Cleric fights ban on child marriage
A senior Saudi cleric issued a religious ruling to allow fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters "even if they are in the cradle," setting up a confrontation between government reformers and influential conservative clergy, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Sheik Saleh al Fawzan, one of the country's most important clerics, issued the ruling after the justice ministry said this month that it would act to regulate marriages between prepubescent girls and men in the Islamic kingdom.
"Those who are calling for a minimum age for marriage should fear God and not violate his laws or try to legislate things God did not permit" them to legislate, Sheik Fawzan wrote in a fatwa, or religious decree, which was published on his website.
It is not clear what legal weight Sheik Fawzan's fatwa would have if the Saudi justice ministry proceeded with its plan to outlaw child marriages.
Saudi Arabia's legal system is not codified, but because it is based upon an interpretation of Shariah law, the rulings of senior clerics can be used by individual judges when deciding cases.
The fatwa marked the second time in a year that religious authorities knocked back a government initiative to move forward on social issues involving women.
Last year, King Abdullah bin Abdelaziz al Saud pushed for higher female employment, suggesting that women ought to be allowed to work as supermarket cashiers, only for the job to be ruled off-limits to the gender by the Grand Mufti, the country's highest religious leader.
In the conservative Islamic kingdom, women are not allowed to drive and cannot work, travel abroad or undergo surgery without the permission of a male relative.
There were signs the government may be prepared to contest the issue of child marriage. Saudi media reported that the justice ministry would push ahead with setting a minimum age for marriage, despite the fatwa.
In recent months, a spate of stories about young Saudi girls being forced by their fathers to marry middle-aged men for lavish dowries or other personal gains prompted editorials in local media denouncing the practice and calling for change.
In April, the English-language Arab News reported that a court granted a 12-year-old girl a rare divorce from her 80-year-old husband, who paid her father a dowry of 85,000 Saudi riyals, or $23,000.