Child marriage and Islam: 5 facts

The Quran does not state a minimum age. It speaks of orphans who “reach the age of marriage” and tells guardians to test their sound judgement before handing over their property.^[1] The verse links marriageable age with the ability to manage affairs, and the jurists drew on that link when they discussed maturity (bulūgh).

Marriage in the Quran’s framework is a mīthāq ghalīẓ, a solemn covenant.^[2] A covenant needs a party who can understand and agree to it. The phrase appears in the verse that reminds husbands of what they have taken from their wives, and it sets the seriousness of the bond high.

The objection is that a standard of understanding is not a number, and that societies have applied it loosely. That is correct. The Quran gives a test and leaves the application to the community, which is why the age at which a person is ready has been argued in every period.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that a previously married woman may not be married until she is consulted, and a virgin until her permission is asked.^[3] The Companions asked how a virgin gives permission, and he answered that her silence is permission. The rule applies to the first marriage as much as to later ones.

When a woman told him that her father had married her to someone she disliked, he gave her the choice to refuse.^[4] The report shows that a guardian’s authority did not override the bride’s own right to accept or decline.

The strongest objection is that the rule speaks of a woman who can be consulted, and says nothing about a child who cannot. The jurists faced the same difficulty, and it is why they differed over minors, as the next entry shows. The consent hadiths remain the clearest statement of the law and the standard against which any marriage is judged.

Ismail al Faruqi summarises the rule on a marriage arranged by parents for a minor: on reaching adulthood, the young person has the full right to confirm the contract or reject it, and may dissolve the marriage even if it has already been consummated.^[5]

Some jurists allowed a father to contract the marriage of a minor daughter, with consummation delayed until she is able. Others, among them early scholars such as Ibn Shubruma and Uthman al-Batti, held that a marriage before maturity is not valid.^[6] The point is that the question was argued inside the tradition and not settled.

Those who allowed it relied on the reports about Aisha and on the Quran’s mention of a waiting period for women who have not menstruated (65:4).^[7] Those who refused it read the consent hadiths and the Quran’s requirement of sound judgement as ruling out a contract made for a child, and some read the waiting-period verse as covering women whose cycles are delayed.

Even among those who permitted it, the permission came with conditions. Consummation waited until the girl was physically able, and the guardian had to act in her interest. The Hanafi school gave a girl married as a minor the option to end the marriage on reaching maturity. The tradition therefore never treated the matter as unrestricted.

The best-known report concerns the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha, which is discussed with the evidence in its own article on this site. Al-Bukhari records that she was six at the contract and nine at consummation.^[8] Scholars distinguish between what the Prophet did as a particular case, in a society with different norms, and what he commanded as law. The commands on consent and maturity are the law.

The objection is that the Prophet’s life is itself a source of law, so a report about his marriage carries legal weight. Scholars answer that his actions fall into several kinds. Some are general models, and others belong to his own circumstances. A marriage contracted in the society of seventh-century Arabia, where marriage at a young age was common and accepted, does not by itself make a rule for later societies.

Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia set 18 as the minimum age, and Morocco did so with a court exception. Muslim jurists have defended such laws as in keeping with the purposes of sharia (maqāṣid), which include protecting a person’s welfare. The ruler is permitted to regulate the permissible for the public good, and the jurists have used that principle to support a minimum age.

Where child marriage persists, the causes are poverty, weak enforcement and custom, and it exists in non-Muslim societies as well. Reform has often come from within Muslim legal institutions. The point of the laws above is that Muslim scholars and legislators have judged a minimum age to fit the faith, and the countries named are themselves Muslim-majority.