28/01/2026
As a trainer and community practitioner, I want to state this clearly and without hesitation:
Advocating marriage for children under 18 is ethically indefensible, legally regressive, and socially destructive.
When a public figure like Maulana Fazlur Rehman dismisses age of marriage laws and encourages child marriage, it normalizes harm under the guise of tradition or religion. This is not a theological debate, it is a human rights violation.
Child marriage systematically deprives children, especially girls of education, bodily autonomy, health, and the ability to consent. It entrenches cycles of poverty, gender-based violence, and silence. Any framework that prioritizes ideology over a child’s welfare is not moral leadership; it is institutionalized neglect.
Even more alarming is the intersection of this mindset with cases of forced conversion and coerced marriage of minority girls, particularly Hindu children, who are married to much older men and presented as “willing.” This practice is not faith based; it is predatory and coercive, and it fundamentally contradicts principles of justice, dignity, and consent.
Let me be unequivocal:
Using religion to justify harm to children is not the defense of faith, it is the corruption of faith.
As educators, trainers, and professionals, our responsibility is to challenge narratives that legitimize abuse, to ground discussions in law and ethics, and to center the lived realities of survivors. Silence, in these moments, is not neutrality, it is complicity.
Protecting childhood is not a Western concept.
It is a moral, legal, and human obligation.
- Asma Tariq
