Moroccan authorities have ordered the closure of dozens of schools and a website run by a Muslim religious leader who argued that girls as young as 9 could marry.
Sheik Mohammed Ben Abderahman al-Maghraoui had issued the fatwa, or religious ruling, on his website saying it was lawful for a Muslim man to marry a 9-year-old girl because Islam's Prophet Mohammed had done so.
Moroccan law, however, sets 18 as the minimum age for women to marry, and the Council of the Oulemas - the country's highest religious authority - denounced al-Maghraoui as an "agitator."
"What the Prophet can do is not open to ordinary Muslims," said lawyer Mourad El Bekkouri, who filed a legal complaint against the sheik this month asking "the king's prosecutor to sue al-Maghraoui for promoting paedophilia and rape."
Government officials said at least three dozen Koranic schools would be shut, according to local media.
A Religion Ministry official has been fired in the southern town of Marrakech for not catching al-Maghraoui's contentious fatwa, the Al-Ahdath Al-Maghribiya newspaper reported.
None of the newspapers named their sources and Moroccan officials could not be reached for comment.
However the lawyer, El Bekkouri, confirmed the media reports.
Al-Maghraoui was not immediately available for comment, but his Web site appeared to be accessible from outside Morocco.
Several newspapers reported that al-Maghraoui's religious schools and his Web site were funded by Saudi Arabia, which promotes a particularly rigorous strain of Islam known as Wahhabism.
Morocco, which is a relatively tolerant Muslim country and a strong US-ally, has been battling a growing tide of radical Islam in recent years.
The North African kingdom has tried to balance its courtship of Western tourism with the expectations of traditionalist societies in its population.
