Minor Marriages in Islam and Bangladesh: Harmonising God’s Law with State Law in the Quest for Reform
| Author | Taqbir Huda |
Minor Marriages in Islam and Bangladesh: Harmonising God’s Law…
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Minor Marriages in Islam and Bangladesh: Harmonising God’s Law
with State Law in the Quest for Reform
Taqbir Huda
In today’s modern world, controversy has become a corollary to Islamic law with the issue of minor marriage
being but one example of that. The relative dearth of material explicitly addressing the legality of minor
marriages within the primary sources (Quran and Hadith) never thwarted minor marriages taking place in
the Muslim world. Over time, the culmination of unjust results in Muslim-majority states stemming from
minor marriages turned it into an increasingly objectionable one. Consequentially, the widespread
contention and the heated global pressure paved the way for legislation abolishing or at least restricting
minor marriages in these states by setting a minimum age of marriage. This then gave rise to the related
controversy of whether such reforms had any justifiable Islamic legal basis or were merely adherent to
‘western’ norms. This article seeks to elucidate the sharia’s position on minor marriages in the classical
period by closely examining the interrelated Islamic legal concepts that delimit the practice of minor
marriages. It then examines existing state laws on minor marriage in Muslim majority countries, with a
particular focus on Bangladesh and its Child Marriage Restraint Acts 1929 and 2017. It concludes that
minor marriages, as it is currently practiced, stands in stark contrast to the type of marriage which gained
permissibility in the classical period and infringes what the esteemed jurist Al-Ghazali’s considered the five
cardinal values of Islam vis-a-vis the maqassid al sharia (objectives of the sharia) on all five counts.
Introduction
In the modern world, controversy has become a corollary to Islam ic law. The issue of minor
marriages is but one illustration of this contemporary phenomenon. The relative dearth of material
explicitly addressing the legality of minor marriages within the primary sources (Qur’an and
Hadith) never thwarted the practice from taking place in the Muslim world. The widespread
contention and heated global pressure have since paved the way for legislation abolishing, or at
least restricting, minor marriages in these states by setting a minimum age of marriage. This has
then given rise to the related controversy of whether such reforms were in fact legally justifiable
in Islam, or were merely adherent to ‘western’ norms. This essay will begin by elucidating the
Sharia’s position on minor marriages in the classical period by closely examining the primary
sources of law and the interrelated Islamic legal concepts that delimit the practice of minor
marriages. The paper will go on to examine existing state laws on minor marriage in Muslim
majority states, with a particular focus on Bangladesh, specifically the Child Marriage Restraint
Acts 1929 and 2017. It will be shown that minor marriages, as they are currently practiced, stand
in stark contrast to the type which gained permissibility in the classical period, and infringe on
what the esteemed jurist, Al-Ghazali, considered to be the five c ardinal values of Islam vis -à-vis
the maqassid al Sharia (objectives of the Sharia) on all five counts. As such, it will b e argued
that fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) is embedded with an array of legal tools, such as maslahah
(consideration of public interest), which can be used to justify outlawing minor marriages; n ot
doing so is certainly contrary to Sharia.
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