Missing eight-year-old girl is found six months later living with a man who claims he has MARRIED her – after family saw video he posted of her reciting the Koran
by Taryn Pedlar, Daily Mail, April 1, 2025:
An eight-year-old girl in Somalia who had been missing for six months has been discovered living with a man who claimed to be her husband.
The child vanished from her home in the semi-autonomous Puntland region last September, sparking deep concern among her family.
But shockingly, it later emerged that her own father had consented to her marriage to an adult man named Sheikh Mahmoud.
Last week, security forces stormed Mahmoud’s home after he barricaded himself inside a room with the girl. The dramatic rescue has sparked a national outcry, with social media in uproar and protests erupting in the capital, Mogadishu.
Campaigners have seized on the case to demand urgent action to protect children, as Somalia still lacks a minimum legal age for marriage….
The horrifying saga began when a female relative took the girl from her home in Bosaso, claiming she was escorting her to visit an uncle.
But months later, a video surfaced online showing the child reciting the Quran – prompting her family to finally launch a search.
Their efforts led them to Carmo, where they discovered she had been living with Mahmoud.
At first, the man insisted he was only teaching the girl the Quran. But after legal complaints were filed, he admitted he had married her – with her father’s consent.
When questioned by the BBC about his shocking decision, Mahmoud justified it by citing religious traditions, claiming Islamic teachings permitted child marriage….
A 2020 UN report found that 35 per cent of Somali women aged 20 to 24 had been married before turning 18, with the rate previously as high as 45 per cent in 2017….
Somalia: Man marries eight-year-old girl, says Islam permits marriage to children
Islamic tradition records that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and the resultant fact that child marriage and the sexualization of children are taken for granted in wide swaths of the Islamic world.
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old. Nowadays in the West there are elaborate efforts to deny all this. An Islamic scholar/apologist named Joshua Little has constructed an elaborate argument from close study of the chains of transmitters (isnads) of various traditions about Aisha, claiming that those traditions, despite appearing in Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection Muslims consider most reliable, are actually inauthentic. Little’s argument, however, is absurd and self-contradictory. He acknowledges that the hadiths are late and unreliable from a historical standpoint, and even admits that the chains of transmitters, like the stories themselves, were freely forged. Then he bases his whole argument for the traditions being inauthentic even on Islamic grounds on the basis of the isnads that he just admitted could be forged. He claims to be able to determine the age of various traditions by how they were forged, but here is argument is so conjectural and subjective as to be essentially worthless.
Little is also a standard-issue lemming academic. He denounces people he calls “Islamophobes” for making much of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha. He ignores the primary reason why anyone cares about this: not because, as he claims, “Islamophobes” contend that Muhammad’s example forces Muslims to condone child marriage, but because all too many Islamic authorities do condone child marriage. In April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.
“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria
“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law
There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council
“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology
Honor killing victim was being protected by police shortly before her murder
A teenager allegedly murdered by family members last May was being monitored by intense surveillance and was receiving protection from authorities before she was killed. Ryan Al Najjar, 18, was abducted, bound with tape, and drowned in Lelystad. It was not clear why her protection was stopped.
Prosecutors have said they believe her family felt disgraced by her involvement and integration in Dutch society. Her brothers were arrested in the case, and her father fled to Syria to evade arrest, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) previously indicated.
Her protection by the authorities was already ended before she was killed, a spokesperson for the OM said, confirming reporting by the Leeuwarder Courant which was published on Monday. The office also would not say when security started for Al Najjar, who was living in Joure at the time of the slaying.
The Leeuwarder Courant requested information from the police and the Public Prosecution Service about Ryan’s security in the period before her death. Information about her was found in the system to log surveillance and security details for individuals.
Prosecutors suspect that Al Najjar was the victim of an honor killing, saying they have evidence to indicate that her family thought she acted too much in line with Western beliefs. Her older brothers, Muhanad Al N., 25, and Mohamed Al N., 23, have been accused of murder. They were ordered to remain in pre-trial detention in February.
The brothers accused her father, Khaled Al N., of carrying out the murder. Prosecutors said his DNA was found on the 18 meters of tape used to restrain his daughter. His DNA also matched forensic evidence found under three of her fingernails, which “indicates she had resisted,” the prosecutor told the District Court in Lelystad in February.
Her hands were bound behind her back, her mouth was taped shut, and her ankles were taped together when her body was found in the water near Knardijk by a forest service employee.
“If she is lying and causing us to lose even more face, she must be punished,” said Muhanad Al N. in a text conversation with the other two suspects 12 days before the murder, the OM said. Other statements were made indicating she should be killed for her behavior in those messages.
Somehow, in the Muslim honour system, murder is better than lying?
The young woman’s mother also allegedly wrote, “God willing, we will see her wrapped in a shroud. Ryan is a disgrace to the family and deserves to die.”
And we will see you wrapped in the flames of Hell!
The next preliminary hearing in the murder case will take place in Lelystad on April 25, and another status hearing is expected on June 30. The trial date will likely take place later this year.
