This unpleasant story persists. Islamists, citing the hadith – a dubious source of Prophet Mohammed’s sayings written 200 years after his death and on which Islamist scholars have never agreed for 14 centuries — defend their lust for underage girls. [Here is a long list of Turkish Islamist practices of pedophilia in the past years.]
Most recently, in November, Turkey was shocked at news that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple. Six! The girl had been forced into sex and became a mother at 14. She complained to the prosecutor’s office, but Erdogan’s authorities apparently did not want to bother the sheik.
