Saudi Islamic cleric has has issued a fatwa defending Muslim child marriage (also known as pedophilia)

Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, an Islamic cleric in Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, has issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married even if they are in the cradle. Fawzan insists that nowhere does Sharia set an age limit for marrying girls. Like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relies on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e. are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam’s role model, married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, consummating the marriage — or, in modern parlance, raping her — when she was 9. The ulema [Islam’s interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle. But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men. And their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and capacity. Aisha was 6 when she married the prophet, but he had sex with her when she was 9 [i.e., when she was deemed capable]. Fawzan is not the first Islamic leader to legitimize pedophilia in Islam and that the former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia himself also supported child-marriage, citing the Quran and Sunna as proof.