Some liberal Muslims think that pedophilia in Islam originates from unrealible or false hadiths, and discarding hadith and sticking to the Quran, the Muslim holy book, would solve the problem. But pedophilia, in fact, is an Allah-sanctioned divine institution is Islam, established by the Quran (65:4). To rid Islam of pedophilia, Muslims have to discard the Quran first.
Indonesia’s leading Sufi Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), whose ex-leader was Abdurrahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur, served as Indonesia’s president from 1999 to 2001, issued a fatwa approving child marriage on the occasion of its 32nd Congress in late march, because 'sacred Islamic verses or regulations had not stipulated a minimum age'. The fatwa said: "They can get married at any age, even girls who haven’t started menstruating… And they can have intimate relationships and intercourse, as long as they are able.”
The Associated Press reported: "Some of Yemen's most influential Islamic leaders, including one the U.S. says mentored Osama bin Laden, have declared supporters of a ban on child brides to be apostates", in protest to a proposal by the government to ban marriage of underage girls.
Meanwhile, on Sunday March 20, thousands of Yemeni women, clad in head-to-toe Islamic veils, demonstrated outside the parliament, opposing the proposed legislation. They carried banners proclaiming "don’t ban what Allah made permissible” or "stop violating Islamic Sharia law in the name of rights and freedoms”.
Houriya Mashhour, deputy director of Yemen's Women National Committee, could only say this to support the legislation: “It is unreasonable to marry our daughters at the age of eight or nine. This is a serious problem.”
She could only appeal to “reason”, not to “Islam”, to support the proposed child-marriage ban.
While Islamic clerics, both fundamentalist and moderate Sufi, as well as Muslim women supported child-marriage and pedophilia in Islam proudly and loudly in Yemen and Indonesia, without raising condemnation from any quarter whatsoever, Tarek Fatah, a self-proclaimed “moderate”, “liberal” and “hardened secular” Muslim, blasted Wafa Sultan, a ex-Muslim critic of Islam, for mentioning, during a debate with Dr. Daniel Pipes in Toronto, the fact on the basis of which Muslim societies practice and support pedophilia. And that fact is: Muhammad was a child-molester, because he, aged 54, consummated his marriage to Aisha, after waiting three years, when she turned 9.
His other complaints against Sultan were: She said, Muhammad was a ‘Jew-killer’; and there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’.
The first two facts, overwhelmingly accepted by Muslims as historical truth, come from the sacred Islamic texts: the Quran, prophetic tradition (hadith) and pious prophetic biographies (sira). The third claim was made, proudly, by Turkey’s Muslim Prime Minister, Erdogan, in 2007, and Muslims generally subscribe to it.
The fact that Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha, when she was 9, is overwhelmingly accepted in Islamic societies even today. The Yemen protests and Indonesian fatwa make it clear.
Despite calling himself a “hardened secular” Muslim, Fatah won’t allow you to criticize Islam or its founder, even on the basis of what Muslim societies overwhelmingly believe as Islam’s “historical” truth. Of course, secular Muslims like Fatah would no problem when mentioned the same facts in front of Muslim audience to defend and glorify Islam, as occurred in Yemen or Indonesia. They will have problem with it, only when done so in a critical light, or on critical forums, and to largely non-Muslim audience.
This is typically Islamist attitude, diametrically opposite to “secularism” or “liberalism”, because the latter stands for the defence of free speech, especially criticisms of religion, even in the most outrageously fictitious forms, such as the depiction of Jesus as a “gay”.
Some defenders of free speech have blasted Fatah for attacking Sultan’s exercise of free speech, and have even insinuated that he is a “stealth Islamist” in the guise of a ‘liberal’ or ‘hardened secular’ Muslim.
Under fire, Fatah has come out to defend himself and tried to prove Wafa Sultan a liar or she is willfully ignorant about Aisha’s true age. He wrote another blazing critique of Sultan, entitled Did Prophet Muhammad Rape a Nine-year Old Aisha?
In it, Fatah tries to malign Sultan further, while trying to disprove the fact that Aisha was underage when Muhammad had sex with her. He tried to prove that she was, instead, a full-blown adult.
Was Aisha 9 years old when Muhammad had sex with her?
This has been an incontrovertibly accepted fact amongst Muslims throughout its history. Even today, 99.9% Muslims in Islamic countries accept it as a fact. Only after Western influence came to the Islamic world in the colonial age, and as colonial powers started criticizing, even banning child-marriages, such as in India, that some well-educated and mostly non-practising Muslims started denying that Muhammad had sex with Aisha when she was 9. Fatah has simply parroted the same denials.
Much has been written on the debate of Aisha’s age at the time Muhammad consummated his marriage to her. Anything to be written on this would amount to repetition, indeed over-repetition. Nonetheless, I will quickly run through the references that say she was “nine” when Muhammad had sex with her as well as those references the deniers use.
References supporting Aisha was “nine”
References from the hadith and other historical sources that unequivocally say that Aisha was nine are overwhelming. A truncated list is cited below (see more here at WikiIslam):
- Narrated Aisha: "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 Alright, 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 5:58:234]
- 'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old. [Sahih Muslim 8:3311]
- "Aisha said, "The Apostle of Allah married me when I was seven years old." (The narrator Sulaiman said: "Or six years."). "He had intercourse with me when I was 9 years old." [Abu Dawud 2:2116]
- Narrated Hisham's father: Khadija died three years before the Prophet departed to Medina. He stayed there for two years or so and then he married 'Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consumed that marriage when she was nine years old. [Sahih Bukhari 5:58:236]
- Narrated 'Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death). [Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64]
- Narrated 'Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old. Hisham said: I have been informed that 'Aisha remained with the Prophet for nine years (i.e. till his death)." what you know of the Quran (by heart)' [Sahih Bukhari 7:62:65]
- Narrated 'Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death). [Sahih Bukhari 7:62:88]
- Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) married me when I was seven or six. When we came to Medina, some women came. According to Bishr's version: Umm Ruman came to me when I was swinging. They took me, made me prepared and decorated me. I was then brought to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him), and he took up cohabitation with me when I was nine. She halted me at the door, and I burst into laughter. [Abu Dawud 41:4915]
- Narrated 'Aisha: I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah's Apostle used to enter they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. [The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden (in Islam), but it was allowed for 'Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty. (Fateh-al-Bari Vol.13, p. 143)] [Sahih Bukhari 8:73:151]
Status of hadith in Islam: Some uneducated or half-educated moderate Muslims have lately questioned the reliability and relevance of hadith in Islam. They are ignorant that Allah, the Islamic God, commands Muslims in more than dozen verses in the Quran to “follow Me (i.e. Allah’s commands as in the Quran) and My apostle (i.e. Muhammad, or his actions and lifestyle as depicted in the hadith, pious sira and the Quran)” (see Q 3:32, 4:13,59,69, 5:92, 8.1,20,46, 33:33, 47:33, 49:14, 58:13 64:12 etc.). Accordingly, believing in the Quran and the hadith, and trying to emulate the commands and examples outlined in them, are the minimum requirement to become a Muslim. In a Muslim country, even the most secular and non-practising Muslim would say: ‘I am a Muslim because I believe in hadith and the Quran.’
You openly reject or condemn the hadith in a Muslim country, you will invite death, and rightly so, as it is a cornerstone of Islam in the very words of the Muslim God.
Muhammad married little girl Aisha |
But non-practising liberal Muslims of Tarek Fatah’s rank, who live in the security of the West, aware of how shameful some of the explicit contents of the hadith in modern civilized conscience is, started rejecting those parts of the hadith, because, in the words of Fatah, “Most medieval Islamic history books were written 200–300 years after the advent of Islam”, and therefore, prone to inaccuracy.
Four lines of evidence supporting Aisha was 9 years old: Above hadith references—which has semi-divine, if not divine, status amongst mainstream Muslims—affirm and reaffirm that Aisha was 9 when Muhammad had sex with her. It constitutes statutory rape and pedophilia in civilized modern ethics.
References from Islamic sources offer “four lines of evidence” to fortify the fact that Aisha was nine.
- Mention of the precise age: These hadiths explicitly and repeatedly specify that she was nine years old, when Muhammad had sex with her.
- Playing with dolls: Hadiths also say that Aisha was playing with dolls when she got married, and only children would play with dolls, not full-blown adults. Moreover, Muhammad did not allow playing with dolls beyond the age of puberty.
- Waiting three years to consummate marriage: Hadiths also repeatedly affirm that Muhammad waited three years before having sex with Aisha. This again proves that she was as young as 6 or 7, and was not yet ready for intercourse. So, Muhammad, being a considerate prophet-like person, waited three years to consummate the marriage.
- Thighing: The fourth line of evidence comes from the prophet’s practice of thighing on Aisha, as issued by the Iranian scholars committee. To the query, “What is the opinion of scholars [on thighing] knowing full well that the prophet, the peace and prayer of Allah be upon him, also practiced the "thighing" of Aisha – the mother of believers – may Allah be please with her”, the committee carried out extensive research and issued this fatwa: “After the committee studied the issue, they gave the following reply: “As for the prophet, peace and prayer of Allah be upon him, thighing his fiancée Aisha. She was six years of age and he could not have intercourse with her due to her small age. That is why [the prophet] peace and prayer of Allah be upon him placed HIS MEMBER (i.e. penis) BETWEEN HER THIGHS AND MASSAGED IT SOFTLY, as the apostle of Allah had control of his [male] member not like other believers...”
The fact is clear: since Muhammad could not have intercourse with Aisha because of her too tender age, as young as 6 or 7 when he married Aisha, he had to satisfy himself by massaging his penis between her thighs.
So the evidences, not one but four lines of evidences, from fundamental Islamic texts converge toward the explicitly and repeatedly stated fact that Aisha was nine years old when Muhammad had intercourse with her.
Fatah’s denials
Fatah has tried to deny this monumental evidence proving that Aisha was nine when Muhammad consummated his marriage with her. He throws his first attempt at the denial thus:
This begs the question: How do people like Wafa Sultan or the Islamists claim to know for a fact that the age of Aisha was nine when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated? There are no birth records from the time and there is not a single piece of physical paper that can be traced back to seventh century Arabia that mentions the age of Aisha.
This is way too silly of a scholar and author of Fatah’s reputation. There is no birth certificate of Muhammad, too. Why don’t Fatah deny that Muhammad was not born in 570 CE, or that he became a prophet at 40, or that he died in 632 CE at the age of 63? Muhammad’s age comes from the same course as Aisha’s. If Aisha’s age is faulty, so is Muhammad’s.
Fatah continues:
In the absence of hard evidence, we have two choices:
1. We rely on medieval hearsay and gossip that has unfortunately seeped into Islamic literature, the Hadith and Sharia law, or;
2. We calculate the age of Aisha based on actual agreed upon indisputable chronology of events.
While the Islamists and Wafa Sultan rely on medieval gossip, I have chosen to make a rational estimate of Aisha’s age based on acknowledged historical timelines.
Most medieval Islamic history books were written 200–300 years after the advent of Islam and it is true that all of them state emphatically that Aisha was only nine when she became Muhammad’s bride. However, all of them rely on, and quote, one single individual as the source of this information. His name was Hishām ibn Urwah, a prominent narrator of sayings of the Prophet (the Hadith), who died in the year 756AD. He was Aisha’s great-grand nephew, who first suggested that his great-grand aunt was only nine-years old on the day of her wedding, 125 years after the said event.
Prior to his utterance, a century after the fact, there is no mention or reference to the age of Aisha. Hisham bin Urwah lived and taught in Medina for 70 years, yet no one else—not even his famous pupil Malik ibn Anas—reported Aisha’s age. It is no coincidence that the growth of harems of the Abbasid caliphs mushroomed to hundreds of wives and concubines—many young girls—at the time the sharia law based on bin Urwah’s report, legalized child marriage.
Instead of relying on the words of bin Urwah as so many Islam-haters and Islamists do, I suggest we look at a few facts that prove that Aisha’s age on the day of her wedding could not have been lower than 14 years of age.
It is not true that Aisha’s age was mentioned by one Urwah alone. According to Sufi Muslim scholar Dr. GF Haddad, at least eleven persons have independently reported it directly from Aisha. Haddad writes:
Al-Zuhri also reports it (that Aisha’s age was nine)… from ‘Aisha; so does ‘Abd Allah ibn Dhakwan – both major Madanis. So is the Tabi`i Yahya al-Lakhmi who reports it from her in the Musnad and in Ibn Sa’d's Tabaqat. So is Abu Ishaq Sa’d ibn Ibrahim who reports it from Imam al-Qasim ibn Muhammad – one of the Seven Imams of Madina – from A’isha…
In addition to the above four Madinese Tabi’in narrators, Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna – from Khurasan – and ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Yahya – from Tabarayya in Palestine – both report it. Nor was this hadith reported only by ‘Urwa but also by ‘Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Umayr, al-Aswad, Ibn Abi Mulayka, Abu Salama ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf, Yahya ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Hatib, Abu ‘Ubayda (‘Amir ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Mas`ud) and others of the Tabi’i Imams directly from ‘A’isha.
This makes the report mass-transmitted (mutawatir) from ‘Aisha by over eleven authorities among the Tabi’in, not counting the other major Companions that reported the same, such as Ibn Mas’ud nor other major Successors that reported it from other than ‘Aisha, such as Qatada!
To prove that Aisha was at least 14, Fatah has given three obscure references from Islamic historical sources.
A) First, he says:
The historian al-Tabari (d. 923) informs us in his treatise on Islamic history that the father of Aisha, Abu Bakr had four children and all them were born before the year 610AD, the year of the advent of Islam. If, as is generally accepted, Aisha became Muhammad’s bride in the year 624AD, then she had to be at least 14 years of age, if not older on the day of her wedding.
Let us accept that Urah alone reported Aisha’s age although the fact is otherwise. To Fatah, Urwah could not be correct, because he mentioned Aisha’s age 120 years after Muhammad’s wedding to Muhammad, even though he was Aisha’s great grandson, who learned about it from his father, who must have had met his grandmother Aisha.
But, would Fatah tell us how could Tabari give us a more accurate date, given that he mentioned it some 300 years after the wedding?
Moreover, Tabari did not specify any date of Aisha’s marriage to Muhammad. How can an abstract mention as Tabari's, from which you have to use complicated calculations to reach at Aisha’s age, be more credible than outright specification of a date about Aisha’s age repeated time and again in Islamic literature by a dozen independent reporters?
Not only that, Tabari elsewhere concretely specifies Aisha’s age as nine when Muhammad had sex with her [Tabari IX:131]:
“(Aisha said:) My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old. Neither a camel nor a sheep was slaughtered on behalf of me.”
Why is it that the same Tabari’s direct mention that Aisha’s was nine when Muhammad consummated his marriage, a reference confirmed by many other authors in multiple ways, is less credible than a dubious mention about Abu Bakr’s children’s birth?
B) Next, Fatah mentioned a reference of Persian historian Ibn Hisham (d. 833):
Other calculations based on historical events place Aisha as old as 20 when she was became a bride. Ibn Hisham (d. 833), the historian, reports that Aisha accepted Islam quite some time before Umar (the second caliph). This means she must have been at least a young girl in the year 610. Assuming she was five years old when Abu Bakr and his family converted to Islam, the information puts the age of Aisha at 20 or more at the time of her marriage with Muhammad was consummated in 624AD.
First thing here: Fatah does not give the exact quote, and it is hard to judge what Ibn Hisham meant. Yet, 1) this mention was made some 200 years after Aisha’s marriage to Muhammad; hence, it couldn’t be more credible than the mention made in hadith literature some 8 decades earlier; and 2) it does not make a direct mention of Aisha’s age: you have to twist your brain to arrive at her age.
Moreover, this is a silly reference. Aisha never accepted Islam; she became Muslim because Abu Bakr, her father, embraced Islam. If she was born after Abu Bakr accepted Islam, he became a Muslim on the day of her birth.
And how can Fatah, from this reference, say that “This means she must have been at least a young girl in the year 610”?
She need not be a young girl at 610; she could well have been born a couple of months before Omar’s acceptance of Islam, so she was a Muslim quite before Omar became a Muslim. If Aisha was born, and thus became a Muslim, a year before Omar’s embracing Islam (i.e. c. 615), that agrees perfectly well with the fact that Aisha was nine at the time Muhammad had sex with her. Hisham’s reference, however abstract, does contradict the hadith mention of Aisha’s age as nine; instead, it reaffirms it.
C) Fatah’s final reference about Aisha’s age comes as thus:
Furthermore, most Islamic historians agree that Asma, the elder sister of Aisha, was ten years older than her. It is also reported that Asma died in 683AD at the ripe age of 100. If this is true, then Asma would have been 31 years old at the time of Aisha’s wedding with Muhammad in 624 and the bride would have been 21.
This is again an indirect way of arriving at Aisha’s age. Mention of the age of Aisha, the mother of the believers—whether by historian like Tabari or Islamic scholars such as the hadith compilers—commands a much greater credibility than the mention of Asma’s age.
Moreover, there are three variables here, which can twist real age:
1) As mentioned above, there is no exact date of Asma’s birth;
2) Historians belief that Asma was 10 years older than Aisha is just a belief; belief is no fact. In reality, she could have been 8 years or 12 years older.
3) Asma died at the ripe age of 100, as mentioned by Tabari, is troublesome. There are a couple of points about this statement. It was extremely unusual for someone to live 100 years in those times. If someone lived 80 or 90-plus years, it would have been such a rare event that people in those days would have said: he/she lived a hundred years. Moreover, the years mentioned was according to Arabic calendar, meaning that her age was some 3-4 years lower in Gregorian calendar. All these considerations still put Aisha’s age quite around 9, not 21, as Fatah desperately tried to establish.
In sum, the references that put Aisha’s age at 9 come from hadith literature that has a near-divine status in Islam. Moreover, hadiths are the only literature in Islam that was based on research methodology unrivalled in Islamic history up to the present day. It was also recorded some 80 or 180 years earlier than other reference Fatah has used to show Aisha was an adult. Also, the mention that Aisha was nine, when Muhammad had sex with her, was made by a closest relative, her great grandson, who can be trusted more than anyone else.
Moreover, as mentioned above, four lines of independent sure-fire evidence from Islamic literature, not some abstract and indirect reference, support that Aisha was 9. And, for some fourteen hundreds years, Muslims had no difficulty with that age; even today, overwhelming majority of Muslims believe she was nine. Only when critics identified it as troublesome issue for a prophet and started criticizing Muhammad on its basis that some rare liberal Muslims like Fatah started digging into rare obscure and indirect references to establish that Aisha was an adult, when Muhammad consummated his marriage with her.
A pervert Prophet and his psychopathic follower
To Fatah and Muslims of his rank, Muhammad not only married an adult Aisha, but his marriage to her was one of “pure love”. Fatah quotes Farzana Hassan, the author of Islam, Women and the Challenges of Today:
“…the charge against Mohammad as a child molester, however, is unjustified for the following reason: His relationship with Aisha was a loving relationship between two consenting adults. It is more than likely that Aisha was closer to being nineteen than nine at the time of marriage. This claim is supported by historical data that puts Aisha at least 15 at the time, though it is likely she was older.”
Fatah himself asserts:
…if one hates Islam and Muslims with the ferocity and vengeance of Wafa Sultan, then it will be difficult to them her believe that the relationship between Muhammad and Aisha was one of love and adoration…
It is utterly psychopathic to claim that Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha or any other of his wives could have been a “loving” one. Muhammad was not only a polygamist, but had an staggering 11 wives at the same time, as mentioned in a hadith above; plus he had a few, probably, many sex-slaves, since he used to acquire one-fifth of the women, captured in his battles.
Let Ms Farzana’s husband keep 11 wives, and throw in a few more sex-slaves in the mix of his harem, and then let her tell us how loving her relationship with her husband would be. How about Fatah taking 11 wives and a few sex-slaves, and have a loving relationship with each of his wives!
To Muslims like Fatah and Farzana, those relationships could be a “loving” one, but civilized people of our time see it as one between a lustful sex-pervert and a subjugated woman.
Muhammad had nothing that can be called ‘love’ in his relationship with his wives, particularly after he became the established prophet of Islam in Medina. He was a sadistic sex-pervert par excellence, who not only built a huge harem as his prophetic power grew, but also captured women of innocent non-Muslim communities after slaughtering their men en masse, and used those women as sex-slaves. And, to qualify as a lustful sadist of the worst degree, Muhammad used to take the prettiest of the captured women to bed on the same day their family-members had been slaughtered, and he often raped them in his tent amidst the blood-drenched battle-fields, strewn with dead-bodies, as occurred in his attack and defeat of the Jews of Khaybar, and Banu Mustaliq etc. Muslim holy warriors perpetuated this paradigm throughout the centuries.
One must have a “psychopathic mind” to claim that Muhammad’s relationship with Aisha, even if she was an adult at the consummation of their marriage, was a “loving” one.
In sum, Muhammad’s sex-life is riddled with perversity, sadism, and horror; his marriage with Aisha, even if she was a child, was a smaller crime. And, a sadistic sex-pervert as Muhammad was, he would have cared little about whether Aisha was underage or adult, when he had sex with her.
Muslims have to discard the Quran to rid Islam of pedophilia
To Fatah, and his kind of liberal Muslims, it is the unreliable hadith, despite its being the finest Islamic literature in terms of the research methodology involved, is all the problems that plague Islam to our day. He says:
We refuse to discard the ossified books of the Hadith that justify so much that is wrong in the Islamic world and which contribute to so much shame and embarrassment….
Muslim scholars are caught in their own predicament. Most are willing to concede that historical timelines suggest Aisha could not have been aged nine when she became Muhammad’s bride. However, if they were to admit this flaw in the Hadith books, they would be opening a pandoras box. How many more laws of sharia, based on the hadith, are lies and need to be discarded.
Too much is at stake for the Islamic establishment to admit that Prophet Muhammad was not the husband of a child bride. They would rather see their leader mocked then to admit to the fallibility of the Hadith literature…
Muslims cannot discard the hadith, because, as pointed out above, that it is the Islamic God’s command, repeated in over a dozen verses, that Muslims must follow Muhammad as much as they follow the Quran.
Secondly, it is not the hadith that is the problem. The problem lies in the Quran. There is no contradiction whatsoever between hadith and the Quran.
As concern our present case, pedophilia in Islam, it is overtly sanctioned by Allah in Quran 65:4:
And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months, and of those too who have not had their courses; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.
This verse talk about waiting period (iddah) for a divorced woman before she can remarry, so as to ensure that she does not carry a child of her former husband. It talks about three kinds of women: 1) “those of your women who have despaired of menstruation”, i.e. post-menopausal women, 2) “those too who have not had their courses”, i.e. pre-pubescent girls, and 3) “the pregnant women”, i.e. mature menstruating women.
Therefore, the Quran, or the Islamic God for that matter, allows marriage of prepubescent girl, and even sexual intercourse with them. Pedophilia is, thus, a divinely-sanctioned institution in Islam. The hadith, at best, reaffirm it.
Fatah rails against hadith, as well as against Islamic scholars, Mullahs, and even caliphs for inventing and perpetuating many ills that plagues Islam today. But, none of these are the root of Islam’s problem, unless one is a half-educated, if not uneducated, or possibly dishonest, Muslim of Fatah’s rank.
In conclusion, to rid Islam of pedophilia, Muslims have to discard the Quran first.
Would liberal Muslims advocate for the same, which will cut the roots of Islam’s problem, instead of advocating the cutting of some branches, as Fatah has done, which would an inconsequential exercise at best?
Well, I doubt it.
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Readers are advised to read Dr. Haddad's fine article on the controversy of Aisha's age: http://mac.abc.se/~onesr/d/aam2_e.pdf.
M. A. Khan is the author of Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery.
