I was not at all surprised when the learned Justice Mohammed Azam Khan of the Islamabad High Court did not annul the marriage of an under-age girl and allowed her to live with her husband (whose age was definitely more than 18). For those who don't know, the minimum age for marriage in Pakistan is 18, but in practice this is widely flouted. Practically every male in Pakistan considers himself an expert on Sharia (without ever having read it), so he naturally assumes that a girl should be married off the day she finishes her first period. There is therefore no way of preventing this, as even a judge of the high court believes it.
Around the time I was 15, two girls in my neighborhood (both sisters definitely aged less than 18), were married off. There was a German engineer and his wife who were employed by the girls' father at the time. The German woman actually wept and asked the father of the girls why he was giving away two helpless children so soon. I think the father must've said the usual thing about all Muslims being ordered to do so.
Come to think of it, even some US states allow girls as young as 14 to marry. So I guess we shouldn't be shocked that there are more than 19 million child brides in Pakistan.
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