A response to “The case of an eight year-old Saudi bride”

altmuslimah.com
The Muslim Public Affairs Council spoke out against the practice of child brides in the Muslim world in a December 9th article, “The case of an eight year-old Saudi bride,” published here. This is an area of jurisprudence that has caused contentious debate in both the Muslim and the Western worlds. Many Muslims argue that the issue of child brides is directly related to the life and practice of the Prophet Muhammad (may God’s peace and prayers be upon him).
In Islamic tradition, the Prophet is reported to have married Aisha when she was six years old, and they consummated the marriage when she reached nine years of age. However, many western Muslims and Muslim reformers in the Islamic world have attempted to re-evaluate these traditions in light of modern sensibilities that denounce child brides as repugnant or unfit for modern values. The problem they face in their revision is that this issue is entrenched in Islamic tradition making it difficult to reform. MPAC’s attempt to explain away this phenomenon is more problematic because it fails to give adequate value to the traditions that approve of child brides. MPAC also attempts to play down how wide spread the acceptance of child brides is in the Sunni Islamic legal tradition.