Matriarchy, Patriarchy, and Imperial Security in Africa by Marsha Robinson;Marsha Robinson ;

Author:Marsha Robinson;Marsha Robinson,;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1037801
Publisher: Lexington Books

In this passage, the virgin was consulted. However, a few lines later, one reads, “Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that al-Qasim Ibn Muhammad and Salim Ibn ‘Abdullah would marry off their virgin daughters without consulting them. Malik said, ‘That is what is done among us about the marriage of virgins.”35 It is possible to interpret, based on these sentences, that Malik condoned the marriage of prepubescent girls against their will. It is also possible that he only acknowledged a local practice without endorsing it. He issued a prohibition of the practice by recalling the words of the Prophet Mohammed. Islamic jurisprudence can be used to stop practices that do not respect the dignity and rights of humans. It can also be used, as with almost any other lex legis, to sanction many such practices.

Susan Spectorsky, who translated some of Ibn Hanbal’s texts, concludes that “he gives preference to doctrines that protect women from exploitation” even though there are “inconsistencies” in his application of his “moral dimension.”36 For example, Ibn Hanbal, who studied under Malik, protected girls from a wali/legal guardian who might misuse their role of guardian to arrange a bad marriage. According to Spectorsky, Ibn Hanbal held that only the father of the pre-pubescent girl, whose “authority is virtually unlimited,” had the right to “give her in marriage without obtaining her consent.”37 However, in her text she included passages that do not support this caution. The first is attributed to Ibn Hanbal: “If her father is alive, and she is under nine years of age, her father’s giving her in marriage is valid, and she has no option.”38 From this statement, one can conclude that within the Hanbali system, marriage to a minor is legal, even against her will if her father approved of it. To whom would a girl in such a situation turn to protect her from being a victim of a pedophile-husband? While Spectorsky does not imply that sexual intercourse is a husband’s immediate right with this child bride, she does not present any direct injunction that would force the husband to wait until the child reached puberty for active sexual relations. When it suits an impatient husband, he might feel vindicated in having sex with his pre-pubescent child bride by forgetting that the signing of a marriage contract does not mean that consummation of the marriage is an immediate benefit.

Ibn Hanbal lived in Baghdad.39 That is where Ibn Tumart studied before returning to Marrakesh to begin his patriarchal revolution against African matriarchy and the Almoravids in order to liberate women’s wealth to non-matriclan members. Can a seven-year old bride who cannot stop her husband from having sex with her possibly stop her patriarchal husband who is legal guardian of her inheritance from accessing her wealth? When Ibn Tumart ordered the humiliation of Almoravid women, he was obeyed by other men who likely saw the economic benefits they accrued under patriarchy. Finally, the wealth of the Almoravid matri-clans could be touched via an imported lex legis.

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