Germany: Muslim Seminar To Prepare 13-Year-Old Girls For Marriage Sparks Backlash

From the European Conservative, an English language version of the reports in Bild and NiUS

An invitation by a mosque in Germany for girls as young as thirteen to take part in a “preparatory marriage course,” has sparked a huge backlash, with centre-right and right-wing parties demanding an explanation.

The invitation was sent out by a mosque in the western city of Mannheim for an event entitled “Girls’ Evenings in the Mosque.” This is part of a series of seminars whose aim is to prepare “girls and women from the age of 13” for marriage. The flyer includes a quote by 10th-century Islamic scholar Al-Tabarani, according to which: “He who marries has completed half of his faith.”

Daily tabloid Bild furiously commented:

A course that is openly intended to prepare children for marriage. And all this in the middle of Germany!

The centre-right CDU party wants an investigation by the city council, saying that “marriage from the age of 13 has no place in Germany!”

The right-wing, anti-immigration party AfD is also outraged:

What we are observing here is not only a direct attack on the rights and freedoms of girls and women, but also clear proof of the failure of the migration and integration policy of the old parties.

the mosque, the Omar Al-Faruq Centre, is located in the Neckarstadt-West district, which has one of the highest proportions of citizens with a migration background.

The centre said that the the aim of the seminars “is to strengthen the self-confidence of the participants and to discuss topics such as education, self-determination, sexuality and equal partnerships openly and critically.” They apologised for the invitation which they say was misleading, and stressed that they have never allowed for child marriages to take place in the mosque.

“Early marriage is neither the goal nor the content of the course,” Khalil Khalil, a board member of the Islamic Workers’ Association said.

Looking at the NiUS article with Google translate to supplement my scanty schoolgirl German the mosque try to justify the course in their website thus:-

A message on the organizer’s website states: “The series of events was initiated by the female adolescents and young women of our community. It was created in response to disturbing content on social media that propagates a one-sided and problematic image of women, such as the TALAHON trends.”

The Talahon are young Muslim men of immigrant background who wear counterfeit designer clothing, like rap ‘music’ and have an unfortunate tendency to get involved in knife crime. As a genre I don’t think they are unique to Germany.  And encouraging girls to marry very young isn’t going to curb knife crime.

This mosque has form for terrorist activity as the European Conservative gives details of in the rest of the article