RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -– Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric was quoted as saying it is permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who think they're too young are doing the girls an injustice.

The mufti's comments showed the conservative clergy's opposition to a drive by Saudi rights groups, including government ones, to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon of child marriages.

""It is wrong to say it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,"" Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh, the country's grand mufti, was quoted as saying.

""A female who is 10 or 12 is marriageable and those who think she's too young are wrong and are being unfair to her,"" he said during a lecture, according to the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper.

Responding to a question about parents who force their underage daughters to marry, the mufti said: ""We hear a lot about the marriage of underage girls in the media, and we should know that Islamic law has not brought injustice to women.""

The mufti said a good upbringing will make a girl capable of carrying out her duties as a wife and that those who say women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a ""bad path."" ""Our mothers and before them, our grandmothers, married when they were barely 12,"" said Al Sheikh, according to Al-Hayat.