IRAN - MARRY AT 16, IRANIAN PRESIDENT URGES GIRLS

Published: Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has urged girls to marry at 16 to help keep Satan at bay.
His call is another controversial, if implicit, rejection of his country's highly praised family planning policy that was sanctioned by senior Islamic clerics two decades ago.
Paying tribute this weekend to a gathering of charities helping young Iranians to wed, Mr Ahmadinejad proclaimed: "I think the best time for girls to get married is 16, 17 and 18 - that is, when they first bloom and are at the height of tender feelings."
The right age for boys, he opined, "is 19, 20 and 21".
Mr Ahmadinejad suggested that young people should not worry about chronic employment and housing problems that deter many Iranians from marrying until they are in their late 20s. Both drawbacks, he claimed, would be solved by the end of his second term as president in three years.
"If we manage to make marriage simple, we can push Satan thousands of light years away from ourselves," he declared.
Mr Ahmadinejad and some Iranian clerics encourage young people to wed to keep them from sin and temptation - euphemisms for pre-marital sex - and to increase Iran's Muslim population as a bulwark against aging western enemies.
The legal age for marriage in Iran is 13 for girls and 15 for boys, although girls need the consent of their father or paternal grandfather at whatever age they choose to tie the knot.
Increasingly, many Iranian women delay marriage until they have finished university. Young men, meanwhile, defer the big day until they have completed not only their education but also two years' compulsory military service.
And both sexes are reluctant to marry until they can afford a home.
The alternative, which is often unappealing to young people, is to move in with the parents-in-law while they save for a deposit on their own accommodation.
Following record birth rates in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran succeeded in cutting its population growth from an all-time high of 3.2 per cent in 1986 to around 1.2 per cent today, a rate similar to that of the United States.

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