Was the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to A’isha morally acceptable?

Understanding the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to A’isha the daughter of Abu Bakr (May God be pleased with them both)

[This is an excerpt from The Misrepresented Prophet]

In Shawwal of the 11th year of the da’wah, the Prophet ﷺ concluded the marriage contract with A’isha, who was 6 when the original contract was agreed and 9 when the marriage was concluded. [[1]]

Was the Prophet ﷺ a paedophile?

The Sahih of Imam Al-Bukhari documents a tradition of the Prophet ﷺ that:

عَنْ عَائِشَةَ، أَنَّ النَّبِيَّ صلى الله عليه وسلم تَزَوَّجَهَا وَهْىَ بِنْتُ سِتِّ سِنِينَ، وَبَنَى بِهَا وَهْىَ بِنْتُ تِسْعِ سِنِينَ‏.‏ قَالَ هِشَامٌ وَأُنْبِئْتُ أَنَّهَا كَانَتْ عِنْدَهُ تِسْعَ سِنِينَ

“(It was narrated) from A’isha (herself) that indeed the Prophet ﷺ married her and she was 6 years old and consummated it (the marriage) when she was 9 years old”. Hisham said that “I was informed that she lived with the Prophet ﷺ for 9 years” (i.e. until his death) [[2]]

The aforementioned narration gives the impression that the Prophet ﷺ married a child, as we know that he ﷺ was roughly 52 when the marriage took place, which can be construed as paedophilia.

The Oxford dictionary defines paedophilia as ‘the condition of being sexually attracted to children[’[3]]

By this definition, the claim that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is a paedophile is raised, so I will respond to this accusation and prove that the Prophet ﷺ was not a paedophile.

Can we simply ignore this issue?

A common misconception amongst Muslims in the West is that they can simply ignore this controversy and practice Islam in peace. The problem with this methodology is that the West is predominantly not accepting of Islam or its teachings. The religion is constantly vilified by polemicists and hate preachers and they use this incident to evidence their claims.

It is important that if you live in the West [[4]] then it is mandatory to learn about this issue and the response to it.

Muslims who simply ignore this incident do not equip themselves with the requisite knowledge to respond to accusations which anathematise the Prophet ﷺ.

It is a common question posed by both sincere non-Muslims and polemicists alike and if the Muslim fails to respond then this will only reinforce the polemicists' bigotry and deter the non-Muslim from accepting Islam. It is the duty of every Muslim to call others to Islam, and this can only be done if the proper knowledge is studied.

An easy solution = reject the hadith

One can easily disregard the issue by rejecting the narrations in question, as many modernist movements have done so. They use weak narrations from tertiary sources to try and prove that she was not nine, rendering the authenticated narrations weak or fabricated.

The problem with rejecting the hadith is that it opens the Pandora’s box ‘why reject this and accept another narration’. The hadith explain the Qur’an, as it is either the statement, action or tacit approval of the Prophet ﷺ.

If you reject one authentic (mass-transmitted) narration then on what grounds do you accept other narrations, rejecting one is paramount to rejecting the entire tradition.

This would be disastrous as the very tenants of Islam like prayer are explained through the hadith (i.e., jurists derive rulings from the narrations).

This is why classical and medieval scholars (mostly) accepted the narrations as authentic. The beginning of the ‘rejection’ of reports regarding the age of A’isha is a very modern phenomenon.

There is a very good reason for this.

History had no issue with this type of marriage

         i.            The Quraysh

The staunchest enemies of the Prophet ﷺ were the Quraysh, led by Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab.

They accused him of sorcery, poetry and insanity in an attempt to deter others from following him, but they never once accused him of immorality based on his marriage to A’isha.

The reason for this was because the marriage to A’isha was a political marriage to strengthen his kinship with Abu Bakr, a very common move in Arabia and politics at the time (and even up till today).

A’isha herself was mature when she consummated the marriage, as the contract was agreed when she was six and they waited until she matured at age nine, so the Quraysh had no leverage to make an accusation that she was not old enough to be married. It needs to be understood that it was the cultural norm at the time.

       ii.            Medieval historians

The medieval perception of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was no better than the time of the Prophet ﷺ at Makkah (prior to the migration), as the holy land[[5]] was under the occupation of the Muslims.

Jerusalem was the prized land of the Christians, Muslims and Jewish people alike, with the war to control it lasting until modern times.

The crusades began after the Pope called for the Europeans to unite and liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims and they began spreading Islamophobic propaganda to incite hatred against Muslims and depict the Prophet ﷺ as a barbarian.

This was all done to encourage soldiers and mercenaries to fight against the Muslims and reclaim the holy land.

But medieval historians never once stated that the Prophet ﷺ was immoral because he married a young woman[[6]], as this practice was practised as much in Europe as it was in Arabia.

      iii.            Renaissance historians

Historians from the renaissance period (15th and 16th century) documented the Prophet ﷺ negatively with a political motive in mind.

With the fall of the Eastern Byzantium Empire in 1453 at the hands of the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad Al-Fatih, the Europeans feared that the Ottomans will turn towards them in an attempt to expand their empire.

They used every argument possible to vilify the Prophet ﷺ and encourage men to stand and fight the Ottomans, but not a single historian of this age used the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to A’isha as an argument to prove that he is immoral or a barbarian.

It is interesting to note that the famous playwright William Shakespeare wrote the famous ‘Romeo & Juliet’ play and in the play, Juliet is roughly 13 years old. The age of Romeo is not clearly stated but some estimations state that he was an old man whilst others stating that he was much older than Juliet (but not giving an exact age). Modern renditions of the play have actors much older than the original play as cultural norms have changed drastically since Shakespeare’s times.

      iv.            Enlightenment historians

Historians from the enlightenment period (17th and 18th century) documented the Prophet ﷺ in a similar manner to the renaissance scholars.

An enlightenment historian and orientalist Edward Gibbon wrote in his book regarding the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in chapter 50 regarding the ‘Arabian imposter’ who fought the Byzantium and Sassanian empires.

He says the following regarding the marriages of the Prophet ﷺ:

“If we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who occupied at Medina their separate apartments round the house of the apostle and enjoyed in their turns the favour of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they were all widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She was doubtless a virgin since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a superior ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the prophet; and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the faithful.”[[7]]

Gibbon repeatedly disrespects the Prophet ﷺ, referring to him as ‘the Arabian’, ‘Imposter’ or simply ‘Mahomet’. Yet when he mentions the Prophet’s ﷺ marriage to A’isha, not only does he confirm that she was nine years old, but he justifies it by stating that the climate allowed females to mature at a much younger age.

Orientalists on this marriage

1. Dr Humphrey Prideaux:

He was an English orientalist from the 17th century who wrote an entire book titled ‘The life of Mahomet or the history of that great imposter’

This is an entire book dedicated to the life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and how he was an imposter, yet when he mentions the marriages of the Prophet ﷺ he states:

“He was espoused to his beloved Ayesha when she was only six years of age, and the marriage was actually consummated when she was no more than eight!. As females in most parts of the globe within the torrid zone arrive at woman-hood at the age of nine or ten, a woman of forty in Arabia must be as constitutionally old as one of sixty in Britain”[[8]]

As we observe that the aforementioned orientalist mentions the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to A’isha but does not use it as a source of contention and justifies the legitimacy of the marriage. He goes further and states that women in Arabia at the age of forty are as old as a sixty-year-old woman of Britain (due to the climate).

2. Thomas Carlyle:

He was a Scottish orientalist from the 18th Century who defended the Prophet ﷺ on multiple occasions against the claims of other orientalists.

For example, he says:

“One would say the primary character of the Koran is this of its genuineness, of its being a bonâ-fide book. Prideaux, I know, and others have represented it as a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter after chapter got up to excuse and varnish the author’s successive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: but really it is time to dismiss all that”[[9]]

He was originally a Christian but loses his faith and becomes critical of religion, eventually becoming a deist.

He had nothing to gain for defending the Prophet ﷺ, yet he states that he wants to present a ‘fair portrayal’ of this great man.

He affirms that the Prophet ﷺ was:

“Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,—nay on enjoyments of any kind”[[10]]

He even refutes the imposter claim made by orientalists:

“It goes greatly against the impostor-theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was done”[[11]]

Thomas Carlyle did have his criticisms of the Prophet ﷺ but never used the marriage of A’isha as a reason for him being an imposter or false prophet, rather he asserts that the Prophet ﷺ was not a sensual man.  

Why was this type of marriage considered normal premodernity?

This is because the marriages of young girls to elder men was a common practice, usually because women premodernity matured quicker than women today. There was also no practical duty on the women (like school or work for income, so girls were married off at a younger age than in modern times).

For example, Canadian historian Margaret Wade Labarge states that:

“It needs to be remembered that many Medieval widows were not old, important heiresses were often married between the ages of five and ten and might find themselves widowed whilst still in their teens”[[12]]

Richard Wortley writes in his book:

“In medieval and early modern European societies, the age of marriage remained low, with documented cases of brides as young as seven years although marriages were typically not consummated until the girl reached puberty. Shakespeare’s Juliet was just 13, and there is no hint in the play that this was considered to be exceptional”[[13]]

He quotes Bullough who reported 1690 cases of marriage, where the bride was nine years old in Virginia alone.

He goes further to state that at the start of the nineteenth century, it was legal in England to have intimacy with a ten-year-old girl, with the legal age of consent slowly increasing during the Victorian period and in the state of Delaware (United States) the legal age for intimacy was seven years old, until the 1920s when most states increased it to sixteen.

Professor of Sociology Anthony Joseph Cortese stated regarding the age of consent:

“In 1962, the American Law Institute recommended that the legal age of consent, that is the age below which sex is defined as statutory rape be dropped in every state to the age of ten. In fact, until the mid-1960s, the legal age of consent in Delaware was seven. So a fifty-year-old man could legally have sexual intercourse with a seven-year-old boy or girl”[[14]]

I must point out that just because the Europeans allowed a girl to marry at such a young age well into the 1900s is not comparable to a man marrying a young woman in the 7th century as the situations differed greatly.

Girls in these late periods were married young (usually) for a variety of reasons, if it were to a rich merchant or businessman who could fund the girl’s family or because the girl had no work or school to attend. I will add on that a lot of children were exploited during these times, but the law and society made everything culturally and socially acceptable.

The case of the Prophet ﷺ and A’isha in the 7th century is different, as girls matured quickly in hotter climates (as mentioned previously). They had no school or work to attend to but rather they were responsible for the bearing of children.

One cannot be anachronistic and label the Prophet ﷺ (from the 7th century) with the same brush as a man in the 21st century.

I would state that it is not fair, honest or acceptable to claim that he ﷺ was a paedophile (pushing 21st century western conceptions of marriage onto a 7th century climate and culture) but rather an ordinary man in his time conducting a political marriage to strengthen the ties of kinship.

Those who dispute the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ with A’isha often have an agenda, whether it is someone against the faith, an atheist or someone who rejects hadith. In reality, there is nothing wrong with this marriage as what is deemed ‘culturally acceptable’ changes over time. That type of marriage was common and practised up until the 1960s and society has changed what is culturally acceptable again as the situation is now different.

Women today have school, university and work to deal with and so the ages of consent reflect these actions, whilst the women of the 7th century had nothing of the sort.

Women in Arabia especially were given little to no rights, with female infanticide a common practice as the women were only seen as the bearer of children.

Conclusion

I will conclude this issue by stating that A’isha was nine years old when she concluded her marriage with the Prophet ﷺ. This was a common practice at the time, and she had passed the age of puberty (hence why there was a three-year wait). I have brought statements from historians and orientalists who state that girls in hot climates like Arabia matured at an earlier age (compared to modern times) to prove that she was indeed mature and a young woman at the time of her marriage.

Mary (known as Maryam in Islam) was said to be between the ages of 9-14 when she married Joseph, an old carpenter[[15]]. This was a cultural norm at the time and no issues were raised because of it.

One might counter the arguments and state that since the Prophet ﷺ is ‘the perfect-role model’ then we expected to follow this example.

I respond by stating that this methodology is flawed, not everything the Prophet ﷺ did is considered Sunnah (that must be followed).

The Prophet’s ﷺ actions can be classified into two:

         i.            Sunnah Al-Huda

The actions, statements and tacit approvals of the Prophet ﷺ as a Prophet, that we are commanded to follow.

This includes commands regarding prayer, fasting (anything within the scope of religion) etc…

       ii.            Sunnah Al-Zai’dah   

The actions or statements of the Prophet ﷺ that he said or did as a man, that we are not commanded to follow.

There are various examples, like the wearing of a Turban. This was a cultural act of the Arabs, with even staunch enemies like Abu Jahl wearing one so it cannot be said that it is Sunnah to wear a turban and be rewarded for it however one can wear the turban and intend to imitate the Prophet ﷺ and here he will be rewarded for it  (the intention makes all the difference).

Other acts might be the riding of a camel or horse, which is not the Sunnah we are commanded to follow but an act he did as a normal man (i.e. it was their mode of transportation, so we must use our forms of transportation).

One cannot argue that the Prophet ﷺ did it so we must do it, rather it was a political marriage during the 7th century, socially acceptable at the time. The norms and cultures have changed, making it no longer socially acceptable.

This is one of the reasons why the Jurist Abu Hanifah allowed the concept of Urf (custom) to dictate Islamic Law, as he understood that cultural norms are relative, acceptable today and forbidden tomorrow.     

Thus, concluding and refuting the notion that the Prophet ﷺ was a paedophile or had paedophilic tendencies.

And God almighty knows best

[1] Rahman, Safiur, The Sealed Nectar, Darus Salam Publications (published 1996), page 146

[2] Imam Al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari - Wedlock, Marriage (Nikaah) - كتاب النكاح - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم) (Hadith 5134)

[3] Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries

[4] The West, referring to the western countries like the United Kingdom, United States etc.

[5] Jerusalem

[6] I use the term young women as A’isha was mature at the age of consummation (concluding the marriage) and therefore the word women is more appropriate instead of the word girl

[7] Gibbon E, Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, Volume 2, Chapter 50 (1782)

[8] Prideaux H, The life of Mahomet or The history of that great imposter, published in 1799 (page 12)

[9] Carlye T, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, Yale University Press (2013) (page 68)

[10] Ibid (page 71)

[11] Ibid (page 59)

[12] Labarge M, A Medieval Miscellany, page 52

[13] Wortley, R. and Smallbone, S. (2012). Internet Child Pornography: Causes, Investigation, and Prevention. (pages 10–12)

[14] Cortese A, Opposing Hate Speech, Praeger Publishers (2006) (page 85)

[15] ‘Mary, a teenage bride and mother’, Spirit & Truth (Christian) learning platform, article written 12/09/2013, access via: https://spiritandtruthonline.org/mary-a-teenage-bride-and-mother/

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