With the details ironed out the groom travels to his bride's family home to finalize the transaction and the girl is handed over by her farther in front of a judge to sign a Mot’aa or Misyar marriage contract. These contracts are valid for a predetermined period of time after which they can be renewed or allowed to expire. The newly weds in most cases have a significant age difference with the bride being between the age of 15 to 20 and the groom being of middle-age. When the man who is often married to another woman is in the last days of his sex vacation and the marriage contract is about to expire he has two choices. The first is to take his underage bride back to his home and give her to his wife as a house slave. Or just leave her at the side of the road on his way to the airport. The latter is most common because Egyptian law prohibits foreign men to permanently marry women 10 years their junior so leaving the country is complicated by obtaining fraudulent documentation.
The injustice to the jilted young girl is just beginning. Returning to her family, often times pregnant she is now branded with the scarlet letter of an unwed mother with an unwanted baby. The girl in most cases abandons her baby and turns to a life of prostitution never being able to escape the grips of poverty in the shanty town that she lives in.
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| Slums of Cairo |
Egypt has so many social and economic problems that must be addressed now that the country has a new president. But will this new political structure actually make a difference. Will President Mohamed Morsi and his so called Freedom And Justice Party aka the Muslim Brotherhood try and tackle any of the problems facing Egyptian society or will the poverty continue to fester.
Sectary of State Hillary Clinton has spent the last three and a half years globetrotting and proselytizing about human trafficking, woman’s rights and religious freedom. The history of the MB shows that none of these issues have been front and center in their agenda. And now with the group in a politically strong position and able to make a difference in Egyptian society many contend that the status quo will continue as it did before the advent of the Arab Spring. Of course there is the Coptic church burnings and crimes against Christians, The genital mutilation of young girls and the condoned flesh peddling of adolescent women must be curtailed to give President Morsi legitimate standing on the world stage.
In April President Barack Obama not only released $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt and had MB leaders in the White House. Clearly the Obama Administration has promoted the MB and probably hand picked Mohamed Morsi as their presidential candidate. For the administration not to add any restrictions on this aid is ridiculous, for one thing the war on woman must stop in Egypt. Second the security in the Sinai peninsula must be maintained and the Camp David Accords must stay intact, third military hardware must be monitored by a U.S. contingent, forth civilian police forces must be re-vetted and redeployed for the tranquility of the citizenry and upholding the rights of all citizens including Christians and Jews. Also the current military rank and file as well as the upper echelon must divest their commercial interests or leave the military. These issues and many others need to be addressed and time-lines need to be attached to any existing or future financial aid. But the current administration has not addressed these issues and Mrs. Clinton's silence has been defining.
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