Author: Ophelia Benson

Young people are so spoiled these days. They just want to fritter away all their time in school when they could be sold into slavery I mean ‘marriage’ to pay off their fathers’ gambling debts. Why, when I was growing up, four year old girls were sold so their fathers could buy an ice cream cone, and they were thankful for the opportunity. Kids are so selfish now.

Shabana, a pretty Afghan teenager with a modern haircut, was 12 years old when she was forced to marry a man 38 years her senior to settle her father’s 600-dollar gambling debt. Two years later, she is unhappy and angry. She doesn’t like her husband, 52-year-old farmer Mohammad Asef. “He is wild – he destroyed my hopes,” she said in their humble mudbrick home in the northern province of Balkh, speaking out only when Asef went into another room to take a call. She doesn’t get on with her husband’s first wife, who is aged 42 and lives with them. And she is disgusted with her father. “He sold me,” she told AFP.

Hopes? Her hopes? What hopes could she have, the ungrateful little brat? To get an education? To decide for herself whether and when to marry or not, and whom to marry or not? What to do with her life? Pfffff. She’s a girl; girls don’t get to hope things like that.

“When I came back, my father-in-law had gambled away all the harvest,” he said. “He promised me to get my money in one month but he couldn’t find it. I knew he wouldn’t because he is a very poor man. It was about 600 dollars. When he couldn’t find the money, I married his 12-year-old daughter in compensation.”

Well, obviously. Because if a man owes another man a lot of money that he doesn’t have, obviously it’s the nearest twelve-year-old girl who is the compensation. Obviously twelve-year-old girls aren’t people (let alone people with hopes, people who ought to be in school), they’re livestock, with a cash value, to be sold whenever their fathers are a little short of the ready.

Shabana, who likes to wear jeans and read novels and newspapers, was taken out of school. Now she spends most of her time doing chores in the simple house for which Asef cannot yet afford doors. The illegal practise of exchanging girls to settle debts, including those owed to opium farmers, or to settle disputes between clans persists around the country…[M]en hold sway and often break the law with impunity, including by marrying underage girls or using them to settle debts or feuds…Between 60 and 80 per cent of all marriages are believed to be ‘forced’ – a term that covers a range of practises including marrying off girls to repay debts or without their consent, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. This is one of the main factors behind girls and women running away from home or committing suicide, including by setting themselves alight by dousing themselves in fuel and igniting it with a match.

I can’t see why. Why would a normal right-thinking young girl not want to leave school in order to move in with a 52-year-old man and his wife to be the man’s sex toy and to spend most of her time doing chores? I can’t see anything unappealing or irksome in such a prospect, can you?

To be able to afford his own wife, Abdul Raheem, also from Balkh province, says he wants to marry off his 12-year-old sister as soon as he can. The family of the woman he has set his heart on wants 6,000 dollars for her. Raheem, who earns 60 dollars a month as a cleaner in a police station in Mazar, has saved 2,000 dollars. “It’s very difficult for me to find 4,000 dollars,” he said. But if he could marry off his sister, “then I can marry my girlfriend,” he told AFP.

Well, whatever works for you, Abdul Raheem. Enjoy your $6000 dollar wife, and give my regards to your sister.

And another thing. If we think that we can justify the belief that our senses are a reliable guide to reality by appealing to our belief that God exists because a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived – then what about the rest? If a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived, why would a good God allow us to have such incomplete senses? Why would a good God not arrange for us to have exhaustive senses, that sense everything that can be sensed? Why are there senses that we don’t have? Why are the senses that we do have so limited? Why are there senses that animals have that we don’t have? Why can’t we hear that high note that dogs can hear? Why can’t we echolocate the way bats and dolphins can? I want to know.

I’ve been thinking of objections to this – to the reply to the reply to the claim that belief in God is no more a “faith position” than is empirical science because our belief that our senses are a reliable guide to reality cannot be justified. One reply to that is we all assume our senses are a reliable guide to reality, while belief in God is an extra; reply to that reply is

if we accept (ii) [there is a God], then (i) [our senses are a reliable guide to reality] is no longer an assumption. We can justify it by appealing to (ii) (in the style of Descartes – a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived). So, each belief involves an equal amount of “faith”.

Stephen asked for comments. I said

It seems to me we have to accept both (ii) and (iii) for (i) to be no longer an assumption. (ii) was “there is a God”; (iii) is “the God there is is good”. So the amounts of faith aren’t equal; (ii) and (iii) are at least double (i).

I’ve been thinking of (iv), (v), (vi) and so on – actually I thought of a couple of them at the time but wanted to keep it simple, not to say stark. But it takes a lot of steps to get from ‘there is a God’ to ‘a good God would not allow us systematically to be deceived, therefore our senses are a reliable guide to reality,’ doesn’t it? You could just change (ii) to ‘there is a good God’ in an attempt to eliminate (iii), but it would be cheating, since the game is counting items believed in order to compare quantity of faith needed for theism and atheism. So those are two, and then there are more. (iv) the good God there is had and/or has something to do with the way our senses are. (v) the good God there is that had something to do with the way our senses are has no way reliably to inform us about itself, despite having had something to do with the way our senses are. (vi) the good God that did these confusing things is not bothered by the fact that there is a convincing alternative explanation for the fact that our senses are a mostly reliable guide to reality. (vii) the good God that arranged this even more confusing situation is not bothered by the way we carry on.

The items you have to believe seem to keep multiplying, and the more of them there are the less sense they make, yet they can’t be eliminated. (Can they? No doubt I’m missing something, or everything, but I don’t see how they can.)

I like it when people fix little problems that most of us don’t even notice.

Iran plans to make special bicycles designed for women that will be compatible with Islamic regulations and not expose their body movements while riding, the newspaper Iran reported. The new bicycle would have a cabin to cover half of a rider’s body…Women in Iran are obliged to wear scarves and long gowns to hide their hair and body contours. Female athletes must also follow this rule and participate in sports wearing scarves and gowns. The clergy considers women’s body movements made while riding a bicycle to be provoking to men and not compatible with social rules.

I know what they mean, don’t you? Women’s body movements are provoking to men – and they keep doing it. Ever noticed that? They just never stop. They keep making body movements – the sluts. They walk here and there – they cough – they breathe. They eat food – they laugh – they turn the pages of books. They type, they drink coffee, they put their socks on. How are men supposed to be able to go about their lives with all that going on?! Women should either hold completely still – or be completely covered up – or ideally both.

That of course is especially true of any movement involving the arms, because of course movement of the arms reminds everyone of sex. Also especially true of movements of the head, because sometimes the head moves around during sex, also because you can put things in it. And triply or quadruply true of the – gulp – the – gasp – the – choke – legs. The legs the legs the legs. Legs, legs, leggggs – oh god help me. Legs. You know. Sex. Sex has legs in it. Because they’re up around you, and because of what’s between them. Actually legs should be against the law, if you think about it. Really. Legs – they’re filthy, they’re obscene, they’re disgusting. They should all be cut off! At birth! Women’s anyway. Not men’s of course. No need for that – just poke women’s eyes out, instead. Cut off their legs, poke out their eyes, make them wear tents when they walk around and little houses if they’re ever insane enough to try to ride a bicycle. The little house will of course make that impossible, so no more problem. No more women on bicycles with their legggggs going up and down, up and down, up and down – ohhhhhhh.

Uh, excuse me. I – um – I have a chill. I have to go now – time for prayers.