Reconstructing Marriage Dispensation through Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah: A Child-Centered Approach to Protecting Children’s Rights

St. Samsuduha
Maria Ulviani (Muhammadiyah University of Makassar)
Ahmad Mas'ari

Hukum Islam
Vol 26 No 2 (2026): Islamic Law

Child marriage remains a significant legal and human rights concern because it may adversely affect children’s welfare, development, education, agency, and future opportunities. In Indonesia, the strengthening of the statutory minimum marriage age through legal reform is accompanied by marriage dispensation as an exceptional mechanism, creating a need to reassess how judicial exceptions can be reconciled with substantive child protection. This research aims to reconstruct the assessment of marriage dispensation through maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah by placing children’s rights, best interests, agency, and long-term welfare at the center of judicial reasoning. The study employs normative juridical research using statutory, conceptual, and maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah approaches. Legal materials and relevant scholarly literature are analyzed qualitatively and descriptively-analytically to examine the relationship between marriage dispensation, child protection, potential harm, agency, power relations, and the objectives of Islamic law. The findings demonstrate that the formal availability of marriage dispensation does not by itself establish the substantive legitimacy of an exception. Marriage dispensation should remain an exceptional mechanism and should be assessed through the child’s best interests, potential physical, psychological, educational, economic, and social harm, meaningful child participation, freedom from coercive power relations, and long-term welfare and development. The study further demonstrates that maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah can function as a substantive analytical framework rather than merely as a justification for legal permissibility, by evaluating whether the expected maṣlaḥah of an exception is sufficiently justified in light of, and capable of preventing or outweighing, foreseeable mafsadah. The principal contribution of this research is the reconstruction of marriage dispensation through a child-centered maqāṣid framework that integrates genuine exceptional circumstances, best interests, harm assessment, child agency and power relations, and long-term welfare into judicial assessment. This reconstruction transforms marriage dispensation from a primarily procedural exception into a substantively justified, child-centered form of judicial reasoning.