8-Year-Old Girl Asks for Divorce in Court
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An eight-year-old girl decided last week to go the Sana’a West Court to prosecute her father, who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man.
Nojoud Muhammed Nasser arrived at court by herself on Wednesday, April 2, looking for a judge to handle her case against her father, Muhammed Nasser, who forced her two months ago to marry Faez Ali Thamer, a man 22 years her senior. The child also asked for a divorce, accusing her husband of sexual and domestic abuse.
According to Yemeni law, Nojoud cannot prosecute, as she is underage. However, court judge Muhammed Al-Qathi heard her complaint and subsequently ordered the arrests of both her father and husband.
“My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage,” Nojoud Nasser told the Yemen Times. “I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,” she said.
Nasser said that she was exposed to sexual abuse and domestic violence by her husband. “He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them.”
“Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months,” added Nasser. “He was too tough with me, and whenever I asked him for mercy, he beat me and slapped me and then used me. I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.”
Nasser’s uncle, who does not want to reveal his name, is following the case now as her guardian. According to her uncle, after Muhammed Nasser, the girl’s father, lost his job as a garbage truck driver in Hajjah, he became a beggar, and soon after suffered from mental problems.
Thamer is in jail now. “Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me,” he said. “But if t
The husband YT Photo by Hamed Thabet
he judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it’s ok.”
So far, no accusations have been made against her father, who was later released due to health problems, or Nasser’s husband, who will remain in jail for further investigation.
“So far there is no case and no charges, as Nojoud arrived by herself to court asking just for a divorce,” said Shatha Ali Nasser, a lawyer in the Supreme Court who is following Nojoud Nasser’s story.
Shatha Ali Nasser confirmed that item number 15 in Yemeni civil law reads that “no girl or boy can get married before the age of 15.” However, this item was amended in 1998 so parents could make a contract of marriage between their children even if they are under the age of 15. But the husband cannot be intimate with her until she is ready or mature,” said Nasser.”This law is highly dangerous because it brings an end to a young girl’s happiness and future fruitful life. Nojoud did not get married, but she was raped by a 30-year old man.”
Nasser confirmed that Nojoud Nasser’s case is not the first of its kind in Yemen, but it is the first time that a girl went to court by herself to ask for a divorce.
“We are not planning to return Nojoud to her family. Who knows? Maybe after a few years the same thing will happen to her again,” said Shatha Ali Nasser. “We are planning to put her in Dar Al-Rahama [an non-governmental organization that works with children], where she can have a better life and education. We do not want her family to pay her expenses, as they are poor.”
(Posted on April 11, 2008)
Comments
In the 1960s, I was in the British military in the Yemen, the Royal Air Force, flying frequently in helicopters in the mountains chasing terrorist and there they were living the same as a 1000 years ago apart from having 300 year old muskets until the Egyptian leader Nasser sent down a load of Lee Enfield and similar rifles left by the British after Suez.
They were paid terrorists (by Nasser in Egypt)whose task was to get the British out of Aden where we were based. More often they blew themselves up with the out of date, unstable dynamite they were supplied with to blow up British servicemen’s families including women and children.
Aden was a modern popular port and airfield in a waste-land, nothing there, not even oil, but had been a British protectorate for 150 years. No one else wanted it and Arab friends expressed to me their worry about the British leaving as they knew their lives would deteriorate, as it did. The climate was very hot and humid, a killer unless you were of a stable mind and fit body for the two years you were posted there. Our fresh water had to be piped 28 miles from Sheik Othman, a natural oasis. In that “town”, public executions were still carried out with head chopping common.
Send those who do not obey US laws back (but not the kids if they do not want to go) and let them live their lives the way they want to. If they want to reject modern life, so be it. Who needs them?
Posted by Brian Deller at 1:02 AM on April 12
It is good to see the Yemen courts are protecting this girl. Its not fair to judge a whole society by the actions of a crazy few, I would say most Americans would not want their morality to be judged by the latest scandal in Texas regarding underage girls.
Posted by Sonya at 6:02 AM on April 12
I do believe that a similar situation arose some 1400 years ago.
Posted by Yorkshireman at 11:03 AM on April 12
Mohammed was a child rapist. Should it surprise anybody that the religion he founded encourages this?
But of course, Islam is as valid and civilized and a religion of peace as can be found anywhere. We just misunderstand it.
Posted by at 11:39 AM on April 12
Brian Deller - “Send those who do not obey US laws back (but not the kids if they do not want to go) and let them live their lives the way they want to. If they want to reject modern life, so be it. Who needs them?”
Send those who are not white back to their respective homelands. We can’t hold fast to simple laws and culture for those are built upon the foundation of race. If race is indeed ignored, the two will surely crumble.
Posted by Phil at 2:02 PM on April 12
Let’s not forget: Aisha, when she was 6 or 7 years old, became betrothed to the “prophet” Muhammad, who ended up having sex with her when she was only 9 years of age! Consequently, it should come as no surprise to us that the practice of child marraige still prevails in Islamic societies.
The above child marriage took place in Yemen. But with all the Muslims migrating en masse into Western countries, we’ll soon be seeing similar articles that appear in the American, British, French or Dutch media.
Posted by Mark P. at 4:25 PM on April 12
The poor girl must have a strong personality already, to stick up for herself this way at age eight.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 5:30 PM on April 12
For whatever reason we’re there, justified or not, one can hope that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East has helped some more than we will ever know.
Something encouraged this young girl to stand up for what she knows in her heart is right. I would assume the judge would think just as the other men in their twisted world. She’d probably rather be dead than to stay with that man or go back to her father. I wish her the best.
Posted by at 8:21 PM on April 12
“It is not fair to judge a whole society by the actions of a crazy few…”
Posted by Sonya at 6:02 Am on April 12.
Obviously you are not aquainted with Sharia law or the Qua’ran. This is not the result of a “crazy few” but in fact part of the very fabric of Islamic society. Mohammed himself married a 6 year old girl, and consummated the marrige when she was nine. Thus, Mohammed being considered the “perfect man” by Muslims, he is to be emulated in ALL things, including marrige to pre-pubecent girls. This is manifestly NOT an aberration. It is a norm.
Also, the situation you mentioned in Texas is now being addressed by the law. In other words…it is AGAINST the law- not part of the law. The comparison is fallacious.
Posted by White Canadian at 8:35 PM on April 13
What crazy “few” are those, Sonya? The huge mobs dancing in the streets after 9/11, cheering the deaths of thousands of innocent infidel “dogs”?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:42 PM on April 14
Aisha’s age at “consummation” is a matter of some debate among Muslim scholars. There is evidence that there is a 10 year glitch in Aisha’s chronological account, which would have made her about 10 years older than 9 at the time she began living with Muhammed. Some scholars have argued that the marriage was never consummated at all. Certainly she died childless, and in spite of much marrying, Muhammed had children only by his first wife.
Posted by scholarly remark at 8:05 PM on April 15
Louisiana has got it right. Molest a child and you need to be put away, or executed.
Posted by at 6:39 PM on April 16