standard response:

in response to your western islamophobia guidebook authors, i will first ask them to take a look at a segment of their own history compiled at http://www.thedigitalfolklife.org/childmarriage.htm. Now note that in this article we are reading of practices that were prevalent after a half a millenium since the advent of islam, all the way until the western industrialization, exploitation of poverty and cheap female labor, mass scale outreach of institutionalized higher education, increased legal responsibilities in the marriage packages resulted in the delay in the age of marriage; and even beyond to a point where there are occurrences (which seems sometimes sufficient for some people to generalize whole civilizations) where "The mother aged 10 who had baby with her 13-year-old cousin" (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327151/Elena-Chiritescu-The-10-year-old-baby-13-year-old-cousin.html).

As for the fellow sri lankans (especially Heshan alias Lester, Lee potter fame Leela and the coward that finds its sinhalese name shameful and uses a tamil fake name M. Sivananthan) who joined the global islamophobia bandwagon in the 21st century, i will leave it as a homework for them to ask their moms and dads how old their grandmas and grandpas were when they made their first child. if the answer was somewhat better than they feared, they may go one or two nodes up in their family trees to see how prevalent the large differences of age between the sexes while marriage and what was the typical bride's age at her first marriage. I believe no need to mention the cultural monopolization of polygamy for the ruling elite. In case you guys think the land of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka remained the same in all its looks, let me give guys you a time machine ride, which will also eliminate without loss of generality the need to look back at the times of monarchies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pCtjnhxXfw&list=UUaHiY9CAHDvyUxOxqYSMSNA&index=4 A recent current affairs coverage is available at http://blog.worldvision.org/sponsorship/married-at-13/, in which we read about a socially alright, but legally impossible marriage between a 13 years old girl and her 20 years old boy friend being performed in this manner: "her boyfriend and his family took them to the courthouse of a village several miles away so that she could falsify her age. The registrar in the village seemed satisfied with the parental affirmation and asked no further questions."

In the meantime, the seventh century A.D. (which means a three digit number for the year) tribal arab man you are quoting first married a divorced woman of 40 when he was 25! (I know you just found an opportunity here to vent your islamophobic anger from a different perspective :D )

A disclaimer: My intention is not to harm any others' feelings, but to remind some fools of their own history before they preach others. In fact, I'm sincerely greatful to the vigil people, Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara, Ms. Tisaranee Gunasekara and so many others.

this comment is available for reuse at http://pastebin.com/S7Ryd0bq. no rights reserved.

-Nobody.