Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, on Saturday, quoted legal marriageable age in other Muslim countries to defend his party’s demand for a ban on underage marriages.

He took to Twitter to wonder, “UAE marriage age is 18, Indonesia is 18 & Turkey is also 18. Are they not Muslim countries?” With reference to a 40-year-old’s bid to marry a 10-year-old girl in Shikarpur, the PPP chairman added, “In Sindh where marriage age is 18, we saw how law stopped an adult marrying a 10-year-old.”

In a similar development, the police of Sindh province arrested the groom and is searching for the girl’s father.

Bilawal wrote on his Instagram page, “We in Sindh managed to save the 10-year-old girl above from marrying this man because we have banned child marriage. It’s time for the rest of Pakistan to do the same.”

“The PTI says it’s un-Islamic to ban child marriage,” Bilawal further wrote on his Instagram page,” he continued.

Bilawal lamented that a girl died every 20 minutes in Pakistan due to the undesired consequences of underage pregnancy. Earlier on April 29, the Senate had adopted the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Bill 2018 at the national level moved by PPP Senator Sherry Rehman amid protest by religious parties. The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) senators had also abstained from voting.

Meanwhile, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) protested against the bill; terming it un-Islamic.

They were of the view that the bill was against Shariah. The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) should have been taken into confidence before presenting the bill before the house, they remarked. Nevertheless, Sindh outlawed under-age marriage in 2014; raising the minimum age of marriage for boys and girls to 18 years.