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Pakistani girls are now free to marry on their own will. Yippee! What’s’ next? Freedom to breathe without their parents’ permission? I never knew that desire to choose your partner for life constituted a legal dilemma apart from a moral or cultural anathema. It finally took the Pakistani Supreme Court to recognize a natural right of an individual though I am still surprised that it required legal intervention. But the court had an interesting anomaly in its judgment.
It stated: “The consent of the wali is not required. An adult and sane Muslim female can enter into a valid nikaah of her own free will…after reaching puberty; a Muslim girl is competent to marry of her own free will”. Does the court conclude that a girl has attained adulthood after she reaches puberty, which can be almost as earlier as 12 years in recent times? I bet the fundamentalists will take advantage of this obvious discrepancy and seek to invalidate the judgment. I hope better sense prevails and the court clarifies its position.
But considering the disparate interpretations of the Sharia law and the inclination to display a progressive attitude towards criminal law often can prove to be tenuous in blatantly Islamic nations like Pakistan. I would love to hear from our neighbors across the border on this obvious yet seemingly fuzzy issue.
by Patrix | on Sunday, December 21st, 2003 at 7:40 pm | 
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December 6th, 2005 at 10:42 pm reply
I was searching something else on google but found this humiliating pen prick!
Sorry to ask….did the writer seek sharia law before talking about it?….I bet NO….Since the Supreme Court failed to follow the same. See fundamentalist is a word for the people who has their beliefs on certain fundamental principles.
So please avoid importing words from west and try to look towards the true picture. The truth is that in south east asia any country has more or less the same culture. Even in India, Malaysia, Bangaladesh, Indonesia most of the girls have the same problem. This is a matter of cultures not religions.