What about this issue of forced marriage? Forced marriage, where Muslim men are forcing their daughters to get married, to who they want them to get married to; this is un-Islamic, this is cultural. This is cultural. This is un-Islamic. There is nothing in Islam called forced marriage! Those who are doing it, are doing it based on their tribal, ethnic, cultural practices. How is the father come force his daughter to marry somebody? I mean, she don't even know this guy. But because that's his cousin or that's the son of his brother or that's his family, that's somebody, the guy, they Bangladeshi; so he would take her to Bangladesh & force her to marry & then after they get married, give him a card where he can come back. No, no, no. This is oppressive, this is repressive. This is un-Islamic, also it's unconstitutional. As a matter of fact, I think that in New Zealand, it is also against the law. I think that in the UK, it's against the law. In America, it's against the law. And it should be against the law! Because nobody has the right to do that!
However, if a father has a daughter that is 16 and he thinks that she is a little bit umm...active & you know, she's already kind of like looking at boys & boys looking at her & they interacting, sms, messages and blah blah, all that kind of stuff going on, he would say, 'hold it, wait a minute now. I can't...she ain't gonna lasting in no uni.' You know, before the uni, before she finish the uni, there might be something else going on. So he'd say, 'Look, I will make some arrangements right now.' So he begins to make an arrangement for his daughter to get married & he says to her, 'Listen, there's a young man that I met. He's working, I know his family & I think it would be good for you to marry him.' This is not a forced marriage; this is called an arranged marriage. So her parents & his parents, arrange for them to be married & those people, they agree; those young people agree & so the young girl, she goes to live with his parents or they...he comes to live with her parents, because they are young, they are still in school. This is called an arranged marriage. Islam says nothing wrong with that, it's nothing wrong. Why? Because, the arrangement was done out of the protection of the children and out of the wellbeing & by the consent & everything of the parents.
But, Islam says, when that girl becomes herself an adult & she don't like that marriage, because she couldn't make all the choices, she couldn't look into the whole background, she don't like it. She wake up one day & said, 'Look, this ain't the right guy' or 'he's not really working, he was working, but he is not working now. He doesn't want to go to school, I finished school. This guy wants to sweep the streets and hang out in the streets, I am going to become a doctor. It's not going to work!' She has the right to annul that marriage. That's what Islam says. So we say that's fair. She got married out of the consent, I mean, out of the will of her parents, out of the concern of her parents; to protect her, to protect the honor of the family & everything. But when she becomes an adult, she can make her own decisions & she can do what? She can annul that marriage. So there is no forced marriage in Islam.
Youtube Video Link: Forced Marriage !
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