Indian Muslims split over wedding age ruling

A Delhi High Court ruling that a Muslim girl can marry once she attains the age of puberty has sharply split the community, with clerics backing the law and virtually everyone else against it.

 

Muslim religious leaders across the country are pleased with the court edict that based its judgment on the Sharia, the moral code and religious law of Islam. While criminal laws in India apply to all equally, communities are allowed their own personal laws.

 

“According to Mohammedan law, a girl can marry without the consent of her parents once she attains the age of puberty,” Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and S.P. Garg said recently.

 

The bench was ruling on a Delhi Muslim girl's contention that she had married on her own free will when she was 15 years old and that her mother's charge that she had been abducted be dropped. She won the case.

 

Well-known Bengali writer Syed Mustafa Siraj is amongst those who are shocked that a court has given legal sanction for puberty-marriage when the official minimum age to wed in India is 18 for females and 21 for males.

 

“A lot of girls attain puberty at age 12,” Siraj told IANS in Kolkata. “Does it mean they can be married off when they are barely 12-13? I protest against this ruling.”

 

Bangalore-based writer Farida Rahamatullah agreed: “Whatever the personal laws of Muslims, Hindus or Christians, it is a crime to let a 15-year-old girl marry and begin a family life when she ought to be studying, playing and dreaming of a career and a job.”

 

“In fact, the law courts should protect the girls and ensure they exercise the right to marry or not till they turn major at 18 years. Fifteen is too young an age to decide their future as they will be immature, indulgent and vulnerable to the hazards of a family life.”

 

Patna-based Maulana Anisur Rahman Qasmi, however, hailed the ruling. “There is nothing wrong in it,” he said. Raheem Quraishi, assistant secretary of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, echoed him. “It is a right decision.”

 

The Board has been demanding an amendment to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act to exempt Muslims from it. Under the Shariat Application Act, marriage is one subject where the Sharia should be applicable. The Board has also been impleaded in a case with the Bombay High Court in which parents were booked by police for marrying off their 17-year-old daughter.

 

“I respect the high court's order,” added Mufti Mohammed Mukarram Ahmed, the Shahi Imam of the Fatehpuri Masjid in Old Delhi. “As per Muslim Personal Law, a 15-year-old girl can marry.”

 

But they appeared to be isolated with a large majority of urban Muslims as outraged as Syed Mustafa Siraj and Farida Rahamatullah.