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Why Islam rejects child marriage – and society should too
As the world enters the era of Industry 5.0, where “society” should act as the controller of technological development, it has turned out instead to uphold traditions and religious practices that seem to ignore common sense, including child marriage.
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Children’s rights: Cipinang Besar Utara subdistrict chief Sri Sundari speaks about child marriage prevention at the Cipinang child-friendly public space on Monday. (The Jakarta Post/David Caessarre)
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s 2021 drew to a close, a number of observers on the issue of child marriage concluded their activities with a webinar titled “[Reasons Why] Islam Forbids Child Marriage”.
The struggle to prevent child marriage in the country has been ongoing for more than 120 years, dating back to Kartini’s letter to protest the marriage of the daughter of the Ciamis regent, who was only 13 years old, in 1901. Yet even today we are still dealing with the same issue, along with its impacts, such as marital violence.
Data shows Indonesia has the second-highest rate of child marriage in ASEAN, with one in nine girls marrying below the age of 18 (GnB 2019). Very few of these marriages last. Most end in divorce even before the first wedding anniversary.
As other data shows, only two in 10 girls who marry manage to return to school, often because of assistance from local authorities or prominent persons such as Islamic boarding school heads, principals or charismatic figures. Although there is no official regulation that prohibits them from returning to school after marriage, there are no affirmative steps to welcome them back to classroom after they have a child either.
The phenomenon of child marriage truly seems to be a “stolen” issue in development. At first, it was not a crucial issue, compared to other population matters, such as family planning and maternal and infant mortality. The world felt confident that child marriage would dissipate when development brought about changes. The transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial one was thought to be the route to eliminate this practice. This kind of belief happened in the eradication of slavery, although in some countries it required a bloody struggle.
As society transitions to the digital era of the 21st century, it simply makes sense to expect child marriage to disappear. But strangely, as the world enters the era of Industry 5.0, where “society” should act as the controller of technology development, society has turned out to uphold traditions and religious practices that seem to ignore common sense, including child marriage.
The practice is closely linked to traditions based on gender inequality: maintaining a family’s reputation; covering up shameful, unwanted pregnancies because of a failure to use contraception correctly; emerging from abject poverty because of the lack of access to industrial progress; and many other reasons that shift the moral responsibility entirely to girls.
