Sexual Ethics in Islam (26 page)

The variety of Muslim responses to the issue of Aishah’s age at marriage reflects differing audiences and attitudes to the hadith sources as well as varying levels of identification with the world-wide
umma
, or Muslim community. A few groups out- side the mainstream, such as the Ahmadiyya or the Submitters, flatly deny that Aishah was nine when she began marital life with the Prophet. They do so by rejecting the authority of the hadith that present this “fact.” One online Ahmadi source questions the credibility of the reports about Aishah’s age at marriage while attempting to defend the authenticity of the hadith literature as

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a whole; the article suggests that “the compilers of the books of Hadith did not apply the same stringent tests when accepting reports relating to historical matters as they did before accepting reports relating to the practical teachings and laws of Islam.”
12
In making this distinction between history and law, the author attempts to deny the information in the report at hand without impugning the reliability of one core source of Muslim ritual and law. Reflecting its increased distance from Muslim ortho- doxy, the Submission site, linked to the organization founded by controversial figure Rashad Khalifa, goes much further, equat- ing hadith to Internet rumor: “All the stories circulating on the Internet and in the hadiths [sic] books about Aishah’s marriage at age of 6 or 9, are no more than lies found in the corrupted books of Hadiths and completely contradict the teachings of the prophet Muhammed that came from his mouth, the Glorious Quran.”
13
Despite their different attitudes to the hadith sources, both of these groups on the margins of Muslim orthodoxy agree with non-Muslim polemicists that
if
the Prophet had indeed engaged in sex with a nine-year-old girl, regardless of whether or not she was his wife, such behavior would be blameworthy. For these groups, the conflict over Aishah’s age provides a chance to prove that they alone embrace“true”Islam, while other Muslims are guilty of distorting the legacy of the Prophet.

Most Muslim authors, though, are not so openly dis- missive of the hadith sources, however inconvenient they may find them in this case. Those who reject the notion that the Prophet consummated his marriage with Aishah when she was nine sometimes argue or merely insinuate that the specific reports cited are inaccurate, leaving aside the question of the reliability of Bukhari or Muslim as a whole, and indeed usually refraining from even mentioning the specific location of the reports in question. For example, T.O. Shanavas, affiliated with a Kentucky-based organization called the Islamic Research Foun- dation International
14
simply states that “We do not know the exact age at the time of her marriage due to lack of reliable records.”
15
Other accounts may attempt to discredit the reliabil- ity of Hisham b.‘Urwa as a narrator, in order to cast doubt on the particular account in question, which is related from Aishah on

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the authority of her nephew ‘Urwa on the authority of his son Hisham.
16
Alternately, they may propose a different chronology, drawing from
sira
narratives, suggesting an earlier date of birth for Aishah based on an account declaring her to be a “girl” when a particular event occurred. Recalculating Aishah’s age at marriage based on this nebulous evidence, such articles generally put her in her early to mid-teens at the time of consummation.

The attempt to revise the standard narrative of Aishah’s age at marriage is not limited to online sources. In fact, the spe- cific features of the online discussion can be better appreciated after a brief detour to evaluate how the question of Aishah’s age is treated in several recently published or reprinted works aimed at Muslim audiences. The late Pakistani ‘
alim
Syed Suleman Nadvi writes proudly of her youth and virginal status, declaring: “Out of all the wives of the Holy Prophet [only] Hazrat Aishah had the distinction of being a virgin wife.”
17
The “wedlock” occurred when Aishah was at the “tender” age of six. Three years later, “the consummation of her marriage” occurred. “Aishah was then only nine years of age,” he writes.
18
The “only” in Nadvi’s statement is a mark of pride, not a con- demnation. Nadvi here echoes statements attributed to Aishah herself in classical sources including Ibn Sa‘d, where her youth and especially virginity at marriage were a mark of honor, not a badge of shame.
19

By contrast, in his book on the Prophet’s wives British Muslim Ahmad Thompson studiously avoids any mention of consummation. Thompson presents a succinct account of events: “Soon after arriving in Madina, ‘A’isha, who was now nine years old, was married to the Prophet Muhammad, who was now fifty-four years old. It was at this point that she left her family’s household and joined that of the Prophet Muham- mad.”
20
The age Thompson provides for Muhammad in this passage coincides with the standard historical view of when con- summation took place; those who dispute Aishah’s age at that time do so by suggesting an earlier birthdate rather than a later date of consummation. By giving Aishah’s age as nine when she “was married,” Thompson thus implicitly accepts the Bukhari

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view of when consummation occurred. Yet by not mentioning the earlier contracting of the marriage at age six or seven, Thompson leaves the reader free to imagine that Aishah’s joining of the Prophet’s “household” at age nine represents a mere shift of residence, not the beginning of a marital sexual relationship.
21

Mumtaz Moin, a Pakistani author, devotes one lengthy paragraph in her biography of Aishah to the question of her age at consummation, but refrains quite deliberately from taking a definitive position. She begins by noting that “The Muslim medieval writers generally accepted the
hadithes
, according to which the age of ‘A’ishah at the time of her
nikah
with the Prophet was six or seven years, and thus she was nine years old when the marriage was consummated, three years later.” Imme- diately following this, she declares that this view of events has “been criticized by modern historians in the light of careful research. They hold that she was fourteen or, according to some authorities, fifteen years of age at the time of the consummation of marriage.” While she refers to a few of the pieces of evidence cited in support of this view, mainly two references to Ibn Sa‘d (who elsewhere gives the same information as Bukhari), she does not name or cite any specific modern scholars who have purportedly upheld it.

Moin proves reluctant to advocate these revisionist views explicitly, presenting her points in detached terms, using expressions such as: “They hold,” “They base their argument,” “They also hold,” “It has also been argued,” and “It is further argued.” Nonetheless, Moin structures her discussion in such a way that she leaves the reader with the impression that Aishah was fourteen or fifteen at consummation.
22
The assumption that she supports this view is strengthened by her reiteration, in the conclusion to the chapter, that “although most of the medieval Muslim historians and a number of modern writers” – and she goes on to add the “Western Orientalists” to this group, in a fur- ther move to discredit their stance – “have rather uncritically accepted the view that ‘A‘ishah was only nine years old when her marriage was consummated, there are valid reasons to differ from this view.”
23
Moin thus impugns the reliability of the

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accepted narrative without directly confronting the hadith sources or explicitly affirming an alternate view.

The authors of online materials are dealing with an environment that differs in crucial ways from that of these authors. First, while Nadvi, Thompson, and Moin are address- ing the question of Aishah’s age at marriage in the context of larger works on, respectively, the female companions of the Prophet, the Prophet’s wives, and Aishah herself, online mater- ials are usually accessible in such a way that the question of Aishah’s age appears separately from any other biographical dis- cussions. Second, while some of the online discussions are aimed specifically at Muslims, the availability of materials to anyone with Internet access makes the actual audience signifi- cantly more diverse. Though, of course, there are no restrictions preventing non-Muslims from purchasing books from Islamic publishing houses, it is less likely that they will come across these materials without putting significant effort into obtaining them. Third, and importantly, those who gain access to online articles discussing Aishah’s age at marriage will likely have located them through an Internet search engine. This means that readers have plenty of opportunity to compare and contrast various accounts, making it more important to address compet- ing perspectives directly.

That said, quite a number of online articles simply refrain from providing specific details about the Bukhari hadith, even to question its reliability. Thus, a response to a query posted at Islam Online quotes Muzammil Siddiqi, former president of the largest American Muslim organization, the Islamic Society of North America. Siddiqi does not discuss textual evidence specifically but asserts that “Historically, it is not confirmed that she was 9 years old when she came in the household of the Prophet. There are various reports from age 9 to age 24.”
24
Later, he notes that “I do not agree that she was 9.”
25
Such a formula- tion, with only vague references to “various reports,” without any consideration of relative authoritativeness of the sources, sidesteps the problem of the canonical nature of the hadith included in Bukhari’s
Sahih
.
26
Siddiqi treats the report on which Vines’ accusation is based, and on which most polemics

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center, as simply an unconfirmed report with which he does not agree; he deftly dodges the larger issue of the reliability of Bukhari’s accounts.

In the context of an ongoing polemical struggle, how- ever, rejection of the narrative found in Bukhari and elsewhere would be a dangerous tactic, since it grants the premise that the most respected and widely accepted textual sources for Islam, outside of the Qur’an, are unreliable. Thus, those pieces found at the “Answering Christianity” website (engaged in an ongoing series of detailed and vigorous arguments with the “Answering Islam” site) do not ever question the premise that Aishah was nine at the time her marriage was consummated. Instead, they turn first to rational justification and then to counter- polemic.

Responding to the argument that it was morally wrong and sinful for Muhammad to have had intercourse with such a young girl, the authors at Answering Christianity and other polemical sites argue that marriage at puberty – which they assume Aishah had reached – has historically been a common human practice. The Prophet’s consummation of a marriage with a nine-year-old girl was perfectly acceptable, they point out, in its socio-historical context. Puberty marked both physical and social maturity, and Muhammad’s contemporaries found nothing unusual in this marriage. Even medieval critics of Islam did not object to this marriage on the basis of Aishah’s youth. Thus, one author notes that “It is therefore undeniable that con- summating the marriage upon puberty was also their practice and not prohibited in their religions. The age restrictions there- fore only came to
certain countries
in our
current century
. It is indeed extremely hypocritical and‘self-righteous’ to judge other centuries, based on new criteria.”
27
Proceeding to counter- attack, the authors claim that biblical and rabbinic sources demonstrate the legitimacy of marrying very young girls. Indeed, they charge that criticism of the Prophet’s marriage to Aishah is hypocrisy given the acceptability of even larger age gaps between some male figures and their female consorts.
28
One prominent line of argument distorts a Talmudic discussion to suggest that Jewish law permits men to have sex with

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three-year-old girls.
29
Compared to such a rule, a nine-year-old girl seems positively mature.

It is worth pointing out, however, that despite the sug- gestion by some of these authors that the delay between the contracting of Aishah’s marriage and its consummation was in order for her to reach puberty, I have not found explicit refer- ences in classical sources to Aishah’s menarche serving as the trigger for consummation of her marriage; in a few instances, precisely the opposite claim is made.
30
Subsequent legal discus- sions fixing nine as an age of presumptive or potential majority if the girl claims menarche sometimes rely on a parallel to Aishah’s age at consummation. However, majority and/or arrival at puberty have no necessary connection with the con- summation of marriage. Though it is sometimes misleading to extrapolate back from later legal discussions, there was general agreement among later jurists that the wife’s puberty was not a necessary precondition for consummation of a marriage. Pre- modern sources, including legal handbooks and Ottoman court archives, link a wife’s readiness for consummation not to
bulugh
but rather to being physically desirable and fit for intercourse.
31

Searching for solace

Quite a number of articles geared at Muslims adopt and adapt arguments found in these polemics and counter-polemics, reshaping them into apologetic form, aimed at reassuring read- ers.
32
The issue of Aishah’s age at marriage is often framed as a matter of addressing “misconceptions” held by non-Muslim Westerners, even when the author and audience are both pre- sumably Muslim. For example, one petitioner at Islam Online requests that the mufti“help us address the misconceptions fill- ing the mind of some people, especially the Westerners about the Prophet’s marriage to “Aishah, may Allah be pleased with her, as they claim it to be a sign of child abuse[.]”
33
Another query, addressed to the online mufti of the Pakistani Jamaat-e- Islami by a South African doctor, describes having read the hadith discussing Aishah’s marriage as part of a Muslim study