BBC defends Islamic child marriage in India

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While it is well-documented that thousands of children are falling victims of child marriage in a number of Islamic and Muslim nations, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya, Muslim-majority nations in African continent, and Muslim-majority nations in the former Soviet Union – this rogue practice is also continuing in several countries – including India amongst the Muslim population. In Bangladesh, although child marriage is strictly prohibited and a punishable crime under the existing law, due to alarming spread of radical Islam and notorious activities of various Islamist groups, including Tablighi Jamaat, child marriages are taking place mostly in the rural parts of the country.

According to counterterrorism expert and research-scholar Robert Spencer, child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law. He gave the following references:

Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.

“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria.

“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18.

This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law”, — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law

There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle”. — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council.

“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children”. — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology.

Robert Spencer said: “According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing”, and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house”. When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine”.

Now, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which has earned infame for promoting radical Islam as well as ISIS bride Shamima Begum, India’s popular news site OpIndia in a report titled ‘BBC, which employed the most famous pedophile in the world Jimmy Savile, comes out in support of child marriages in Assam’ said:

The Indian state of Assam is executing a massive crackdown against child marriages in the state right now, arresting thousands of people involved in these marriages. Thousands of cases have been filed and most of them have resulted in arrests.

While most sane people have praised the Assam government for cracking down on child marriages, the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has strongly come out in support of child marriages.

First BBC published a piece titled, “Indian women protest against child marriage mass arrest”, trying to push the theory that Indian women are somehow in favor of child marriages. Interestingly, BBC in its own report says that child marriages are prevalent in India due to patriarchal traditions, and then goes on to support that patriarchy.

If one report wasn’t enough, BBC came back to affirm that they really support child marriages in another piece titled, “Assam: India child brides desperate after mass arrests”. In this piece, the BBC writer Zoya Mateen argued that arresting men involved in child marriages leaves their child brides without any support.

Once again, the BBC tried to imply that this crackdown on child marriages is somehow discriminatory against Muslims since they are mostly involved in child marriages. Coming from any other source, it would have counted as racist and Islamophobic, but somehow BBC can get away with saying that Muslims indulge in child marriages.

BBC also goes on to say that cracking down on such child marriages will force these marriages underground, so what are we supposed to do BBC, allow child marriages overground? Allow 60 years old men to marry 8 years old girls?

If BBC feels so strongly about child marriages, and in fact believes that child marriages are good for society, then why doesn’t BBC fight for child marriages in Britain?

OpIndia in its article said, one of BBC’s biggest stars was Jimmy Savile, a pedophile who was infamous for sexually abusing children, while first allegations against him appeared in 1958. But BBC did not fire this notorious pedophile.

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