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Abdelhak Senna / AFP - Getty Images
Morocco's Solidarity, Women and Family minister Bassima Hakkaoui, the only woman in the new Islamist-led government, speaks during a debate about underage marriage in parliament in Rabat on April 16, 2012, next to Justice minister Mustafa Ramid.
Abdelhak Senna / AFP - Getty Images
Hamida, the sister of Amina Al Filali, holds a poster of her sister during a sit-in protest outside the local court in Larache that had approved the marriage on March 15, 2012.
Morocco's parliament has been debating a controversial law that allows rapists to marry their underage victims after the suicide of a teenage girl last month raised doubts about the effectiveness of reforms to women's rights brought in by King Mohammed VI.
The North African country's Islamist-led government has been urged by human rights groups to amend article 475 of the penal code, which allows a rapist to marry his victim if she is a minor as a way of avoiding prosecution.
Sixteen-year-old Amina El-Filali killed herself by swallowing rat poison on March 10 after being severely beaten during a six-month forced marriage to the man who raped her.
--Reuters contributed to this report
- Read more about Amina el-Filali and the demands for a change in the law in Edward Cody's report for the Washington Post
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Men in Islamic countries are ignorant,backward,barbaric jerks who have not advanced a whole lot since the cave dwellers we descended from. Fight for your freedom women!! What can they do to you,rape,torture,slavery,murder? They already do that!
Haha Morocco, what a backwards country. They accept rapists into their society and let them get away with their crimes, even if those rapists were to rape their own daughters. Women in Islam take the most brutality that most men couldn't fathom. For some of them to still continue to live is beyond me and it just shows how strong they try to be...until they swallow rat poison.