Yeah yeah the 9 year old think again.

[Michael]

OK, I personally know Muslims who think Mohammad married and consummated his marriage with 9 year old. Of course not every Muslim thinks this, some Muslims (particularly women and educated people) say his wife was 18 at the youngest and more likely was 25.

Regardless of this, I think we would all agree Mohammad (even as a literary character) was not a pedo. He didn't surround himself with lots of children. That's something a pedo would do. Mohammad, if he existed, if he is a composit, if he didn't exist at all, well, he seems to have been your average nomadic Arab and was just doing what was normal - back then, the way nomads in the desert lived 1400 years ago.

Back then it was normal to make an military alliance by taking a man's daughter. If in this case that man's daughter was a 9 year old girl, well, for back then this was probably considered normal :shrug:

Of course, I think we all agree that by today's standards, if you saw a 50+ year old man tongue-and-gumming with a 9 year old - well, you'd punch him square in the nose. But, back then, yeah, that sort of behavior was considered acceptable. Normal even.

So? Do we all agree Mohammad was NOT a pedo?

 

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

-=-

I yet must consider that intercourse with a 9 yo girl is very likely to cause her serious physical harm.
It's good to consider time, place, culture & other factors & think maybe their morals were different & even mental harm may have been minimized yet physical harm is clearly harm.

 

[lightgigantic]

Of course, I think we all agree that by today's standards, if you saw a 50+ year old man tongue-and-gumming with a 9 year old - well, you'd punch him square in the nose. But, back then, yeah, that sort of behavior was considered acceptable. Normal even.

and there's your problem

for your edification

Third, the meaning of marriage in the U. S. has changed over the past 40 years. As sociologist Andrew Cherlin has noted, marriage used to be the "foundation" for adulthood, sex, intimacy and childbearing. Now, marriage is viewed by many Americans as a "capstone" that signals that a couple has arrived -- financially, professionally and emotionally.

In short, what marriage means to today is vastly different than what it meant 40 years ago .... what to speak of 500 (in a different culture you can't even begin to understand).

 

[Norsefire]

It was not considered "weird" back then, so no

 

[baftan]

Above all, a Muslim can not say "it was in their times, but today things are different". Because Muslims believe that their religion and Mohammad are saying things for eternity. If a Muslim can speculate this, they should also speculate the other parts of their religion whether or not they are suitable for today or tomorrow. So Muslims have no luxury to choose.

That is to say, there is no middle way: You are either Muslim who must accept Mohammad unconditionally as an ultimate true example of a for all Muslims or you are not buying his words and life-style as a model for your world view. Simple as that. But if you are a Muslim who do not teach your new generations (such as 9 year olds) what Mohammad really did, so I have right to suspect your true intentions about humanity.

 

[scifes]

OK, I personally know Muslims who think Mohammad married and consummated his marriage with 9 year old. Of course not every Muslim thinks this, some Muslims (particularly women and educated people) say his wife was 18 at the youngest and more likely was 25.

Regardless of this, I think we would all agree Mohammad (even as a literary character) was not a pedo. He didn't surround himself with lots of children. That's something a pedo would do. Mohammad, if he existed, if he is a composit, if he didn't exist at all, well, he seems to have been your average nomadic Arab and was just doing what was normal - back then, the way nomads in the desert lived 1400 years ago.

Back then it was normal to make an military alliance by taking a man's daughter. If in this case that man's daughter was a 9 year old girl, well, for back then this was probably considered normal :shrug:

Of course, I think we all agree that by today's standards, if you saw a 50+ year old man tongue-and-gumming with a 9 year old - well, you'd punch him square in the nose. But, back then, yeah, that sort of behavior was considered acceptable. Normal even.

So? Do we all agree Mohammad was NOT a pedo?

you have a lot of truth in this OP micheal..i'll expound on the replies..

but please tell me first..what do you mean by pedo? i know it's a prefix about children..but how does it fit?

-=-

I yet must consider that intercourse with a 9 yo girl is very likely to cause her serious physical harm.
It's good to consider time, place, culture & other factors & think maybe their morals were different & even mental harm may have been minimized yet physical harm is clearly harm.

true..usually intercourse at 9 is harmful..
that's why there was no intercourse at 9..i don't want to give info i'm not sure of of when was there intercourse..but it wasn't at 9.

Above all, a Muslim can not say "it was in their times, but today things are different". Because Muslims believe that their religion and Mohammad are saying things for eternity. If a Muslim can speculate this, they should also speculate the other parts of their religion whether or not they are suitable for today or tomorrow. So Muslims have no luxury to choose.

That is to say, there is no middle way: You are either Muslim who must accept Mohammad unconditionally as an ultimate true example of a for all Muslims or you are not buying his words and life-style as a model for your world view. Simple as that. But if you are a Muslim who do not teach your new generations (such as 9 year olds) what Mohammad really did, so I have right to suspect your true intentions about humanity.

no contradiction baftan,(i don't know what then)

if the prophet killed his brother because his brother was trying to kill him...should we all kill our brothers unconditionally too?

the factors brought into the prophet's marriage are many..if you consider them all and reach a final result other than what the prophet did, then that's what's required..
before quoting what he did and reqire us to follow suit you should know the circumstances.



points i want to provide for the whole discussion:
1- not all girls reach puberty at the same time..geography has a lot to do with it..:
2- in this summer(2009) there are girls of 12 years and more or less getting married.
3-the points Micheal presented well about how marriage was used to form alliances and other goals..explains this marriage plus the other 11.

 

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

-=-

Usually, intercourse is physically harmful for a 9 yo girl???

What's the point of mentioning 12 yo girls marrying?

 

[Michael]

scifes,

pedo as in pedophile. I don't concider Mohammad a pedophile because if he were a pedophile then he'd have had Allah come up with prophecy for him to have sex with people's children. He didn't do that, so, he wasn't interested in having sex with children. If anything he seems interested in having sex with adult women. So, I think children weren't his thing.

Also, lots of times people married their children off back then. It was quite common to make military alliances.

I will say this though, if "Allah" were a forward thinking God, I think It would have settled on Mohammad being a monogamist and in the case of this child, adopting her. But, as that wasn't Arab custom, well, it didn't occur to Mohammad ... ... I mean Allah.

Anyway, my point is people back then thought it was OK whereas now, well now we think it's sick. Which is why a lot of modern people in modern societies like America or Japan or England etc.. well, because of this they tend to think Mohammad was a sick pedo, but, really he wasn't. He was just doing what came natural in his nomadic uncivilized culture (I say uncivilized here to mean they hadn't reached the state of civilization as defined in the dictionary - they were still pre-civilization, no written language, no understanding of philosophy and maths etc... no Civil institutions etc...)

 

[Michael]

points i want to provide for the whole discussion:
1- not all girls reach puberty at the same time..geography has a lot to do with it..:
2- in this summer(2009) there are girls of 12 years and more or less getting married.
3-the points Micheal presented well about how marriage was used to form alliances and other goals..explains this marriage plus the other 11.

1) While people like to suggest girls reached puberty earlier back then, the opposite is likely true. Girls in our modern culture have many more calories in their diet and so their bodies develop much much quicker than back then. A girl in the desert without much meat to eat would have been younger than the equivalent modern day girl. Just look at modern day nomadic children, you'll see they are under developed.

2) 12 year olds are having sex more often. But emotionally they are children.

3) yes, military alliances were common back then. Hell, many times men left married to a child and came back 5-10 years later after many champagnes.

 

[DiamondHearts]

There is much disagreement on this topic. I think we discussed this in several threads now. I'm sure you have heard this before, but I'm going to tell you again anyway.

The scholarly opinions:

1) Prophet had a dream when she was 9, that God had chosen her as a wife for him. He consulted with her father, the future successor of the Prophet. He got engaged to her, and married her when she reached puberty at 12.

2) He married her when she became 14 or 16 (there is a difference of opinion).

In Semitic culture, Jewish and Arab culture, marriage is allowed when an individual reaches the age of puberty. Judaic law is quite clear on this matter, as well as Christian law which is based on Judaic law.

It is also interesting to note that after the death of the Prophet. She became a powerful political and military figure in the Islamic state, and even led several armies to battle, proposed several laws, and narrated thousands of hadith. She was a great scholar of Islam. Muslims call the wives of the Prophet, the Mother of the Believers.

 

[scifes]

scifes,

pedo as in pedophile. I don't concider Mohammad a pedophile because if he were a pedophile then he'd have had Allah come up with prophecy for him to have sex with people's children. He didn't do that, so, he wasn't interested in having sex with children. If anything he seems interested in having sex with adult women. So, I think children weren't his thing.

Also, lots of times people married their children off back then. It was quite common to make military alliances.

I will say this though, if "Allah" were a forward thinking God, I think It would have settled on Mohammad being a monogamist and in the case of this child, adopting her. But, as that wasn't Arab custom, well, it didn't occur to Mohammad ... ... I mean Allah.

Anyway, my point is people back then thought it was OK whereas now, well now we think it's sick. Which is why a lot of modern people in modern societies like America or Japan or England etc.. well, because of this they tend to think Mohammad was a sick pedo, but, really he wasn't. He was just doing what came natural in his nomadic uncivilized culture (I say uncivilized here to mean they hadn't reached the state of civilization as defined in the dictionary - they were still pre-civilization, no written language, no understanding of philosophy and maths etc... no Civil institutions etc...)

aaagh..i couldn't even read the whole thing.."child "child" "child"...
define child!!
if a child is a human who haven't reached puberty..
then most 12 year olds from 1400 years ago till now are NOT children..

i was going to say that's mostly in the middle east because it's there where they marry at that age..but no, i'll generalize it..go to a middle school in the states and ask principles if all of their students know about condoms or not..then ask them how do they know..

 

[scifes]

(I say uncivilized here to mean they hadn't reached the state of civilization as defined in the dictionary - they were still pre-civilization, no written language, no understanding of philosophy and maths etc... no Civil institutions etc...)

no witten language?:bugeye:
:splat:
oh man..
no understanding of philosophy?
:bawl:
maths, civil institutions..
"well of course..they were sheep herders for crying out loud..how could they know such things?"

1) While people like to suggest girls reached puberty earlier back then, the opposite is likely true. Girls in our modern culture have many more calories in their diet and so their bodies develop much much quicker than back then. A girl in the desert without much meat to eat would have been younger than the equivalent modern day girl. Just look at modern day nomadic children, you'll see they are under developed.

forget calories and nowadays nomads..back then the majority married young..

2) 12 year olds are having sex more often. But emotionally they are children.

children of TV and cellphones yes..back then 12 year olds went to war and headed their tribes, 12year old girls were able to decipher messages and debate and shush old men of wisdom..


i'm a bit tired, pardon the snappy attitude..

 

[Orleander]

Had she started menstruating? If she had, then she would have been considered old enough to have children and therefore sex with her wouldn't have been bad.
If not, then he was having sex with her for his pleasure alone. pervert

 

[Michael]

no witten language?:bugeye:
:splat:
oh man..
no understanding of philosophy?
:bawl:
maths, civil institutions..
"well of course..they were sheep herders for crying out loud..how could they know such things?"

forget calories and nowadays nomads..back then the majority married young..

children of TV and cellphones yes..back then 12 year olds went to war and headed their tribes, 12year old girls were able to decipher messages and debate and shush old men of wisdom..


i'm a bit tired, pardon the snappy attitude..

No worries. Look some people say Mohammad's wife was 25 when they married. Some say 18. Actually, somewhere on these boards someone said 18 or 20 years old. BUT, many Muslims think she was 6 when they married and 9 years old when Mohammad consummated their marriage.

Lets suppose that a 53 year old man TODAY had sex with a menstruating 9 year old. Would you think that this is wrong? I mean, suppose you saw a 53 year old man canoodling in the park with a 9 year old - would you call the police?

Now, suppose that the man said, hey now, wait just a minute, this girls menstruating! Would it make you feel better?

OK now, suppose she was 12. Feel better about it?


Look, my point about Civilization was based on a couple of things.
1) Back 3000 years ago there was no such a thing as "teenager". There was "Adult" and there was "Child". Following menstruation a child was an adult. Done.
2) However, people living in a "Civilization" tend to bump up the age of child to much further along AFTER menstruation. There's something about high density city dwelling that brings out qualities in humans that normally don't exist otherwise.

As Mohammad was a simple nomad, we shouldn't really expect him to mainly express moral proclivities that we in the modern world would relate to as moral. Actually, the exact opposite may indeed be true. Hence, in the modern Civilized world people (and by people I'm talking people as far away as Japan and as close as the USA) may see Mohammad as an immoral individual. That's because we are seeing him from our standards. The man was a nomad that lived 1400 years ago. If he had a Slave, well, that was perfectly fine .... for people back then. If he had 20+ wives, hey, Kind of England did too. Again, back then this was moral. So, of course much of what Mohammad was doing and thinking about is completely irrelevant in the modern Civilized world. That's only natural. We've progressed past those backwards and simple ways of thinking. Now, in most of the Civilized modern world, slavery is immoral; a 9 or 12 year child is considered a child.

In Ancient Italy the average age of marriage would have been 13-14. But in Medieval Florence, a Civilized and prosperous city, it was 20. In India a generation ago the average age was 12. Now it's 20+.


So, no, Mohammad was no a pedo. Mohammad was just a nomadic herdsman doing what was the norm. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

[Carcano]

Do we all agree Mohammad was NOT a pedo?

Or maybe youre really asking...do we all agree that sex with females under the age of 18 was considered normal for most of human history?

 

[Michael]

I even took the time to go to Wiki.

The issue of Aisha's age at the time she was married to Muhammad has been of interest since the earliest days of Islam. Early Muslims regarded Aisha's youth as demonstrating her virginity and therefore her suitability as a bride of the Prophet. During modern times, however, critics of Islam have taken up the issue, regarding it as reflecting poorly on Muhammad's character. References to Aisha's age by early historians are frequent.[3] According to Spellberg, historians who supported the Abbasid Caliphate against Shi'a claims considered Aisha's youth, and therefore her purity, to be of paramount importance. They thus specifically emphasized it, implying that as Muhammad's only virgin wife, Aisha was divinely intended for him, and therefore the most credible regarding the debate over the succession to Muhammad.[3] Child marriages such as this were relatively common in Arab communities at the time, and remain common in some societies in the modern era.

As we can see, back then in those primitive times people were not "elected". (well, actually they were in Greece and Rome for awhile but normally no). And so all that was important to most people was Power. Normally after a Tribal leader dies there's a fight for succession. Which is exactly what happened here. So, again, it's all just so very ordinary for that time in that place.

 

[Carcano]

Does the Quran say anything about a minimum age for marriage???

 

[Carcano]

Was Aisha no longer 'pure' after she has sex with the Prophet?

 

[Michael]

Or maybe youre really asking...do we all agree that sex with females under the age of 18 was considered normal for most of human history?

Well, no, I think the problem arises that we're dealing with a pre-teen. I think modern day people accept that teens have sex. But, people have a problem with pre-teens having sex. Now, add into the mix a pre-teen having sex with a 53 year old man. No, that probably is against the law in most Modern countries.

 

[Michael]

Was Aisha no longer 'pure' after she has sex with the Prophet?

Well no. Now this kind of goes into metaphysics but apparently Mohammad's manhood, unlike all other mortal men, didn't cause impurity. Some people think this was because it was a gift from Allah to have such an extremely divinely small and flaccid unit that it didn't penetrate. A truly wondrous gift, from Allah.

No, I'm just kidding.

Seriously, before the days of Republics making sure that the blood line of the "Divine" Rulers was intact was VERY VERY VERY important and so it was important for Abu the Baker that the only person HIS daughter had sex with was Mohammad. This was common the world over. That way Abu could become the next "Divine" Ruler/Emperor.