Presenter
Jones Justin - Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, Oxford, United KingdomPanel
23 – Unfamiliar: Family, Law, and Democracy in South AsiaAbstract
Colonial and postcolonial regimes in South Asia have long been vexed by the links between child marriage and religion: they have seen religious laws as sanctioning underage marriage, but simultaneously, have harnessed religious reasoning to mitigate against child marriage as a harmful ‘custom’. As a case study of this relationship, this paper interrogates the complex links between Islam and child marriage in Pakistan. While Pakistan has imposed statutory minimum marriage ages, child marriage endures and is often purportedly supported by religious actors and institutions.
Exploring a multitude of voices in Pakistan’s crowded religious marketplace including high-profile maulvis, official religious bodies, fatwa literature and online forums, this paper explores competing perspectives regarding minor marriage. In particular, the paper considers how the state has engaged, and even attempted to ‘manage’, religious opinion regarding child marriage. It argues that the state has sought to cultivate support for its laws among aligned religious bodies, while to the contrary, other religious leaders have rebuffed the state’s right to impose a marriage age limit from outside of Islamic law. Overall, the paper considers chid marriage to be a testing ground for the careful interactions between religious authorities and state intervention, with both parties claiming a stake in the regulation of Muslim marriage.
