This story seems to have flown under the radar, it happened in early April of this year. I'd like to hear some opinions on this case, especially what people think of the girls actions, if they were acceptable or not acceptable, and what should the consequences be, if any.

Men marrying younger girls in Nigeria seems to be widely accepted, and there is a dowry paid of some sort. Officially, Nigeria does not allow marriage of girls under the age of 18, but as this article notes, "the ruling is often ignored in favour of Islamic Sharia law".

Here are the cliff notes:

-Wasila Umaru, 14, married Umaru Sani, 35
-Umaru invited his friends to village in Nigeria to celebrate
-Wasila bought rat poison from market and put it in rice
-She has admitted killing Umaru and three of his friends (two men one woman)
-Told police she did it because she was forced to marry him

To any Muslims here, this is not meant as a subtle or blatant Islamic slam, I just want to hear opinions on this case as a whole, not the condemnation of Islam.

Islam is evil
/thread

As a non Muslim I dont see why your post would be taken as offensive to Islam. All your doing is providing information. If someone was to post about a individual Christian or a group of Christians engaging in questionable/criminal behavior, I would not take offense.

Case is sad.

Islam provides a certain amount of acceptance towards unsuitably young brides. I don't think it's coincidental that Muslim countries correlate with incidence of child marriage.

The ICRW had a study on the topic of child marriage,

No one religious affiliation was associated with child marriage, according to a 2007 ICRW study. Rather, a variety of religions are associated with child marriage in countries throughout the world.

http://www.icrw.org/child-marriage-facts-and-figures

I don't really know what there is to say. Nobody on this forum, I think, supports underage forced marriage. And certainly nobody supports multiple murders. So unless one wants to get into the OMG ISLAM IS TEH EVILS NO IT ISN"T debate, what else is there to talk about? Flying under the radar seems a relatively reasonable spot for it. It isn't like either forced marriages or murders in third world countries are uncommon.

I don't take offence when Christians do stupid stuff (edit: and people criticize them), but it make me sad. Like when people picket outside abortion clinics, or hold anti-gay signs, it's bothersome on a different level, because we are supposed to be brothers of the faith.

Anyway, just wanted to throw it out there, that this isn't a passive aggressive diss on Islam, but was thinking of this more in terms of morality.

No, I don't suppose anyone supports those things, and if they did, they probably wouldn't admit it.

I was really looking to see people's perspective on this, since there is a number of different belief systems represented here. As in, do you support her actions given that she was forced into marriage? Should she face jail-time like anyone who murdered 3 people? Should she be given leniency because of her age, or because it was a forced marriage.

I have a hard time coming up with a verdict that I'm satisfied with, given the specifics of the case. The comments I saw elsewhere showed many people arguing she should face no punishment, because it was a kidnapping of sorts.

Wait, so child marriage isn't an exclusively Islamic practice? No way, but since I didn't make that claim I'm surprised you seem to think this is a rebuttal.

I'm pretty sure there is a connection though. Let's look at the top 5 child marriage hotspots from the website you quoted and check the majority religion, shall we?

1 Niger 75 - Muslim
2 Chad 68 - Muslim
3 Central African Republic 68 - Christian
4 Bangladesh 66 - Muslim
5 Guinea 63 - Muslim

I would say that rat poison seems strangely suitable, but in all honesty that would be a very specist thing to say because rats ain't all that bad.

Bad stuff often leads to more bad stuff.

My prejudices cause me to simpthises with Wasila which is probably wrong, but without knowing the details passing any judgemnet would be premature.

To what extent can one condem someone from following the traditions of their society, even if the actions feel wrong to us?

Murder is fairly uniformaly consider bad.

self defense IMO

What does this have to do with Islam? There aren't any religions that prohibit children being part of arranged marriages.

You might be thinking of modern Western post-enlightenment culture, I guess.

There's a difference between "does not explicitly forbid child marriage" and "the guy that tells you how your entire religion works married a six your old and then had sex with her when she was nine". Leading by example and so on.

It's hard to argue self defense when she also killed three guests.

The laws of how old a girl has to be before she is married off is the same age in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. 14 is traditionally a perfectly fine age for all three.

There is that whole "but Mohamed didn't follow that rule so good himself" thing. You often get that sort of behavior in religious texts.

Yes you do. But Muslims don't say that having sex with Aisha was something that only the Prophet could have done. It's something that any man could do, if the correct circumstances exist.

Pretty sure that Mary's knees weren't tied together when she was twelve and God banged her behind Joseph's back.

Sin and bro-fail.

I think Christian dogma doesn't take the line that God actually phucked Mary.

Joseph was WAITING for Mary to have her first menstrual period so he could be first, and God shoved a baby Jesus up in there adding at least an extra 9 months to his ordeal and ruining his chance at having a virgin.

Not a cool move. I am pretty sure that Christian dogma doesn't involve Mary regaining prepregnancy pussy.