After many years of ‘*psychological distress’ and psychological counselling I learnt that (profoundly) premature sexual activity affects the body’s physiology and upsets the natural hormonal system; the hormonal system, of course, affects the onset of puberty and hence, menstruation. So, if menstruation is regarded as the measure of ‘readiness’ for marriage and a ‘legal’ sexual relationship, ‘being interfered with as a young girl’ of course then ‘gets your little girls “ready” for this’ at a much earlier age!

Note: my ‘psychological distress’ was as a result of Post Traumatic Stress from being in a sexual ‘relationship’ with an adult male (my father) over the span of years since the age of approximately 3 .. and the effects on my life for the next 4 decades has been horrendous, NEARLY leading to the death of not only myself (through suicide) but also my two young sons at the time (as I could not bear leaving them behind in what I had come to see as a frightful world); MAKE NO MISTAKE, the ramifications of premature sexual engagement are HUUUUUGE and .. in my opinion .. are not to be dismissed on any grounds, be they religious or not!

(PS: my parents are from Indonesia, with one of them .. co-incidentally .. being from Semarang, where Syech Puji is the head of the Islamic boarding school)