But why do they come to thee for decision, when they have (their own) Law before them?- Therein is the (plain) command of God; yet even after that, they would turn away. For they are not (really) people of faith. (Surah 5, Maida, verse 43)

2.41 And believe in what I reveal, confirming the revelation which is with you, and be not the first to reject Faith therein, nor sell My Signs for a small price; and fear Me, and Me alone.

2.89 And when there comes to them a Book from God, confirming what is with them,- although from of old they had prayed for victory against those without Faith,- when there comes to them that which they (should) have recognized, they refuse to believe in it but the curse of Allah is on those without Faith.

2.91 When it is said to them, “Believe in what God Hath sent down, “they say, “We believe in what was sent down to us:” yet they reject all besides, even if it be Truth confirming what is with them. Say: “Why then have ye slain the prophets of Allah in times gone by, if ye did indeed believe?”

It says confirming What is With Them. What exactly is this revelation that is with them?

Two generations before Shafi`i reference to traditions from Companions and Successors was the rule, to traditions from the Prophet himself the exception, and it was left to Shafi`i to make the exception the principle. We shall have to conclude that, generally and broadly speaking, traditions from Companions and Successors are earlier than those from the Prophet.

Based on these conclusions, Schacht offers the following schema of the growth of legal hadiths. The ancient schools of law had a ‘living tradition’ (sunna) which was largely based on individual reasoning (ra’y). Later this sunna came to be associated with and attributed to the earlier generations of the Successors and Companions. Later still, hadiths with isnads extending back to Muhammad came into circulation by traditionists towards the middle of the second century. Finally, the efforts of al-Shafi`i and other traditionists secured for these hadiths from the Prophet supreme authority.

Goldziher maintains that, while reliance on the sunna to regulate the empire was favoured, there was still in these early years of Islam insufficient material going back to Muhammad himself. Scholars sought to fill the gaps left by the Qur’an and the sunna with material from other sources. Some borrowed from Roman law. Others attempted to fill these lacunae with their own opinions (ra’y). This latter option came under a concerted attack by those who believed that all legal and ethical questions (not addressed by the Qur’an) must be referred back to the Prophet himself, that is, must be rooted in hadiths.These supporters of hadiths (ahl al-hadith) were extremely successful in establishing hadiths as a primary source of law and in discrediting ra’y. But in many ways it was a Pyrrhic victory. The various legal madhhabs were loath to sacrifice their doctrines and so they found it more expedient to fabricate hadiths or adapt existing hadiths in their support. Even the advocates of ra’y were eventually persuaded or cajoled into accepting the authority of hadiths and so they too “found” hadiths which substantiated their doctrines that had hitherto been based upon the opinions of their schools’ founders and teachers. The insistence of the advocates of hadiths that the only opinions of any value were those which could appeal to the authority of the Prophet resulted in the situation that “where no traditional matter was to be had, men speedily began to fabricate it. The greater the demand, the busier was invention with the manufacture of apocryphal traditions in support of the respective theses.”

In summary, Goldziher sees in hadiths “a battlefield of the political and dynastic conflicts of the first few centuries of Islam; it is a mirror of the aspirations of various parties, each of which wants to make the Prophet himself their witness and authority.” Likewise,

Every stream and counter-stream of thought in Islam has found its expression in the form of a hadith, and there is no difference in this respect between the various contrasting opinions in whatever field. What we learnt about political parties holds true too for differences regarding religious law, dogmatic points of difference etc. Every ra’y or hawa, every sunna and bid`a has sought and found expression in the form of hadith.

And even though Muslim traditionalists developed elaborate means to scrutinize the mass of traditions that were then extant in the Muslim lands, they were “able to exclude only part of the most obvious falsifications from the hadith material.” Goldziher, for all his scepticism, accepted that the practice of preserving hadiths was authentic and that some hadiths were likely to be authentic. However, having said that, Goldziher is adamant in maintaining that:

In the absence of authentic evidence it would indeed be rash to attempt to express the most tentative opinions as to which parts of the hadith are the oldest material, or even as to which of them date back to the generation immediately following the Prophet’s death. Closer acquaintance with the vast stock of hadiths induces sceptical caution rather than optimistic trust regarding the material brought together in the carefully compiled collections. Herbert Berg- Phd

I tend to find myself agreeing most with Grimalkin’s opinions, but you have all given me much more insight into specifically the pedophilia charge, and more broadly, the various nuances of welcoming the deconverted.

You mention the idea that this was a political marriage – it wasn’t. As I stated in one of my earlier comments, Abu Bakr was Muhammad’s adopted brother, making Muhammad’s relationship with Aisha incestuous and against the law! Abu Bakr even refused the marriage because of this, but Muhammad insisted, later stating that he had received a dream from Allah commanding him to take her (whether he was just lying for justification or if he was misrepresenting a wet dream is unclear). This was NOT a political marriage. This was a marriage of lust – one that shocked people at the time. Had Muhammad not claimed to speak for Allah, it would never have been accepted.

And finally, on the point of menstruation: ultimately, it doesn’t really matter when Aisha started her period. At nine-years-old, a girl’s vagina is usually not large enough for a full grown man’s penis. There would have been substantial pain involved in sex. Not to mention that, in the event of pregnancy, this would have posed considerable risk because her body would not yet be fully formed. Even in the case of political marriages, there is some evidence that kings might abstain from sex with their wives until they reached more appropriate ages. Edward II is a great example – his wife going so far as to complain that he refused to enter her bed. Isabella was 12 when she married Edward II and did not produce any children until a full 4 years later, making her around 16. After that, they had at least 4 children together, so we can’t just say that he refused her company because he was gay (which I’m sure someone will bring up).

The point is that sexual relations that young would have probably caused Aisha a whole lot of pain and put her life in serious danger. This was not a political marriage which, it is true, were made young. Even if it was a political marriage, Muhammad did not have to come for her so early.

And, finally, there’s the fact that Muhammad sets the example for the entire Muslim world. Whether he realized it at the time (surely he must have?), his words and actions were to become blueprints for billions of people for the next millennia and a half. We cannot justify what he did just because “this is what people did back then.” We don’t necessarily have to say that he was a bad person, but we DO have to say that he was a man of his time and that we cannot justify ANY actions based on his example. Once we can say that we are beyond one of his actions, we can no longer trust any of them. He must be abandoned as a role-model altogether. If he did anything positive, we can say “this was something positive,” but we cannot say “this was positive because he did it” or “because he did this positive thing, his other actions must also be worthwhile and, even if we disagree, should be given the benefit of doubt.”

*That being said, even the text for that argument (Tabari VII:7) emphasises the point that she was 6-years-old. Apologists simply cut off the second half of the sentence to make their argument.

There are a lot of Islamic apologetics. I would always go to the actual source – either the Quran or hadith for verification one way or another.

The original source, the hadith itself notes (authored by Aisha herself):

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/058.sbt.html

QUOTE:

The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.

Sahih Bukhari V5 B58 #234

Also see reference here:
http://www.answering-christianity.com/sami_zaatri/aisha_and_prophet_muhammad.htm

Digital Dame – Islamic tradition (from the hadiths) indicated that Muhammed married Ayesha at six and consummated the marriage at nine.

I’ve always understood that Aisha married at 9 or 10, and the marriage was consummated at 19.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2404356/Age-of-Aishaha and http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/history/biographies/sahaabah/bio.AISHAH_BINT_ABI_BAKR.html both support this view. But, even if this one wife was married young (as part of a political alliance, the fact that all of Mohammed’s other twelve wives were all over 30 (and most of them were widows) makes it pretty obvious that he wasn’t actually a paedophile.

Also, onset of puberty was probably later then than it is now (it’s based on proportion of body fat, so it gets earlier with improvements in nutrition), so there’s an argument to say that taking younger brides was less acceptable back then.

Menarche was later in the 19th century as you say, due to poor diet, but before that all evidence seems to suggest that it came on at about the same age it does today. Generally, nutrition was pretty good before the Industrial Revolution.

But (in Europe, at least – I don’t know much about the rest of the world) marriages have always been very rare before the age of 15 or so, the few exceptions being those marriages that secured political marriages.

DD – the pedant in me has to point out that the “we lived shorter lives back then” argument is a fallacy; low life expectancy is skewed by infant mortality, and if you reach your 20’s you were more or less as likely to see your sixties as today. Also, onset of puberty was probably later then than it is now (it’s based on proportion of body fat, so it gets earlier with improvements in nutrition), so there’s an argument to say that taking younger brides was less acceptable back then.

Both DD and Vorjack – My understanding was that Moorish Spain was slightly past the tipping point of religious equality; and that the churches-and-mosques-in-the-same-building phase was slightly earlier (and in North Africa, unless I’m remembering wrong). By Moorish Spain, Christians and Jews were tolerated and even respected, but also heavily discriminated against; their rights and what we would today regard as “civil liberties” were systematically infringed and denied by the Muslim government. Of course, against the rest of Christian Europe – which was systematically infringing and denying Jews the right to, y’know, breathing and being alive and stuff at that time – they were positively magnanimous.

All this has no bearing on the debate at hand of course.

In which case, I mostly agree. The reason why Muhammad’s marriage to a child is important (while we rarely ever bother talking about other historical figures who married children) is because he claimed to be a prophet, because he claimed to speak for God, and because people look to his life as a guide for how we ought to live our own. In other words, it’s his status that makes his act important.

And maybe I agree with you that our focus should be on the relationship between his status and his actions, and how condemning one of his actions because “times have changed” calls into questions everything else he may have done.

As for not saying that Muhammad was a pedophile, why should we lie (or omit the truth)? It was against his own law to marry her (because he’d declared her father to be his brother, making it incest as well). When her father refused the marriage because of this relationship, Muhammad quickly invented a special religious exception. He wanted her, he was turned on by a six-year-old child. He bent the rules so that he could have her.

When a doctor rapes his patient it is considered more heinous than when an average person rapes another average person. This is because a doctor is in a position of trust. How can we believe any consent Aisha might have given when the 50+ year old man in her bed is claiming to be the prophet sent by God? This is more than just pedophilia. This is a powerful man abusing the trust his followers have placed in him to excuse his lust for a 6-year-old child.

I think that calling Muhammad a pedophile absolutely needs to be done – whether it offends or not. He is placed on a pedestal as a role-model, a guide by which we should all live our lives. When he acts in a way that any decent person would find repulsive, his pedestal needs to be destroyed. How can we do this if we keep silent about his immoral behaviour just because we don’t wish to offend or drive away potential allies? While keeping silent may help in the short term, it will only work against us in the long term by implicitly condoning such behaviour.

Welcoming ex-Muslims is one thing, and I can certainly see where Mathurine is coming from with her other points, but this is one that I don’t think we can afford to just let go of in the interest of diplomacy. At the risk of trespassing into Godwin’s territory, it’s like saying that we should make ex-neo-nazis feel more welcome by not mentioning the holocaust. (note: I am not comparing Muslims to nazis. I am comparing the despicable actions of one man who is seen as a prophet by some to the despicable actions of another man who is also seen as a prophet by some.) It’s crazy.

To those talking about the Muslim Golden Age, it’s mostly true (of course, non-Muslims didn’t have the same rights as Muslims, even in the most tolerant societies – but it was still much better than most of the rest of the world was doing). But does that really matter? The Muslims in my family often bring this up as a way to deflect any criticism of Islam (”while Europe was in the dark ages, we were leading the world in science, technology, and tolerance! Therefore, Islam is a religion of peace, goodness, tolerance, and scientific advancement!”). It’s the worst case of resting on one’s laurels that I’ve ever seen. Whatever greatness the Muslim empire may have achieved in the past (through the sword, I might add – Spain never asked to join the empire!), it has absolutely no bearing on where Islam is now. Right now, Islam is centuries behind the West. I sincerely hope that they catch up. I sincerely hope that all the violence and intolerance currently taking over the Muslim world is causing a movement of insider resentment that will become apparent as time goes on.

I have heard (probably some program on the History Channel) that Islam, back when the Moors were in Spain in the 9th century (or thereabouts, don’t quote me on the date) they were far more tolerant of other religions than the Islam we know today. They were vastly more interested in education, and actually brought the concept of “0″ (zero) to the West.

It doesn’t seem like they’re in the process of mellowing out now though, quite the opposite these days. There was a huge flap awhile back about Muslim cab drivers in (was it Chicago?) some city refusing to pick up fares who either had been drinking, or were carrying bottles of wine, or something, and the cab company wanted to fire them so sometimes they do let their faith get in the way of earning a living.