Issues: ‘NU rules in favor of underage marriages’

March 27, p. 1

The minimum age of 16 years to marry under the prevailing 1974 Marriage Law is not a sharia-binding regulation for Muslims, according to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) jurists. The panel of sharia experts announced there was no age limitation for marriage under Islamic law. They did not cite gender; but the law states that women must be at least 16 to marry, while the minimum age for men to marry is 18.

The experts said Muslim parents can marry off their underage children, but strongly appealed for marriages to only be carried out after the child has reached puberty. The jurists underlined that couples in which both are underage must abstain from sexual intercourse until they are deemed physically and mentally capable of doing so.

The edict was reached at a meeting of jurists at the national leadership conference of NU, the country’s largest Muslim organization, in Makassar, South Sulawesi. “The majority of clerics are of the opinion that there is no minimum age limit in marriage under sharia law,” NU jurist Cholil Nafis told a press conference on the sidelines of the congress on Friday.

Your comments:

The NU has clearly shown their true colors by voting in favor of underage marriages under sharia law in Indonesia.

The extreme orthodox clerics of the NU, wish to forget the fact that during the days of Muhammad, after bloody tribal desert wars, many women became widows and young children orphans. It was only for these reasons that sharia law provided for legitimate marriages to more than one wife and marriages to underage girls, in order to provide for their economic security and protection.

During those times, this served as a kind of social security in the desert community. However more than 1,500 years, later these circumstances have dramatically changed and there is no need any more to follow these antique practices in our current (“civilized”) society. In today’s societies these marriages only serve the physical interests of “dirty old men’s sick pedophilic perverted longings “.

Indonesia’s state laws have recognized this and have set minimum age requirements for boys and girls to marry.Nobody in Indonesia is above the law and every citizen should strictly comply with the laws of this country, whether they be Muslims, Christians, Hindus or Buddhists. In the case of noncompliance, these sick people should be arrested to face the judicial music and be sent to prison.

Jan R. Scheele
Bogor, West Java