Child Brides in Iran:
A Report on Disturbing Trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran
September 2015
Dr. Carole R. Fontaine*
This report builds on previous work done on the Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Iran, “A Synthesis Report of NGO Submissions to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for Consideration of the Third Periodic Report of the Islamic Republic of Iran During the 71st Pre-Sessional Working Group# (Feb, 2015)[1]. The documentary evidence cited here was submitted by the following NGOs[2]:
Amnesty International (AI)
Association for Crisis Assistance and Solidarity Development Cooperation (WADI)
Association for the Human Rights of the Azerbaijani People in Ran (AHRAZ)
Baha’i International Community (BIC)
Front Line Defenders (FLD)
Insight Iran
Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network (6Rang)
Justice for Iran (JFI)
Society Protecting the Rights of Street and Working Children (Kashaneh)
The Advocates for Human Rights (Advocates) and Iran Human Rights (Advocates & IHR)
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO)
While certain socio-religious factors mean that all children are at risk of Human Rights violations in Iran (treating juvenile offenders as adults in capital crimes, for instance), certain groups of children are at special risk. These include: girls, GLBTQ children, children from minority communities, disabled children, and orphans. The focus of this report is to explore behind the statistics to get a contextualized portrait of the full impact of child marriage on girl children.
The laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran stack the deck against the well-being of girl children. The full adoption of Shari’a law, interpreted in the most extreme and restrictive way, in 1979, meant that the male head of the household is placed in absolute control of the decisions, practices, and life outcomes of all family members. Claiming that such a legal position is ‘religious’ in origin (rather than seeing it as a ‘cultural’ remnant of tribal patriarchy, as many Muslim apologists do) means that fundamental inequalities are very difficult to challenge. Since it is common to see Human Rights issues interpreted as attempted Western violation of Islamic sovereignty, world opinion has little effect in pressing Iran to uphold its obligations in international law—including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the UNDUHR. The CRC, which is one of the only international instruments to actually mention Islamic Law, has (along with CEDAW, which focuses on the rights of women) received more objections from Muslim-majority states than any other international treaty on Human Rights. It is CEDAW that forbids child marriage (Article 16 (2); there is no mention of the practice in the CRC, which is held by many to be a serious problem with the document as it stands. [3] It is the view of the present writer that it is precisely the presence of females within the category of ‘children’ that causes the CRC to offend biased cultural and legal sensibilities that view females as only subsidiary, biological servo-mechanisms to the male population. In a theocratic setting, such views institutionalize alleged male superiority and sound the death knell to the rights of women and girls.
Because motives behind the discrimination against girls and women have little to do with any ontological inferiority on their part, we must question repeatedly any statements that start from such ‘religious’ principles. This requires placing Islamic traditions, understood in their original contexts, into creative tension with modern medicine, epidemiology, and Human Rights values, since reform must take hold from within if it is to be successful. Currently, any systematic challenge to injustice is framed as an attack on Islam, and so fails to motivate internal reform. Those who defend the practice of child marriage in Islam point to the general demographics of this practice in non-Muslim majority communities, which show early marriage to be a consistent feature of agricultural societies. However, this practice is increasingly considered problematic, at least in the West in light of medical and demographic research. Similarly, Islamic defenders of the practice of child marriage point out that it is, like all Muslim marriages, a two-part process: a marriage contract is first completed and accepted, and at some subsequent—unspecified—time, the consummation of the marriage takes place. The implication here is that the age of the girlchild might be as young as 13 years (solar calendar) or 9 years and 8 months (lunar calendar) old, but this is not necessarily the age of consummation of the marriage: this was the format followed by the Prophet Muhammad in his marriage to 6-year old Aisha. However, there is no particular intervention or monitoring specified to make sure that consummation does NOT occur until the child has reached maturity, so there is no real barrier to consummation before puberty, and authorities do not even agree on how to assess the presence of puberty. Child brides who seek family or legal protections from sexual abuse by husbands—often much older than themselves—seldom see redress of their circumstances, and often wind up being treated harshly by the courts.[4]
It is certainly true that ‘sexual depravity’ has been a consistent anti-Muslim polemic in Christian (and now, Zionist) literature and culture, usually based on the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to the child bride Aisha. For Muslim apologists, gender issues are considered to be merely a matter of colonial devaluation of indigenous values and practices, a necessary component in teaching the formerly free to be colonized. The defenders properly note that Europe’s history of child marriages is never placed alongside Muslim practices, and that this particular vilification of Islam arises in the age of colonial exploration, and forms a tool for the advancement of Empire, in the form of rescuing ‘the damsel in distress’. Modern sources show that the reappearance of some of the outrage over child marriage occurred exactly as invasions of Muslim countries were about to take place in the 21st century.
Similarly, others who want to argue that “pedophilic marriages” are permitted in Islam do so based on the example of Aisha’s marriage, and Quranic discussion of waiting periods for divorce (prescribed to make sure that the wife is not pregnant). Girls who have not menstruated are likewise to observe a waiting period before a divorce can be finalized. However, when polemicists with little training in exegesis of legal texts attempt to make this point, their bias is more compelling than their research, as the Quranic passages they cite might easily be interpreted otherwise. Very few of the political and religious entities who denounce or defend child marriage, however, are willing to look at the real impact of these unions on the life of the girlchild, or on society as whole. Where a theologian or historian is able to dismiss millions of girls in favor of their theological ideology, those who attend to ‘facts’ on the ground can do no such thing.
It is the founding principle of Human Rights work that those concerned with such issues take the human body as one of their key witnesses to the violation of universal rights. The bodies of little Iranian girls, prostitutes, widows, addicted, trafficked, and homeless women, along with the weeping bodies of mothers, sisters, and other family members, give evidence that the modern world cannot ignore. We must be very clear: practices that worked in the preindustrial, agricultural world are not to be considered inviolable and unalterable when there is clear evidence that such practices are detrimental to individuals and society. We bring this information to the world body so that these silenced voices of battered bodies will not go unheard. Giving them justice may require turning the world upside down, and dethroning men from their positions of absolute power in Muslim majority countries. Where Human Rights abuses are framed as authentic and faithful adherence to Islamic law, it may well seem that we are shaking the bars of Heaven. Make no mistake: that is precisely what we are doing, and the Heavens should tremble (as one Iranian leader claimed happens whenever a woman asks for a divorce)!
In Iran, HR defenders and advocates for children are routinely harassed, detained, threatened, arrested, tortured, and ultimately cannot be protected from repercussions from their work. Children’s legal activist, Atena Farghadani, currently held in prison, but occasionally allowed medical treatment after beatings, is an excellent example of ‘justice’ in the Islamic Republic: she is serving an 11-year sentence as an enemy of the people for drawing a cartoon about the conditions of street children.[5]
On the subject of Child Brides, Iran is speaking from a position of multiple violations, including:
Failure to honor the CRC and the International Charter on Civil and Political Rights (Iran is a signatory to both treaties) age for marriage: Iran’s choice of Shari’a as its governing code, interpreted in the most restrictive way possible, sets the marriage age for girls at 9 years and 8 months (lunar years).
Failure to provide and enforce what might be called ‘authentic consent’: that is, a marriage between two persons capable of consent to an economic contract with total rights—economic, legal, social, or physical—of the male party over the female. No girl under the age of nine in Iran can possibly be considered of the age of authentic consent.
Failure to monitor and provide guardianship of minor girls is conducted in the interests of the girl child, rather than her family, guardian, brothers, aspiring suitors. Recent legal changes in Civil Law (Article 1041, amended in 1982, and later in 2000) to allow a guardian himself to marry a female child who has not yet attained puberty is an excellent example of what Iran considers careful custodianship by a guardian. As has been pointed out by many, this new law exposes a defenseless girl child—even babies who are still being nursed—to pedophilia, neglect, health threats, and other challenges to a successful life as a thriving human.
Failure to forbid, monitor, and redress circumstances of forced marriages for girl children. The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices, which Iran has signed, includes provisions that define forced marriage (even worse in situations of underage partners who cannot give ‘authentic consent’) as a form of ‘slavery’ and ban it among signatory nations.
It is, of course, not only international laws that Iran flouts in the context of their commitment to the exploitation of girl children; it violates its own laws, and much of the spirit of Islamic Law, which has often played a humanitarian and altruistic role in securing decent treatment for the less powerful members of society. Iran’s Article 211 of the civil law code, requires that the marriage contract can only take place if both members of the contracted marriage are mature, physically and mentally, such that parties are capable of giving authentic consent. In 2009, the Law to Support Disadvantaged, Defenseless and Abandoned Children, while maintaining that guardian marriages must be registered with Family Court, actually sets up some of the very exploitation is was designed to prevent. Many of these marriages are not registered, and most of them fail to provide against sexual, mental, physical, and neglectful treatment that can lead to despair and death.[6]
Consequences of Child Marriage for Girls and Their Societies
While there are serious philosophical, egalitarian, and psychological concerns that intersect with views of child marriage in Muslim-majority and traditional societies, it is necessary to place challenges to the practice in a broader societal framework. This is necessary because, at present, the world at large seems to be largely unmoved by the plight of girls and the struggles to defend their dignity, worth, and well-being. Simply put, girls do not ‘count’: they are both ‘children’ (which means their legal standing is often ambiguous or that of human chattel) and because they are females. A misogynist global ethos still permeates legal issues, and the shape of what ‘liberation’ and ‘human dignity and worth’ might actually look like if we extended those concepts to female children is still obscured by indelible prejudice. The question of gender-based bias is generally held to be of less importance than those of war, environmental degradation, food security, and all other aspects of life, if we judge by actions rather than documents. Hence, HR and international legal activists must repeatedly hold up the losses to all of society by the continued discrimination and low valuation of female lives.
Aside from the outright theft of female personhood and entrapment in a kind of legalized slavery that also includes beatings for no reason and non-consensual intercourse on demand, societies have been shown to suffer broadly from the consequences of the violation of bans against child marriage. The impact of the misogynist law codes of Iran is felt in all areas of life:
- Psychological Dysfunction.
We will not dwell overlong here on the profound impact on the emotional development of both boys and girls when a society routinely discriminates against one gender, legally and without restraint. Boys in Iran are raised to believe themselves to be the ‘golden penis’, the masters of their family world and every world. Socially acceptable sexual violence and predation on females, including that committed by family members, sets up an oppressor-victim dialectic. This robs girls of their autonomy and hope, and boys of their compassionate humanity. Consider the impact of the Grand Ayatollah Khomeni’s teachings on the concept of ‘worth and dignity’ of a nursing female infant:
“A man is not permitted to have intercourse with his wife if she is under the age of nine but any other act such as touching out of lust and hugging are permitted even if the wife is an infant.”[7]
While this horrifying violation of the care and protection due any infant is outrageous enough, the implication that a girl of nine years old ought to be having sexual relations, however ‘legal’ the act, is outrageous and unacceptable.
- Child brides are at a greatly increased risk of death in childbirth, and their babies are much more likely to die, with mortality rates for children born to mothers under the age of 15 to be the highest of all. Further, complications from early childbirth can greatly diminish a female’s later fertility, causing a range of problems for her personally, for her family, and her society. It is a great irony that many families regard early marriage as one of the best safeguards of their daughter’s successful future. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! If she survives a much-older husband, she may find herself without any means of support for herself and her children. Many of Iran’s youngest prostitutes, addicts, homeless, and suicides are girls whose lives have been dramatically foreclosed by child marriage. In light of recent declarations by the state that the birth rate is too low, removed access to sex education and family planning services, including legal contraception, is sure to intensify the problems for child brides.[8]
- Child brides are assumed to have completed all the education they will ever need for their upcoming servitude to the male-ruled family. This lacuna affects family health, the ability of widows to make a living and support their children, and has profound impact on public health issues. Reports to the UN repeatedly stress that the education of women is a key marker in a country’s path to greater development and higher standards of living. In order to compete in a global marketplace, a country’s female population must attain a significant educational level. This appeal to the equal treatment of women, cast in capitalist terms of better profits, can also be appropriated as a form of national and religious ‘patriotism’. Islam does not need to be seen as ‘backward’; rather a ‘modernized’ rights-based version of Islam, so in harmony with much of the Prophet Muhammad’s original teachings, would restore world-wide reputation and prominence as one of the great monotheistic traditions, rather than a source of barbarity unwelcome in the world community.
Iran’s view, found in its constitution, that because women have smaller brains than men, they are intellectually inferior to men and not able to benefit from education is laughable, given their own statistics. Women and girls were greatly benefited by the government’s literacy campaign, and by 2009, made up more than half of the students in Iranian colleges and universities. This happened in spite of the fact that women are prevented from entering certain fields of study not deemed appropriate to their gender. The educational successes of young Iranian women are all the more notable, given that discrimination against these highly qualified and educated young women means that they do not become gainfully employed. In fact, a quota system to displace top women candidates and give their spots to men was initiated in 2010, by making seventy additional fields of study forbidden to women. Still, when forced by circumstances or faced with sudden opportunities (like the movement of male bread-winners into the army during wars), poor and middle class women regularly use their skills and wits to make the most of their abilities in order to support their dependents.[9]
Education, then, is key—not just for girls, but for their future families, communities and nation. Child Marriage is the fundamental factor (along with poverty) in removing young girls from classrooms and placing them in domestic and sexual servitude, as this chart in the drop of female populations in school from 2007 to 2012 illustrates:
- The practice of child marriage is coming to be recognized as a significant source of female suicides among juvenile brides. The trend is so serious in fact, that one Iranian epidemiologist has labelled it an ‘epidemic’ that will certainly need to be addressed in light of birth rate and other variables, though this is an area where Middle Eastern countries seldom focus public health attention.[11] The four ‘Cruel Ms’ of juvenile female suicides and their lethal effectiveness are listed as:
- Mental Disorders
- Marriage
- Masculine Roles (compared to permitted Female Roles)
- Method Chosen
Of these reasons for lethal suicide attempts by girls, three of the four Ms refer directly to gendered categories of oppression that constitute a risk situation for girls. Mental disorders are primarily those related to depression, and must be correlated with gender roles and issues. Non-gendered mental illness is also a contributing factor. Even where a girl is not depressed (because she understands her future all too clearly), marriage at a young age to much older men, and the restrictive roles allotted to women as a sexually subservient domestic slave and breeder are key components in girls’ decision to commit suicide. Even the fairly neutral ‘method chosen’ turns out to have both a class and gender component: females, especially poor and rural girls, choose the extremely lethal methods of self-immolation or pesticide inhalation, compared to urban populations who have more access to non-lethal methods (a ‘cry for help’).[12]
Summation
Etemad newspaper reported on July 17, 2014, that the Iranian Deputy of Women’s Affairs, Azar Ismaili, went on record to say that the average age of a housewife in Iran had now reached 12 years old.
In a country the size of Iran, this represents a hidden population of suffering girl children exposed to the rigors of repeated childbearing, sexual abuse, and physical cruelty often rising to the level of low-grade, continuous torture. They are denied education, voice, and even the most basic respect of their bodies. Once one looks over all the laws against the practice, and the myriad problems it creates for a society, we realize a child bride is no more than a legalized sex slave and drudge; her ‘marriage’ exposes her to all of the dangers experienced by a trafficked child, for that is just what she is. Such girls, aged 12 and younger, are at the base of the infrastructure of over half of the family homes in Iran.
The IRI justifies this circumstance with a confusing and complex mishmash of cultural traditions masquerading as deepest spiritual tenets, and of religion imposing its metaphysics on biology. What we see is outright male bias in the service of social control, with a veneer of ethical religiosity thrown over it to disguise its stench. In other words, the ‘reasoned’ religious readings that the Islamic State proposes as its justification for its Human Rights record with respect to children, especially girls, are neither reasonable nor religious.
The whole premise of the protection of children is abrogated by the state to the male guardian, but in a deliberately biased government where all the laws concerning male guardianship encapsulate and encourage abuse against girl children, there is no such thing as authentic consent. The guardian is well within his rights to do whatever he pleases—even when the law forbids, culture permits by looking the other way. The laws and ideology of the state and its version of religion fully support unequal treatment, and for that reason, no guardian in Iran can be said to be taking a girl child’s needs and wellbeing into account. In such a case, no marriage contract can be considered valid legally or religiously.
We call upon the IRI to meet its international and ethical obligations with respect to girls and women.
Child Marriage in Iran:
A Disturbing Trend in Human Rights Violations
Askari, Ladan, “The Convention on the Rights of the Child: The Necessity of Adding a Provision to Ban Child Marriages”, 5 ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law (1998): 124-138.
Brown, Jonathan A. C., Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld Publications, 2014).
Haeri, Shahla, “No End in Sight: Politics, Paradox, and Gender Policies in Iran”, Boston University Law Review 93 (2013): 1049-62.
Hashemi, Kamran, “Religious Legal Traditions, Muslim States and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Essay on the Relevant UN Documentation”, Human Rights Quarterly 29 (2007): 194-227.
Rezaeian, Mohsen, “Suicide Among Young Middle Eastern Muslim Females: The Perspective of an Iranian Epidemiologist”, Crisis: Journal of Suicide Prevention 31 (2010): 36-42.
“In the space of only one year, 276,000 under-age girls were married and 109,000 teenagers gave birth in Iran”, https://justice4iran.org/reports/276000-under-age-girls-were-married , accessed 9/11/2015.
“Early and Forced Marriages in the Islamic Republic of Iran: A Brief Submitted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Women’s Rights and Gender Section (WRGS) For the 26th session of the Human Rights Council”, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/ForcedMarriage/NGO/JusticeForIran.pdf , accessed 9/16/2015
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, “Iran-Gender Inequality & Discrimination: The Case of Iranian Women”, https://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/legal-commentary/1000000261-gender-inequality-and-discrimination-the-case-of-iranian-women.html , accessed 9/11/2015.
“UN expert breaks global silence on rape of young virgin girls in Iranian prisons”, https://justice4iran.org/publication/call-for-action/rashida-manjoo/, accessed 9/11/2015.
“Arrested for her Art, Punished for Speaking Out Against her Jailers”, https://justice4iran.org/reports/arrested-for-her-art-punished-for-speaking-out-against-her-jailers/ , accessed 9/6/2015.
NCRI Women’s Committee, “Exclusive Report on Child Brides Under the Mullahs’ Rule in Iran”, https://women.ncr-iran.org/publications/documents/item/979-exclusive-report-on-child-brides-under-the-mullahs-rule-in-iran , accessed 9/ 7/2015.
“Stolen Lives, Empty Classrooms: An Overview of Girl Marriage in the Islamic Republic of Iran”, https://justice4iran.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/JFI-Girl-Marriage-in-Iran-EN.Final_.pdf , accessed 9/11/2015.
*Dr. Carole R. Fontaine is an internationally recognized American biblical scholar. She has been the John Taylor professor of biblical theology and history at the Andover Newton Theological School, and feminist author of 6 books and over 100 articles, in addition to serving on several Editorial Boards.
[1] https://justice4iran.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Joint-CRC-Report-February-2015-Final.pdf ; accessed Sept. 24, 2015.
[2] Full reports of the NGOs appear in the full PDF document, Ibid.
[3] Kamran Hashemi, “Religious Legal Traditions, Muslim States and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Essay on Relevant UN Documentation”, Human Rights Quarterly 29 (2007), 194-227; p. 196; Ladan Askari, “The Convention on the Rights of the Child: The Necessity of Adding a Provision to Ban Child Marriages”, 5 ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law (1998), 124-138.
[4] Jonathan A. C. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld Publications, 2014), 141-48.
[5] https://justice4iran.org/reports/arrested-for-her-art-punished-for-speaking-out-against-her-jailers/ , accessed Sept. 6, 2015.
[6] https://women.ncr-iran.org/publications/documents/item/1037-iran-men-allowed-to-marry-their-adopted-children-under-regime-s-new-law , accessed Sept. 7, 2015; https://women.ncr-iran.org/publications/documents/item/979-exclusive-report-on-child-brides-under-the-mullahs-rule-in-iran , accessed Sept. 7, 2015.
[7] Ruhollah Khameni, Tahrir al-Wasilah, vol. 2, p. 221, quoted in NCRI Women’s Committee, “Exclusive Report on Child Brides Under the Mullahs’ Rule in Iran”, https://women.ncr-iran.org/publications/documents/item/979-exclusive-report-on-child-brides-under-the-mullahs-rule-in-iran, accessed Sept. 7, 2015. Note: (Khameni refers here to “thighing a baby”- placing the adult penis between the thighs of a baby, or cheeks of buttocks, etc.).
[8] https://justice4iran.org/reports/276000-under-age-girls-were-married/ , accessed Sept. 11. 2015.
[9] Shahla Haeri, “No End in Sight: Politics, Paradox, and Gender Policies in Iran”, Boston University Law Review 93 (2013): 1049-62).
[10]www.justiceforIran.org, “Stolen Lives, Empty Classrooms: An Overview of Girl Marriage in the Islamic Republic of Iran”, https://justice4iran.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/JFI-Girl-Marriage-in-Iran-EN.Final_.pdf , accessed Sept. 11, 2015.
[11] M. Afifi, “Adolescent Suicide in the Middle East: Ostrich head in sand”, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84 (2006), quoted in Mohsen Rezaeian, “Suicide Among Young Middle Eastern Muslim Females: The Perspective of an Iranian Epidemiologist”, Crisis: Journal of Suicide Prevention (2010) 31: 36-42.
[12] Rezaeian, pp. 38-40.
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