Under British law, sex with a child under the age of thirteen is automatically classified as rape, regardless of whether or not the child “consented” to the act. What are we to make, then, of Muhammad, who is reported in Islamic tradition to have married and had sex with a nine-year-old girl when he was in his fifties?
The most authoritative hadith collections record numerous variations of this straightforward statement: “[The Prophet] married 'Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.” (Bukhari v.5, b.58, no.234, and many others). Muslims today, understandably embarrassed and ashamed by this fact, attempt to deny that Aisha was nine when Muhammad had sex with her, but the textual evidence in the hadith and other Islamic literature is overwhelming. References to her being nine appear, multiple times, in five of the six hadith collections which are considered most reliable by Muslim theologians, as well as in the writings of numerous renowned scholars and historians, including Ibn Hisham (d.833), Tabari (d.923) and Ibn Kathir (d.1373).
Any lingering doubts about what Muhammad did with Aisha are quickly erased by other hadith, which recount the following revolting details:
Narrated 'Aisha: The Prophet and I used to take a bath from a single pot while we were Junub [ritually impure from recent sexual intercourse]. During the menses, he used to order me to put on an Izar (dress worn below the waist) and used to fondle me. (Bukhari v.1, b.6, no.298)
Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin [“Mother of the Believers”]: The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to kiss her and suck her tongue when he was fasting. (Sunan Abu Dawud b.13, no.2380)
Since Aisha was only eighteen when Muhammad died (Muslim b.8, no.3311, and others), we can be sure that at no point was she old enough by the standards of any decent person to be subjected to this sort of contact by an elderly man.
It is frequently countered that child marriage was common in seventh-century Arabia, and so Muhammad was not doing anything unusual for the time and place in which he lived. But even if this is true (and there is no evidence that it is), the most important point is not the cultural context of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha, but its impact on Muslims of all future times and places. Because Muhammad is held up as a “beautiful pattern of conduct” for Muslims to follow (Qur'an 33:21), child marriage became a fixed part of Islamic law, and Muslims ever since have sought to emulate their prophet’s example, even today. For example, Iranian law currently sets the legal marriageable age for girls at thirteen, although it allows parents to marry them off even younger with the permission of a judge. Islamic clerics in the country have made attempts in recent years to reduce the marriage age to nine in imitation of Muhammad. Meanwhile, it is estimated that despite laws against child marriage in Afghanistan, over half of girls there are married before the age of fifteen. In Pakistan, roughly a third of all registered marriages involve children. Even in Britain, it has been reported that girls as young as nine are being forced into marriage by Islamic clerics in the London Borough of Islington. In 2007, Dr. Bilal Phillips, the imam of a Birmingham mosque, was recorded saying: “The Prophet Muhammad practically outlined the rules regarding marriage prior to puberty. With his practice, he clarified what is permissible, and that is why we shouldn't have any issues about an older man marrying a younger woman.”
Coming soon: What Islamic attitudes towards rape mean for Western women
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