At 07:29 PM 1/2/2013, de Bivort Lawrence wrote:
Thanks, Abd ar-Rahman.
Some time ago I wrote a long post on Muslims, marriage, and pre-and
post Quranic practices. Jojo said he would respond later, but never
did. FYI, I subsequently read that post to a well-regarded Muslim
scholar and he confirmed the accuracy of the post, so I'll let my post stand.
Do you have a link to it? Or the date and time?
I do notice that you "mispell" my name correctly as a common variation.
I think memetics is the way to understand the
birther/Muhammed/aliens/illuminati alternative "reality". For
reasons I think you and others here will appreciate, I'd prefer not
to discuss this field further, here or in any other public venue.
You can write me privately. Anyone who subscribes to this list can,
if you read the list as a subscriber.
I admire your patience, and wish I had as much of it!
Patience or foolishness, I can't tell. Thanks.
On Jan 2, 2013, at 6:48 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg75072.html
On the subject of Ayesha's age at "marriage" i.e. when she began to
live with the Prophet, I found some sources I'll share. I am *not*
claiming to know the age of Ayesha, and my own opinion is that it's
impossible to know for sure. But I'd still pay attention to
authoritative analysis. Too much of what I've seen may have been
contaminated by bias.
http://dawn.com/2012/02/17/of-aishas-age-at-marriage/
This is a newspaper source and might be a cut above the average. The
author is called "a scholar of the Qur'an," which could make him
outside his expertise. Some of the arguments I've seen elsewhere. The
argument about the kunnat, the name Ayesha adopted, "Umm Abdullah,"
is interesting. He concludes that she was 21 when she moved into the
Prophet's House (I'll call that "marriage"). And God knows best.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-liepert/islamic-pedophelia_b_814332.html
This is a reputable media site. The author has clearly done a lot of
research. He's also not necessarily a "muslim scholar," but has
probaby collected materials and analysis from some. The above site
and this one, I just found today, and I find, here, many of the facts
and arguments I came up with myself. He comes up with a possible age
of 20 at marriage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/muhammad-aisha-truth
Article in the Guardian by a Muslim woman, "studying for a DPhil at
Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco." She
comes up with my opinion, roughly, saying "it is impossible to know
with any certainty how old Aisha was," but estimates of her age range
from nine to 19.
http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=7&ID=4604&CATE=1
This is a reputable web site apparently affiliated with Nuh Keller,
whom I know. The page is written by G.F. Haddad, whom I also know.
Keller is definitely a Muslim scholar, and recognized as such.
Haddad, as I recall, was studying, and that was more than ten years
ago. The page is poorly formatted and the questions that he is
answering are not set off from his answers, but he concludes that
Ayesha "could not have been less than 14."
I looked for some time for some page that appeared to me to be
authoritative. I did not select pages for skepticism on the age. But
I didn't find one that actually argued for nine years old.
Trying to find some other opinion, I cast a bit wider net. I found a
page titled "Authentic Tauheed," and mentioning the "Salaff" The
could be a highly conservative site, but I didn't read widely enough
to be sure.
http://authentictauheed.blogspot.com/2011/07/age-of-hazrat-aisha-ra-when-she-married.html
He comes up with age 9-18, and says that regardless, she had reached
puberty and was very happy.
(The site seems amateurish in ways, so I'm not confident in the
authority of this site as to scholarship.)
Okay, I found something.
http://www.islamic-life.com/forums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=3&id=879
has a PDF download, of a paper prepared that argues for an age of 9.
The controversy is portrayed as between "history" and "hadith."
Basically, a fundamentalist position is being taken. The hadith are
correct, and history is false, and that actually seems to be the
major point. If you want to know how a fundamentalist Muslim thinks,
the paper is detailed. The paper has the Abu Dawud hadith, previously
mentioned, in Arabic, should I be crazy enough to pursue this further.
My own stand is that we cannot know the age with certainty, and that
the age is actually irrelevant.
Legally, the conditions of marriage and consent are crucial, and age
is only a proxy for those conditions. A community may use such a
proxy to protect children, and I commend the practice of requiring
judicial consent for a marriage under some specified age. That
process could review testimony, etc. From a religious perspective, if
a woman is actually ready for marriage, delaying it can be harmful,
so, ultimately, the welfare of the child must be paramount. That
determination may also vary with the social conditions present. And
God knows best.
