As the Michelin Man said, ‘It’s time to retire’. Saudi Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al-Sheikh thinks that suppressing child marriages (that is, in his book, sub-teens) is ‘un-Islamic’. Times of India reports on his latest foray into social politics:
‘Girls over 10 or 12 years are eligible for marriage’
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s senior-most cleric said girls as young as 10 years old can be married, local media reported on Wednesday.
The powerful Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said in a speech late on Monday that Islamic Sharia law allows the practice of pre-teen girls getting married, and that critics of the practice were doing the girls “an injustice,” reports said.
“We hear often in the media about the marriage of minors. We must know that Sharia law is not unjust for women,” the cleric is quoted as saying.
“If it is said that a woman below 15 cannot be married, that is wrong. If a girl exceeds 10 or 12 then she is eligible for marriage, and whoever thinks she is too young, then he or she is wrong and has done her an injustice.”
His comment came in the wake of several well-publicized cases of young girls being married to men sometimes old enough to be their great-grandfathers.
On Monday a court in Taif allowed an 11-year-old girl to separate from her 75-year-old husband after the girl’s mother petitioned the court, according to a report in Okaz newspaper. The girl’s father had arranged the marriage in exchange for a dowry, it said.
In December a Saudi court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh, rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.
…
There is nothing ‘un-Islamic’ in trying to protect minor girls. The Sheikh will be hard pressed to explain how a 10-year-old is ‘disadvantaged’ by being prohibited from being married off by her father, brother, or even uncle if he happens to be her guardian. It seems to most people—including Saudi human rights organizations—exactly the opposite from the facts.
UPDATE: Further on this… I understand where the Sheikh is coming from, but his thinking is grossly outdated. Yes, there’s certainly a form of honor to be found in marriage. And certainly the Prophet is one who example is worthy to be followed. But insistence that everything he did must be emulated by all men is ridiculous. How many Saudis will give up their cars or airplane tickets to walk to Damascus or go in a camel caravan? How many will limit their diets to the few foods–and the lower caloric content–available at the time of the Prophet. A thing is not sacrosanct because the Prophet did it, rather what is to be acknowledged is how he confronted the problems of living a life in his place and in his time. That is the challenge that faces Muslims today as they try to reconcile ancient practice–practices that were the result of practicalities, not rituals–with what they need to do in these times and in the global array of places in which they find themselves. Here, I fear the Sheikh has let his respect for the past get in the way of his common sense and human compassion. I’ve never read a hadith in which the Prophet blamed someone for showing too much compassion for his fellow man–or woman.
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January:14:2009 - 15:31
The issue is not whether (and I am not a theologian) religion does allow such marriages of minors.
The issue is that we have a governmental legal system that is exclsuively linked to a religious legal system.
We should divorce the two.
Were we to do so, then there would be no societal consequences of such theological musings by this clerical.
January:14:2009 - 16:04
Well, Abdel Aziz Al-Sheikh is just following the example of Prophet Muhammad. He is in an awkward situation: he can’t declare un-Islamic something that his own prophet did! That’s the problem with Sharia law.
January:14:2009 - 16:38
Absolutely true, but I’m not holding my breath. I suspect that my human remains will be dust before that happens in Saudi Arabia.
Yet, it needs to be done if Saudis are to attain what it possible for them.
Quite a problem.
January:14:2009 - 16:39
Yes indeed! As Andrew notes in a comment below, the fusion of church and state is producing serious paradoxes for Saudi society.
I think the country needs some younger and more widely-grounded theologians to manage the problems.
January:14:2009 - 17:56
This is just sheer stupidity in my book. Just because his mother was married off at 12 and started having babies (like my own mother-in-law was), doesn’t make it right in this day and age. Justifying it that way or because the Prophet himself did it is a very poor argument. I have such a hard time understanding this aspect of the religion.
January:14:2009 - 18:36
There is some logic to the argument:
The argument, however, completely ignores that times and people change, that what was once admirable may not remain so, no matter who was doing it. Any argument that brings in the Prophet, though, quickly runs into the brick wall of religious obstinacy. To do other than the Prophet must be to sin, these folks will argue.
January:14:2009 - 23:02
So, let me get this straight. It’s an “injustice” to prevent a 10yr old girl from marriage but it’s fine to prevent her from driving a car when she’s 18yrs old.
They need more doctors who refuse to conduct the blood test. That’s where I’d focus, if I were running the human rights group. That’s the bottleneck that can be clogged. There are only so many blood labs in the country. Find them. Get to know the staff. Present the case of the problems of child marriage and ask them to act, in good conscience, to help stop it. No blood lab results, no marriage.
Am I correct?
January:14:2009 - 23:49
It’s good thinking, but it’s not a bulletproof solution. The ringer in this mix is wasta. Turn down the wrong person and the medical technician (or his boss and boss’ boss) can find themselves before a Shariah court defending themselves against a charge of interference with a Prophet-ordained practice.
Now, most of these child marriages are taking place in more-or-less rural areas, which suggest a shortage of wasta to begin with. But because of blood relations and tribal relations, a nasty surprise could pop up if the wrong person were thwarted. That leaves aside problems of familial relationships with the judges, of course, as well as blatant bribery.
If a law were passed saying that the lab techs could not conduct pre-marital blood tests (already a legal requirement) on any woman under 15, then the techs (and their bosses) might have the immunity they’d need. Lacking that law, it takes a brave lab tech to cross a judge.
IMO, of course.
January:15:2009 - 08:30
If a doctor or lab workers were not brave enough to cross a judge, then they could just stall or delay the blood test results long enough to raise the ire of the participants. Done over and over this would draw more attention to the need for the law change.
Let the wasta throwing begin! It becomes counterproductive in this case because the goal is to educate people of the wrongs of marrying a child. Wasta helps get the word out by involving more people in the decision.
January:15:2009 - 09:56
I understand where he’s coming from to in respect to the marriage between the Prophet and Aisha. But it need also be considered the times then were greatly different than the times now.
Life expectancy was much shorter then. It was not at all uncommon for girls/women to marry upon onset of menses … much like the rites of becoming a “man” and a “woman” in many global indigenous cultures – both past and present.
In our time, it is alarming primarily because they are so very young, and alternately seem to be betrothed for the purposes of familial debt to much (sometimes much, much) older men. Reminds me of the horrid practice of “first night privileges”.
It seems primitive, out of touch with the times. But too, it frames the realities of life our “Books” contain … it makes a person stand for their belief … to question in the best way, to learn.
It puts Aisha into concept, it puts Mary into concept … it tests the metal of our belief(s).
In Islam, women are a “trust” with rights of spousal refusal – most certainly prior to consummation of any betrothed arrangement. They are allowed to see – faces exposed – their prospective spouse (That perhaps an affection will result …)
Women are not a commodity, without a soul, without dignity.
When the female infant asks for what crime she was buried?
January:15:2009 - 10:20
I would agree that humans must adapt to changing times as we evolve. Evolution is evident all around us as our wisdom teeth and appendixes really serve no purpose other than to be a pain in the butt.
Thus, what was once upon a time a common practice is no longer useful because it is causing more pain. It doesn’t mean that is has to be condemned and people who have done it in the past were “bad”. No, all it means “to me” is that it is no longer useful and has become “harmful” thus it needs to be removed to prevent more harm.
January:15:2009 - 10:35
Susan,
Welcome to Crossroads Arabia!
I agree. Old customs do not necessarily mean that they remain good or valid in changed time and circumstance. To insist on the letter of the law under changed conditions is to lose sight of the purpose of the law, ostensibly justice.
Luckily, ‘first night privileges’ seem to be a myth. It is no myth, however, that this pre-Islamic custom of child marriage needs to be halted.
January:15:2009 - 10:49
Hi John. Thanks for the welcome.
Not quite sure how much of a myth it is really, as myth tends to have it’s basis in truth.
January:15:2009 - 10:53
Sometimes they have a basis in truth. Sometimes, though, that have a basis in fears, desires, and anger! And sometimes they can just be created as a good club to bash an opponent!
January:15:2009 - 11:08
A problem is that the logic that I have often heard in our country is a type that is not widely heard throughout Islam.
There are indeed those who assert that the Rasulullah did X, and therefore we should individually do X.
However, as I have been given to understand by reading a bit into various forms of Islamic thought, that is not the best way to understand the revelation of the Rasulullah.
If the Rasulullah only wore cloth or leather shoes, it does not mean that we are forbidden to wear shoes with nylon, as a trivial example.
So, too, the example of the Rasulullah must be used with great care and caution, as one should not impute universal truths into each and every individual action of his.
Some of his actions were appropriate for himself and for a particular circumstance, without any greater universal meaning.
January:15:2009 - 11:19
Exactly.
Sometimes, this desire to emulate the Prophet seems to verge on idolatry, forgetting that he was human, living in a particular time, place, and circumstance.