“The arguments for or against the law were cited from Islamic literature, not one argument was made citing human rights or other modern progressive ideas.”
Child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law.
Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.
“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria
“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law
There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council
“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology
These authorities say these things because hadiths that Muslims consider authentic record that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.
Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:
The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.
Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.
“Pakistan Shariat Court dismisses plea against a law that sets minimum age restrictions for marriage,” OpIndia, March 7, 2023:
Federal Shariat Court in Islamabad has dismissed a petition challenging the validity of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013. The law was passed in 2013 and sets the minimum age for marriage for both boys and girls at 18 years. The law, it was argued by the petitioner, was against the injunctions of the Quran and Sunnah. The law has been in place for almost 10 years now and is one of the few such laws passed by the Pakistani legislature.
The FSC said that the law was totally in line with the commands of the Quran and Sunnah. Citing verses that talk about the protection of children’s rights from Islamic literature, the court upheld the law. The law has received criticism from the hardliners in Pakistan who believe that Child Marriage is not haram according to Sunnah.
Pakistan in general and Sindh in particular has had a history of brutal atrocities on children. OpIndia has covered many such news reports where Hindu minor girls were abducted, raped, forcibly converted, and married to Muslim men. In 2022, while Pakistan was going through devastating floods which brought the country to its knees, a Hindu girl was gang-raped under the pretext of offering her food, this happened in Sindh too. There are hundreds of such cases where minor girls (mostly Hindu) are abducted and raped and then forced to undergo Niqah with their perpetrator.
The law in question is supposed to curb such barbaric acts, and although it can most amply be characterized as a failure especially if you look at it from the standpoint of Hindu girls in the Province of Sindh, at least the legislature of Sindh showed the courage of going against Islamic hardliners and passed such a law.
The arguments for or against the law were cited from Islamic literature, not one argument was made citing human rights or other modern progressive ideas. This testifies to the deep Islamization of the common populace as well as the Judiciary in Pakistan.
In October of 2022, a minor girl who was raped and converted to Islam by a Muslim man was ordered by the Court to return to her abductor. Following social media outrage, the decision was reversed with great reluctance. The OpIndia report about this incident can be read here. The fate of Christians and Ahmadiyas is no different, they are also constantly subjected to raped, forced conversions, and forced marriages. In 2019 a Christian girl who was just 14 years old was raped, converted, and married to her abductor.
Mehwish Maria, a UNICEF official in Pakistan said that “Child marriage is a human rights violation. Despite laws against it, this harmful practice remains widespread”. Quoting the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18, she said that child marriage prevalence in the country is 18%. She also underscored that child marriages increase during humanitarian emergencies. She said, “Historically, women and girls are disproportionately affected during emergencies and it’s mandatory to sensitize communities for birth and marriage registration,”….
tim gallagher says
The rest of the human race can make progress and can decide that pedophilia is morally wrong but not barbaric, primitive islam. In endless ways, islam is fit only for primitive knuckle draggers. Civilised human beings have moved on and Muslims are like some kind of leftover from barbaric days. islam continues to drag over a billion Muslims back to barbaric and evil times because of its pedophilia and many other evil practices.
gravenimage says
Pakistan: Sharia court dismisses plea from Sharia advocates against law that sets minimum age for marriage
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Well, of course. There is nothing so Islamic as raping children. The “Prophet” famously did this himself.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
True. But in this story, the Shariah court did the unexpected: it upheld the age limit of 18 for both boys and girls when it comes to marriage, even if it didn’t use human rights standards to make any arguments. I think it was smart of the supporters of the Sind ruling to only use arguments based on islamic literature rather than anything from modern human rights ideas, otherwise there was no way that that Sind law would have been upheld
That said, I do hope all Pakistani Christians, Hindus and Sikhs manage to hightail it out of there. Quite a number of them to date have, but Pakistan needs to be emptied of its infidels, so that they have no one left to support the muslim expectations that infidels will do everything for them
OLD GUY says
Girls as young as nine can marry, NO the law allows dirty old men to take 9 year old girls as sex toys under muslim law. The 9yr. old has no voice in the process.