Prophet Muhammad's marriage to Aisha [MOD EDIT - Warning post #7]

Jigga

One of the prophet Mohammed's wives was under 10 (Aisha) when he married her. I have a Muslim friend and when I question him on this he simply uses the culture excuse (everyone married young back then, etc.) and that he also had wives older than himself.

Please don't mistake this thread as trolling but I am intrigued as to what do the posters here think of this [MOD EDIT]

PCPhoto

Jigga wrote: »

One of the prophet Mohammed's wives was under 10 (Aisha) when he married her. I have a Muslim friend and when I question him on this he simply uses the culture excuse (everyone married young back then, etc.) and that he also had wives older than himself.

I never knew that ...but then again ... it was part of the culture at the time.... plenty of romans had sex with minors, infact plenty of the worlds greatest artists were swinging in every direction (basically riding anything that had a hole)

kiwimac

One of Muhammad's wives was Ayesha or Aisha. Depending on what sources are used her age at marriage is sometimes put at 6 and consummation at 9. However there are a number of facts which need to be factored in.

1: Not all sources agree with Bukhari about Ayesha's age, Bukhari's Hadith were not collated until 300-odd years after Muhammad's death. Other sources give Ayesha's age as being 16 at marriage and 19 at consummation.

2: Even if her age were 6 / 9, the custom of taking child brides was a part of Middle-Eastern culture. The Jews practised it as well as many of the other nations in the Middle-East and remember too that Mary of Nazareth's age was probably around the 12-14 mark.

3: Pedophilia is both a sexual dysfunction and a legal one. Muhammad's others wives were adult women with who he apparently had very good relations. This would not normally be the case for a pedophile.

4: Customs and Traditions as well as laws were very different then from now. What is considered unacceptable now was not considered anything to comment about then.

kiwimac

Customs and Traditions as well as laws were very different then from now. What is considered unacceptable now was not considered anything to comment about then. You cannot read 21stC mores and laws back into 6thC Arabia.

irishconvert

Jigga and Rojomcdojo, take a week off for breach of charter. Genuine questions are always welcome in this forum but we will not tolerate posters making insulting accusations without backing up what they say.

deravarra

Never ceases to amaze me that people love to comment on things they know absolutely nothing about.

Sure, there are hadith about the age of Aisha being 6 at marriage, but the SINGLE source for this was a man from Iraq, and it is known that he was old and frail when he related the stories.

Other studies, taking into account the contemporaneous knowledge of Aisha's family (especially her sister), the historical events (such as battles, etc) and using techniques to compare and contrast, scholars have deduced that Aisha was not anything like 6 - but more like 16.

The prophet Mohammed (SAW) himself gave instruction that no female was to be married unless her family thought she was mature enough - both in mind and body.

Im afraid there's plenty of people who dismiss the more recent scholarly studies about Aisha - merely because it doesnt suit their anti-Islamic agenda.

kiwimac

There is, IMO, nothing wrong with asking the questions just so long as you are willing to accept the answers may not always agree with your POV. My big bugbear in this area is the reading back into history of modern mores and saying that things should always have been as we understand them today.

We cannot redact history in that way nor should we, the historical period must stand for itself and itself as it was in the context of it's time not as we may like to think it was nor as our fears may tell us it was.

hivizman

Looking back over past threads in this forum, I suppose it's about time that the hardy perennial "Muhammad's marriage to Aisha" should "come into bloom".

The Wikipedia article on Aisha provides a fairly even-handed discussion of the issue of how old Aisha was when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated. There is certainly some disagreement among the sources as to whether Aisha was 9 or 10, or rather older. Even the main source, the hadiths reported by Imam Bukhari, is not altogether clear regarding the chronology. Moreover, people did not celebrate birthdays in Arab culture at that time, and it is possible that, when Aisha narrated (Bukhari, Vol. 5, Book 58, No. 234) that she was six years old when she was betrothed and nine years old when she married Muhammad, she was guessing how old she was (or using conventional ages) and simply meant that she was a young girl (but able to talk and remember things) at the time of betrothal and that she had started to menstruate at the time of marriage.

The Wikipedia site discusses arguments that subsequent hadith reporters could have had an interest in emphasising the youth (and by implication the virginity) of Aisha as a contrast to Muhammad's other wives, who all appear to have been widows.

However, as has already been noted in earlier posts, even if we accept the ages for Aisha given in the main hadith evidence as being literally true, marriage at this age was by no means unusual not just in 7th century Arab culture but in many other world cultures until the last 100 years or so.

oceanclub

I'm quite happy to accept the argument that moral standards were different in previous eras (my own grandmother-in-law got married at 13, in fact).

But then isn't there a contradiction between stating that (a) as a man, Mohammed should be judged on the subjective morals of his time, and (b) the moral impositions he imposed on his religious followers are objective and not subject to change over time?

P.

hivizman

oceanclub wrote: »

I'm quite happy to accept the argument that moral standards were different in previous eras (my own grandmother-in-law got married at 13, in fact).

But then isn't there a contradiction between stating that (a) as a man, Mohammed should be judged on the subjective morals of his time, and (b) the moral impositions he imposed on his religious followers are objective and not subject to change over time?

P.

I think that this is a very important question to ask. In the context of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha, I must state that I am worried by some very extreme interpretations that I have come across on the internet (I'd prefer not to provide links because I don't think they are very pleasant reading). These argue as follows:

1. Muhammad is the best of all the human race and his behaviour is to be taken as normative (there is Qur'anic authority for this in Surat al-Azhab 33:21: "In the Prophet of God you have an excellent example to follow for one who seeks God and the Last Day, and who remembers God often" [Tarif Khalidi translation]).

2. Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine or ten years old (or consummated his marriage as soon as his wife began menstruating, which in the case of Aisha was when she was nine or ten).

3. Therefore there is nothing wrong, indeed on the contrary it is following the Sunnah of the Prophet, if a man marries a girl and consummates the marriage as soon as she starts menstruating (or even, to consummate the marriage when she is nine years old).

Against this, it could be argued that the Qur'an imposes specific rights and limitations on Muhammad and his wives, so indicating that what Muhammad did in connection with marriage is not necessarily to be taken as a possibility for other Muslims. For example, Muhammad was permitted to marry more than four wives (Surat al-Ahzab 33:50), while he was not permitted to divorce any wife (Surat al-Ahzab 33:52), and his widows were not allowed to remarry after his death (Surat al-Ahzab 33:53). So, just because Muhammad did something with regard to marriage, even if it was consistent with social custom in the 7th century, that does not necessarily mean that it is therefore acceptable to do the same in all subsequent periods.

However, I am sure that there are those who disagree with this view, and as always I have to note that I am not a Muslim.