Child Brides Around The World

[asalamualaykum]

I know of people from the gulf region who are quite young, highly educated and in our generation who are still getting married in this way ( i.e. not seeing their spouse until the wedding night-and no they are not living in remote villages). They seem happy...

It is Allah subhanahu watalla who places love and mercy between spouses. It has nothing to do with marrying someone of equal age etc. Our prophet was 40+ when he married 9 year old Aisha. Do we know of any better relationships than theirs?

A friend works in a court on divorce cases and she told me that in the district in which she lives between 60-90 divorces are filed each week (this is in a Muslim country where 95% of the population is Muslim). Most are young people who have only been married a couple of years or so. I should mention that arranged marriages are unheard of in the region. It is common here for couples to get to know each other for some time before marriage. So they have chosen to marry each other and were not forced etc.

Yet for some reason these new and “improved” ways of doing things don’t seem to work as well as the good old fashioned ways.

I am not encouraging that people marry someone they’ve never seen or give their child daughters to men 20 years their senior. Just suggesting that we be more open minded about other cultures and their practices (especially if those practices happen to be embedded within our deen- i.e. our prophet's marriage to Aisha was no different) rather than allowing ourselves to be blinded by the large dose of popular western media that we’ve all ingested.

[Abu Coburg]

large dose of popular western media that we’ve all ingested.

There are "Muslims" who swear by the kuffaar's lifestyle and live by it.