Government ministers are considering raising the minimum age for marriage in England and Wales from 16, as the phenomenon of children from minority communities being taken abroad for forced weddings intensifies. Equalities minister Baroness Williams of Trafford and the Home Secretary Sajid Javid are among those working on fighting abuse of minors, which takes many forms but can include forced marriage in ancestral homelands for young British residents
It is naive to think that raising the minimum age of marriage will have any significant effect on forced child marriage, which is considered to be an acceptable practice in keeping with Islamic teachings. Last month, a British police officer asked if it as “acceptable for an Iraqi man to date a 12-year-old girl because he wanted to be ‘culturally sensitive.'” Difficult to imagine a police officer asking such a question about paedophilia.
One wonders what the UK could have possibly expected with its wide-open borders, except the importation of normative Islamic practices that it is ill-prepared to contend with. The UK has a long way to go to correct its many colossal mistakes in dealing with this problem, beginning with scrapping Sharia courts, which operate beyond the reach of British law, managing its borders, and restoring free speech and the equality of rights of all people before the law.
“UK Could Raise Marriage Age to 18 to Tackle Forced Weddings,” by Oliver JJ Lane, Breitbart, September 6, 2018:
Government ministers are considering raising the minimum age for marriage in England and Wales from 16, as the phenomenon of children from minority communities being taken abroad for forced weddings intensifies.
Equalities minister Baroness Williams of Trafford and the Home Secretary Sajid Javid are among those working on fighting abuse of minors, which takes many forms but can include forced marriage in ancestral homelands for young British residents, reports The Times.
Normally the marriage age is 18, but 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to marry with parents’ consent — an important loophole because many forced marriage cases involve family pressure, and the consent of a parent. The newspaper report claims the issue is of particular interest to campaigners now because “the forced marriages of teenagers in Asian communities are often perpetrated by parents”.
Speaking at a House of Lords committee Wednesday, Baroness Williams responded to whether the government would review the law to make it easier to tackle forced marriages, saying: “I will certainly bring that point back because [it] is absolutely right to be concerned about it.”…