Friday, April 3, 2020

Islam critiqued finds a genius child; Aisha's early maturity?

In answer to the video "Surah 65:4 and Child Marriage in Islam"

Aisha relates herself as having played an active role during the migration; getting the travelling goods together in a highly tense situation per the narrations. An 8 year old could not have acted in such a way. Again she describes herself how she reached Shajra along with the soldiers in the battle of Badr that took place in 2H. Nobody under 15 years old was allowed to join the soldiers in the battlefield. This was to avoid being captured and raised as idol-worshippers or killed and become a problem for the army. Yet she is alleged to have been 9 or 10 at the time, meaning she had absolutely no business whatsoever in being at the battlefield.

But if she was born prior to the revelation, then by that time she would be around 18 years old, which makes sense.

In fact there are reports of the prophet sending back some Muslim youths who tried, out of eagerness, to go along with the Muslim army. The very notion that the Prophet would set an age limit to 15 for people to participate in battle, but allow 9-10 year olds or 11 year old females to accompany the battlefield, especially in such situations, is against all common sense. Why would young men below 15 be forbidden to be at the battle-field, but 9-10 year old girls be allowed to take care of people wounded and on the verge of death. Does one think the Prophet would have exposed these girls to the chance of being captured and eventually mistreated and abused by masters who used to force their female slaves into prostitution?

Anas further describes Aisha along with Umm Sulaim lifting their dresses up to avoid any hindrance in their movement, at the battle of Uhud. The idea of lifting the dress in Arab tradition, as is evident in abundant pre-Islamic poetry is a reference to women fleeing the battlefield, having to raise their skirts exposing their shins. This is what happened in Uhud when Muslim men were panicking, because the unbelievers had sent them into disarray. It had reached such an extent that they abandoned the Prophet.

Yet, here is a 'nine or ten year' old girl running back and forth, to various Muslim men assisting them with their needs in the midst of battle:
“On the day (of the battle) of Uhud when (some) people retreated and left the Prophet, I saw Aisha daughter of Abu Bakr and Umm Sulaim, with their robes tucked up so that the bangles around their ankles were visible hurrying with their water skins (in another narration it is said, ‘carrying the water skins on their backs’ (7). Then they would pour the water in the mouths of the people, and return to fill the water skins again and came back again to pour water in the mouths of the people”.
How can people think that at the height of the battle, when Muslims were panicking and even leaving the Prophet, Aisha was 9-11 years old, not even slightly panicking while attending bravely wounded soldiers, and was allowed to go into battle? Dont the narrations specifically tell us the Prophet constantly warned his men not to abandon their posts on the hill? If he was so keen about that matter and so keen on males being a specific age, what makes people think he was going to take females that would burden the army?

The fact is Aisha actively participated in battles during the prophet's life, assisting the men at the battlefield along with other women, which is why by the time of Ali's reign as Caliph, she gathered enough experience and credibility that she could rally a huge fighting force.

None of the narrations saying she was 6 when engaged and 9 when moved with the prophet come from Mecca or Medina and whether from Muslim or Bukhari's sahih books combined, it is the same hadith narrated in multiple ways, which refutes the position that Aisha's age is established by multiple reliable sources. Even the two hadith in Bukhari claiming that Aisha says her age are attributed to Hisham bin Urwa, so they arent even her own words. It is only in Muslim, in the context of permissibility of marrying young women, that we find two hadith claiming to be Aisha's words. But they all report additional material from Hisham that arent reported in Bukhari. All such narrations come from Iraq, even those outside sahih Bukhari, and the majority of those are traced to Hisham bin Urwa, Asma's grandson, meaning there is no possibility to verify whether Hisham was involved in those other reports where his name isnt mentioned in the chain, directly or indirectly.

So it all goes back to one source ultimately who himself was married to a 9 year old (8).

In addition to this obvious bias, he is reported by imam Malik, his student, to have become unreliable in his Iraq period, due to changing, willingly or not, the transmission chain of certain reports going back to his father. But even if we dismiss these reservations and his bias, we would still be confronted to difficulties showing how any attempt at specifically determining Aisha's marriage age is not based upon contradiction-free information.

Asma was 10 years older than Aisha (9). Yet Hisham bin Urwa himself claims Asma lived until 100(10). Asma died in 73H (11). If she was 100 in 73H according to bin Urwa himself then it means she was 27 at the time of Hijra. Consequently Aisha was 17 at the time and 18-19 when she married 1 or 2 years later. Knowing this difficulty to harmonize the records available with bin Urwa's, the historian Imam Adh-Dhahabi tries reducing Asma's age at death in order to make it fit with the reports on Aisha's marriage age
"If this is true (Asma being 10 years older than Aisha), then the age of Asmaa when she passed away should be ninety-one".
For a 17-18 years old to be playing on a swing the day of her wedding with her friends or playing with toys during her marriage isnt an extreme oddity (12). This may be referring to the early period of her marriage. Today married men regularly spend hours playing video games. The contention that she played with dolls even after the campaign of Khaybar or Tabuk (13) which would mean around the age of 26 is flawed. The same narration is found in Bukhari and Muslim without the part about the prophet coming from Khaybar or Tabuk, as well as other differences. They have both rejected these parts because they are attributed to Yahya bin Ayyub who was deemed confused in the chain and content of this hadith. Even if one were to accept the passage as true for argument's sake, as well as Aisha's age of marriage at 6years old, then this means she was still playing with dolls after the battle of Khaybar when she was 15-16. Playing with dolls is not an indication of age or stage of physical development.

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