Dating, Love & Relationships Around The World

It’s a well know fact that Saudi human rights groups have been pushing the government to put an end to marriages involving the very young and to define a minimum age for a Muslim marriage. In the past few months, Saudi newspapers have highlighted several cases in which young girls were married off to much older men or very young boys.

The government-run Human Rights Commission has condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an “inhumane violation” and rob children of their rights.

In a recent case, an 8 year old girl was divorced from your 50+ year old husband. The girl’s marriage was arranged by her father and backed twice by a judge on the condition that it was not consummated until she reached puberty.

The case was widely publicized and prompted heated debate in the Saudi Arabia, which is currently giving more rights to women than have previously been granted. It was also condemned by human rights groups abroad.

King Abdullah, seen as a reformist, appointed the first ever woman deputy minister earlier this year.

One of his advisers, Mohsen al-Obaikan, an Islamic scholar, went public to demand that a legal age for marriage be set at 18. The justice ministry said it was considering reforming the law, which until now has given no minimum.

The justice minister said he wanted to end the “arbitrary” control of marriages by girl’s fathers.

However, the country’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Shaikh, said that marrying girls even under the age of 15 was not against Sharia – Islamic law which forms the basis of the Saudi legal system.

The Saudi Gazette reported that the marriage of the eight-year-old, who has never been named, was annulled in a private out-of-court settlement between the two families in the city of Onaiza.

There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed in Saudi Arabia every year. And it’s also not clear whether these unions are on the rise or whether people are hearing about them more now because of the prevalence of media outlets and easy access to the internet.

Activists say the girls are given away in return for hefty dowries or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

Popular attitudes also play a role in the acceptance of child marriage, according to women’s rights activist Wajiha Al Huweidar, who has called for banning child marriage.

People often refer to girls being in their “full moon age” when they are 14 and 15, meaning they are then most physically desirable. Poets “are always talking about a girl at that age of the ‘full moon,’” Al Huweidar said, adding that “deep inside, both men and women, believe this is the best age to be married.”

Such attitudes are reinforced by the “myth” among elderly men that when they “get married to a very young girl they will get their youth back,” she added.

But perhaps more importantly, many people “think they are following the Prophet’s footsteps” because Muhammad is said to have married a 9-year-old girl named Ayesha, Al Huweidar said. “That’s why it’s hard to change.”

Actually, child marriage violates Islamic law, or shari’a, on two counts, critics of the practice say. First, a marriage contract is only valid if husband and wife voluntarily consent, which a minor is unable to do. Secondly, the dowry paid by a husband is the property of the wife, not her father, who would control it in the case of a minor.

Technorati Tags: Saudi, Muslim marriage, Saudi Arabia, child marriage, Islamic

Bookmark It