"Summer marriages" (Islamic prostitution) booming in Egypt under MB rule

From Now Lebanon:

Rich Gulf nationals go to Hawamidiyya, especially during the summer, to contract marriages for a definite period of time in return for a meager amount of money, some of which goes to the broker. The rest goes to the family of a young woman, often a virgin under 18 years of age, so that a rich man about the same age as her father can have sex with her while on vacation in Egypt.

During the years before the 2011 revolution, women’s and human rights organizations in Egypt followed several courses of action in their struggle to end such practices, including awareness-raising marches in areas where ‘tourism marriage’ is popular, in order to disseminate the dangers it entails. Rights groups have also advocated the promulgation of a law that criminalizes marriages if either one of the spouses is under 18 years of age. However, these efforts regressed after the revolution and such practices came back with a vengeance, against a backdrop of economic crisis and weak local authorities. Illegal practices, like changing the young woman’s age through falsified medical evidence attesting that she is over 18 years of age has also become widespread.

The growing phenomenon of ‘tourism marriage’ in Egypt’s governorates and towns was profiled in the US Department of State report on human trafficking last year, which estimated the number of such marriages to be in the hundreds. According to the report, “minor girls are entering into temporary marriages with Arab Gulf tourists during the summer in return for money” with “underage girls being taken into sexual slavery and forced to work as servants.”

Dr. Hoda Badran, president of the Egyptian Women’s Union, told NOW that poverty is the main factor behind the spread of this phenomenon, asserting that “tourism marriage is a form of slavery or of selling women.” Badran explained that she met with several “summer wives,” some of whom gave birth to children and struggled to inform the husband of his paternity. ‘Tourism marriage’ victims may have to abandon their newborns at an orphanage or childcare center so as not to become an ‘outcast’among her family members, the same people who may have sold her in the first place.

Nohad Abu al-Qomsan, president of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, told NOW: “Slavery and servitude have acquired a legitimate cover in some countries, including that of summer marriage, which has spread in many Egyptian villages, not only in Hawamidiyya, due to poverty and other pretexts.” Qomsan noted that, in many cases, a girl is married off several times in a sort span of time without heeding the customary waiting period, which might cause confusion as to the identity of the child’s father.

Qomsan argued that some Islamists want to “turn the poor into a pool of abominations, which can be traded on the pleasure market, with clients seeking multiple wives or marriage for pleasure.” She also underscored the phenomenon of marrying displaced Syrian women in Egypt.

This has been a problem for years, but there was some headway being made against the phenomenon before the Islamists took over Egypt. Now it appears to be back.