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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MuslimLankan" data-source="post: 10768809" data-attributes="member: 146629">elakiri eke inna siyaluma anya aagamika saamajikayan maage sahodayo. meke inna honda pudgalayo athara jaathiwaadaya awussana pudgalayoth innawa. wikileaks kiyanne ewani pudgalayek. me wikileaks kiyana pudgalaya muslim jaathikayanta erehiwa daala thiyena thread eka patta pal boruwak kiyana eka oppu karannai mama me thread eka damme. eka eka boru katha kiyala mathena jaathiwaadaya awussana wikileaks wani pudgalayanta api anukampa karamu.menna wikileaksge thread link eka.<a href="http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1170368" target="_blank">http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1170368</a>here is the true storyMessages like the example included above are currently circulating via  email and have also been posted to a great many blogs, online forums and  social networks around the world, where they have generated a flood of  often vitriolic anti-Islamic sentiment and very heated debate. The  messages claim that hundreds of pre-pubescent girls were forced to marry  adult grooms in a recent mass wedding ceremony in Gaza organized by  Palestinian Islamic organization, Hamas. According to the messages, 450  brides, most of whom were under ten years old,  were married to 450  grooms most of whom were in their mid to late twenties. The messages  accuse Hamas of actively and willfully promoting pedophilia and condemn  the act as "bizarre & shameful". Support for these claims is centered around several photographs  supposedly showing tiny "brides" dressed all in white and holding the  hands of their much taller, grown-up "grooms". However, while a mass  wedding did indeed take place in Gaza in July 2009, the claim that the  photographed children were actually the brides in the ceremony is   untrue. These photographs represent virtually the entire "body of  evidence" that supports the claims in these indignant protest messages.  However, this supposed photographic "evidence" is in fact meaningless  because they do not actually depict child brides at all. Instead, they  show young family members of either the bride or the groom. At such  Muslim wedding ceremonies, it is a tradition for young girls to dress up  and play a role in the celebrations in a way similar to how flower  girls are used in Western wedding ceremonies. Although these young girls  do look like little brides, they are certainly not the ones getting  married.Hamas has vehemently denied that any children were married at the event. news link<a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106002" target="_blank">http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106002</a>These scurrilous and inflammatory reports began circulating soon after  the Hamas sponsored mass-wedding took place. A 30 July 2009<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5igKMKNhotZrz6JytkJenE7spoaDQ" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5igKMKNhotZrz6JytkJenE7spoaDQ</a> Nearly a thousand Palestinians celebrated marriage on Thursday night in a  ceremony organized by Hamas in the north of the Gaza Strip. Hamas dignitaries including Mahmud Zahar, one of the militant group's  top leaders, were on hand to congratulate 450 grooms who took part in  the carefully stage-managed event. "We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy  and happiness," Zahar told the men, all of whom were dressed in  identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp. Each groom received a present of $500 from Hamas, which said its workers  had also contributed five per cent of their monthly salaries to add to  the wedding gift. Much has been made of the fact that no photographs of the real brides  have made it into  news reports about the event. This seeming omission  has been seized upon by many commentators as more evidence that the  children in the photographs really are the brides in spite of denials by  Hamas and others. However, the absence of the brides is in fact just a  reflection of how Muslim public ceremonies are conducted. News <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-world/hamas-sponsors-mass-wedding-in-gaza-20090731-e3f5.html" target="_blank">reports indicate</a>  that "the 450 brides shared none of the glamour, taking seats among the  audience" while their grooms actively participated in event ceremonies.  And a <a href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/video/Gaza-Hamas-Firmly-In-Control/Video/200908115353754" target="_blank">SkyNews video report</a>  about the mass wedding notes in reference to the brides that "The women  are elsewhere". Tim Marshall, the journalist who presented the SkyNews  video, was actually there at the mass wedding ceremony. In a <a href="http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:dcc9d723-8046-4857-b618-5c1135ba6417" target="_blank">blog post</a>  about his attendance, Marshall reiterates that the brides were  elsewhere, noting that some of them were among the guests. He also  writes: The men and women are sitting, Most ignore the speeches, some even  ignore the prayers. Then the fireworks explode, the cheering begins, and in march the Hamas scouts, bashing  drums, looking every inch the future Hamas fighters many will be. Then  the grooms, aged about 18 to about 28. They are holding hands with their  young nieces and cousins, little girls aged from about 3 to 8, made up  to the nines, wearing white wedding dresses. Up they all go to the stage, the cheering and music grows ever louder.  The girls were having the time of their lives, but, getting a little  bored after a while, came down off the stage to dance with each other  and play games. Our report on this put it into context saying that it took place just a  mile from the Israeli border and was a message from Hamas about its  strength confidence and future fighters. Oh and that the brides were  elsewhere. Pretty straightforward. It never struck me for a moment that the little girls might later be  described in the bloggersphere as the brides! How naive I am.    Moreover, the 2009 mass-wedding is not at all unprecedented.  An October  2008 New York Times article reporting on a Hamas sponsored mass wedding  held in that year, notes that it was the tenth such event held in Gaza.  The article also mirrors reports about the 2009 event, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/world/middleeast/31gaza.html?_r=2" target="_blank">noting</a>: The 300 grooms were dressed in black pants, white shirts and colorful  ties but no jackets, because of recent budget cuts. The brides, sitting  separately among the women, wore head scarves and black robes over their  evening dresses but were easily spotted by their heavy makeup. The  couples had all signed marriage contracts before the event.   Ironically, reports about the 2008 event also featured photographs of  young girls clad in white bride-like dresses. The New York Times article  shows such youngsters dancing in front of the grooms. Apparently, the  poison-pen denizens of the blogosphere saw no reason to conclude that  the children in photographs of the 2008 mass wedding were actually the  brides, so one wonders why they have so rabidly done so in 2009.Perhaps the 2009 images are a little more compelling and it is, I  suppose, at least possible that whoever first perpetrated these  inflammatory falsehoods did so out of genuine misunderstanding. What is  less forgivable -  "bizarre & shameful" even - is that many hundreds  of bloggers have gleefully perpetrated such errant nonsense in their  publications without taking the few minutes required to check the  veracity of its claims. While free speech is (or should be) a  fundamental human right, perhaps even home-based citizen journalists  should take at least some responsibility in ensuring that the  information they publish is factual and accurate.   </blockquote>

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