Childhood And Child Marriage in Islamic Law

Though the child marriage has been a social phenomenon known and practiced in different societies throughout history, it has recently been all the more offensive to modern sensibilities. Until the last two centuries, children did not enjoy an exceptional status entitling them to differential treatment before the judiciary in the European legal thought. On the other hand, Islamic law took pioneering steps in according children a special legal status. One can see that even the early books of Islamic jurisprudence were full of highly technical details on different stages of physical and mental development of human being along with legal provisions resulted from each stage. Despite this early awareness of child rights, the child marriage phenomenon was seen in both Islamic societies and Islamic law. Because Islamic child law has remained deeply influenced by the cultural aspects of the period in which it first emerged, and these aspects have continued to serve as the basis of child law in Islamic jurisprudence across the Muslim world. This study attempts to demonstrate some excessive interpretations through which jurists traditionally argued for child marriage and read the relevant verses more coherently with their textual context. Summary: Developing a one-size-fits-all definition of the term “child” is more difficult than one might think. That is why there might be seen a palpable dissatisfaction among the scholars of childhood studies with a child definition made by any social discipline. On the other hand, Islamic law has from the very beginning had a detailed theory of child law. According to Islamic legal thought, humans pass through three stages of development between birth and adulthood: minority, puberty, and mental maturity. All the schools of Islamic law agree that children are minors [saghīr] from birth to puberty. Minors must have legal representatives to manage their possessions in their best interest. Jurists had a large consensus on a guardian’s, and especially a father’s and paternal grandfather’s, authority to compel the minor children in his care (al-wilāya al-mujbira), such that he can even give them in marriage to whomever he sees fit. However, such a betrothal is perceived to be a preliminary contract that does not directly result in a joint marital life. In premodern Islamic history, only a few early scholars such as Ibn Shubruma (d. 144/761), ？Abū Bakr al-Asamm (d. 200/816), and ？Uthmān al-Battī (d. 143/760) were categorically against the marriage of minor children. In ？anafī opinion, girls and boys who have reached puberty with a