KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 2 — Cross-border marriages between Malaysian men and Thai girls are a profitable business for imams on the other side of the border, the Guardian reported.
The UK daily reported Thai children’s rights activist Anchana Heemmina as saying that a legal loophole in Thai civil law, which allows Muslim communities to apply Islamic law to family matters, has enabled Malaysian men to cross into southern Thailand to engage in underage or polygamous marriages that would not be easily approved in Malaysia.
“People come from all over Malaysia to do this,” Mohammad Lazim, who runs a business arranging cross-border marriages for Malaysian men, was quoted saying.
The Guardian reported Lazim as saying that he works with more than 50 bridegrooms a year, mostly polygamous marriages but never with child bridges.
“Business is booming: instead of applying to a Shariah court in Malaysia and answering all their difficult questions — a process that takes sometimes a year — the shortcut is to come to Thailand. Here there is no law,” Lazim said.
The Guardian reported that many Malaysian men preferred to take a shortcut and come to Thailand to get married, as applying to do so in a Malaysian Shariah court required answering difficult questions in a lengthy process lasting up to a year.
Thai imams can charge up to four times as much to officiate marriages for Malaysians as they do for Thai Muslims. One example is 41-year old Kelantanese Che Abdul Karim Che Hamid, whose marriage to 11-year old Ayu in July sparked outrage.
In Thailand, he would only have to pay 4,500 baht (RM566) to formalise his marriage to his third wife. On July 10, Che Abdul Karim was fined RM1,800 by the Shariah Court in Gua Musang in lieu of a prison sentence for committing polygamy without court permission.
There is no minimum age for marriage under Islamic law in Thailand unlike civil legislation, where under-17s are unable to marry since 2003.
For southern Thai Muslims, girls are deemed marriageable once they start menstruating. As a result child marriage continues as it is considered a solution to underage pregnancy and rape, with many Malaysians seeking underaged brides across the border.
