The Sexual Enjoyment of an Underage Wife from the Perspective of Imāmī Jurisprudence

One of the challenging aḥkām (rulings) related to the women’s rights system in Islam is the ruling on the permissibility of enjoying an underage wife. According to this ruling, any sexual enjoyment is permissible from an underage wife except dukhūl (penetration). Using library sources and the descriptive-analytical method, the present paper tries to review this ruling. For this purpose, after explaining the arguments of those who believe in the permissibility of enjoyment from an underage wife, it has reviewed each of these arguments. Then it has followed the selected point of view in two parts, the reasons for the permissibility of changing the rulings and the effective components for changing the ruling on the enjoyment of the underage wife. In the first part, it was proved that the two main reasons for the ruling and the change of conditions can be used to change rulings. In the next part, it considers the following five factors in the issue of enjoyment of the underage wife as the reason for changing the first ruling: rational qubḥ (evil); being unconventional; opposing the interest of the child, being harmful, and opposing morality. Based on the following explanations of each of these components, any sexual enjoyment of an underage wife will be impermissible in the current age.