Thighing

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The process of thighing (مفاخذة, mufākhadhah) refers to rubbing between the legs^[1] as an alternative to sexual intercourse when that is not possible due to age or menstruation (an example of a fatwa permitting the practice during menstruation can be seen here).

The Shi'a cleric Ayatollah Khomeini (d. 1989), the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, infamously permitted this act on wives who are pre-pubescent. Permission is also found in a handful of isolated fatwas which used to be in a large Sunni fatwa database (one is still present on the site). While Ayatollah Khomeini is an important 20th century Shia figure, neither they nor he cite hadiths or classical rulings that explicitly mention doing this act to minors. As such this would not count as representing any kind of Islamic legal consensus, historic or otherwise. However, the more general permission for Child Marriage in Islamic Law has the longstanding consensus of the legal scholars. Modern Muslim countries are increasingly changing their civil laws to raise the minimum age of marriage in an effort to reduce the prevalence of child marriages. Many Muslim groups also campaign for these changes. The UN regards child marriage as a human rights violation and aims to eradicate it by 2030. The girl is vulnerable to spousal abuse and childhood pregnancy which greatly jeopardizes her health and future.

The Sunni fatwas permitting the practice on minors quoted below appear to be incompatible with traditional Sunni jurisprudence in which the husband is forbidden access to a minor wife until she reaches the age of majority (typically understood to mean menarchy). Reuben Levy, who was Professor of Persian at Cambridge University, writes, "No age limits have been fixed in Islam for marriage, and quite young children may be legally married, although a girl is not handed over to her husband until she is fit for marital congress. The Hanafite legal code lays down that a wife must not be taken into her husband's house until she reaches that condition. In case of dispute on the matter, between the husband and the bride's wali, who is her nearest male kinsmen and her guardian, the qadi is to be informed, and he is to appoint two matrons to examine the girl and report on her physical preparedness for marriage. If they decide she is too young, she must return to her father's house until she is declared fit."^[2]

Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, wrote of this practice regarding its practice with pre-pubescent children:

The practice is also attested to and confirmed by Sunni legal sources. Islamweb.net, one of the largest Fatwa sites on the internet that includes more than 250 thousand Fatwas, includes the following Fatwa:

The following is a Fatwa from the same website archived by Al-Maktabah Al-Shamilah library in 2009. The Fatwa on the site now no longer mentions the kissing and the thiging of a minor. The archived Fatwa says:

Another archived fatwa from Islamweb.net that's now deleted from the site: