Eighteen Is Not Western—It Is Constitutional, Islamic, and Just

The critics’ lament—“But that’s westernization!”—rings hollow.

When Islamabad passed the Child Marriage Restraint Bill in May 2025, it did not just legislate; it made a statement. A statement that childhood is not a loophole, girlhood is not a waiting room for marriage, and consent without maturity is not consent at all.

The law sets 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage across the capital and introduces clear penalties for guardians, officiants, and adults who enter into or enable underage unions. In doing so, it aligns the federal capital with Sindh, the only province to have taken this step back in 2013. The reaction was predictable. The Council of Islamic Ideology called it “un-Islamic.” Religious leaders argued, again, that puberty is the only valid threshold. And the rest of Pakistan—Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan—must now decide whether to follow the lead of the capital and Sindh or remain stuck in a contradiction that costs girls their education, health, autonomy, and sometimes, their lives.

Opponents claim the law is un-Islamic, insisting puberty alone suffices for marriage. But that captures half the story. The Qur’an never names an age. It speaks of maturity (rushd) and consent. Take Surah An-Nisa (4:6), which entrusts orphans’ property only when they show “marriageable age and sound judgment.” Islamic scholars, from Imam Malik to the Hanafi school, understood this to mean that mental maturity—not bodily changes—enables legal contracts, including marriage. And consent? The Prophet ﷺ said, “A woman shall not be married until her permission is sought.” Put bluntly: consent without comprehension is a mirage. Laws that still allow marriage at 16 or under often violate this principle. Islamic law has always prioritized consent, not arbitrarily defined entitlement.

This cultural habit, fossilized over time, has become so politically sacrosanct that to challenge it is to be accused of betraying tradition. But traditions must justify their continued existence. When they cause harm—physical, psychological, spiritual—they lose the right to claim our allegiance. Islam, after all, is not a museum of practices. It is a living, dynamic system committed to justice, mercy, and the prevention of harm (la darar wa la dirar).

And the harm is undeniable. UNICEF estimates that 18% of Pakistani women aged 20–24 were married before 18, with 4% married before 15. Girls married young are more likely to drop out of school, experience early and dangerous pregnancies, suffer gender-based violence, and face greater economic insecurity. A 2022 Egyptian study found significantly higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death among girls married before 18. In South Asia, each year that marriage is delayed correlates with a 0.22-year increase in female schooling and a 5.6% rise in literacy. This is not anecdotal. It is an epidemiological fact.

Islamic jurisprudence supports these protections. In 2023, Pakistan’s own Federal Shariat Court upheld age-based marriage restrictions as fully consistent with Islamic principles. Citing both the Qur’an and the classical legal doctrine of maslahah mursalah (public interest), the Court concluded that the state has both the authority and the obligation to intervene when early marriage endangers health, education, and dignity. The idea that setting a minimum age is somehow un-Islamic is simply inaccurate. Islamic law has always allowed the state to regulate marriage conditions if it protects human welfare (maqasid al-shariah).

It’s not about Islamic identity versus secular progress. It’s about Muslims modeling Islamic ideals, just as Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have. Morocco’s 2004 Moudawana reform set 18 as the legal minimum age for both men and women, grounded explicitly in maslahah and ijtihad. Algeria raised the age to 19 in 2005. Turkey set the bar at 18, allowing exceptions only through judicial oversight. In 2019, Saudi Arabia—hardly a bastion of liberalism—banned all marriages under 15 and required court approval for marriages involving individuals aged 15 to 18. The Saudi Justice Ministry grounded its rationale not in secular values, but in Sharia itself: emphasizing consent, maturity, and the prevention of exploitation. If the birthplace of Islam can interpret its tradition to ban child marriage in the interest of public good, Pakistan—a country constitutionally committed to Islamic principles and international human rights—can do the same.

Islamabad’s new law is, therefore, not a Western transplant but a domestic awakening. But it must not remain confined to the federal capital. Punjab, KP, and Balochistan must follow. Sindh, which enacted an 18-year limit in 2013, has shown that provincial autonomy can be a tool for progress. Though implementation has been uneven, the law has empowered courts and communities to intervene where before they were helpless. Punjab, despite being the most populous province, still adheres to the colonial-era law that permits marriage at 16 for girls. Balochistan and KP remain tethered to legislative inertia, offering vague penalties and weak enforcement. In these provinces, child marriage is not just legal but it is sometimes incentivized, particularly in post-disaster scenarios.

Climate change has made the stakes even higher. In the aftermath of the 2022 and 2024 monsoon floods, NGOs reported a spike in child marriages in Sindh and South Punjab, where economic desperation drove families to barter their daughters in exchange for food, livestock, or the promise of stability. The law was silent. And so were many lawmakers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A harmonized national standard, modeled on Islamabad and Sindh, would not only protect girls from early marriage, it would also create consistency across legal systems that currently contradict each other. Under Pakistan’s Penal Code, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 is statutory rape—even if she is married. Yet in provinces where the Child Marriage Restraint Act hasn’t been updated, such marriages are still legally valid. This legal schizophrenia cannot be defended under any religious or rational pretense.

And let us not forget the lived experience behind the legislation. Senator Naseema Ehsan, who spoke in favor of the bill, shared her own story: married at 13, a mother at 14, and nearly dead by 15. Her testimony was not just anecdotal; it was evidence. It was law refracted through life. Her advocacy should serve as a model for how lived trauma can inform legal transformation.

The political opportunity is now. The public supports it. A 2021 Gallup survey found that a majority of Pakistanis back raising the minimum age to 18. Among urban youth, the numbers are even higher. This is not an elite concern. It is a cross-class, cross-ideological imperative. The federal government must work with provincial assemblies to craft tailored legislation that enforces the 18-year threshold with the same clarity, judicial backing, and religious coherence that Islamabad’s law has achieved.

To those who still argue that Islam mandates puberty as the only threshold, we must ask: what then of choice, of agency, of health, of justice? What of the girls who lose their education, their bodily autonomy, their childhoods? What of Islam’s own insistence that “there shall be no harm and no reciprocating of harm”?

Eighteen is not just a number. It is a line between protection and betrayal. Between a society that sees girls as citizens, and one that sees them as commodities. Between a future chosen and a future stolen. Islamabad and Sindh have drawn that line. They did not raise the age for symbolism. They raised it because Islam demands protection, health demands it, and humanity demands it. Let every province echo that vow—not because a foreign text says so, but because our daughters’ futures demand it.

It’s time the rest of Pakistan did too.

The law isn’t Western. It’s constitutional. It’s Islamic. And above all, it’s just.