Child Marriage
Muhammad is the perfect example to Muslims, and as such they are supposed to model their lives after his. Muhammad had multiple wives during his lifetime, however his favorite wife was his third wife, Aisha. He married Aisha when she was a child of six, but did not consummate the marriage until she was nine.
Child marriage continues to be practiced in much of the Islamic world despite the fact that it is considered a human rights abuse. More than 60 million girls worldwide are child brides. In developing nations one in seven girls marries before the age of 15, and nearly half of the 331 million girls in developing nations marry by their 20th birthday.
Child marriages create a cycle of poverty, gender inequality, abuse and numerous health problems. Many young brides are married to men who are much older than they are and often suffer abuse in the marriage. The leading cause of death worldwide for girls ages 15 to 19 are complications related to childbirth and pregnancy.
Child protection experts report that child marriages cause mental illness, suicides, teenage runaways, and even prostitution. The children are forced into prostitution because the marriages often end in divorce, and the child has no way to support herself.
In Afghanistan, girls can legally marry at age 15, and 57% of girls in the nation are married by the age of 16. 66% of girls in Bangladesh are married before the age of 18, and slightly more than 50% of girls in Mali, Mozambique, and Niger are married before the age of 18.
Iran’s legal age of marriage for girls is only 13. One British newspaper reported that in Iran in 2010, 716 girls under the age of 10 had been married. There is no minimum age for girls to marry in Saudi Arabia, and statistics show that there are more than 5,500 child brides under the age of 14.
Western Islamic apologists often cover up the example of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha, however it is clear that many continue to follow Muhammad’s example today. As Islam has spread to western nations, child marriage is also spreading.
Prayer Points:
Pray that the international community will speak out loud and clear regarding young girls being forced into marriage when they are too young to understand what is taking place or too young to take on this responsibility.
In nations where parents are taught in their culture that child marriage is acceptable, ask God to open their eyes to the truth that this will most likely be frightening and harmful to the young girls.
In Western nations teenage girls most often are given opportunities for further education, choose a future career and make their own decisions. Ask the Lord to give His heart to the parents (especially the fathers) to give their daughters opportunities in their lives – rather than child marriage.
Pray that the families will receive revelation of Almighty God’s desire to bring them true liberty and freedom – through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
War on Women – Educational Opportunities
The metaphor, “war on women” has become a worn out catch phrase for politicians in western nations to describe an imaginary attack on the “rights” of women. Most often it is used to try and advance a pro-abortion stance in national public policy. The implication is that pro-life, pro-Christian individuals are waging a “war” against a woman’s freedom to choose to abort their babies.
The term became popular after the 2010 U.S. Congressional elections, and can now be found in news articles from other nations. For instance, in February, headlines declared that women in Spain, France, Britain and other European nations were marching against Europe’s “War on Women” in protest of the Spanish’s government plans to ban abortion. In the past few weeks, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s attempted use of the “war on women” narrative failed to help her hold onto her position as the Labor Party leader. And the “war on women” rhetoric surrounded the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this week allowing Hobby Lobby the ability to deny funding abortifacient contraceptives.
This western imaginary war on women pales in comparison to the treatment of women under fundamental Islamic rule. There are countless examples of inequality and mistreatment of women within fundamental Islamic societies, which has its root in Islamic texts. The Center for the Study of Political Islam in a statistical study of the Qur’an found that 68% of the verses about women in the Qur’an are negative.
As an example, the Qur’an states, “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other…” (Qur’an 4:34). The idea that women are inferior to men is also echoed in the hadith (Sahih Bukhari 1:6:301). In this hadith, Muhammad passes by a group of women and says that the majority of dwellers in hell are women. When they ask him why he replies, “You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you.”
Women in Muslim majority countries are rarely given the same educational or economic opportunities as their male 
counterparts. The ten nations with the lowest economic participation and opportunity for women are Muslim majority nations such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen. Globally 523 million adult women are illiterate. 98% of illiterate people are concentrated in South and West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab States. In many Muslim nations, the majority of women are illiterate. There is an 87% female illiteracy rate in Afghanistan, 84% in Niger; 75% in Chad and Sierra Leone; 59% in Pakistan; 56% in Morocco and 53% in Yemen.
In Afghanistan, the Islamist Taliban banned female education while they were in power, but even after the Taliban was overthrown it can be dangerous for women to seek an education.
Shamsia Husseini suffered severe acid burns on her eyelids and cheeks in 2008 after she was attacked for attending school in Afghanistan. As she walked to school, a masked man who asked her if she was going to school approached her. When she said that she was, he tore off her veil and pumped acid from a spray gun onto her face. Despite the attack she and other girls that were attacked that day persuaded their parents to allow them to continue with their education. Today, nearly six years after the attack, Shamsia is a teacher at the school. She said, “I remember the attack on me and the pain. Education of girls and having female teachers is so important for the future, to show parents and everyone what we can do.”
Prayer Points:
The lack of education for the women of Islam keeps them trapped in a cycle of poverty with few opportunities. Stand with the women for breakthroughs in their lives – declaring that this cycle will be broken for women and future generations.
Without an education, people cannot understand the teachings of their religion and are not taught the truth of God’s Word. Christianity encourages everyone to “study to show ourselves approved” and God’s Word brings His light to our understanding. Islam’s teachings that women are inferior not only keep the Muslim women, but also their children, trapped into a system that they truly have not had opportunity to research for themselves.
Pray for the Muslim women during Ramadan – that they will have a great desire for “truth” and begin to seek God for it. (We know when they do He will reveal His heart of love to them.)
Ramadan 2013 – Day 23 – The Plight of Islam’s Children
The words of the “adhan” or the Muslim call to prayer are first words a newborn Muslim baby hears. His or her father whispers into the child’s right ear, “God is great, there is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Come to prayer.” This is the crux is Islam, acknowledging Allah and Muhammad as the perfect example.
By the time a Muslim reaches the age of 50, he has heard this repeated nearly 90,000 times. That is roughly 1,800 times per year every year since the day he was born.
In some nations, the call to prayer is not the only tenet of Islam that children learn at an early age. A 2011, report regarding school textbooks in the Middle East revealed the Egyptian school children are taught Christians and Jews are infidels. And for many years textbooks in Palestinian schools have rejected Israel’s right to exist, and have portrayed a Middle East in maps and through text without the nation of Israel on them. For instance, the following is from a 12th grade Palestinian textbook: “Palestine’s war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel.”
Palestinian Media Watch released a video of a young girl reciting a poem about Jerusalem on Palestinian Authority TV that calls Jews the most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys and wretched pigs. It ends with the lines:
As long as my heart is my Qur’an and my city
As long as I have my arm and my stones
As long as I am free and do not barter my cause
I will not fear your throngs
I will not fear the rifle.
In April of 2013, The Guardian reported approximately 37,000 teenagers between the ages of 15 to 17 were receiving weekly military training classes in the Palestinian area of Gaza. The boys learn about assault rifles and other weapons, first aid and firefighting. During school breaks, voluntary camps are offered where students can learn how to handle guns and explosives. The armed wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades assists in the training. They deny the use of real weapons, however a video that was filmed at a school near Gaza City shows students carrying assault rifles and one boy firing an artillery shell at a replica of an Israeli watchtower, complete with an Israeli flag. About 5,000 boys have participated since the program began in September 2012, and the Palestinian government is considering adapting the course for teenaged girls next year.
Another video, filmed in Deir ez-Zor, Syria was posted to the Internet in June which shows children training at an Al-Qaeda. Save the Children estimated that two million children were innocent victims of the war in Syria. Many children struggled to find enough food to eat, girls were being forced into early marriages to protect them from the threat of sexual violence, and armed groups were recruiting other children. Children as young as eight have been used as human shields in the fighting.
The Taliban in Afghanistan recruits orphans to act as decoys and to be suicide bombers against western forces in Afghanistan. According to Britain’s Channel 4, Taliban fighters promised an eight-year-old orphan boy named Neaz a handful of coins worth 91 cents to go with them. They gave him sweets and taught him to use a gun and build IEDs. After gaining the child’s trust they tried to convince him to use a suicide vest and blow himself up at a checkpoint. After questioning how he could spend the coins he was promised if he blew himself up, he eventually escaped and turned himself into police. He now lives in an orphanage.
Prayer Points:
In Matthew 19:14, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them…” Pray for the children of Islam who have become orphans because of war in their nation. Ask God to watch out for them, enabling them to be cared for by people who will not use them as weapons or decoys.
Many Muslim children are taught to hate non-Muslims from the time they are small children. Pray that God will break through the years of indoctrination with His love and reveal His heart for all people.
Pray the Spirit of Truth will be revealed to these children, causing the stronghold of deception to be broken over the minds of Muslim children and that they will be introduced to salvation through Jesus Christ.
Best Current News 