The view that underaged girls might be ready for marriage because they look like adults should be corrected, an Amanah MP says.

"That is a view that needs to be corrected. We don't marry because you have the body of an adult," Kota Raja MP Siti Mariah Mahmud said at a press conference in the Parliament media room today.

She added that if the bodies of girls were to be a benchmark, then psychological assessment must be done to determine if they're actually ready for marriage.

SIti Mariah was commenting on remarks by BN Tasek Gelugor MP Shabudin Yahaya in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday, that some underaged girls may be ready for marriage because "their bodies are like 18 year old women."

Shabudin had cited Malaysian laws that allow girls below the age of 16 to be wed, with permission from the Syariah Courts.

The former Syariah Court judge courted controversy for also saying that marriage between a rapist and his victim could be a social "remedy".

Siti Mariah stressed that Shabudin's remarks must be viewed in their full context.

"I don't blame him totally because the law allows it. I'm not saying he is right, but that is the mindset of Malaysians today, of Muslims today," she said.

The Amanah women's chief also said that marrying girls off before they complete their studies, stripped away their right to self determination.

"In the old days, daughters were raised to get married, to get a husband. There was no future but to be a mother and a grandmother.

"But in the current context of time, girls are raised to be independent, to have their own self-determination, so we have to adjust to it," Siti Mariah said.

She added that girls married off at such a young age would also become submissive and financially dependent on their husbands.

Siti Mariah also said that there is a serious need for the matter of minimum age of marriage to be debated, because while many religious people hold it to be permissible, neither the Quran nor the prophetic hadith set the age of marriage.

According to The Sun article dated June 12 last year, the Syariah Judiciary Department revealed there were 10,240 child marriage applications made between 2005 and 2015, which saw the highest applications from Sarawak (2,064), Kelantan (1,929) and Terengganu (924).