Yemen cleric: Fight draft law banning child brides
Published: Apr 24, 2010 23:42 Updated: Apr 24, 2010 23:42
SANAA: Yemen’s most influential Islamic cleric vowed on Saturday to gather a million signatures to protest a draft law banning child brides, in an increasingly vocal showdown against the country’s weak government which needs the support of powerful religious leaders to hold onto power.
The issue of child brides in Yemen has attracted broad international attention, most recently when a 13-year-old girl bled to death earlier this month after her 23-year-old husband allegedly tied her down and forced her to have sex with him.
The cleric, Sheikh Abdul-Majid Al-Zindani, said “a ban on child brides threatens our culture and society and spreads immorality.” Al-Zindani is Yemen’s most powerful Islamic scholar and believed by the US to be a spiritual mentor of Osama Bin Laden.
Speaking at a conference at Iman University in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, Al-Zindani called on the dozens of clerics and Islamic law students in the crowd to oppose the draft law.
“You have to gather a million signature... that supports the demands of clerics,” said Al-Zindani. “If the issue calls on us to gather a million protesters, we’ll organize it,” Al-Zindani said.
Al-Zindani’s calls against the ban have become increasingly strident ahead of an expected vote by Yemeni lawmakers next month on raising the marriage age to 17. The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in Yemen, where a quarter of all females marry before they turn 15, according to a 2009 report by the country’s Ministry of Social Affairs.
In the country’s deeply tribal society, families prefer young brides because they are seen as more obedient and are expected to have more children. It is also difficult for poor families in impoverished Yemen to ignore bride-prices of hundreds of dollars.
A February 2009 law set the minimum age for marriage at 17, but it was repealed and sent back to parliament’s constitutional committee for review after pressure from some lawmakers and clerics, led by Al-Zindani, who called it un-Islamic.
In March, Al-Zindani signed a religious decree that declared people who supported the ban on child brides to be apostates.
It is widely expected that the government will raise the marriage age to deflect international pressure, but will not enforce legislation.
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