The exposure of children to exploitation, violence, health-related shocks, and deprivation from basic rights is generally higher compared to adults. Lack of adequate capacity for logical reasoning to protect their own interests in complex matters increases their vulnerability in many forms and shapes. Child marriages, child abductions and forced conversions to other religions are examples of harmful practices in which age is a major factor. These practices inhibit a child’s potential to thrive.

In Pakistan, an effort has been under way to enact laws to end child and forced marriages and forced conversions. However, progress has been stalled for long due to opposition from religious circles. The Parliamentary Committee to Protect Minorities from Forced Conversions rejected the proposed anti-forced conversion bill on October 13. Targetted lobbying preceded this outcome, including a meeting of some religious leaders with the prime minister on September 28. Following this meeting, the prime minister commented that contentious government bills, including the one on forced conversions, will not be enacted due to provisions that were “in direct conflict with the teachings of Islam”.

The Child Marriage (Restraint) Acts that seek to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 years for girls in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are also pending for long. Sindh is the only province that has raised the age of marriage to 18 years. The spectrum of criticism on the Punjab and KP child marriage bills and the Federal anti-forced conversion bill is wide, ranging from a complete denial of the issues to incompatibility of certain provisions of the bills with Islam to attributing their origin to a trap by the West. A major ground for contestation is the proposal to fix the minimum age for marriage and conversion to another religion at 18 years. The opposition to the Federal Domestic Violence Bill also has an age angle.

The anti-forced conversion draft bill proposes that a non-Muslim child who wishes to convert to another religion has to prove that he or she has attained the age of 18 years, although this threshold will not apply if the entire family decides to convert. The critics argue that this proposal is against Islamic law which does not set a minimum age threshold for conversion. In fact, there are precedents of children converting to Islam during the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The opposition to the Child Marriage (Restraint) bills follows a similar line. It is argued that a girl is permitted to get married when she attains “puberty” regardless of her age.

But, what is the rationale for setting a minimum age? The modern nation state has conformed to the concept of the “age of majority”. This is a legally defined age at which minors can undertake responsibilities as major, can choose what is good for them and give consent, and can be held accountable for their decisions and actions. They can exercise discretion and enter binding contracts with others. In a legal sense, the authority of the parents or guardian(s) over the child’s person and affairs generally ends at this age.

In the matter of child marriage, there is already good evidence that underage girls are much more likely to be deprived of education and die in childbirth than adult women. There is also evidence that children of child brides are more likely to die in the first year of life than those born to older mothers.

The age of majority of persons domiciled in Pakistan is 18 years under the Majority Act, 1875. However, the Act excludes marriage, dower, divorce, adoption, the religion or religious rites from its purview, allowing a person below 18 years to undertake these roles subject to provisions in some other laws. Another issue is that there is no single threshold for when a child or an adult can or cannot do certain things in legal terms.

A 2004 report of the Law and Justice Commission reviewed more than 62 sections of different laws and Articles of the 1973 Constitution and found no uniformity. For example, the minimum age for a child to do non-hazardous work is 14 years. Some labour laws define a child under 15 years of age. The Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, 1929, defines a male child below 18 years and a female child below 16 years of age. The age of criminal responsibility in the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 is set at 10 years. The minimum age for election to the lower house and the Senate are set at 25 and 30 years, respectively.

While some of these differences warrant harmonisation, some variation is inevitably needed. A fundamental principle in setting a minimum age is that it should fulfil the requirement of logical reasoning, and the individual should have acquired the ability to question and understand the consequences of decisions and actions. Therefore, the legal age for different matters is set at a level that is roughly proportionate to the complexity of the responsibilities and corresponding needs of logical thinking. Simple tasks involving less complex reasoning can be performed by an adolescent under 18 years of age such as non-hazardous chores. Marriage and conversion to another religion are by no means simple tasks.

How would logical reasoning change the fate of this age controversy? The data compiled by the Centre of Social Justice verified 162 incidents between 2013 and 2016 and found that around 17 percent of victims were above 18. Around 46 percent of the victims were minors. The actual ratio of minors could be higher because the exact age of 37 percent of the victims was not specified in the documents reviewed. If this data is not sufficient to establish the correlation between age and forced conversions, further research can be commissioned to find out the truth. In the matter of child marriage, there is already good evidence that underage girls are much more likely to be deprived of education and die in childbirth than adult women. There is also evidence that children of child brides are more likely to die in the first year of life than those born to older mothers.

This evidence is not being considered meaningfully despite the fact that Islam places massive and recurrent emphasis on seeking truth, rational thinking, and reasoning. This is a well-established principle in the Islamic jurisprudence. The issue is that objections to the proposed bills rely heavily on references to a lack of specific injunctions or precedents in the Holy Quran and the early days of Islam about an age-in-years threshold for marriage and conversions. If an age-in-years was not specified then, the state is not prohibited to fix a minimum age either. If there is a shariah ruling that forbids the state from fixing a minimum age, the religious scholars should make that contention clear sooner rather than later.

The writer is a social development expert based in Islamabad. Email: sirajmazhar@hotmail.com