Buggerystan

A document released by WikiLeaks described efforts by high-ranking Afghan officials to quash reports of police officers and other Afghans arrested for "purchasing a service from a child."

The leaked diplomatic cable quoted former Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar's concern that publicity about the arrests, which involved the hiring of "dancing boys," would "endanger lives."

The author of the diplomatic cable fretted that the case would be "blown out of proportion, an outcome that would not be good for either the U.S. or Afghanistan."

The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.

In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.

Islam is the only major world religion where child marriage has the religious sanction of its prophet. Mohammed 'married' Aisha, his most notable wife, when she was six years old. The marriage was consummated when she was nine or ten at the latest. Like so many marriages, it was the product of an alliance between her father and Mohammed. Aisha's merchant father was Mohammed's first ally outside his family, and went on to be Mohammed's successor. That alliance was sealed with the sexual abuse of his little girl.

Such arrangements are still common in the Muslim world today, where little girls are treated as gifts to seal an alliance.

Islam was born out of the brutal rape of a little girl. As the mother of the Sunni Caliphate, Aisha is not just an incidental figure. Her marriage to Mohammed lies at the heart of Islam. The alliance between her father and her abuser made Islam viable by giving its prophet his first real power base. After Mohammed's death, her father used that connection to the Chief Prophet of Islam, to gain the political upper hand over Mohammed's son-in-law in the civil war that arose afterward. And it was her father who oversaw the codification of the Koran in its written form.