Family Killed 'Over Marriage Row'
YAHOO! NEWS: A community is in mourning after a British husband, wife and daughter were gunned down in Pakistan when an arranged marriage ended in murder.

Father-of-six Mohammad Yousaf, 51, his wife Pervaze Yousaf, 49, and their 22-year-old daughter Tania, had left the UK to attend the wedding of a son in Pakistan surrounded by loving family and friends.

But they were shot dead just days after the happy ceremony while paying respects at a family graveyard.

Members of the devastated family, from Nelson, Lancashire, were being consoled by relatives. Tania's two young boys, Harris, aged nine months, and three-year-old Arien, were being looked after by relatives in Pakistan. >>> Press Association | Saturday, May 22, 2010

Muslim Girl in Baptism Row Was Fleeing an Arranged Marriage
MAIL Online: The foster mother struck off for allowing a Muslim girl to convert to Christianity took the child in after she was threatened with an arranged marriage.

The woman, a devout Christian, was asked to care for the teenager after the authorities learned of her abusive family background.

Her father beat her just for chatting to boys and warned he would haul her off to Pakistan to marry against her will, a friend claimed.

But council officials were angered when the girl chose to be baptised. They insist the foster mother failed in her duty to preserve the girl's original religion.

As a result, the girl was removed and the foster mother struck off the register last November, despite having worked with children for ten years with a perfect record. >>> By Tom Kelly | Saturday, February 14, 2009

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Court to Consider Divorce for 8-Year-Old Girl
NEWS.COM.AU: A SAUDI court will next month hear a plea for divorce from an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man in his fifties, the Arabic-language daily Al-Watan reported today.

It said the girl's mother had filed the divorce case with the court at Unayzah 220km north of Riyadh, and cited lawyer Abdullah Jtili as saying the father had arranged the marriage without telling the girl.

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married,'' added Jtili of the girl who is about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Al-Watan said relatives of the girl had told a Saudi rights group of her plight and urged it to intervene to have the marriage annulled.

But the daily also reported that the husband had refused to renounce the marriage, saying that he had not done anything illegal.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in the ultra-conservative Saudi kingdom where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28. [Source: Court to Consider Divorce for 8-Year-Old Girl]

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Australia)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback – Australia)

Egypt Bans 92-Year-Old Man’s Marriage
BBC: The Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported.

The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.

Egypt brought in the law prohibiting the marriage of elderly men to very young girls during the Gulf oil boom.

It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

Not much is known about the 92-year-old man who tried to marry an Egyptian girl of 17 except that he is an Arab from the Gulf. Egypt Bans 92-Year-Old's Marriage >>> By Frances Harrison | June 13, 2008

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Dozens of Missing Schoolchildren Could Have Been Forced into Arranged Marriages
DAILY MAIL: Dozens of children are missing from school amid fears they have been forced into arranged marriages, it was revealed yesterday.

In Bradford, 33 children remain "unaccounted for" after being off school for at least two months with no explanation.

The Government is also concerned about another 14 areas of the country where it is feared children under 16 could also be missing from school rolls. Dozens of missing schoolchildren feared forced into arranged marriages >>> By Chris Brooke

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)