SAUDI ARABIA: Underage marriages to be regulated

Modernists in Saudi Arabia are striking back in their ongoing fight for influence and power with hardliner Islamists in this ultraconservative nation. After a court refused for the second time to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a man 40 years older than her, the Saudi minister of justice said last week that his government was planning to regulate the marriage of underage girls.

The Saudi justice minister, Mohammed Issa, told local media that his ministry wanted to “put an end to arbitrariness by parents and guardians in marrying off minor girls." 

The minister, however, did not elaborate on how marriages to minors would be kept in check. Other media reports quoting high-ranking officials said that a new law pertaining to marriage in the kingdom was being drafted and would set the minimum age of marriage as 18. 

Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive or travel without the approval of a male guardian, applies one of the strictest interpretations of Islam. The marriage of minor girls to adult men has been been pushed to the forefront of public debate in the oil-rich kingdom after a prominent cleric stated earlier this year that Islamic law was not against the holy union of girls under the age of 15.

The topic was back in the spotlight when the much-publicized case of the 8-year old girl, who was married by her father to settle a debt, was widely condemned locally and internationally.

The mother of the girl raised the case in court in the past weeks to try to  nix the marriage, but a judge rejected the case for the second time recently, ruling that the girl can decide for  herself once she reaches the age of puberty. The judge reportedly said that until then, the man was forbidden from engaging in any sexual activity with her. 

Local media has been reporting several other cases in which parents marry off their underage daughters to wealthier men for a certain sum of money, which was denounced by human rights groups as parents selling their daughters. 

Muslim clerics maintain, however, that parents must obtain the consensus of their daughters before marrying them off.

The debate on child marriage is part of a bigger struggle for power led by the relatively modernist Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, who has been attempting to curb the wide authority of religious authorities in the kingdom by slowly introducing new reforms.

-- Raed Rafei in Beirut

 

 

 

Comments

[Jack]

These people should be forced to live in Utah to learn civilized way of doing things.

[Red Toubbar]

Just how many chances do we give "these people" before we can aver collectively that theirs is a misogynistic, backward-looking violent menace of a culture? Allow me to be the first.

[rob]

I am for freedonm of religion but this is SICK ! And it has got to stop !

[Tyler]

"If you are under 13 years of age you may read this message board, but you may not participate."

However, you can get married in Saudi Arabia well under 13 years of age - terrifying.