Muslim Child Marriage – What Is Marriageable Age?

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Pujiono Cahyo Widianto aka Syech Puji, the 43-year old Indonesian cleric who has a 26-year old wife and who recently married Lutfiana Ulfa, a girl barely 12 years of age as his second wife with the declared intention to marry 2 more girls aged 9 and 7, the question now is this: What is the marriageable age of a Muslim girl? 

Syech Puji said: “You can marry a 7-year old if you like but you can’t have relations with her until she starts menstruating”. Vice President Jusuf Kalla commented said his mother married when she was 13, and “it  wasn’t something out of the ordinary then.” Lawyers for Syech Puji and the Chair of the National Child Protection Commission reportedly said that Syech Puji needs to be patient and wait until Lutfiana Ulfa is at least 16 years of age.

But let’s see what the clerics of Saudi Arabia have to say about this. A report in Al Watan Daily the other day said that Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia recently opposed a move to define the age of marriage and to end child marriages.  He said: “It is wrong to say it’’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger. A female who is 10 or 12 is marriageable and those who think she’’s too young are wrong and are being unfair to her. Our mothers and before them, our grandmothers, married when they were barely 12.”

Grand mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh said that those who say that women should not marry before 25 years of age are following a “bad path”. He also said that a young girl is capable of carrying out her duties as a wife if she has good upbringing.

Last month a court in Saudi Arabia ruled that the mother of a 8-year old girl did not have the right to file a petition of divorce for her daughter whose father married her off to a man who is over 50 years of age.  So who has the right to file for divorce?  Well the court says the girl should wait until she reaches puberty to file that divorce petition.

Responding to the court’s decision, the government-run Human Rights Commission issued a statement condemning child marriages as an “inhumane violation” that robs children of their rights. It calls on the government to abolish child marriages and to define a minimum age for marriage.

Grand mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh countered by saying: “We hear a lot about the marriage of underage girls in the media, and we should know that Islamic law has not brought injustice to women.”

How widespread is this practise of child marriages in Saudi Arabia?  Nobody really know, but there seems to be more cases reported in recent years.   But why do parents do such a thing to their children?  Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty dowries or as a result of longـstanding custom in which a father promises his infant daughters to cousins.

Think about it.  Is Grand mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh right in saying that “Islamic law has not brought injustice to women”?  Is the Saudi government run Human Rights Commission right in calling child marriages as an “inhumane violation” that robs the children of their rights? Should child marriages be abolished?  And should there be an agreed minimum age for marriage? If so, what is that marriageable age?

Previous posts

Syech Puji – Child Marriage Or Pedophile?
Why Is Incest More Endemic In Muslim Families?