Prophet Muhammad’s Marriage to Aisha
A Socio-Political Marriage
In ancient (and not so ancient) times, marriages were contracted as a means of cementing
alliances. This was especially true among the nobility and ruling class. We read in the
book The Royal Bastards of Medieval England:
Laymen in medieval Europe saw marriage as the key to both property transfer and
political alliance...If the son of one house married the daughter of another house,
it was a visible sign of alliance between the two houses...This political aspect of
marriage explains why betrothal was so important in the Middle Ages: the
betrothal indicated that the diplomatic agreements which underlay the union had
been concluded...
Marriage for purposes of political alliance could not wait on age: to cement the
Anglo-French peace made at Paris in 1303, it was agreed that Edward, prince of
Wales (the future Edward II) should marry Isabella, the French King's daughter.
Edward was nineteen at the time, but Isabella was only seven. A century later,
when Richard II and Charles VI of France concluded a truce at Calais in 1396, the
twenty-nine-year-old King Richard himself married a French princess, another
Isabella, this time aged eight. Child-marriages, or child-betrothals, were common
in the Middle Ages, particularly among royalty and aristocracy...
Marriage, then, was a contract between two houses—or kingdoms...the control of
property transfer and the establishment of political alliances were therefore two of
the main functions of marriage in the eyes of medieval laymen.
(The Royal Bastards of Medieval England, pp.21-23,
http://books.google.com/books?id=xKI...21&lpg=PA21&dq
=church+repudiate+marriage+at+puberty&source=web&o ts=YP01yWW DJ5&sig
=cVUs2aWOm-PWkhC3M8gLD4PMv5g)
The marriage between prophet muhammad (peace be upon him) and Aisha (peace be
upon her) was similarly the seal of a political alliance between the prophet (peace be
upon him) and his future successor, i.e. Abu Bakr (Aisha’s father). Abu Bakr was an
Arab nobleman, and he was one of the early converts to Islam who came from a powerful
socio-political standing. Sir William Muir writes about prophet Muhammad’s marriage
to Aisha:
He [Muhamma
d] contracted a second marriage with Ayesha, the young daughter
of Abu Bakr—a connection mainly designed to cement the attachment with his
bosom-friend [Abu Bakr].
(Sir William Muir’s The Life of Mahomet, p.208,
http://books.google.com/books?id=Xzw...A208&lpg=PA208
&dq=about+the+same+time+he+contracted+a+second+mar riage+with +ayesha&s
ource=web&ots=QgqQzqreSW&sig=lYk2ltyFEtGiR2lFIz0HC FMzTL8)
Washington Irving wrote:
He [Muhammad] sought, by this alliance, to grapple Abu Bekr still more strongly
to his side.
(Washington Irving’s Life of Muhammad)
Rev. W. Montgomery Watt states:
Since muhammad had a political aim in nearly all his marriages, he must have
seen in this one a means of strengthening the ties between himself and Abu Bakr,
his chief follower.
(Quoted in Encyclopedia of Islam)
It should be known that Abu Bakr (peace be upon him) was the first Caliph of the
Muslims, and the successor of the Prophet. The prophet also married the daughter of his
second successor, Hafsa (peace be upon her), the daughter of Umar ibn al-Khattab (peace
be upon him). Hafsa was a widow (and a grown woman) when the prophet (peace be
upon him) married her. Therefore, we can see that the matter had nothing to do with the
ages of the daughters; it was not that the prophet (peace be upon him) had some
pedophilic desire to marry a young child. These were socio-political marriages and they
were contracted in order to cement ties between families. Both Abu Bakr and Umar
(peace be upon them) came from strong families, and marriage was the ultimate seal of
union between households.
The Prophet’s marriages to Aisha and Hafsa (peace be upon them) were contracted when
the pagans were persecuting the Prophet’s followers. These marriages were political in
nature, arranged in order to strengthen and protect the Prophetic household in this time of
persecution. Similarly did the prophet wed Juwriyyah, a marriage which cemented his
ties to the clan of Bani al-Mustaliq and their allies. He also married Mariyya the Copt
and by doing so he formed a political alliance with a very powerful monarch. In fact, the
first four successors (i.e. Caliphs) of the prophet either married the Prophet’s daughters
or married their daughters to him. So none of these were marriages of desire, but rather
they were socio-political marriages! As such, allegations of pedophilia are baseless, as
there was no desire involved.
The Islamaphobes claim that the prophet (peace be upon him) was a pedophile; if this
were the case, then is it merely a coincidence that the only young girl he married just
happened to be the daughter of the nobleman Abu Bakr, his immediate successor? If the
Prophet (peace be upon him) had some pedophilic desire, then why was the marriage
contracted three to four years before Aisha (peace be upon her) moved into her husband’s
house? If prophet muhammad was a pedophile, then it would not make sense why he
would wait until Aisha passed through the age of puberty. Furthermore, Prophet
Muhammad had no reason to wait at all; he could simply have married another young girl
whom wouldn’t make him wait three to four years at all. Why didn’t he? The answer is
obvious: the marriage was political, and it was merely happenstance that Abu Bakr’s
only daughter was young at the time. The political need to cement family ties was so
great that the betrothal was done years before the actual marriage. The fact that the
marriage contract was rushed three to four years before the contract was executed, shows
that there was an urgent political need that this marriage fulfilled.للمزيد من مواضيعي
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