Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Muhammad and Child Molestation

I recently received an email from a reader critical of my post Muslims and Muhammad: The Impossible Task. She wrote, "I was a Christian and I left because they always preached the information you have. When I sat with a Muslim from the Sunnah and he explained the truth of the religion from reliable sources I instantly converted.

"As for what you said about Aisha, there is nothing correct in it. For example, he did make a marriage contract with her at 6 years old, but it was not consumated until she reached adulthood at 9. People in those days, even Christians, married and reached adulthood earlier, which has been proven scientifically. Just look at these times it is not uncommon to see young adults pregnant at 9...I can go on and on correcting your misinformation."

I was driving home from work today listening to Dr. Laura. A caller said she was feeling guilty about not wanting to visit her grandfather. Twenty years earlier, when she was 6 years old, he had sexually molested her. Now he was dying in the hospital, and she was conflicted over her feelings towards him.

It took Dr. Laura only a few seconds to get to the point. The caller did not need to feel at all guilty about not wanting to visit the abusive grandfather. It would be good when he died, because at least he could never rape another young child. Hell, it would have been better if he had died 25 years ago, because then he would never have molested her!

The thought struck me like a thunder clap. How was this caller's experience any different than that of Aisha? She was 9 years old when Muhammad robbed her of her childhood and forced her into a sexual relationship. He was 54 - perhaps the same age as the grandfather. Her father Abu Bakr sacrificed the innocence of his daughter for the demands of his Prophet. Aisha went from playing on the swing at her parent's home to playing with her dolls on the floor at the house of Muhammad.

My correspondent only repeated two of the many justifications reached by "Muslims from the Sunnah" who "explain the truth of the religion from reliable sources". The first is that although Aisha was only six when Muhammad told Abu Bakr he wanted her, she was nine when he penetrated her. She was an adult, they argue, at the ripe old age of 9. Really? She was nine years old! Secondly, they claim, it was the culture of the day. Again, really? A Prophet who adapts himself to the culture rather than lifting the culture to new levels?

I think some of the other justifications are much more creative. Some Muslims argue that Allah wanted Aisha to be with Muhammad as many years as possible, since she was the author of more than 3,000 authentic Hadiths. If she had been 14 when he married her, they note, that number would have been cut in half!

Many Western Muslims find it easier to simply deny Hadiths that are offensive to their Prophet, even though these Hadiths have been accepted as authoritative for 1400 years. Aisha was a teenager when she married, they argue, without any original source documentation.

Perhaps the most interesting argument is the circular one used by many Muslim apologists including Turkish writer Fethullah Gulen here. Prophets are perfect and cannot sin. Therefore nothing that a Prophet does can be considered sin. Murder committed by a Prophet cannot be called murder, because a Prophet is perfect and cannot commit murder. Rape done by a Prophet is not rape, because a Prophet is perfect and does not rape. A Prophet's molestation of a nine-year-old child cannot be molestation, because the Prophet is perfect and does not molest.

5 comments:

Juniper in the Desert said...

This reads like classic taqqiya: I do not believe a word this person says about being a Christian. She has not proved she knows anything about Christianity!

This is also nonsense that it has been proved "scientifically" that Christians and Jews consummated their marriages by the age of 9! Unless she means islamic science which is further back than flat earth stuff!

Traeh said...

ACCORDING TO CORE ISLAMIC TEXTS, MUHAMMAD WAS IN HIS FIFTIES WHEN HE CONSUMMATED HIS MARRIAGE TO THE NINE-YEAR OLD AISHA. BUT BECAUSE ISLAM FOLLOWS A LUNAR CALENDAR, SHE MAY HAVE BEEN WHAT WE TODAY MEAN BY AN EIGHT-YEAR OLD.

The Islamic year is only 355 days. Multiplied by 9, we get a number of days (3195) that tells us that Aisha was what we today in the West mean by a child 8 years and 9 months old when Muhammad consummated the marriage. That assumes that he did so close to the time of her 9th Islamic birthday. If instead she was, say, nine and a half Islamic years old when he consummated the marriage, then she was what we mean by a child about 9 yrs and 3 months old. But the upshot is that she may well have been what we in the non-Muslim world mean by an eight year old.

skipper said...

I wonder if the "reliable source" mentioned that Mohammed habitually fondled and "thighed" Aisha since the age of 6 up till he cosummated the marriage ("thighing" is the act of rubbing one's penis between someone's thighs for sexual pleasure). Was this practice acceptable during those times too?

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Anonymous said...

When a female has no breasts nor has she menstruated, she is not a woman! When at the age of reason and the individual can actually carry a conversation and develop feelings of sexual craving, then that is a person who has reached adulthood. A woman should crave for her husband's body! Otherwise it is like plucking an unripe fruit. There is no ethical reason to support child marriage; it has a poor foundation which tries to make such actions justifiable.

What would a nine year old boy be good for? He cannot develop an erection therefore he is not a man. The double standards in the backward countries is cruel an sinful. God will be the judge and those who violate and force others will learn of their vile sin and they will be judged for it.