Should pre-teen girls be allowed to wed? Iraqi women say no.

Shaimaa Saadoun is haunted by her memory of being forced into an abusive marriage to a 39-year-old man just after she turned 13.

Her impoverished family near the southern Iraqi city of Basra hoped that the dowry of gold and money would help improve their circumstances. Her husband presented a bloodstained piece of linen to prove her virginity after their wedding night.

“I was expected to be a wife and mother while I was still a child myself. No child or teenager should be forced to live what I have lived and experienced,” said Ms. Saadoun, who divorced her husband when she was 30 and is now 44.

Ms. Saadoun’s marriage was illegal, though a judge – who was related to the husband – signed off on it. Iraqi law sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage in most cases.

But such child marriages of girls might be state-sanctioned soon. Iraq’s parliament is considering controversial legal changes that would give religious authorities more power over family law matters, a move that rights groups and opponents warn could open the door to the marriage of girls as young as 9.

Law would let clerics rule how young a girl can be married

The push for the changes comes mainly from powerful Shiite Muslim political factions backed by religious leaders that have increasingly campaigned against what they describe as the West imposing its cultural norms on Muslim-majority Iraq. In April, the parliament passed a harsh anti-LGBTQ+ law.

The proposed amendments would allow Iraqis to turn to religious courts on issues of family law, including marriage, which currently are the sole domain of civil courts.

That would let clerics rule according to their interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law, as opposed to national laws. Some clerics interpret Shariah to allow marriage of girls in their early teens – or as young as 9 under the Jaafari school of Islamic law followed by many Shiite religious authorities in Iraq.

Many Iraqi women have reacted with horror, holding protests outside parliament and campaigning against the changes on social media.

“Legislating a law that brings back the country 1,500 years is a shameful matter … and we will keep rejecting it until the last breath,” Heba al-Dabbouni, an activist among dozens at a protest in August, told The Associated Press. “The Iraqi parliament’s job is to pass laws that will raise the standards of society.”

Conservative legislators say the changes give people a choice whether to use civil or religious law, and argue they are defending families from secular, Western influences.

Human Rights Watch Iraq researcher Sarah Sanbar said the changes prioritize the husband’s preference. “So, yes it’s giving a choice, but it’s giving a choice to men first and foremost.”

Not all religious leaders are on board

The often furious debate has spilled into Iraqi media – even among clerics. On one recent news show, a Sunni cleric argued against a younger marriage age, calling it damaging to girls and saying there was no problem under Islam with the existing laws.

In a lecture posted on social media, Shiite cleric Rashid al-Husseini insisted Shariah allows marrying a 9-year-old girl. “But in practice, is this something that actually happens? … It might be zero percent, or 1% of cases,” he said.

The proposed amendments are backed by most Shiite legislators in a bloc called the Coordination Framework that holds a parliament majority. But disputes continue over the draft. Parliament was meant to hold an initial vote on the law Tuesday but could not reach a quorum, and had to postpone it.

Iraq’s personal status law passed in 1959 is broadly perceived as a strong foundation largely protecting women and children’s rights. It set the legal marriage age at 18, though it allows girls as young as 15 to marry with parental consent, and medical proof that the girl has hit puberty and is menstruating.

Marriages outside state courts were forbidden. Still, enforcement is lax. Individual judges sometimes approve younger marriages, whether because of corruption or because the marriage has already taken place informally.

Parliamentarian Raed al-Maliki, who presented the proposed amendments, said the state would still provide protections, and that discussions were still taking place about a minimum marriage age.

The age will be “very close to the current law,” Mr. Maliki told the AP, without elaborating.

Iraqi women are leading the fight against the changes

Mr. Maliki and other proponents depict the changes as a defense against Western secularism.

He said the original law was influenced by “communists and Baathists,” the latter in reference to the secular pan-Arab nationalist party that ruled the country with an iron fist from 1968 until its rule under Saddam Hussein was toppled in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

“In the West they take children away from their parents for the simplest reasons and accuse them of violence, then they change their culture and create homosexuals out of them,” Mr. Maliki said, referring to Iraq’s law passed in April that criminalized same-sex relations and the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights. “We cannot imitate that or consider it as development.”

Criticism of Western culture has gained new strength since the latest Israel-Hamas war broke out, with most Iraqis sympathizing with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Many see statements about human rights by the United States and others as hypocritical because of their support of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

But the most vocal opponents of the changes are Iraqi women, said Ms. Sanbar of Human Rights Watch.

“It speaks volumes to the fact that this is what Iraqi women want, not foreign organizations dictating what Iraq needs to do,” she said.

This wasn’t the first such set of amendments to be proposed over the past decade. But now, Shiite parties are more unified behind them.

Harith Hasan, a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, says Shiite parties previously had different priorities, focused on the many conflicts rocking the country the past two decades.

“Now there is sort of a consensus” among them on cultural issues, he said, adding that the new amendments would create “institutionalized sectarianism” in Iraq and could weaken civil courts.

“When they say it is the right of religious officials to handle marriage, inheritance, divorce, and the court cannot challenge this, you create two parallel authorities,” Mr. Hasan said. “This will create confusion in the country.”

Ms. Saadoun, who now lives in Irbil, in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, said she fears for women and girls in Iraq.

“The new amendments in the personal status law will destroy the future of many little girls and many generations,” she said.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.