The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom's top cleric saying that it's OK for girls as young as 10 to wed. "It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her." The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom in recent weeks. Late last month, a Saudi judge refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man. The judge, Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib, rejected a petition from the girl's mother, whose lawyer said the marriage was arranged by her father to settle a debt with "a close friend." The judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty. Al-Sheikh was asked during a Monday lecture about parents forcing their underage daughters to marry. "We hear a lot in the media about the marriage of underage girls," he said, according to the newspaper. "We should know that Shariah law has not brought injustice to women." Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, recently told CNN that his organization has heard many other cases of child marriages. "We've been hearing about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger -- especially so when girls are traded off to older men," Wilcke said. Wilcke explained that while Saudi ministries may make decisions designed to protect children, "It is still the religious establishment that holds sway in the courts, and in many realms beyond the court." Last month, Zuhair al-Harithi, a spokesman for the Saudi government-run Human Rights Commission, said his organization is fighting against child marriages. "The Human Rights Commission opposes child marriages in Saudi Arabia," al-Harithi said. "Child marriages violate international agreements that have been signed by Saudi Arabia and should not be allowed." He added that his organization has been able to intervene and stop at least one child marriage from taking place. Wajeha al-Huwaider, co-founder of the Society of Defending Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, told CNN last month that achieving human rights in the kingdom means standing against those who want to "keep us backward and in the dark ages." She said the marriages cause girls to "lose their sense of security and safety. Also, it destroys their feeling of being loved and nurtured. It causes them a lifetime of psychological problems and severe depression." The Saudi Ministry of Justice has made no public comment on the issue. CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom contributed to this report.

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Grand mufti speaks out after judge refuses to annul marriage of man, 47, to girl, 8. Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh: "Shariah law has not brought injustice to women" Human Rights Commission fighting child marriages.

By. Helen Collis. PUBLISHED:. 05:32 EST, 22 October 2013. |. UPDATED:. 10:30 EST, 22 October 2013. Naming a child can be hard enough with so many old and new names going in and out of fashion. Now a new tool shows how trends in girls' names have swept across the US over the decades. This fascinating map illustrates how some names will stand the test of time, while others are short-lived trends - here today but gone tomorrow. Trendy: New mothers and fathers can check out which girls' names are the most popular in their state and across the US with this time-lapse map. The clever tool shows how some names, such as Lisa and Jennifer have stood the test of time and swept across the entire country in popularity. Remarkably, it also illustrates how some parts of the US are the trend-setters, coming up with a new favourite girls' name, which then spread like wildfire across neighbouring states, and sometimes even across the entire United States. From 1960 until 2012, the most popular girls name in each state are easily identified by the colour, while all other names are monochrome. Tennessee and Kentucky, in the mid-East, frequently buck the trend. These two states opted for Amanda over Jennifer in the mid-1970s, ending a decade dedicated to a love for the name Jennifer. Not all names were adopted from East to West, with trends often spanning a cluster of neighbouring states. Jessica, like Jennifer a few years earlier, showed it was a strong girls' name that stood the test of time, clinging on for years in some states, disappearing but then coming back again. They then also adopt Ashley, which spread almost entirely across the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps one of the traditionalist states is Utah, which began the Jennifer affair in 1969. It went on to be the most popular girls' baby name throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The name Madison originates in the West, in Utah, in 1996. It's picked up two years later in neighbouring states before it travels like a plague across the south-east and other pockets for a few years. Madison's eventually pushed out in favour of Emma and Emily. Ava, Isabella and Sophia are some of the most popular recent baby names today the US. Sometimes, names were only popular for a short period of time in just one or two states, like Brittany on the East coast. The baby names map was created by Reuben Fischer-Baum, of Deadspin sports news service, using data from the Social Security Administration. After some trial and errors with colours Mr Fischer-Baum decided it was 'cleaner and more interesting to limit the palette to just the most popular name for any given year, and put the rest in greyscale so you coud se how the different eras of tops names progressed,' he is quoted in The Atlantic. The baby naming trend data was made available by one curious father in 1997 who didn't want to name his child a common name. According to the Boston Globe, Michael Shackleford wrote a simple programme to sort rank popular baby names, as listed on Social Security data, against year and gender. His program gave the results of the most popular boys' and girls' names. Both the north west and south east regions appear to be trend-setters, often the first states to break away from a traditional name and start a new trend, such as Hannah. Ava, Isabella, traditional name Emma and Sophia are some of the most popular baby names for girls today.

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Some names have stood the test of time while others are a brief-lived trend. Map shows that North West and South East are often trend-setting states.