Corralation and causality, so easy to mix up and abuse.
They are all also former European colonies, does that count as well?
If "former European colony" was the main reason for gender inequality, you'd find other ex colonies mixed at the bottom. But you don't. The big majority of Islamic countries is at the bottom of the list though.
In your opinion, what's the most likely reason for all those countries to appear at the bottom of the list?
This in a week where another Saudi woman was in the news because she was afraid of being killed by his family for renouncing to Islam if she was sent to Saudi Arabia.
Nothing you said in this paragraph makes even the slightest argument against it being arbitrary. You just compared it to other things that have totally arbitrary age restrictions.
I don't believe there's an objective minimum age at which people should be legally able to get married.
But I think we should err on the side of caution. There's a grey area within which societies have been trying this things out and, it seems, putting a minimum age at 18 has produced the best results for everyone.
People achieve a socially / psychologically considered point of maturity at different ages. Some are capable of making complex decisions about their lives at 16 ofc. But most aren't. So if we want to protect them from being manipulated or forced into a marriage, when they don't have the maturity and decent knowledge of what that entails, again, we should err on the side of caution.
It's the same for the voting age. Sure, some people have the maturity to take part in the political process at 15 or 18, but most don't, so we set it at 18. It's arbitrary, yes, but within reason, it's probably better at 18 than at 16 or 25.
I've been driving cars since I was 10 or 11. But I couldn't do it until I was 18. Most people hardly know how to drive at 18... But, within reason, we had to set the minimum age at some arbitrary point. In the USA, 16 is considered OK. In most other countries 18 is the minimum for cars, 16 for motorcycles.
It's arbitraty, but it's not random.
Quite. So it should be higher than 18 then, right? Not the same, if it's so much more important. Why not 20? 21? 25? This is a serious life decision we're talking about here. Marriage gives the each person an enormous amount of power over the other.
As I've said, I don't think 18 is objectively the best age to set the minimum. What I've been trying to say is that, looking at the world and the societies we can examine, 18 is definitely better than 14, 15, 16 or worse no minimum age at all.
If we consider a gradient, between 1 year old and 100 years old, you'll find better and worse options within that gradient. 1 year old seems just as ridiculous as 100 years old for a minimum legal age to get married. 60 and 12 are less stupid, but still far from a good answer to that problem. 14 and 30 probably closer to the right answer. 18 seems to be the best we got. Is it perfect? Probably not.
If you ask me: If you had set the bar 1 year backwards or 1 year forward, what would you do? I'll answer: I'll go for 19. And my justification would be simple: I think I prefer to err on the side of caution and let people have 1 more year to make complex decisions than being younger and having less time (and life experience) to make those same decisions.
Who knows if 20 wouldn't produce better results in the long run? But at the moment there's no reason to do that, as there are no problems we can find directly connected to the fact that people can get married (or vote, or drive, etc) when they get to 18.
The 2 examples I've brought up were from religious and political authorities who claimed there shouldn't be a minimum age for marriage because their religion didn't say anything about setting a minimum age for marriage. The fact that Muhammad also married an underage girl makes the change even harder, imo.
I'm not discussing the legal issue specifically here. I'm more concerned with how Islam, specifically, can allow interpretations that make this specific point of marriage a nightmare for so many girls and women. And the link between the religious texts and the practices / culture.
Islam never says get married to a child.
I never said that it says. But the perfect human being in Islam, did marry a child. Some religious authorities resist the idea of minimum age for marriage to be raised or even set because Islam doesn't say anything about it but makes it reasonable to interpret that it's OK to not have a minimum age at all.
It was always prefered once they hit puberty they should get married.
The issue has always what age is the best for a boy and a girl to get married.
Hence the conflict.
There should be an age cap. 16 seems right.
Then again if one person hits 16 does not mean that person will get married.
Im 25 years old im still not married my Turkish parents and family berate for me not getting married yet.
I never mentiong mandatory age for marriage, but minimum age to get married. Of course you can decide to not get married ever. But if you want to get married, there should be a minimum age (in most developed countries that age is 18).
I'm 32 and I'm not married and don't intend to get married either. My family is aware of that fact even though they still poke me from time to time.
), just trying to point out that this often-wielded argument about why muslamicalisming is The Worst Thing In The World ignores all the things that make the other versions just as bad.
