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Saudi
Clerics Fight for the Right to Marry Children
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your friends to like this.
Originally published under the title, "Islamic Law: Girls
Can Be Married 'Even If They Are In The Cradle'."
Muslim attempts at "reformation" continue
to be limited to words not actions. A few days ago, efforts to set a
minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia "received
a blow after the Grand Mufti said there was nothing wrong with girls
below 15 getting married."
Two years earlier, the justice ministry began pushing for setting a
minimum age in the Arabian kingdom. According to Gulf News, "It
submitted an integrated study on the negative psychological and social
effects of underage marriages to religious scholars and requested a fatwa
that sets a minimum age."
However, the ulema—the "religious scholar," the
learned ones of Islamic law—responded by totally ignoring the request.
Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority, its Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul
Aziz, shrugged the whole matter off by saying "There is currently no
intention to discuss the issue." In other words, case closed.
Although the brief Gulf News report focuses on the age 15, going back
to earlier reports when the justice ministry began bringing this issue
up, one discovers that the issue at stake is full-blown pedophilia.
Back in 2011, for example, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric
and member of Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, issued a fatwa asserting
that there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married
"even if they are in the cradle."
The grand point of the Saudi
fatwa, however, is not that girls as young as nine can be married,
based on Muhammad's example, but rather that there is no age limit
whatsoever.
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Appearing in Saudi papers, the fatwa complained that "Uninformed
interference with Sharia rulings by the press and journalists is on the
increase"—likely a reference to the justice ministry's
advocacy—"posing dire consequences to society, including their
interference with the question of marriage to small girls who have not
reached maturity, and their demand that a minimum age be set for girls to
marry."
Fawzan insisted that nowhere does Sharia (or Islamic law) set an age
limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he
relied on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not
yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that
Muhammad, Islam's role model, married Aisha when she was six or seven,
"consummating" the marriage—or, in modern/Western parlance, raping
her—when she was nine.
The grand point of the Saudi fatwa, however, is not that girls as
young as nine can be married, based on Muhammad's example, but rather
that there is no age limit whatsoever. The only question open to
consideration is whether the girl is physically capable of handling her
"husband." Fawzan documented this point by quoting Ibn
Battal's authoritative exegesis of Sahih Bukhari:
The ulema [Islam's scholars and
interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off
their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle. But it is not
permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are
capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men. And
their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and
capacity. Aisha was six when she married the prophet, but he had sex with
her when she was nine [that is, when she was deemed capable].
Fawzan concluded his fatwa with a warning: "It behooves those who
call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not
contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit.
For laws are Allah's province; and legislation is his exclusive right, to
be shared by none other. And among these are the rules governing
marriage."
Once again, case closed.
Fawzan, of course, is not the
first
to insist on the legitimacy of pedophilia in Islam.
Nor is this just some theoretic, abstract point; the lives of countless
young girls are devastated because of this teaching. Recall, for
instance, the 8-year-old
girl who died on her "wedding" night as her
"husband" raped her; or the 12-year-old who died
giving birth to a stillborn; or the 10-year-old who made headlines by
hiding
from her 80-year-old "husband."
Finally, it should be borne in mind that Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz—the
highest Islamic authority in the land of Islam's birth—not only dismisses
calls to place an age restriction for marriage, but is the same Grand
Mufti who called for the destruction of all Christian churches on the
Arabian Peninsula (as
first reported here).
The consistency makes perfect sense. After all, in the eyes of
non-Muslims, or "non-believers," Sharia law is nothing less
than a legal system built atop the words and deeds of a seventh century
Arab, whose behavior—from pedophilia and sex-slavery
to war mongering and plundering to destroying non-Muslim places of
worship—was very much that of a seventh century Arab.
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum
and a CBN News contributor. He is the author of Crucified
Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (2013) and The
Al Qaeda Reader (2007).
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