Some Thoughts on Child Marriage
by
Sr Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood
When Muhammad 
reached the age of 52 he married a motherly woman
to help raise his daughters, and a child - Aishah, who was said to have been
only 6 years old. This action had far-reaching consequences:
· it established a precedent, and since his followers are commended for following his example, to this day in the rural villages of Egypt, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, and the Middle East it is very unusual for a girl to reach the age of 16 and not be married. Some very young girls find themselves being made to marry men old enough to be their grandfathers.
· it
led to accusations that the Prophet 
was a paedophile.
· it
led to accusations that Muhammad 
could not have been a genuine prophet, for
God would not have allowed him to do such a thing.
The spirit of Islam required a man to behave with kindness, compassion and nobility. If a marriage took place at the onset of menstruation, it was also subject to the general Islamic ruling that no Muslim should ever force any other person to do something that would cause them hurt or abuse
· the specific ruling that men were forbidden to force or co-erce women into unwanted sexual intimacy
· the specific ruling that free consent was required from both partners before the marriage took place
This should have, in itself, ruled out young girls being forced to marry any person they did not wish to, let alone much older men. The Prophet’s marriage to Aishah was in no way forced, but she had seen him every day of her life and loved him dearly, in such circumstances it remains as a sunnah. There are several hadiths recording the forced marriages of certain women, who informed the Prophet of what had happened, and he instantly dissolved their marriages.
The
Prophet’s sunnah included arranging other marriages. If marrying at a very
young age was a requirement from Allah, the Prophet would have acted
accordingly.
Of the Prophet’s four daughters, the first three did marry very young. Zaynab married at around the age of 10, and this was said to have been a love-match. Ruqaiyyah and Umm Kulthum married before the age of 10, to the sons of the Prophet’s uncle Abu Lahab, but these marriages were never consummated and the uncle’s rejection of Islam led him to divorce the girls and send them back to the Prophet’s home. Ruqaiyyah then married the wealthy merchant Uthman, and had her first baby by him at the age of 12. Umm Kulthum, however, remained unmarried for many years, and eventually married the same Uthman after Ruqaiyyah died. The Prophet’s most famous daughter, Fatimah, remained single until she was 20, and only then did she marry the Prophet’s cousin and fostered son, Ali.
Of the Prophet’s own wives, apart from Aishah, none of them was under the age of 16, and his sunnah was actually to marry older women who had been widowed or divorced. (See my article on the Prophet’s wives).
As it happens, there is controversy over the dates for Aishah’s birth and death.
Most Muslims
do accept that Aishah was born in the 4th year of the Prophethood,
ie 614 CE, and that she was therefore engaged to the Prophet 
when she was only 6 years old. Others have
suggested that various dates given in the hadith traditions do not ‘add up’,
and that she could have been born 4 years before
the Prophethood, ie. 606, in which case she was 13 at her nikah, probably the average age for this ceremony in Arabia.
In the West today sex is illegal for girls under the age of 16, but this is an arbitrary choice of age,[1] and many girls are sexually active much younger. Muslim culture prefers honourable marriage as soon as pregnancy becomes a possibility to dishonourable sex before marriage with its attendant tragedies and abortions.
The issue of child brides has now reached England and the United States where secret illegal weddings are being performed. It has been estimated that 49 countries have a significant child bride problem.
The Prophet 
was not a paedophile
A paedophile
is someone who lewdly seeks to have sex with a child. That the Prophet 
had no such inclination was proved by the
fact that he could have done anything he liked to Aishah, yet there was no
physical intimacy between them for several years, and she continued to live in
her father’s household. According to her own testimony, although she knew she
had been ‘married’ to someone, she did not actually know who the bridegroom
was, and did not even feel the need to ask at that stage. She said that the
first time she realised she her husband was the Prophet 
was when the union was physically consummated
several years after the marriage.
To be married without consummation was not an unusual or amazing thing, and to this day it is still quite normal for couples who have been officially married by nikah (even adults) not to consummate their relationship for varying lengths of time, for all sorts of reasons.
Suitable age for marriage
As regards the
matter of physical intimacy with a very young girl, before the coming of Islam
marriage arrangements could be made from birth (or even from before birth), and
sexual intimacy was considered acceptable once a girl had become technically
capable of childbirth with the onset of menstruation – which could be as early
as 9 or as late as 18. The usual age for a girl to marry was between 11 and 15.
However, it is generally accepted that it is not in a 9 year old girl's best interest to engage in marriage and sexual relations, regardless of the cultural setting, as it can often lead to physical and psychological damage. In the West today, a man using a child for intimacy could be sent to prison for sex with a minor, statutory rape, or other related laws.
Islamic feminists point out that there is no Qur’anic text requiring or encouraging men to marry very young girls. If physical intimacy is allowed to take place with the onset of menstruation, it must be primarily dependent upon
· the Islamic general ruling that no Muslim should ever force any other person to do something that would cause them hurt or abuse,
· and the specific ruling that men were forbidden to force or co-erce women into unwanted sexual intimacy.
This would in
itself rule out young girls being forced to marry any person they did not wish
to, let alone much older men. The Prophet’s 
marriage to Aishah was in no way forced, but
she had seen him every day of her life and loved him dearly, in such
circumstances it remains as a sunnah.
How to break free
Breaking out of the tradition to marry young is difficult:
· These young girls do not often receive support from their families to say no to marriage
· Cultural, economic, and religious aspects of the communities where they live make it nearly impossible for the girls to break free from marrying early
·
increasing
poverty in rural areas forces women to take up work outside their homes, which
indirectly fuels the practice, since working mothers often prefer to marry off
their young daughters instead of leaving them alone at home
·
where marriage
customs are expensive, expenditure is often stretched far beyond the
parents’ means. Some families therefore prefer to marry off more than one
offspring at the same wedding function, which can mean including some very
young brides.
The practice has long been commonplace in
Iran in the countryside and in smaller towns where such child marriages were
not only sanctioned by tradition, but in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, Iran's new government quickly
suspended the country's progressive family law, disallowed female judges, and
strongly enforced the wearing of the hijab. Within a few months, shari’ah
rulings lowered the marriage age of girls to 9 and boys at 14,
permitted polygamy, gave fathers the right to decide who their daughters could
marry, permitted unilateral divorce for men but not women, and gave fathers
sole custody of children in the case of divorce.
Successful
reforms
Now,
however, after months of deliberation, Iranian authorities have recently
approved a law that requires court approval for the marriage of any girl below
the age of 13 or boy younger than 15. One female reformist, Fatemah Khatami,
said that the new law is particularly due to the efforts of women law-makers,
who have sought to increase legal protections for girls and women.
The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare
of the Child specifically gives
girls the right to be protected from early marriage, on the grounds that being
forced into marriage at ages as young as 11 not only robs girls of their
childhood and any chance of an education, it risks exposing them to
exploitation and violence.
Non-acceptance of any reinterpretation of Muslim law to suit modern times has been the dominant trend among Indian/Pakistani Muslims. The famous Sarda Bill against child marriage (made an Act in 1928) was supported by both Allama Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah as early as the 1920s, but the ulema opposed (and still oppose) it. The 1961 Muslim Family Law Ordinance in Lahore, Section 12, banned child marriage and set a minimum age for the marriage of boys at 18 years and girls at 14 years.
Morocco recently raised the marriage age from 15 to 18, abolished polygamy,
equalized the right to divorce, and gave women the right to retain custody of
their children. These efforts were opposed by religious groups, but Morocco's
modernizing young king, Muhammad VI (who claims to be a direct
descendent of the Prophet), backed the reformers and appointed a committee to
examine the potential changes. In October 2003, he formally presented
parliament with a set of sweeping revisions to the family law, defending the
changes with copious references to the Qur’an.
A conference organised by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO), called in 2005 upon all Muslim states to ‘take the necessary measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against girls and all harmful traditional or customary practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation.’