6 replies to this topic

[Khadim uz Zahra]

I hope you are all in the best of health and Imaan (faith).

So, I have recently seen people being very concerned about the allegation some non-Muslims make against the Holy Prophet , in regards to the age of his wife Aisha at the time of their marriage. Many a Muslims are shocked when they hear of the narrations regarding her age (there are, of course, differing accounts but I am talking about the accounts which age her fairly her young, at around 6 when the marriage took place and 9 at the time of consummation). Many non-Muslims try to raise this as an issue to malign the Prophet as immoral and a man who is controlled by carnal desires - I am not even going to mention the names they call him because of how lowly they are.

This is why I decided to give a few points which helped me out on this matter, mainly the age of Lady Fatima (peace be upon her), when she was married. Although I, myself, am not really sure and do not have a concrete view on what really was Aisha's age at the time of the marriage because I have seen conflicting theories and I can't seem to decide which one is right, at least, not at the moment. I did, however, come up with something that makes me very comfortable, even if she was 9 at the time of consummation, as those who like to malign the Prophet would like and I would like to share this with you.

Before I delve into the point which occurred to me, I want to give an example. I remember a member of Shiachat creating a thread recently, explaining how his/her (I don't want to give too many clues about the identity of that person because the member may not like it) father had this addiction for pornography and how he overcame it. One of the major reasons this person gave for his/her father leaving this nasty habit was that he could not accept his daughter doing "something silly with stupid men" and, so, the women in those magazines/videos were also the daughters of someone and if he disliked his daughters doing such acts, he should also take into account that these women were also the daughters of someone. Now, the only reason I brought up this whole thing was to show one thing: in these cases of immorality, no matter how vile and immoral the person is, he/she would still be very uncomfortable with his own daughters performing the acts of indecency that he was so used to. The point, in a nutshell, is that a person may do all sorts of morally corrupt actions but when it comes to their own children, they don't like the idea of their own children doing those acts, no matter how much of it they, themselves, do it.

Coming to the Prophet , the thing I want to point out is that, according to the Shi'i narrations, the age of Lady Fatima (peace be upon her) at the time of marriage was 9 (according to the Sunni narrations, she was a bit more older, at around 11, but would still be considered a child by the standards of those who try to malign the Prophet and, so, the age we take does not matter - she was a "child" at that time). It is said that she had her first-born when she was 10 and, so, it is reasonable to assume that the marriage was consummated when she was still 9, or at most, 10. Now, if the Prophet was an indecent man who married Aisha at such a young age because of whatever reasons the opponents give, trying to make it look like immoral, I want to ask, keeping in mind the example I gave above, even if he was so immoral, why would he let his daughter also marry at approximately the same age as his marriage was consummated with Aisha? Even the most vile person would not allow his daughter to undergo oppression, which is what they say the Prophet marriage to Aisha was, to Aisha.

The Prophet 's decision to let his own daughter marry at this "young" age clearly shows that he did not find it immoral for a woman to marry at this age and, therefore, he cannot be criticised regarding his marriage to Aisha. The concept of morality he had did not make it immoral to marry a 9 year old and, so, we cannot use our standards on him! I wonder why those modernists who even support homosexuality simply on the premise of multiculturalism, tolerance and accepting the differences within cultures are so eager to attack the Prophet when the same reasons apply to his case?

Some do try and purport that the concept of morality in his time was different but his actions, being those of a Prophet, should be moral for all ages and times. This is, perhaps, the most ludicrous arguement one could make in this regard. There are two very basic flaws in such an arguement:

1. He is the Prophet of Allah , the Messenger of God who teaches us what God deems right and wrong and, so, morality should be predicated upon his commands and actions. We should appraise the morality of our actions using him as the model and not the other way round, evaluating his actions on our conceptions of morality. Such a thing is extremely outrageous and ridiculous because according to social dynamics, the what is perceived as moral or immoral with society is always changing and, so, we cannot judge his actions on a scale that is not even constant. He is the yardstick and, so, we can't judge the yardstick based on the specimen because that is totally opposite logic!

2. Like I have said above, conceptions of morality are always changing within societies and, so, we can't expect someone's actions to fulfill the requirements of all these differing concepts. Sometimes, we may find the conception of what is moral regarding a certain issue being contradictory to what is conceived as moral in another society. How can we expect - or, indeed, ask - a person to be moral using both definitions when, obviously, they are antithetical?

Insha'Allah, I have been helpful, clear and objective in my reasoning and have not hurt anyone!

May Allah (SWT) bless us all, our families and loved ones, guide us all to The Straight Path with His Perfect Guidance, increase our knowledge and Imaan and may He, The Forgiver of Sins and the Oft-Forgiving, forgive all our sins for, verily, there is neither any refuge nor any respite for the sinners, except in Allah (SWT) .

[titumir]

I already made a post on a previous topic discussing this issue, in which I showed sources which say that the average life expectancy back then was about 30 years. In that case, 9 years is 1/3rd of a person's life. Nowadays people marry at 20, while the life expectancy is around 70, which is still around 1/3rd of a person's life. So the relative age of marriage has remained the same throughout the ages.

[Aly ReZa]

i am not interested in ayesha at all so i dunno about her
But i am pretty sure that zehra s,a was 9 yrs old.

[Shia_Debater]

Jazakamullah Khairun for taking your time to write this bro

[Khadim uz Zahra]

titumir, on 02 May 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

I already made a post on a previous topic discussing this issue, in which I showed sources which say that the average life expectancy back then was about 30 years. In that case, 9 years is 1/3rd of a person's life. Nowadays people marry at 20, while the life expectancy is around 70, which is still around 1/3rd of a person's life. So the relative age of marriage has remained the same throughout the ages.

Well, yes, that could be another way of approaching the problem. My response, however, was aiming at trying to use Lady Fatima 's age at marriage in order to justify the marriage of the Prophet to a nine-year-old, if she was that age at all. Also, I wanted to refute this arguement that some wish to bring that his actions should be moral to people of all times and places. Thank you for also bringing this into my knowledge.

Shia_Debater, on 03 May 2012 - 12:05 AM, said:

Jazakamullah Khairun for taking your time to write this bro

wa RAHMATULLAHI WA BARAKATOH.

wa RAHMATULLAHI WA BARAKATOH.

JAZAKAMULLAH KHAIRUN for reading this!

[UndercoverBrother]

Mashallah beautiful post

[Qa'im]

The following hadith is in al-Kafi, and it is saheeh:

إِنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ص دَخَلَ بِعَائِشَةَ وَ هِيَ بِنْتُ عَشْرِ سِنِينَ وَ لَيْسَ يُدْخَلُ بِالْجَارِيَةِ حَتَّى تَكُونَ امْرَأَةً

The Prophet had consummated with `A'isha when she was 10 years old. And one does not have intercourse with a young girl until she becomes a woman (hits puberty).

If you bring all of the sources together, both Sunni and Shi`i, there will be some differences in opinion on when the Prophet consummated the marriage, but the detail that all Muslims agree upon is that she had hit puberty prior to any intercourse.

Evangelists and orientalists in last few decades have been poking at our Prophet's character and his conduct regarding this marriage. In response to this, some Muslims have brought together complex theories that try to make `A'isha much older. I agree that her age may be somewhat unclear from the sources, but one must understand that Islamically there would be no problem with marrying a young woman.

1. Once a woman has her menstrual cycle, she is biologically a woman. She's ready for procreation (even though the Prophet did not procreate with her) and physically ready for marriage. Yes, a person can mature mentally with the years, but that's a process that takes a lifetime.

2. It was normal for women to get married at young ages at the time. The enemies of the Prophet did not withhold their insults, but they had never insulted his marriage nor had they accused him of any lewd or profane acts. In many cultures, including European cultures, it was very normal for a woman to get married soon after hitting puberty. An example off the top of my head is James Cook, a British explorer from the 18th century whose wife was only 12. Likewise, Christian sources estimate that Mary was only 12 when she became pregnant with the Messiah Jesus .

3. Women did not need to go to school for twenty years, nor were they responsible for joining the work force. Once they matured (and ancient people had many responsibilities and matured quickly) young girls were trained for marriage and their parents looked for a husband who can provide for them and protect them. Even in the case of Fatima , it's likely that she was only 18 when she died, and at that point she had already been married to Ali for a number of years. The Imam and his wife were a younger couple, but there was still a large age gap between the two (larger than most modern couples).

4. People did not live as long back then and thus had to marry earlier.

5. People today are "children" until they're 21 or 18, while people were full adults (both in rights and punishments) at puberty in most ancient cultures.

While marrying early may be odd for us today, it's a subjective issue that is dependent on our cultures. There's definitely a lot of advantages to marrying early though: people are more likely to remain chaste and families are more stable. Most cultures have just recently stopped this practice (in the past century), so you can argue that the practice has "worked for this long" and if anything had been wrong with it, it would not have been so widespread for centuries.