Ilham Mahdi al-Assi, a 13 year old girl, died in al-Thawra hospital in the Hajja province of Yemen.
Young Ilham had been forced into a marriage with an older man. The older man put his penis in the little girl and raped her until her vagina ruptured. She died of hemorrhaging. She had survived five days in the marriage.
Ilham was married at 13 in order to arrange a marriage for her brother. She was married in a trade for the mans sister.
Yemen came into the international press earlier year due to the story of a 12 year old child bride who died while giving birth. Child marriage is technically illegal in Yemen, but the government does not have the ability to enforce the law on Yemen’s predominately Muslim populace.
Child marriage was introduced into Islam by Muhammad, who took a young girl from her parents and “married” her at the age of six. He molested the girl, Aisha, for three years before raping her at the age of nine.
Islamic scholars such as the Ayatollah Khomeini have written in support of such activities:
A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomizing the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister… It is better for a girl to marry at such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house, rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven. [“Tahrirolvasyleh”, fourth edition, Qom, Iran, 1990]
Those last words remain haunting. “Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.” If there is a hell, I would think that any father who trades his perpubescent daughter into sexual slavery would be a prime candidate for eternal torment.
