That's actually a really interesting perspective and interesting sounding documentary... is it on Netflix?
You can watch it on LinkTV. It's called Where do I Belong. Really great cinematography and also some really beautiful quotes from some of the refuges.
http://www.linktv.org/bridgetoiran/where-do-i-belong
In general their documentary selection on LinkTV is phenomenal, specifically if want to get inside perspectives from the 3rd world.
You know the thing about arrange marriages is that I'm not totally against them per se. It seems here in America, we treat free will pretty bad. The more options we have the more we seem dissatisfied with our circumstances. In cultures where there are arranged marriages, they are forced to work their disagreements out, which is admirable.
Yeah I think at times we can overvalue the benefit of our freedom of choice, at least insofar as actually having a "happier life" is concerned. A lot of people have no idea what they want or what's good for them, so I could certainly see an argument for arranged marriages, if the matchmaker is really considering compatibility. Which some do. But in other cases it seems purely financial.
However, I do have the inclination as well that selling kids off is immoral. Yes, these families are poor and possibly uneducated which dampens their awareness level, but at the same time just because something can be justified doesn't make it the right thing to do.
Yeah I agree. I really do think you're bound seriously damage and traumatize a girl whose 10-14 if you force her into marriage and a sexual relationship with a man much older than her. And what sort of culture emerges when a high percentage of the women have experienced such trauma?
At the same time, I always try and put myself in the perspective of someone making a decision that initially seems morally abhorrent. If I was in a situation where I could barely afford to feed my kids and someone who could offered to buy my daughter, what would I do? It's easy to say I would say no, coming from the perspective I'm coming from today, but if I was actually in that situation, who knows what my answer would be.
I actually didn't know marriage had to be consensual in Islam. Seems pretty obvious, but American ideology has gotten to me so I assumed otherwise.
Yeah there's a lot of misinformation on Islam, in part of Western stereotypes and in part because of Muslims who do not live by the words of their own book.
It's a sad life to live being a third wheel. Read one of those Khaled Housseni books, and something similar happened to a character in the book. She was married off by arrangement at an early age then her husband married another woman, and she was left as a third wheel. It is pretty awful being a woman with extremely strict "Islamic" laws. They literally have no protection even as children. There shouldn't be a way for a grown man to be able to marry an 11 year old girl, & with the girl not even having the option of divorcing said man.
That's another thing. Islamic couples can divorce at any time, at either the man or women's discretion, so long as a real effort has been put into resolving the problem. It's all plainly stated in the Quran, so I have no idea where these fundamentalists come up with these laws or how they justify them on Islamic grounds.
