Female Islamic clerics in Indonesia declared a series of fatwas on Thursday, including one to tackle child marriage, a rare example of women taking a leading religious role in the Muslim-majority country. The fatwas — religious edicts that have no legal force but are influential — were issued at the end of a three-day congress of female clerics in the country with the world’s biggest Muslim population. The meeting in Cirebon on Java island, billed as the world’s first major gathering of female Muslim clerics, attracted hundreds of participants. Most were Indonesian but there were also clerics from Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia.
They issued a series of fatwas at the end of the gathering, the most eye-catching of which was aimed at tackling child marriage. It urged the Government to raise the minimum legal age for women to marry to 18 from the current age of 16.