In Iraq, a law that can ‘legalize pedophilia’ is on the table

A proposed amendment to Iraq’s Personal Status Law is causing controversy, especially among women’s rights supporters. The amended law would allow men to decide upon marriage whether to follow Sunni or Shiite family law and would give clerics unprecedented legal authority. Critics say it would deprive Shiite women of basic rights and even open the door to child marriage.

The draft amendment would change inheritance law in Iraq by mandating that inheritance operate by sect. Under the current law, which is based on Sunni inheritance customs, a woman whose husband dies inherits his estate. The amended law would allow women in Sunni marriages to inherit from their husbands but would ban women in Shiite marriages from doing so, in accordance with Shiite custom.

Custody law is also differentiated by sect under the amendment. Sunni custody customs, which currently apply to all Iraqis, mandate that a divorced woman maintain custody of her children until they reach puberty, at which point the children can decide which parent to live with. Under Shiite law, the children’s father automatically receives custody unless he chooses otherwise.

A woman seeking divorce from a Shiite man under the amended law would be forced to pay a sum of money to her husband to end the marriage. In current Iraqi family law, based on Sunni custom, a woman can request a separation and be granted a divorce by a judge if she provides adequate justification.

One of the most controversial effects of the amended law would be the legalization of “pleasure marriage,” a concept unique to the Shiite sect. A pleasure marriage, known in Arabic as nikah mut’ah, is a temporary marriage that can last as little as an hour. Unlike a permanent marriage, a pleasure marriage does not require registration in court or the presence of witnesses.

Critics say that the legalization of pleasure marriage would be devastating to the status of Shiite women and could be used to legitimate child marriage and prostitution.

Iraqi nongovernmental organizations, human rights activists, lawyers, Sunni clerics, and many political parties have heavily criticized the amendment. But the ruling Shiite coalition, known as the Coordination Framework, insists on passing the amendment, as do Iraq’s Shiite clerics.

An Iraqi parliamentary source, who declined to be named, told The Media Line that the Shiite authority in Najaf, Iraq is pushing the Shiite parties to pass the amendment.

“They are now negotiating with us—either we pass the law or no other law proposed by the rest of the blocs will be passed, and since they are the majority, they may pass this law, but they need more votes,” the source said.

Much of the discussion of the amendment relates to dynamics between Iraq’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority and is taking place in a parliament obstructed by those same dynamics. The parliament, the Council of Representatives of Iraq, has been without a speaker since November 2023, when the Federal Supreme Court removed Sunni Speaker of Parliament Mohamed al-Halbousi from his post. (According to Iraqi custom, the speaker is always Sunni, the prime minister is Shiite, and the president is Kurdish.) Divisions between the two major Sunni parties have kept the parliament without a speaker for the past eight months.

Amendment to the law

The parliamentary source said that the authority that the law gives to clerics is unconstitutional, as is the lack of reference to religious groups other than Sunni or Shiite Muslims. Around 2% of Iraq’s population, or about 890,000 people, are not Muslim.

While Shiite parties are intent on passing the Personal Status Law amendment, Sunni parties are working to pass a general amnesty law, the source said. That law would grant amnesty for the many Iraqis convicted of terrorism without just cause, most of whom are Sunni.

The source said that negotiations will likely lead to both the amended Personal Status Law and the general amnesty law being passed or to neither of them passing.

In a statement published on its website, the Coordination Framework called on the Council of Representatives to proceed with the first reading of the amendment. It described the proposed amendment as “in harmony with the constitution, which stipulates that Iraqis are free to make their choices in a manner that does not conflict with the constants of Sharia and the foundations of democracy.”

“The Shiite woman is the biggest loser from this law if it is passed,” Heba Al-Naib, an Iraqi journalist and member of several women’s associations, told The Media Line. She said that the new law would lead to legalized child marriage in Iraq, in contradiction to the original 1959 Personal Status Law, which requires that both members of a couple be above 18 years old to marry.

“The law legalizes pedophilia,” Al-Naib said. “There are cases of marriage outside the law for young children, some of them 8 or 9 years old. This used to happen outside the courts and only with a contract from a cleric. Now this will become official. Instead of the state fighting it, it will become legal.”

She also said that the legalization of pleasure marriage would lead to “official prostitution.”

The Shiite Women’s Support Association has seen thousands of cases of women involved in pleasure marriages, Al-Naib said. “After the man spent a day or two with them and they became pregnant, the husband refused to acknowledge the children, considering that they might be children from another temporary marriage and not from him,” she explained.

Nawar Assem, founder of the Dream Women’s Organization, told The Media Line that unofficial estimates suggest that more than half a million marriages in Iraq involve children under the age of 15. Official figures show that around 250,000 Iraqi girls under 18 are married, she said.

“Shiite women in particular will be wronged, and Iraqi women in general, if child marriage is allowed,” Assem said. “Most of these marriages end either in crime, divorce, an unhappy life, or death, as a result of the girl becoming pregnant before she can bear children and raise them.”

She said that she and other activists will fight against the amendment even if they are threatened with murder.

Talal al-Azzawi, an Iraqi lawyer, noted that the amendment allows a man, but not a woman, to choose which sect the couple will follow.

“What is the fault of the Sunni woman that the provisions of the Shiite sect are imposed on her because it is the sect of the husband? The proposal is contrary to the provisions of the Iraqi constitution,” he told The Media Line.

“The other problem is that the law will be subject to the mood of the clerics. Does he want to divorce the wife or not?” he added.

He also said that the legalization of pleasure marriages would cause problems in Iraqi courts.

“There are women who want to cheat on their husbands, or husbands who want to cheat on their wives, so they get married temporarily for a few hours or a few days, and then the cheating begins,” he said. “The cleric who signed the marriage contract does not know whether it is cheating or not, and problems and murders occur. Imagine if this matter will be legal and take place in court.”

Iraqi human rights activist Mohammed Ezz said that the amendment would be a step “thousands of years backward” for Iraq. “Maybe later we will see a law that restores slavery,” he told The Media Line.

Shiite cleric Sayed Jafar al-Mousawi defended the amendment. “Islam is what governs us,” he told The Media Line. “It’s our law.”

Al-Mousawi said that the Personal Status Law was originally legislated by “secular people who do not understand religion.”

He criticized Westerners as hypocritical for opposing child marriages when children in the West begin having sex “at an early age, maybe 12 or even 11.”

“When a woman reaches puberty and gets her period, she becomes a full woman, and she has the right to marry. And when a child reaches puberty, he has the right to marry too, so why do we refuse?” he said. “The matter remains in the hands of the fathers.”

He also defended the Shiite legal regulations that allow pleasure marriages and forbid a woman from inheriting her husband’s estate.

“The amendment will pass,” al-Mousawi said. “Otherwise, we have other ways to pass it.”

Iraqi Sunni cleric Muawiya al-Badri harshly criticized the amendment, saying it has “nothing to do with Islam.” Now that child marriage is no longer acceptable in society, it should no longer be acceptable religiously either, he told The Media Line.

“Their problem with the law is that it took into account the Sunni opinion in 1959, and since 2003 until now they have tried to amend it several times, but they always fail,” al-Badri said of Iraqi Shiites. “The one who drafted the law saw what was most beneficial for women and society, and put it in law, but now they reject it just because it is a law according to the legitimate Sunni opinion.”