There are two articles on the same topic in this singular posting.

KP@ACP.

 

Afghan men arriving in the U.S. with underage girls as their ‘wives’: report

 

Saturday, September 4, 2021

By Anugrah Kumar

Reprinted from The Christian Post

 

U.S. officials have found that Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the “wives” of much older men and some girls said they were forced to marry older men who raped them, according to a report.

The State Department has sought “urgent guidance” from other agencies after child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi said they had been raped by older men they were forced to marry, The Associated Press reported, citing officials and an internal document.

The document, which is a situation report sent last Friday to all U.S. embassies and consulates and to military command centers in Florida, says some older Afghan men who were transported to Fort McCoy also claimed to have more than one wife.

Titled “Afghanistan Task Force SitRep No. 63,” the document states: “Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families. Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”

According to a diplomatic cable sent by U.S. officials in the U.A.E to Washington, many girls at the Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi claimed they had been sexually assaulted by their “husbands.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday that the U.S. expects to admit at least 50,000 Afghans, and likely thousands more.

When Afghans arrive at Dulles International Airport in Virginia or Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania, they are then transported to one of eight military bases across the country, including Fort McCoy, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Lee in Virginia, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that as many as 25,600 Afghans were being housed on U.S. military bases as of Friday. According to U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, about 1,000 Afghans have been resettled or relocated off military bases.

Among the thousands who’ve arrived in the U.S., some 10,000 were flagged for additional security screening, and of those 100 were flagged for “possible ties to the Taliban or terror groups,” sources with knowledge of the evacuation process told NBC News.

Two of those 100 were sent out of the country to Kosovo for an additional security review.

“Our commitment is an enduring one,” Mayorkas told reporters, suggesting that there was no set limit or a specific time frame for further evacuations out of Afghanistan.

“This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal,” Mayorkas said.

“Our mission is not accomplished until we have safely evacuated all U.S. citizens who wish to leave Afghanistan or lawful permanent residents, all individuals who have assisted the United States in Afghanistan,” he added. “This effort will not end until we achieve that goal.”

An estimated 13% of all evacuees were U.S. citizens, according to Mayorkas. Another 8% were lawful permanent residents. The remainder were Special Immigrant Visa holders, SIV applicants or other Afghan nationals.

Mayorkas has been using his parole authority to allow Afghans who didn’t obtain a visa to enter the U.S., a senior Biden administration official with the Department of Homeland Security told reporters on Aug. 24.

While the U.S. and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan, it’s believed that the majority of Afghan interpreters who are at risk of Taliban reprisal for helping the U.S. were left behind.

Among them is an Afghan interpreter who was part of a 2008 mission to rescue Joe Biden, who was a senator at the time, and two other senators, when their helicopter made an emergency landing in blinding snow in a valley 20 miles southeast of Bagram Air Field, The Wall Street Journal reported, adding that the man is now in hiding.

The State Department estimates that up to 200 Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan have also been left behind.

At least 24 Sacramento-area students are confirmed to be among those stranded, along with a pregnant American from California, whom Taliban militants kicked in the stomach as she tried to flee Kabul with her husband and father, Fox News reported.

Last Thursday, a suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul killed 10 U.S. Marines, two Army soldiers and one Navy Corpsman, along with as many as 170 civilians, most of whom were awaiting their evacuation.

The explosion came less than a week before the Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.

Human rights group ADF International has urged the international community to address the “dire plight” of religious minority communities in Afghanistan, including 10,000 Christians who are now “at extreme risk of being targeted with deadly violence.”

Following the drawing down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly seized control of much of the country, eventually taking the capital Kabul last month and forcing the government to flee. In response to the unexpected speed at which they retook the nation, tens of thousands of Americans, Afghan allies, and others desperately tried to leave the country.

The withdrawal marked the end of the war in Afghanistan, which spanned nearly two decades.

Afghan evacuees bringing their child brides into the United States

BY 

Reprinted from Jihad Watch

 

Child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law.

Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.

“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria

“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law

There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council

“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology

These authorities say these things because hadiths that Muslims consider authentic record that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:

“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)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).

Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:

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. (Bukhari 5.58.234).

Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.

Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.

Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:

The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.

Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”

According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.

Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking,” by Matthew Lee, Associated Press, September 3, 2021:

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as “brides” or otherwise sexually abused.

U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the “wives” of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don’t crack down on it.

One internal document seen by The Associated Press says the State Department has sought “urgent guidance” from other agencies after purported child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Another document, described to the AP by officials familiar with it, says Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.

The State Department had no immediate comment on the documents or the veracity of the details in them. Officials say that they take all such allegations seriously but that many of them are anecdotal and difficult to prove, particularly amid the crush of Afghan evacuees at multiple locations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

An Aug. 27 situation report sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates abroad as well as military command centers in Florida points to potential issues involving young girls and older men, some of whom claim to have more than one wife at Fort McCoy, a sprawling 60,000-acre (243-square-kilometer) Army base in Wisconsin. Relevant portions of the document, titled “Afghanistan Task Force SitRep No. 63,” were obtained by the AP.

“Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families,” the document says. “Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”…

At the same time, U.S. officials in the United Arab Emirates have expressed similar concerns, sending a diplomatic cable to Washington warning that some young Afghan girls had been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

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