marriage

"It is the custom with you, for the eldest of five brothers to marry and for the wife of such brother to be common to all five; hence there cannot be the slightest or remotest doubt of your being all bastards and whoresons. This is about the seventh time that you have acted treasonably towards the sircar, and plundered our armies. I have now [therefore] vowed to the true God, that if you ever again conduct yourselves traitorously or wickedly, I will not revile or molest a single individual among you, but making Ahmedies [i.e. Muslims] of the whole of you, transplant you all from this country to some other; by which means, from being illegitimate, your progeny or descendants may become legitimate, and the epithet of whoresons (born of sinful mothers) may no longer belong to your tribe."

"See yonder blushing vine tree grow, And clasp a dry and wither’d plane, And round its youthful tendril throw A shelter from the wind and rain.That sapless trunk in former time Gave covert from the noontide blaze, And taught the infant shoot to climb, That now the pious debt repays.And thus, kind Powers, a partner give To share in my prosperity; Hang on my strength while yet I live, And do me honour when I die."

"Daughters are frequently seen as burdens or commodities because of pervasive gender inequality. In places where the groom’s family pays a bride’s price, parents in difficult economic circumstances may marry off their daughters as a source of income."

"Many girls are forced into a marriage before they have the full rights of adulthood. It is a horrific form of human rights abuse."

"Forced and especially early forced marriages in the has long been known to be a serious problem, but now it has been documented in the first-ever large-scale study – and the consequences of this problem are even more serious and widespread than many had suspected."

"She is concerned for the orphan and concerned for the widow. She does not forget the man who helps others, she is a mother for the orphan; Nance, a carer for the widow, who always finds advice for the ; the lady who gives protection for refugees. She seeks out a place for the weak. She swells his collecting basket for him; she makes his collecting vessel profitable for him. For the righteous maiden who has taken her path, Nance chooses a young man of means. Nance raises a secure house like a roof over the widow who could not remarry."

"He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died."

"WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character."

"Child marriage was an accepted childrearing practice in sixteenth-century northern England."

"Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis... 18.8 million Afghans are unable to feed themselves every day.... starvation is not the only issue faced by children. As UNICEF warns “Afghanistan was already one of the toughest places on earth to be a child. Right now, the situation is desperate.” The situation deteriorates quickly as the country is on a brink of famine. Recent weeks have seen yet another trend: families selling their children, and mostly girls, so that families could buy food. In one of reported cases, a six-year-old girl and 18-month-old toddler were sold for $3,350 and $2,800 respectively. In another reporting, a 9-year-old girl was sold for about $2,200 in the form of sheep, land and cash. There are many more such stories.... Some of these girls will become child brides... Child marriage... a major violation of their human rights and can sometimes amount to a form of modern day slavery. While poverty may drive child marriage, child marriage traps girls in a cycle of poverty. Child marriage further puts girls at risk of physical and sexual abuse...Some of the girls will be turned into child laborers... The people of Afghanistan cannot be left to starve. Afghan girls cannot be sacrificed."

"As for my two wives, what can I do about it? They married me off at thirteen, to my cousin. I was thirteen and she was twenty-three. I didn’t even know what it meant to have a wife, and when they tried to explain it to me, I went out of my mind with rage. With fury. I didn’t want a wife, I wanted to play cricket. I was very fond of cricket. To calm me down, they had to give me two new cricket bags. When the ceremony was over, I ran off to play cricket. There are so many things I must change in my country! And I was fortunate. They married my playmate off at the age of eleven to a woman of thirty-two. He always said to me, »Lucky you!«"

"“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)”"

"The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication. The Hindus have their social evils. But there is relieving feature about them-namely, that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act."

"The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age."

"[C]hild marriage or marriage of the non-adults remain a dangerous practice in char-chapori areas. For the immigrant Muslims, girls are forced to get married at the age of 12–14, as if this becomes their main agenda of social reforms. Girls are forced to get married at an early stage and they become mother of two-three children at a very tender age. As a result their health never recovers. Majority of them suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. Their life cycle is also very less. Majority of the women are exploited, subjugated and neglected …"

"Child marriage has rapidly gained international attention over the last decade with donors increasingly recognising the importance of child marriage and its links to a range of development priorities from economic development and poverty alleviation to health, human rights, and social justice. The body of evidence regarding child marriage prevention and response is now deep and wide, and it clearly shows that effective strategies require not only dedicated efforts to address child marriage, but also crosssectoral cooperation and integration. ... Child marriage disproportionately affects girls more than boys. According to UNICEF, 720 million women alive today were married as children, as compared to 156 million men. Some fifteen million girls are married each year worldwide, and across the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of 18, and one in nine girls before age 15."

"Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage."

"Marriage before the age of majority is prohibited.... the age of majority for boys is fifteen lunar years and for girls nine lunar years... marriage before puberty by the permission of the Guardian and on condition of taking into consideration the ward’s interest is proper."

"In February 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) stated that it was “seriously concerned” that child marriage was becoming more common in Iran, and that an increasing number of “girls at the age of 10 years or younger . . . are subjected to child and forced marriages to much older men.” It called upon Iran to “repeal all legal provisions that authorise, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”"

"One does not marry a three-year-old wife, as a donkey does."

"Hindu child brides in India are flogged, and sometimes burned alive, if the pathetic dowry they bring is judged to be too small."

"As the legacy of this scenario, Indian girls are still being sold to West Asian nationals as wives, concubines and slave girls. For example, all the leading Indian newspapers... flashed the news of a sixty year old “toothless” Arab national Yahiya H.M. Al Sagish “marrying” a 10-11 year old Ameena of Hyderabad after paying her father Rs. 6000, and attempting to take her out of the country. Al Sagish has been taken into police custody and the case is in the law-court now. Mr. I.U. Khan has “pointed out that no offence could be made out against his client as he had acted in accordance with the Shariat laws. He said that since this case related to the Muslim personal law which permitted marriage with girls who had attained Puberty (described as over 9 years of age), Al Sagish could not be tried under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Besides Ameena’s parents had not complained.” But this is not an isolated case. I was in Hyderabad for about four years, 1979-1983. There I learnt that such “marriages” are common. There are regular agents and touts who arrange them. Poor parents of girls are handsomely paid by foreign Muslims for such arrangements. Every time that I happened to go to the Hyderabad Airlines office or the Airport (which was about at least once a month), I found bunches of old bridegrooms in Arab attire accompanied by young girls, often little girl brides. “A rough estimate indicated that as many as 8000 such marriages were solemnised during the past one decade in Hyderabad alone.” In short, the sex slave-trade is still flourishing not only in Hyderabad but in many other cities of India after the medieval tradition."

"The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl; he was twenty-eight at the time. She became pregnant at age eleven, although that pregnancy ended with a miscarriage. Khomeini called marriage to a girl before her first menstrual period “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.”"

"In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum legal age for marriage for women without parental consent or approval by a pertinent authority. However, in 146 countries, state or customary law allows girls younger than 18 to marry with the consent of parents or other authorities; in 52 countries, girls under age 15 can marry with parental consent. In contrast, 18 is the legal age for marriage without consent among males in 180 countries. Additionally, in 105 countries, boys can marry with the consent of a parent or a pertinent authority, and in 23 countries, boys under age 15 can marry with parental consent."

"As already noted, the church in Africa is facing a grim reality even when it comes to sex in marriage. According to UNICEF, teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages. That’s because young brides are acquiring HIV from their husbands, who tend to be many years older and were infected before marriage. Clearly, abstinence and fidelity prevention strategies will not reliably protect these women."

"The The Clinton Foundation notes that child marriage "limits the full potential of girls" and "undermines health, education, economic opportunity, and security." Early wedlock is most common among the world's poorest children. One study found that teen marriage in the U.S. increased by nearly 50 percent in the 1990s thanks to "the spread of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education at American schools, a shift toward cultural conservatism among some teens and a growing fear among youngsters of contracting AIDS through promiscuity," as the Chicago Tribune wrote in 2004."

"I revolted against this marriage of convenience, this marriage for money and wanted to marry only for love, out of a great passion."

"The marriage of convenience has this to recommend it: we are better judges of convenience than we are of love."

"Cling closer, closer, life to life, Cling closer, heart to heart; The time will come, my own wed Wife, When you and I must part! Let nothing break our band but Death, For in the world above 'Tis the breaker Death that soldereth Our ring of Wedded Love."

"She is your treasure, she must have a husband; I must dance barefoot on her wedding day And for your love to her lead apes in hell."

"Is there anyone who thinks that the resolution can come later when it is really needed? So it is not needed then, not on the wedding day, when the eternal pledge is entered into? But then, later? Can he mean that there was no thought of leaving one another, but of enjoying the first gladness of their union-and so united, of finding support in the resolution? Then when toil and trouble come, and need, be it physical or spiritual, stands at the door, then the time is there? Aye, indeed, the time is there-the time for the resolved individual to muster up his resolution; but not just the time to form a resolution. It is true that distress and failure may help a man to seek God in a resolution; but the question is whether the conception is always the right one, whether it is joyful, whether it does not have a certain wretchedness, a secret wish that it were not necessary, whether it may not be out of humor, envious, melancholy, and so no ennobling reflection of the trials of life. There is in the state a loan association to which the indigent may apply. The poor man is helped, but I wonder if that poor man has a pleasant conception of the loan-association. And so there may also be a marriage which first sought God when in difficulty, alas, sought Him as a loan-association; and everyone who first seeks God for the first time when in difficulties, always runs this danger. Is then such a late resolution, which even if it were a worthy one, was not without shame and not without great danger, bought at the last moment, is that more beautiful, and wiser than the resolution at the beginning of marriage?"

"The Doctor: Ook, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times, especially at weddings. I'm rubbish at weddings, especially my own."

"WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable."

"For talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get the wedding dresses ready."

"I want to have it all. I want to have a family, a career, and a side piece."

"Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death."

"I saw a little burnished fly Within my Mistress’ bodice lie, Sipping lovely stolen sweets From her ample rosy teats. ‘Small adulterer,’ said I, ‘Dost thou know where thou dost lie? ‘’Tis my lady’s bosom fine, ‘And thou dost sip what is not thine.’"

"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate’s sultry."

"Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless Thine own thy neighbor doth caress."

"Ȝyf weddyd man, sengle woman takeþ, Forsoþe spousebrechë þere he makyþ. Ȝyf weddyd wyfe take sengle man, Alle spousebreche tel y hyt þan; For þey haue broke with-outë fayle Þe chastë bondë of spousayle."

"Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria."

"I am possess’d with an adulterate blot; My blood is mingled with the crime of lust."

"And then they called me foul adulteress, Lascivious Goth."

"When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die."

"Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it"

"Adultery it is not fit Or safe, for women, to commit."

"And come not near unto adultery. Lo! it is an abomination and an evil way."

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor."

"In flagrante delicto."

"Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father Than my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets."