Recordings › Age of Aisha (ra)- Mufti Abu Layth · 11 Jan 2017 › Segment 18 of 18
Why did jurists like Imam Malik let a father marry off his young daughter without her consent?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas imaam prayer leader shafi shafei shafiite shafi'i school fatwah fatawa fatwaa fataawa legal opinion muftis haram haraam koran quraan al-quran ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat ulama ulema ulamaa nikah nikkah nikaah nikah nama nikahnamaWhy jurists allowed a father to marry off his underage daughter
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This segment2:00:23 to 2:09:30 · 9 min 07 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenMarrying off an underage girl is impermissible today. Imam Malik's exception was a contract only, without intimacy, tied to welfare in his own circumstances and not based on a clear verse or report.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth calls this a very good question and says first that such a marriage is absolutely impermissible in our understanding and our age. He says Imam Malik, al-Shafi'i [?] and others did not base this on a clear verse or report but on their own understanding: no one may force a girl, with a small exception for the father where there was an overwhelming welfare, because Imam Malik believed a father's compassion would only seek the child's welfare, a presumption Mufti parallels with Imam Malik's fatwa that a father who killed his child could not have intended murder, which he says was tied to Imam Malik's time. He says the exception covered a contract only, not any intimate relationship, which Imam Malik allowed only with a girl capable of it, and suggests the welfare was securing a poor girl's future or protecting her from abduction in an age without police, some twelve hundred years ago. He says this was not the norm but not unheard of, like underage pregnancy today, and that the fatwa was restricted to its circumstances and would change with time, just as the imams' fatwas on slavery sat on a trajectory, in line with trajectory hermeneutics, towards prohibition. He closes by saying that quote-mining such fatwas misses that they are impermissible and impractical in our age and were tied to saving lives in theirs.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedIf consent is so paramount, why do most jurists allow the father to marry off his daughter while she is under age?
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth holds that a father marrying off an underage daughter is impermissible in our age, and that Imam Malik's contractual exception was tied to welfare in his own circumstances.
“make it very clear that this is impermissible in our understanding in light of our age absolutely impermissible to do that right in in our context”
Category: ruling
Kind: general teachingTranscript
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Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam it's all in line with reason it was all firmly based on reason and Welfare whereas trying to say Well about uh a child that has no uh concept or cannot conceptualize reason so therefore I know the advantage can be taken of the child I do not believe that to be acceptable especially in our day and age that's actually a very good follow-up question that has been raised by people um that okay when we look throughout Islamic F you know I've highlighted yes
that Imam Malik and all these great imams said that a girl uh she can only be married when she is newal she's capable of marriage capable of a sexual relationship now I've said these things and other imams and so on but why is it right throughout uh right throughout F and throughout these different diverse opinions we see that we see people like uh Imam Malik and and Imam sha and all these other Scholars and many scholars saying yes that the father can without the will marry off his daughter his young daughter now we have to understand
something first of all because I think that's a very important question that's been raised we have to first of all before even answering this say that make it very clear that this is impermissible in our understanding in light of our age absolutely impermissible to do that right in in our context now let's go back to that question because I do think that question is a very good question this is not when people like Imam Malik or these other imams had said that they had not said that in light of a very clear conclusive verse of the Quran there was no verse of the Quran clearly saying something like that or a
clear Hadith saying something like this they said this based on the their understanding and it can and is better viewed actually not like that like this that nobody can force a young girl and they made a tiny exception for the father to be able to superimpose and override that will why the Imam Malik and the scholars had highlighted they said if if there was to have been such an overwhelming welfare and I will explain
and they said and this is key as well that IM Malik believed that the compelling the overwhelming compassion of a father would only seek welfare and would never abuse the child and this is important why because we see with Imam Malik there is a parallel uh for example in in in the situation of murder and you see this thing emerging again that Imam Malik said that if it was to have transpired that a child was killed and the father was responsible Imam Malik's fwa was
that it was inconceivable that that would have been murder because in his time his understanding was that per a father could never have done something like this therefore it must have been an accidental killing although he said if it was the other way that a father had been killed it was very conceiv it was conceivable that a child could have murdered that uh that somebody could murder their father but he felt it was inconceivable that the father could murder his his own child now obviously in later time it's very conceivable in our time it's very
conceivable so this fatwa was very uh restricted to Imam Malik's understanding of what was going on so we see this as a reality looking at how Imam Malik is trying to understand this is what could a musl be what could the welfare be now let's take a look at that time there it was obviously there was huge many people were poverty stricken many people were vulnerable so for example a situation may have a and this this where a father May override the
will of his child and engage and it's important to understand this was a contractual only contractual ncah that the person may engage in a contract not in any intimate or sexual relation because Imam Malik clearly says that the that he can only have a full that full Consortium and a full sexual relationship if the other person is capable of being in such a relationship so this was a contractual NE somebody might ask well what is the purp what could be the benefit of that well in that time for
example uh let's say if somebody did not have an ear and and and they had a certain amount of Fortune and somebody and you had poverty stricken families and they thought well I know if I could contractually uh marry my daughter to this old man and you know that will at least stabilize for her her future and ensure a a kind of prosperous survival for her so he may have kind of said I know I will and she's too young to have reason so that's what overriding reason means or against her will it means her
not being capable of developed reason so she's young and he's he's done the contract on her behalf it may have also included situations where people for example was so vulnerable in a certain place that um that people may kidnap or forcefully abduct uh women or children and so they think well to safeguard her to safeguard to safeguard lives right I know I will contractually marry her to so and so who nobody would mess with because they don't want to mess with that person he's quite established
and therefore she will not be abducted killed or violated or any of these things right she would be her life would potentially be saved by having these things and you have to remember that 12200 years ago these things not even that long we don't even need to go that far back but 1200 years ago these things were a reality that people were worried about saving the lives of the children this was an ERA where there was no s such thing as the Poli police you didn't have policemen
policing things people did attack the vulnerable so when Imam Malik and other Scholars said well nobody can force an override the will because they saw the the term force is simply to say well this person has no will so to override their will is a kind of forc and they said nobody has that Authority Imam Malik said but then he left the window of saying well if there was welfare that contractually the father could superimpose or override the will of the child for the contract only Imam Malik made it very clear that they could not
be sexual relations okay he made that very as did many other so I want to clarify that I think it's a very good question also I want to clarify that this does not mean that uh first of all this this this thing of overriding the will it does not mean that was the norm it definitely was not the norm but it simply means that it was not uncommon as in like sorry it was not unheard of that's what it simply means yes it may have occurred but it was not just as today we may say uh kind of like underage pregnancies for example
like you know a 12-year-old being pregnant 13y old being pregnant it's not the norm but it's not unheard of it's not that nobody's heard of these things so in a similar light this fatwa of IM Malik was for in light of the understanding of his age in light of these circumstances to safeguard lives and this would change with time okay just as to just as somebody could pick the fatwa of IM Malik or these imams on slavery but that Islam had set just as it did with many things a trajectory in line with trajectory hermeneutics that in time to come when
human civilizations would rise above certain things that these things would be forbidden and you could not do them so that's to kind of give that holistic understanding that yes if you want to dig deep and just kind of quote mine certain quotes from imams then you might find these kind of fatwas but it is not in first of all it is impermissible Impractical in our age and secondly it was restricted to their understanding of their circumstances and that's what it was in light of saving lives okay and so it's very important to remember those
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Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2017-01-11-S18, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/0ovisexs4ca/s/18/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2017, January 11). Why did jurists like Imam Malik let a father marry off his young daughter without her consent? [Video, segment 2017-01-11-S18, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/0ovisexs4ca/s/18/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2017. "Why did jurists like Imam Malik let a father marry off his young daughter without her consent?" Video, segment 2017-01-11-S18, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded January 11, 2017. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/0ovisexs4ca/s/18/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2017-01-11-S18, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Why did jurists like Imam Malik let a father marry off his young daughter without her consent?}}, year = {2017}, month = {1}, date = {2017-01-11}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/0ovisexs4ca/s/18/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/0ovisexs4ca/s/18/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2017-01-11-S18, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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