Nor Fazira told the newspaper that she had stopped attending school last year but now planned to resume her studies, as her husband had encouraged her to do so. The girl’s father, Saad Mustafa, supported the marriage, telling the local news media that it was better for the couple to get married than do something “improper.”

A report released this month by the United Nations Country Team Gender Theme Group found that in 2011, Malaysia’s Shariah courts had approved 824 marriages involving Muslims in which at least one party was younger than the legal age. The report did not look at marriages involving non-Muslims. Researchers suspect that the overall number of underage marriages is higher because not all couples who have taken part in religious weddings register with the authorities.

Ratna Osman, the executive director of Sisters in Islam, a Muslim women’s advocacy group in Kuala Lumpur, said that the 2000 census showed that 6,800 girls and 4,600 boys younger than 15 were married. The 2010 census did not include similar data.

Ms. Ratna argued that the government should raise the minimum marriage age for everyone to 18, rather than allow Shariah courts or state ministers to make exceptions for younger children.

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

“How did the judge determine that a 12-year-old was ready for marriage?” she asked. She noted that having sex with a 12-year-old girl who is not one’s wife is considered statutory rape under Malaysian law.

“Yet once you do it under the name of marriage, she is no longer a minor? Her body has suddenly transformed into an adult body?” Ms. Ratna said. “You would be charged under the law on statutory rape but get permission from the court and suddenly it’s O.K. to have sex with a 12-year-old.”

Sharmila Sekaran, chairwoman of Voice of the Children, a rights group in Kuala Lumpur, also said the government should outlaw child marriage.

“This should not be happening regardless of the fact that the parents had consented. I don’t think parents should be allowed to consent for children the age of 12,” she said. “There has been research done which shows that children at the age of 12 are not sufficiently mature to understand their role within a marriage and certainly in terms of becoming parents; they themselves are still children.”

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Ms. Sharmila added that studies had found that young girls who become pregnant and their babies faced greater health risks than older women.

But Nazri Aziz, the government minister responsible for legal affairs, said the government had no plans to amend the law regarding the minimum legal age of marriage “because it concerns Islamic law.”

He said the government could not pass any law that would be inconsistent with Islamic law.

The United Nations report included Malaysian census data showing that in 2010, about 1.4 percent of married women, or more than 82,000, were 15 to 19, up from 1.2 percent, or about 53,000, in 2001.

The researchers interviewed six girls and one boy who married below the legal age and found that their reasons for getting married included to avoid premarital sex, which is forbidden under Islam; to avoid being arrested for khalwat, an Islamic offense in which unmarried men and women are found together in “close proximity”; coercion by family elders; and pregnancy.