, traded and executed like animals.
Evil is evil. Anywhere on the planet by anyone for any reason including religion. The difference is what evil is found acceptable.
Girls as young as 8 are allowed to be sold to cousins and great-grandfathers. Second graders left alone with men as old as 80 who have free reign to do whatever they want to a little girl half their size.
Where is the outrage of non-extremist Muslims?
Where is the outrage about 13 y/o Elham Mahdi being tied down and raped to death by her 30 y/o “husband”.
http://citizensagainstproobamamediabias.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/update-re-13-yo-elham-mahdi-raped-to-death/
Where’s the outrage over a doctor who sends a little girl home with the rapist who “ripped” her open?
Yes. This does anger me. As does the fact no Arab State has taken a stand and said enough.
If Sharia is not what Islam is all about – why aren’t these so-called moderate States standing up and saying so?
No to genital mutilation. No to burying daughters alive. Not to stoning wives to death. No to killing sisters in the name of honor. And no to marrying cousins in the name of religion.
Teenage girl being stoned to death in the street with the police standing by doing nothing, while the jackals cheer and jockey for position to take cellphone video.
VERY GRAPHIC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgSH0h45Eo
UN Arab Charter on Human Rights that no one enforces.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/loas2005.html?msource=UNWDEC19001&tr=y&auid=3337655
Tthe Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in which women are to have:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#article16
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, where children are considered anyone below age 18.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm
Charters without consequence.
Yemen wants to keep the minimum marriage for girls set at 17 and just throw out the punishment part.
The largest block in the UN – the Organization of the Islamic Conference made up of 56 mostly Muslim-majority countries passed a resolution that wants to make any criticism of Islam a crime.
“Combating Defamation of Religion”
http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/5a0fb9a15c41a265c1256ba40037c72f?Opendocument
And yes. Men who rape children, men who look the other way and “holy” men who sanction child rape in the name of religion are beasts. No matter what age, position, religion, country or race.
80 y/o man who bought and “married” his 11 y/o cousin:
http://www.alarabiyaDOTnet/articles/2010/01/21/98001.html
There is nothing in this world that could ever make rape of an 11 y/o girl by an 80 y/o man acceptable.
How is Real Islam characterized. The world hears no definitive agreement as to what the “real Islam” actually is. Just what it isn’t – radical extremism or whatever ism it is now. If extremism doesn’t represent Islam – why is Sharia allowed to exist?
Muslim cleric says Islam = submission
http://citizensagainstproobamamediabias.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/uk-cleric-islam-does-not-mean-peace-islam-means-submission/
Founder of Hamas’ son, who was raised Muslim says moderate Islam does not exist.
http://citizensagainstproobamamediabias.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/hamas-founders-son-moderate-muslim-doesnt-exist/
60% of Iraqi Kurdistan women/children have undergone genital mutilation.
http://www.stopfgmkurdistan.org/
Listen to the women (video) “Handful of Ash”
http://www.stopfgmkurdistan.org/html/english/resources.htm
Ash referring to what is smudged on mutilated genitals after the mutilation is complete.
Which moderate Muslim State practicing whatever this real Islam is is speaking out against the sanctioned violence of women and little girls in the Muslim world?
April 29, 2010 at 9:55 AM
Hello Arab American Muslim.
Thank you for your thoughts.
There are some very big differences you seemed to have overlooked.
In the US:
Every life is sacred.
People are not owned and sold.
Women have rights.
Women are not the property of their husband.
Women are free to pursue whatever they choose.
Mothers have parental rights.
Children have rights
Cartoonists can draw whomever/whatever they like.
Public executions: stoning, burying alive and beheading are not acceptable practices.
Pedophilia, child rape, marital rape and any other type of rape is not legal.
Marrying ones cousing at any age is not legal.
Tying down a 13 y/o girl and raping her to death is not legal.
Fathers selling their daughters to settle a debt or maintain a drug habit is not legal.
Mothers allowing it to happen is not legal.
Starving a wife because she denied her “husband” sex is not legal.
Beating a wife because she paid too much for a shroud she is forced to wear is not legal.
In the US:
People are not forced to practice religion.
People are not forced to blow themselves up in the name of religion.
People are not forced to kill their sisters, mothers, daughters, wives and grandmothers in the name of religion.
In the US:
Little girls’ genitals are not mutilated in the sake of religion.
Little girls aren’t forced to marry “holy men” in the name of religion.
Little girls are allowed to go to school – not disfigured with acid for wanting to learn.
Adult men who “marry” 8 year-old girls are considered savages. As are men who rape, beat and kill their female family members.
The justice system is not perfect but it exists.
And there are women policemen, physicians, lawyers and judges to make sure crimes against women and girls are prosecuted.
Your words:
Do you really believe that with a list like this – each and every one “acceptable” in Islam – anyone anywhere has to “smear the image of Arabs or Muslims”?