Moral standards that people took for granted for centuries seem to be eroding everywhere. That is not just true only in the woke, decadent West, but all over the world, albeit for different reasons. While the West casts off every residual attachment to traditional morality, elsewhere in the world, old traditions are being reasserted. Yet while the traditions in question are strikingly different, the outcome is much the same.
The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that “A proposed amendment to Iraq’s Personal Status Law is causing controversy, especially among women’s rights supporters. The amended law would allow men to decide upon marriage whether to follow Sunni or Shiite family law and would give clerics unprecedented legal authority. Critics say it would deprive Shiite women of basic rights and even open the door to child marriage.” It’s good that the proposal is at least causing controversy, but the proponents of the amendment have strong support from traditionalist Muslims, who are thick on the ground in Iraq.
And not just in Iraq. The News Agency of Nigeria reported back in June 2021 that “the Chief Imam of the Nasrul-lahi-li Fathi Society of Nigeria (NASFAT), Abdul Azeez Onike, says Islam supports underage marriage.” Onike insisted that “Islamic scripture was clear about marriage” and called upon people to refer to Islamic texts “instead of using contemporary standards” to determine whether or not child marriage was an acceptable practice.
Onike is right: child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law. Numerous Islamic authorities worldwide attest to this. Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in Jan. 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.
Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria, has said, “Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this.” An Iraqi expert on Islamic law, Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, agrees, saying, “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.”
So does Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent Muslim cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council: “There is no minimum age for marriage" and girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology has declared flatly: “Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.”
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). Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old. Numerous other early Islamic traditions state the same thing.
Marrying young girls was not all that unusual in Muhammad's time. But because, in Islam, Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this even today. Iraq will not be alone in making 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.
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Yet despite all this, worldwide organizations dedicated to ending child marriage universally fail to acknowledge its justifications in Islam. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights never mentions Islam in connection with child marriage. UNICEF doesn’t, either. Nor does the international network Girls Not Brides.
Until the root cause of why child marriage continues to be prevalent in some regions is acknowledged, the problem will never be solved. And more girls will suffer.
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