Presidential Panel to suggest raising age of marriage for Muslim girls

The Sri Lankan Presidential panel set up to suggest amendments to the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act of 1951, is likely to recommend raising the minimum age of marriage for Muslim girls from 12 to either 16 or 18, a member of the panel told Express on condition of anonymity.

"The committee favors raising the age of marriage, but it is yet to decide if it should be raised to 16 or 18." "Discussions are still going on and we hope to submit our recommendation in June," the member said. The committee was set up in 2009 by the then Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

It is headed by the retired Supreme Court Judge Saleem Marsoof. One of the key organizations associated with it is the Muslim Women's Research and Action Forum (MWRAF) headed by the well known social activist, Jezima Ismail.

The committee has been on the job for long because of the sensitive nature of the issue.While social activists, human rights workers and the majority Sinhalese community have been clamoring for raising the age of marriage for Muslim girls to 18, to put it on par with the minimum age for the rest of Lankan females, the community itself has been wary about the bid for change.

For instance, when non-Muslim MPs, Hirunika Premachandra and M.A.Sumanthiran, took up the issue in and out of parliament, agitated Muslim leaders said that non-Muslims had no right to interfere.Sumanthiran was shouted down in parliament by Muslim ministers and MPs. However, among Muslims themselves,  a good section is in favor of  making a change in tune with the times.

For example, S.M.Aliyar, the Qazi of  the all-Muslim town of Kattankudy in the Eastern Province, told Express that Muslim law does not say that marriage at 12 is mandatory for girls. The minimum age could vary from country to country and as per the culture of the times. If the government and people of a country, in their wisdom, decide to raise the age of marriage, there should be no objection, Aliyar said.

However, in an article on the issue in www.meelparvai.net, Anas Abbas, argues that there are valid  reasons for certain classes of Lankan Muslims to marry their girls off at a young age, sometimes immediately after puberty.

Poverty forces many parents to give away their daughters in marriage as quickly as possible. It  relieves them of the burden of looking after the girls.Wome -headed households, which are a plenty in the Eastern Province because of the 30-year war, are particularly eager to get their daughters married off at the earliest.

Mothers who go to the Middle East to work as maids, have the additional problem of ensuring the security of the daughters they leave behind. Giving off their young daughters in marriage is one way of ensuring their security, Abbas points out.

Muslim boys themselves tend to get married early because they stop their education abruptly to take a job and earn money.  Being young themselves, they have to look for younger brides.

Yet another factor contributing to the intense anxiety among women about getting married is the gender imbalance among Lankan Muslims With women outnumbering men, parents' anxiety about finding grooms for their daughters is understandable.

Abbas agrees that when a little girl is married off to shoulder  conjugal responsibilities, she loses her youth and the opportunity to get educated.

But for him, the solution for the problem does not lie only in raising the minimum age of marriage from 12 to 16 or 18.It lies in tackling the underlying issue of poverty, for it is poverty which makes women go abroad for work. It is poverty which makes it burdensome to bring up girls.And it is poverty which makes young men give up their studies early and take up a job. And once in a job, marriage follows automatically.

"It will be more useful if people like Hirunika Premachandra demand an improvement in the economic condition of the Muslims," Abbas said.(The New Indian Express)