OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
4:16 PM – Tuesday, February 4, 2025
The Iraqi parliament passed three controversial measures last month, one of which would have benefited Islamic pedophiles who wish to claim a 9-year-old “child bride” as their wife.
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However, Iraq’s top court halted the bills’ implementation on Tuesday after global condemnation and threats, sources say.
Since all three bills, which are backed by different blocs, were voted on last month as a single item, rather than separately, some parliament members filed a complaint arguing that the voting method was unlawful.
The Associated Press was able to receive a copy of the Federal Supreme Court’s order, which stated that they must put the measures on hold until the matter is decided, according to AP News. It is unclear if the parliament will circle back to the laws.
The country’s personal status law would have been amended as part of the steps to grant Islamic courts more jurisdiction over family issues—such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
Meanwhile, proponents of women’s rights and those who fight against pedophilia in Iraq contend that besides being morally wrong, the modifications weaken earlier laws that provided protections for girls and women, as well as consolidated family law.
Additionally, the legal marriage age for boys would have also been reduced from 18 to 15, according to the Walk Free organization, a human rights group. The law would deny girls and women access to basic rights that are essential to their safety and autonomy, such as divorce and child custody. Women’s rights advocates, human rights organizations, and many female Iraqi lawmakers were outraged by the new laws and fiercely opposed the modification, the organization continued.
The amendments’ proponents, who were mostly Shiite parliamentarians, deviously described them as a way to lessen Western influence on Iraqi culture and bring Iraqi law into line with Islamic values, AP News reported.
Online users familiar with Iraq and its laws chimed in with their own explanations of why this disturbing effort is being carried out by certain Iraqis in the country.
“Muslims now believe that since Muhammad [prophet of the Islam] married a 9-year-old girl, they can marry girls as young as 9 y.o… The girls they marry are mostly from poor families, making these families have no choice but to accept the worst reality that their beloved girls, who need basic education, are married to adults and become their servants without any basic knowledge. Instead of helping them out of poverty, they choose to marry the girls,” said legal associate Finnick Brume, who is based in Denpasar, Indonesia.
Since some interpretations of Islamic law permit the marriage of girls as young as nine years old, or in their early teens, earlier versions of the proposal were understandably viewed as opening the door to child marriage.
The parliament’s final version now stipulates that both parties must be “adults,” but it still doesn’t specify how old a bride must be to be considered an adult, which some proponents of the law shockingly claim is “debatable” for a number of reasons.
The second bill, which would have benefitted Sunni captives, called for a general amnesty law. However, some worry that it could permit the release of violent Islamist terrorists who have committed war crimes, as well as those engaged in theft, public corruption, and more.
Returning territories taken from Kurds during Saddam Hussein’s regime was the goal of the third measure. Some Arab organizations opposed it on the grounds that it would result in the eviction of Arab inhabitants.
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