Imam Ahmed: Aisha's marriage. Justifying the unjustifiable

Submitted by Plato (India), May 2, 2008 at 01:16

Imam Ahmed, you wrote:

>>I know it is hard for many non Muslims to hear of Muhammed taking Aishah, a 9 year old girl as his wife. The common reply many muslims use is that it was customary for this to take place. In my research of it I've found that in some Arab tribes it is. But if Muhammed was trying to change Arab culture for the better, why keep this custom? <<

It is not hard for non-Muslims. It is actually Muslims who find Muhammad marrying a child very hard to take and so invent all sorts of excuses for it including questioning Aisha's own confession of her age at marriage. Her age is boosted to nearly 19 by some fancy interpretation of hadith. Why do Muslims go to all this trouble if they have no issue with this obnoxious marriage?

>>Aishah's father Abu Bakr, offered his daughter to the Prophet as a way to combine families, and become stronger against the oppression of the Quraish.<<

You have just repeated another stale Muslim excuse for an inexcusable marriage. You have also twisted it to appear that Abu Bakr offered his child to Muhammad in marriage when it was actually Muhammad who asked for the alliance:

Shahih Bukhari, volume 7, Book 62, Number 37: Narrated Ursa: The Prophet asked Abu Bakr for Aisha's hand in marriage. Abu Bakr said "But I am your brother." The Prophet said, "You are my brother in Allah's religion and His book, but she (Aisha) is lawful for me to marry."

Here is your prophet contemptuously dismissing the dictates of Allah's religion and also His book to marry Aisha.

When he does not want to marry someone offered to him this is what he says: V7, B62, N18: It was said to the Prophet, "Won't you marry the daughter of Hamza?" He said, "She is my foster neice (brother's daughter)."

The prophet twisted Allah's laws to suit his convenience.

What oppression of the Qureish are you talking about? All of them had already migrated to Medina when the prophet consummated the marriage.

>>While the Prophet did marry a minor, which isn't uncommon amongst semetic people, Christians, and Jews (quick quiz, What age was Mary. when she was betrothed to Joseph?),<<

You admit that the prophet did marry a minor when he was nold enough to be her grandfather and then excuse it by saying this was not uncommon among semetic people. But wasn't the Prophet mandated by Allah to improve upon the practices of jahiliya? If he was going to encourage jahiliya practices where was the need for Allah to look for a new prophet?

You also use the common Muslim trick of bringing in Christian faults (in this case Mary's age at marriage) again forgetting that Islam is all about correcting the corruption that had crept into Allah's older scriptures.

>>…he did not consumate the marriage until she came of age that the Arabs felt was legitimate for a girl to consumate a marriage.<<

You have conveniently shifted the legitimacy of consummating this marriage on to the nine-year old Aisha. Do you seriously consider that Aisha had any clue to what she was letting herself in for when she let the prophet climb into bed with her? What would you do or think if you caught your grandfather in bed with a child of nine? Would you excuse it as his following your hallowed prophet's bedroom antics?

>>Besides while what we know as pedophelia today existed 14 centuries ago,<<

Why don't you come out in the open and tell us whether what the prophet did can be considered pedophilia? Murder, slavery, all also existed 14 centuries ago. It is not okay now. Nor was it okay then. Islam justifies both (9:111, 48:20) and now you are justifying pedophilia because of the Prophet's marriage to Aisha.

>>It wasn't a crime, and pedophiles don't marry thier victims, they don't care about them.<<

Pedophilia wasn't a crime then. We know it is a terrible crime now. How come the Prophet of Allah did not know that? Was he not sent to end the practices of jahiliya?

Pedophiles don't marry their victims now because they can't and would be jailed in non-Islamic countries. But in Islamic countries since the beginning of Islam pedophiles hide their crimes by marrying their victims. It is legal since the prophet himself practiced it.

>>It's not even an issue of sex with them, it's an issue of control, and power, the same as with rape with a grown woman.<<

Even if it is with the consent of the little girl it is still rape if the man is considered an adult. In Muhammad's case was it an issue of sex or of control and power? Sex certainly, as he consummated his marriage when Aisha was nine and he is known to have given her more nights than his other wives. And power too, as you claims that this was an alliance against the Qureish.

>>Before I became Muslim I was Methodists. Alot of people tell me I sound more like a Christian, than a Muslim.<<

You sound exactly like any Muslim I have come across on this forum. The same tired old excuses for the Prophet's inexcusable behaviour.

Regards

Plato

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