"Un-Islamic" to outlaw child marriage - Pakistan (quote, Christianity, Christian)

[cupper3]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ed-un-islamic/

From the article:


But the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body which gives advice to parliament on the compatibility of laws with Sharia, appeared to slap down the legislation after deeming it "un-Islamic" and "blasphemous," according to Agence France Presse. It had already handed down a similar ruling in 2014.

These are the same zealots who said:

The council has garnered opprobrium in the past. In 2013, reports AFP, "it suggested making DNA inadmissible evidence in rape cases, instead calling for the revival of an Islamic law that makes it mandatory for a survivor to provide four witnesses to back their claims."

Welcome to the 21st century.

[mordant]

Unsurprisingly, the number of rapes -- which are inevitably done when the assaulter and victim are alone, sex itself being an act that even most rapists don't want an audience to -- for which there is even one witness, much less four, are basically zero. Such a rule drips with the assumption that men's sexual desires are women's fault, a notion that most secular societies got over a long time ago. Although there are faint echoes of it in Christian fundamentalism. I was taught as a preadolescent that immodest clothing (which inherently is something only women can wear, it would seem) was a major cause of sexual sin. While no evangelical would openly assert that the altitude to which skirt hems have risen or that necklines have plunged to should be considered in rape cases -- or would not assert that rape is rape is rape regardless of any real or imagined provocations -- they still teach their up-and-coming young ladies that they must not stir the passions of men through immodesty. Which is rather like suggesting that wealthy people should live in ramshackle houses to discourage robberies.

I don't see this as inherently a problem with Islam so much as that Islam has not been "gentled" by its own equivalent of the Enlightenment. Despite early advances in the sciences, especially mathematics, somehow Islam as a whole has never thrown off the hegemony of its fundamentalist wing. I don't see any evidence that this is anything but an unfortunate accident of history. It is possible that the interlocking system of memes that is Islam, lacks balance that the interlocking memes of Christianity provides ... but even there it's an accident of history. Some belief systems prove more adaptable in ways then others.

[thrillobyte]

I was taught as a preadolescent that immodest clothing (which inherently is something only women can wear, it would seem) was a major cause of sexual sin.

Only women can wear it because it is only the men who respond to it with their animal sexual instinct, it seems. "It's her fault I raped her because she excited me with her alluring provocative attire." Maybe burkas are a good thing after all in that part of the world.

[Toyman at Jewel Lake]

But of course anyone that suggests child rape is wrong...is labeled intolerant and a "racist" (even though Islam is a political system and not a race).