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In an article on FaithFreedom.org, Jennifer King claims:

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, The Supreme Leader of Iran, the Shia Grand Ayatollah, 1979-89 said in his official statements:

"A man can quench his sexual lusts with a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate. Sodomizing the baby is halal (allowed by sharia). If the man penetrates and damages the child, then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister. It is better for a girl to marry when her menstruation starts, and at her husband's house rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven."

The same claim was published in this book written by Nonie Darwish (author of Gatestone Institute) and this book written by Gareth Wilson. And the first four lines of the quote are mentioned in this link.

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1 Answer 1

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The first 5 sentences of the OP quote are basically a paraphrasing of the following passage from page 229 here (large file warning) in the Marriage section of his book Tahrir al-Wasilah

enter image description here

The untranslated word Diyat is, in Islamic law:

the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage.

The untranslated word Ifda' means "tearing" according to one reference and the urinary tract and vagina being one according to another reference.

This English translation of the book is by Dr. Sayyid Ali Reza Naqavi, former professor of Shi'ah jurisprudence, Islamabad University, who has a doctorate in Persian language and literature from Tehran University.

The book is translated in four parts, presented page by page with the original language.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (the part with the section on marriage law)

Part 4

So Khomeini is saying that, intercourse is permitted only if the wife is at least 9 years old, but other forms of sexual activity are permitted regardless of the age of the wife, even if she is so young that she is an infant being breastfeed.

Then Khomeini explains, that while it is a sin, there should be no legal punishment if the husband does have intercourse with the under 9 years old wife.

Khomeini goes into the range of legal possibilities in a situation where, while having intercourse with the under age 9 wife, the divide between the vagina and urethra is destroyed, or the divide between the vagina and rectum is destroyed.

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    The above text looks completely different from the quote. Commented Dec 4, 2016 at 19:39
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    @MohammadSakibArifin the last two sentences of the OP quote are totally absent from the marriage problem 12 discussion, but the first 5 sentences of the OP quote are a poor paraphrasing of the discussion.
    – DavePhD
    Commented Dec 4, 2016 at 20:22
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    @DavePhD Can you add some sort of conclusion, so that one wouldn't have to read through the blurry text to confirm or debunk the quote? On "basically a poor paraphrasing" I first thought it's the sort of paraphrasing which bends the meaning, but in fact they say pretty much same thing.
    – sashkello
    Commented Dec 4, 2016 at 22:06
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    @DavePhD Your answer is pretty good and it doesn't look completely different from the quote. Upvoted. Also, it made my day a bit more sad knowing that someone think that doing those things with a baby is ok and made a rulling on it.
    – T. Sar
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 15:22
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    @ThalesPereira Yes, very disturbing. The actual version is even worse than the OP version. Really horrifying injuries that I never even considered. I'm worried that these injuries must actually happen often for him to have written some much about it. And there seems to be a special word "Ifda" just for this type of injury.
    – DavePhD
    Commented Dec 5, 2016 at 16:00

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