The British child brides: Muslim mosque leaders agree to marry girl of 12

British Muslim clerics are willing to carry out sharia marriages involving child brides as young as 12, an investigation has found.

Two imams said they would be prepared to officiate at the wedding of an underage girl to a man in his twenties, despite fears the pair would later have sex.

The revelations have led the Home Office to confirm that such ceremonies will be examined in the Government's forthcoming Bill to outlaw forced marriages.

More than 1,000 of the 8,000 forced marriages of Britons each year are believed to involve girls of 15 or under, with one case last year allegedly involving a girl of five.

The clerics were approached by man posing as the father of a 12-year-old who wanted her to marry to prevent her being tempted into a decadent Western lifestyle. Imam Mohammed Kassamali, of the Husaini Islamic Centre in Peterborough, stressed the need for secrecy with such a ceremony.

He allegedly said: 'If it (the marriage) was not possible, I would have told you straight away... I would love the girl to go to her husband's houses (sic) as soon as possible, the younger the better.

'The problem is that we cannot explain such things (the marriage) if the girl went tomorrow (to the authorities). 'The other thing is the underage thing and if tomorrow the girl is, let's say coerced or forced into this, and she goes and reports it to the police then she will put all of us into the problems.'

He also urged the father to encourage the newlyweds to 'delay the togetherness', meaning postpone having sex.

Abdul Haque, a retired imam who still officiates at weddings at Shoreditch mosque, East London, reportedly agreed to carry out the ceremony after evening prayers on Wednesday.

'Tell people it is an engagement but it will be a marriage,' he told an undercover Sunday Times reporter.