IT was a fairly unusual, though an entirely welcome, departure from the usual discourse surrounding matters of faith that, across the world, tend to be dominated by men. At the close of a three-day conference of women clerics in Indonesia, the congress issued an unprecedented fatwa against child marriage and urged the government to raise the minimum legal age for women’s marriage to 18 years from the current 16. There is no argument that the issue is of vital concern to that Muslim-majority country, which has among the highest number of child brides in the world: according to Unicef estimates, one in four women in Indonesia is married before the age of 18. The edict issued by the women’s conference, perhaps the first major gathering of its kind, is bound to be influential even if it is not legally binding. A point of extreme significance for the future of millions of young girls — not just in Indonesia but hopefully in other parts of the world, too, given that the participants included clerics from countries including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — has already been made, ie child marriage destroys lives. As the conference organiser told sections of the media, “Female clerics know the issue and the obstacles women face — we can take action and not just wait for the government to protect these children”. And it was not just child marriage that the gathering dilated upon — other edicts involved issues including sexual abuse and environmental destruction.

Pakistan would do well to take a leaf out of Indonesia’s book in this regard. The primary platforms from which religious perspectives are disseminated are the Council of Islamic Ideology, or the pulpits of mosques, both of which are dominated by men and lack any meaningful input by women. The former, in particular, tends to distinguish itself through putting out regressive statements, as was the case in the CII’s resistance to using DNA as primary evidence in rape trials. This unfortunate reality needs to be changed soon.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2017