Greetings friends! I am having a small crisis of conscious right now. I follow an interfaith path, believing that all religions and faiths are true paths to the Divine. I try to embrace and accept the beliefs of all peoples. But today i read an article about an Islamic man from the middle east, in many ways he seemed to be a noble and upright man, just trying to live his life in very harsh conditions. And then i read about his bride. His 14 year old bride. I am having a very hard time reconciling the respectable man i read about with his willingness to participate in what would be called here, child molestation. If this man lived in the USA he would be thrown into prison. I would do harm to any full grown man, or indeed any male, who tried to molest my 14 year old daughter. I know that this can be seen as just a difference in cultures but i think that just because the law says you can do something, does not mean you should. And i think that child molestation is a universal wrong that transcends cultures, like the prohibition on murder. If anyone out there can explain to me why this practice is considered acceptable i would be very grateful. I do not like to think badly about ANY person, but this shocked me. Please help if you can! Thanks!

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We will meet today,
We will meet again tomorrow,
We will meet at the Source every moment,
We meet each other in all forms of life.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

First, I'd point out that believing in the validity in all religions is not the same thing as believing in the goodness of the actions of all individuals.

Second, remember that mother Mary was 14 years old when she gave birth to Jesus. At that, she was quite old...most girls were married by 13. And Joseph was in his late 40's...pretty old for a people where men seldom lived beyond the age of 50. Our society has dictated that this is wrong, but it wasn't always that way, nor is it that way in all places even now. Morals are usually decided upon and imposed upon any given society. That doesn't make them right or wrong.

I'm reminded of eating. In some areas of the world, grubs, worms, midges, and locusts are great eating. Most people here wouldn't touch any of that...a lot of them, even if they were starving. In other places, fish are strictly not eaten. In still others, they won't eat cloven hoofed animals under any circumstances. Which way is right, and which is wrong? I would say that it depends on the people and the culture involved.

For you, your 14 year old daughter having any sort of sexual relations may be totally wrong. But that doesn't mean that it would be for someone living in a totally different culture. It is something we must all decide for ourselves. In the end, we can control ourselves, but we cannot control anything else.

And i know that Miriam was 14 when she gave birth, however, as you pointed out, people did not live that long back then. There was a reason that people were married that young then that was beneficial to the society. It is not so today, even in the middle east. People live much longer. It is no longer necessary to force a girl into a marriage where she will be expected to damage her body which is not yet fully developed, by having baby after baby. Our moral codes were set up to benefit society and ensure that the society grew and prospered. Hence, "Thou shalt not murder" or "Thou shalt not steal" these things harm society. Today there is no need to marry that young, even in a different culture.

__________________
We will meet today,
We will meet again tomorrow,
We will meet at the Source every moment,
We meet each other in all forms of life.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

I understand your feelings on it, and personally I think the same; 14 is too young to marry. But the culture in the Middle East is different than ours. And Rex is right, we can only control ourselves. I think that this is one of those circumstances where we need to agree to disagree. He (the Islamic man apparently thinks it is right, and his country agrees with him. We can say that we don't agree, but because it is and we can't change it, we must accept it.

I am sorry this tarnishes the image you had of the man. Unfortunately, it happens to the people we hold in admiration.

Also, the life expectancy in that area is still only about 56, so it hasn't improved much. Many girls feel that they are doing something they want to do, rather than feeling that they are forced into it. It is very hard for people in our culture to deal on equal footing with people in their culture, because of things like this. Life expectancy didn't have much to do with it, though. Their main thought at the time, apparently, was that if nature decreed that a girl was able to carry a child, she was meant to carry a child. Again, this is foreign to most of us, but at the same time, while I might not agree with it, I can understand their reasoning.

We have largely freed the people in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there are still area in the middle east where women are STILL thought of as possessions, can't go to school, can't own a business, and so on. Unfortunately, until this mind set changes, female are going to be primarily considered as breeders and nothing more. In some of those places (and in Afghanistan and Iraq before we got there), a female isn't even as valuable as a cow or a camel. This is sad reality, and is one reason we are in the region to begin with. But I don't expect widespread changes for a long time.

I think whenever we are shocked like you were, Gavriel, it's definitely a sign that we need to grow in some area. For some reason you got a wake up call. Maybe it isn't a crisis, maybe it's an opportunity. Only you have the answer to what you are being called to. I like to trust that I am being led to where I need to go and led to heal what I need to heal or led to see something great I didn't see before or led to change something.

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

I think that was what i was having such a problem with. I have such an easy time understanding and accepting most religious and cultural differences that i come across that i didn't know quite what to make of my reaction to this one. I want to apologize if i offended anyone with this subject or my reaction to it, i guess i should have taken some time to mull it over before i wrote about it, but i was looking for different views that might shed a different perspective on it for me. But you are right, my problems with this subject have more to do with me than with them. My mother was 14 when she had me and it ruined her life, to this day she resents me for being born. Also when you are a victim of child abuse and most of the people you are friends with are too, you tend to over react. Some day i hope to be an ordained minister and i am going to have to do a better job of accepting the things i can't change. So thanks to all of you who wrote on this subject, i really did need the change in perspective and insight, that is why i love this forum! And thanks for being understanding Lightkeeper.

__________________
We will meet today,
We will meet again tomorrow,
We will meet at the Source every moment,
We meet each other in all forms of life.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

No need to apologize Gavriel. I'm so glad you posted this. We are all growing together and we all learned from your post. It is the kind of post that is so honest it makes us look at ourselves. We love you just as much as you love this forum. Thanks so much for the honesty.

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.