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Yet another child has been married because of Islamic laws that no one wishes to admit exist, much less counter in any way.
The BBC reported recently that “an eight-year-old girl, who had been missing for six months, was found living with a man who said he was her husband.” This man, identified as Sheikh Mahmoud, “initially said he was solely teaching the girl the Quran. But after legal complaints were filed, he changed his statement, saying he had married the girl with her father’s consent.”
He did this based on Islamic law: “When asked by the BBC how he justified marrying an eight-year-old, Sheikh Mahmoud said that the traditions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, along with that of the Shafi’i school of thought, allowed child marriage.” The BBC, as woke as ever, and thus determined to defend the image of Islam in every possible way, begged to differ: “After the BBC questioned his reasoning – citing opposition from numerous Somali Islamic scholars – Sheikh Mahmoud maintained that he would not abandon the marriage.”
The BBC’s “opposition from numerous Sunni Islamic scholars” notwithstanding, Sheikh Mahmoud is not some extremist or eccentric. He is acting upon standard, basic Islam. Islamic tradition records that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and the resultant fact that child marriage and the sexualization of children are taken for granted in wide swaths of the Islamic world: “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. For that reason, 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.
And this practice not accepted just in Iraq and Iran. 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 was 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.”
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.