Islamic wedding cake controversy heads to Supreme Court

Aisha Mohammad and Mohammed M. Mohammad are a couple in love. He's 53 and she just turned 9, the legal age in Islam for a girl to marry.

The kids have known each other for six weeks. They met when Mohammed was hanging around the local playground and spotting Aisha near the grown-up swings playing with her doll in the sand.

"The moment I saw Aisha playing with her "Hijab Barbie," I knew she was the little girl for me," Mohammed said. "I soon told her parents--mine are dead--that I wished to marry their daughter and they agreed on the spot."

The couple was planning to celebrate their union in a Dearborn, Michigan high school gymnasium next month. The school offered use of its gymnasium and the principal, Omar Mohamad, has  even been invited to the event along with the couple's 489 family members.

But there is one problem, and it's a big one.

The baker they were planning to use for the cake has refused to bake it for them on religious grounds.

Bernie Birnbaum, the chosen baker said that baking a cake for an Islamic wedding isn't the issue. It's what the couple want on the cake that goes against his beliefs as well as the fact that he doesn't believe that a child of 9 should marry, and especially not an older man of 53.

Specifically, the future groom asked Birnbaum to inscribe the cake with these words from the Quran:

"Slay the idolaters wherever you find them." (Sura 9:5)

The baker refuses to inscribe the cake thusly. He said that such sentiments do not abide by his beliefs.

Mohammed felt a compromise coming on. He told Birnbaum that he would be willing to use a different  sura from the Quran. He came up with:

"When you meet the unbelievers, strike their necks." (Sura 47:4)

Still, that wasn't okay with baker Bernie Birnbaum. He refused to not only do the inscription, he said that he will not bake the cake at all.

"There's a nice Muslim baker two blocks away--they can go to him for their wedding cake. Oy vey, I don't want any part in this mashugana wedding," he told the couple. 

It made Aisha cry and her nose to run, and her future husband almost reached the point of violence, but held back.

The couple is now having the case heard in U.S. Supreme Court. 


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