Welcome to austerity
Saudi Arabia has seen the error of its ways. Or perhaps not.
Saudi Arabia says it plans to start regulating the marriage of young girls, amid controversy over a union between a 60-year-old man and a girl of eight. A court in Unaiza upheld the marriage on condition the groom does not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.
Oh good; because the only problem with marrying a child of 8 to a man of 60 is of course that she won’t much want him to fuck her, yet. There is no other problem. No problem with ending her schooling, no problem with her having to live with (and under the rule of) a man more than seven times older than she is, a man old enough to be her great-great-grandfather, a man she didn’t know and didn’t ask to marry, a man with whom she can be assumed to have absolutely nothing in common. No problem with consigning her to what amounts to a long prison sentence when she is too young to have committed a crime by any sane legal definition. No problem with deciding her life before she is anywhere near old enough to think about it herself. No problem with turning her into a wife when she is all of two years older than Sasha Obama and should be playing with a puppy rather than obeying some horrible old bastard who thinks himself entitled to marry a child.
Saudi Arabia implements an austere form of Sunni Islam that bans free association between the sexes and gives fathers the right to wed their children to whomever they deem fit.
That’s a stupid word for it – ‘austere.’ Typical BBC mealy-mouthing. What’s austere got to do with it? Where does austerity come in? It’s not austere, it’s harsh and punitive and degrading and cruel. What is ‘austere’ about making a small child marry an adult seven times her age? What is the luxury or hedonism or voluptuousness that that is the antidote to? The wallowing sybaritic indulgence of going on being a child, and going to school, and not being married to some old goat? Is that it? If so, what about the old goat then? Is he being ‘austere’ by marrying a child too young to cross the street by herself? That doesn’t sound like austerity to me. Greedy, ruthless, piggish, hard as nails, yes; austere, no.
The judge said that once she reached puberty, she could ask for a divorce.
Yeah, that is like asking for a death sentence, where the child comes from, which in the central province of Qaseem – the heartland of Saudi Islamic fundamentalism.
Again, I say, it is paedophilia, hidden under the banner of religion.
Well, “austere” is so much pithier than “denial of basic human rights.” How can one blame the BBC for wanting to provide its audience with a healthy dose of pith?
And speaking of goats, what gets mine is that attempts like these to make this cruelty look like just another quaint cultural custom is being written and published by people who don’t seem to understand how lucky they are not to have to live under such a regime. Using one’s freedom of speech to trivialise the suffering of those who don’t have it – there must be a name for doing that.
I think it’s like the (now long-passe) ‘tired and emotional’, or the ‘conservative’ in ‘conservative Christian’ – it’s a journalistic understatement with an implicature that goes beyond its ‘real’ meaning. To my ear, the word ‘austere’ is a dog-whistle: disguised condemnation, concealed editorializing. Is that just me?
In any case, though, I really don’t see non-committal factual reporting as a problem – I think it’s predicated on a presumption of intelligent reading. From this brief article, for example, we can see that the ‘controversy’ in Saudi Arabia does not seem to be about whether children should be married off, but whether it’s being done for money. Do we really need the journalist to tell us that’s a screwed up set of priorities?
What OB has written needs to be said – shouted – trumpeted from the rooftops – tattooed in luminescent acid on the insides of the eyelids of every wannabe moral relativist that climbs into bed with the Wahabbist apologists in the MCB and elsewhere. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be in that article… does it?
Understatement is sometimes useful. I just did a quick online search of definitions for “austere” and the one that really grabs me is “the trait of great self-denial.” Doesn’t ring particularly true for the men marrying little girls.
outeast, hmmmmmm. Maybe not, but then again, I think the BBC always labels Saudi that way, and it’s really not a very good way. It’s not a particularly complete or helpful single-word description. I would say ‘conservative’ would be better, for instance – it’s still pretty understated and untendentious, but it can cover a lot more territory. ‘Austere’ is just too precise – especially given that lots of people really don’t realize how harsh Saudi Arabia is, and that UK officials prate of the values the UK shares with the Saudi king.
Fair comment. Not sure conservative would be a better choice (some have argued reasonably persuasively that wahabbism is not a conservative form of islam at all, though thats another debate) but I do take your point about there being better one-word descriptors available.
Non-committal reporting, like this, perhaps?
That’s from a BBC report “Against the Bad Guys” about the Gitmo detainees. Bad Guys This is a story about little girls. Does ‘austere’ or even ‘conservative’ really do the trick? Read the article. The girl is 8 now. When she reaches puberty – when is that, precisely? – when her reproductive organs mature or when she has her first period – say, in five to eight years – earlier? – her then 65-68 year old husband will be able to have sex with her. And the BBC thinks that the Gitmo detainees were treated badly and that basic human rights were abused? I think they can do better.
To me, “austere” is even worse than what OB says–it implies that not marrying little girls off to old men is some sort of decadent luxury!
Right, and because the West is so decadent as to permit little girls to grow up and decide when and to whom they should get married (if, indeed, at all), it is a fitting target for attack. Isn’t the (relative) freedom of women in non-Islamic countries cited often enough as grounds for hostility?
These girls are given to decrepit men by their parents. They are treading in the footsteps of Mohammed and Anna Nicole Smith; marrying the elderly, and hoping for a quick death. If we are fortunate, some of these men will be given a helping hand/ pillow by their child-brides. Sadly, I doubt the inheritance laws of Saudi favour women.
An Arab tried to buy my cousin from my stepfather. God bless those crazy Arabs
From her stepfather.
I tried very hard not to get a mental picture of the “footsteps of Mohammed and Anna Nicole Smith.” I was successful, but the trade-off was a mental picture of the Islamic riots that will one day take place when archaeologists claim the footsteps have been found.
‘”austere” is even worse than what OB says–it implies that not marrying little girls off to old men is some sort of decadent luxury!’
But I did say exactly that, in the post!
The probability of locating footprints from Mohammed and Anna Nicole Smith’s treks (she could have been his companion for his flight to Medina) is at least as great as the possibility of finding the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, or the Da Vinci Code, each of which is being sought at this moment.
I vote we raise an expedition. I also vote not to be the one to explain the purpose of our visit to the Saudis.