Girls as
young as nine married off in Saudi
Khaleej Times - 03 March, 2006
How does it feel to be married at an age when it
is a period of playing children's games?
The Arabic daily Al
Watan spoke to some Saudi women about their experiences of being
married at a very young age, and suddenly finding themselves in
adult situations for which they were unprepared. According to the
daily, the fault was in the lack of awareness on the part of the
girls' families.
One of the women was married off when she
was 14, because her father decided she had enough education and
should marry. Her husband now calls her “illiterate.”
Another
of the girls was the victim of her stepmother who wanted to get rid
of her and saw marriage as the way to do so. A father saw a solution
for his indebtedness in marrying off his 14-year-old daughter.
Another girl thought if she married, she would escape from the hell
of living with her father but she ended up living in an even worse
hell of her husband's.
According Naser Al Suhaibi, a marriage
official, in the absence of strict laws that guarantee young girls
their childhood freedom, there were even cases of girls as young as
nine being married off. Al Suhaibi said that many scholars rule out
the matter of age as long as the father agrees to the marriage. He
said that there was no law preventing marriage officials from
performing these marriages.
Umm Nuf said her father came to
tell her that she was to marry. "I was 14 at that time and he did
not even bother to ask how I felt. I was happy as a child because I
had nice clothes and lots of toys. When I got married, I found
myself in a strange world. I did not know what to do and my mother
never taught me anything,” she said. She now has four children and
her husband wants to marry another wife because he thinks she is
illiterate and that he needs an educated wife.
Even if the
marriage of young girls is a success, there can be a lingering sad
feeling. Zena, a young wife, said that she was forced to marry her
stepmother's brother. “After my mother's death, my father married a
bad woman. As soon as she entered our house, things changed. She
stopped me from going to school and forced me to agree to marry her
brother. He was 10 years older than I was and he turned out to be a
kind and loving man. I still remember, however, that I was forced to
marry and had no opportunity to agree or disagree,” she
added.
Nadia said that her father had contracted a debt that
he could not repay, and wanted her to marry at a very young age. “My
father told me that I had to marry his friend in order to keep him
from going to jail for not repaying the debt. I had to accept and so
I married the man. Those were the worst years of my life. My
marriage did not last; I was divorced after three years. My future
has been destroyed and because of the forced marriage, I was unable
to go to university and continue my education,” she said.
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