ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

**Hax** · 11-23-2014, 00:55

What is happening here.

It only says that he married her, not that they had intercourse when she was nine. I believe it is forbidden to have sex before someone is sexually mature.

I think this is the leading theology throughout all jurisprudential schools of Islam. It's not really my area of interest, so if someone comes up with some preacher making idiot claims: okay.

IIRC she was 6 when she started to practise to have sex (rub herself against him I guess) and 9 when the penetrational sex happened.

I don't think the reports are that..ehm "explicit". I just checked the reports considered the most correct within the Islamic tradition (Bukhari and Muslim) and they just mention that Aisha says she was six when she married, and 9 when the marriage was consumed. This is the leading tradition within most Islamic communities (with some rebellious types claiming she was like 16 or whatever, it's still creepy).

I'm gonna get back on why this is not really interesting anyway.

For hundreds of years before Muhammad's time most of the civilized world set the marriagable age at 12 (including Romans and the Catholic Church).

Eh, I was under the impression that it was more-or-less set to "whenever puberty hits", which is usually around 12, but can differ of course. Guys this is starting to creep me out.

Of which mohammed had little contact with before marrying said 9 year old.

Actually this is not true at all: most reports (even within the Islamic tradition) mention that Muhammad travelled to Syria quite a lot. Additionally, the Arab peninsula was much better connected to the rest of the Middle-East than is often assumed. The myth of the "Arab in isolation" is something that we find from 11th century pseudo-nationalistic tracts onward, which had mostly to do with a kind of chauvinism ("our ancestors were pure Arabs, who spoke pure Arabic, and never heard of your fancy modern stuff and-so-on", as well as to stifle criticism towards the Quran ("but Muhammad lived in isolation, so he can't have taken anything from the Bible!"). If you're interested in this subject, cf. Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Michael Macdonald.

Since when are we supposed to take religion seriously, you are a historian, you should know very well that Mohammed probably never existed at all.

Well this is going a bit too far, but not entirely wrong I think. I don't think there's a lot in merit in saying that Muhammad didn't exist. There's probably some kind of soothsayer-poet-king-figure-person that existed in 7th century Arabia -- but then again, there were a lot of those going around.

What is much more interesting is the way people tend to decontextualise the reports on Muhammad's life, known as the hadiths (english plural, the actually Arabic would be ahadith of course). These were canonised two centuries upwards of Muhammad's death, so what is interesting is that it tells us much more about a degree of orthodoxy that was starting to exist at this point. In this period (cf. shu‘ubiyya) there was a large degree of social upheaval in Caliphate, which led to all kinds of fun stuff, like milleniarism, terror attacks, large-scale revolts, etc., as well as some serious religious criticism -- both from Muslims and non-Muslims -- on certain aspects of Islamic theology. Shi'ism is actually incredibly interesting, because it is a kind of Islam with a huge blend of Persian ideas on kingship.

In any case -- the problem with all this is that these reports (so the ahadith) can't really tell us anything useful about the historical person known as Muhammad. They only tell us something about how 10th century religious scholars liked to think about Muhammad. Keep that in mind when talking about the guy.

Edit: Oh and about ISIS: just wait and see what happens when the money dries up. the caliphate will fall apart more than a Jenga tower in hurricane season. I hope. Otherwise I will drink myself to death. the joke's on you, abu bakr.

**Kadagar_AV** · 11-23-2014, 01:31

Originally Posted by Hax

Wrote stuff and I am loving him for it

So, our residential Muslim is arguing I am right, more or less.

Hax, I am rather certain there is some text about how Aisha "practised" sex before she was penetrated at 9 years old... I might have been wrong about the details, maybe it was just a BJ.

Regardless, I welcome your contribution as to how it's unimportant anyway. Feel free to take however much time you need to write it