Times of India - 15/1/09
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia’s senior most cleric said girls as young as 10 years old can be married, local media reported. The powerful Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said in a speech 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 cases of young girls being married to men sometimes old enough to be their great-grandfathers. On Monday a court in Taif allowed a girl, 11, to separate from her husband, 75, after the girl’s mother petitioned the court.The girl’s father had arranged the marriage in exchange for dowry, it said. In December a court rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off to a man who is 58, saying case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia’s senior most cleric said girls as young as 10 years old can be married, local media reported. The powerful Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said in a speech 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 cases of young girls being married to men sometimes old enough to be their great-grandfathers. On Monday a court in Taif allowed a girl, 11, to separate from her husband, 75, after the girl’s mother petitioned the court.The girl’s father had arranged the marriage in exchange for dowry, it said. In December a court rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off to a man who is 58, saying case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.
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