KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The marriage of a 12-year-old Malaysian girl has
outraged advocates for children and women, who called Monday for a ban on child
marriage.
The girl, Nor Fazira Saad, married her boyfriend,
Mohammad Fahmi Alias, 19, on Nov. 17 and the groom’s family held a celebration
last Saturday, according to local news media reports.
In Malaysia, a
Muslim-majority country, the legal marrying age is 16 for Muslim girls and 18
for Muslim men. However, they can marry before those ages with the permission
of their parents and the Shariah courts.
For non-Muslims, the minimum legal age is 18, though a
girl can marry as young as 16 with permission from her state’s chief minister.
Azmi bin Abdul Rejab, a marriage registration officer at the Islamic religious
office in Kulim, a town in the northern state of Kedah, confirmed that the
Shariah court there had given Nor Fazira permission to marry.
“It is good that we are marrying early, rather than
risk being in an illicit relationship,” Mr. Mohammad Fahmi was quoted as saying
by The Star newspaper in its Sunday editions.
Nor Fazira told the newspaper that she had stopped
attending school last year but now planned to resume her studies, as her
husband had encouraged her to do so. The girl’s father, Saad Mustafa, supported
the marriage, telling the local news media that it was better for the couple to
get married than do something “improper.”
A report released this month by the United Nations Country Team
Gender Theme Group found that in 2011, Malaysia’s Shariah courts had approved
824 marriages involving Muslims in which at least one party was younger than
the legal age. The report did not look at marriages involving non-Muslims.
Researchers suspect that the overall number of underage marriages is higher because
not all couples who have taken part in religious weddings register with the
authorities.
Ratna Osman, the executive director of Sisters in
Islam, a Muslim women’s advocacy group in Kuala Lumpur, said that the 2000
census showed that 6,800 girls and 4,600 boys younger than 15 were married. The
2010 census did not include similar data.
Ms. Ratna argued that the government should raise the
minimum marriage age for everyone to 18, rather than allow Shariah courts or
state ministers to make exceptions for younger children.
“How did the judge determine that a 12-year-old was
ready for marriage?” she asked. She noted that having sex with a 12-year-old
girl who is not one’s wife is considered statutory rape under Malaysian law.
“Yet once you do it under the name of marriage, she is
no longer a minor? Her body has suddenly transformed into an adult body?” Ms.
Ratna said. “You would be charged under the law on statutory rape but get
permission from the court and suddenly it’s O.K. to have sex with a 12-year-old.”
Sharmila Sekaran, chairwoman of Voice of the Children,
a rights group in Kuala Lumpur, also said the government should outlaw child
marriage.
“This should not be happening regardless of the fact
that the parents had consented. I don’t think parents should be allowed to
consent for children the age of 12,” she said. “There has been research done
which shows that children at the age of 12 are not sufficiently mature to
understand their role within a marriage and certainly in terms of becoming
parents; they themselves are still children.”
Ms. Sharmila added that studies had found that young
girls who become pregnant and their babies faced greater health risks than
older women.
But Nazri Aziz, the government minister responsible for
legal affairs, said the government had no plans to amend the law regarding the
minimum legal age of marriage “because it concerns Islamic law.”
He said the government could not pass any law that
would be inconsistent with Islamic law.
The United Nations report included Malaysian census
data showing that in 2010, about 1.4 percent of married women, or more than
82,000, were 15 to 19, up from 1.2 percent, or about 53,000, in 2001.
The researchers interviewed six girls and one boy who married below the legal age and found that their reasons for getting married included to avoid premarital sex, which is forbidden under Islam; to avoid being arrested for khalwat, an Islamic offense in which unmarried men and women are found together in “close proximity”; coercion by family elders; and pregnancy.