Islamic apologists in the West routinely deny that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and go through all sorts of contortions to deny the evidence of the texts, but the fact that child marriage is accepted in wide swaths of the Islamic world, even by the directorate of religious affairs in once-“moderate” albeit now rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey, most clearly shows their dishonesty. The Diyanet wouldn’t approve of child marriage if it weren’t Islamic, as it explains in its own defense. And child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law.
“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria
“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law
There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council
“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology
Hadiths that Muslims consider authentic record that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.
Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:
The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.
Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.”
According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.
“Turkish child marriage religious document sparks anger,” BBC, January 3, 2018:
Turkey’s main opposition party has called for a parliamentary inquiry after the directorate of religious affairs said that, under Islamic law, girls as young as nine could marry.
The comments by the Diyanet prompted an outpouring of anger on social media from Turkish women’s groups.
The directorate insisted it was only defining points of Islamic law.
Turkey’s legal age of marriage is 18 but the practice of underage weddings in religious ceremonies is widespread.
Turkish law also allows 17-year-olds to marry with the consent of their parents or guardian, or 16-year-olds in exceptional circumstances with court approval.
The current outcry was started by a statement on adolescence posted online by the Diyanet, the state body which administers religious institutions and education.
It said that, according to Islamic law, the beginning of adolescence for boys was the age of 12 and for girls the age of nine. On the same website, it said that whoever reached the age of adolescence had the right to marry.
Thirty MPs of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) called on the government to launch an investigation into child marriage.
Murat Bakan, CHP’s MP for Izmir, said on Twitter: “The Turkish Civil Code clearly states that adulthood begins at the age of 18. Early marriages violate children’s rights, women’s right’s, human rights. As CHP MPs we ask parliament to investigate child marriages.”
In a later statement, the Diyanet said it was only defining Islamic law and that it did not approve of early marriages.
“Forcing a young girl to marry someone before they obtain the psychological and biological maturity, and before they gain the responsibility to make a family and become a mother, would not comply with Islam which puts consent and will as a condition in a marriage,” it said.
“Our directorate has never approved early marriages in the past, and it never will.”
Correspondents say that, despite the directorate’s assurances, distrust of the body still remains among secular groups….
john spielman says
this PROVES that muhammed , ” the perfect man of islam” was a reprobate PEDOPHILE
StellaSaidSo says
If we only needed one reason to eradicate Islam from the face of the earth, this is it.
gravenimage says
+1
mortimer says
PEDOPHILIA disguised as child marriage is NORMATIVE Islam, rather than an aberration.
We now know that pedophilia is EXTREMELY HARMFUL to a woman (and boys too). Some victims of pedophilia commit suicide. Others are so traumatized, they cannot cope with life and spend their miserable lives in abject failure until relieved by death.
So why allow this Death Cult and Misogyny Cult to exist? There is no case to be made to allow Islam to exist anywhere. It is practically without any discernible value and demonstrably harmful and dangerous.
Islam should be banned everywhere or at least discouraged everywhere in the way we discourage smoking in most countries.
CRUSADER says
Good point.
Islamists should be seen as pariah in societies from here onward.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Right. Pretending that the global crime-gang called islam is a “race” of poor swarthy animal-people, oppressed by the mentally superior whites, in order to slander everyone who notices it’s a crime-gang as a hatefully bigoted “racist” – is to deliberately enable that crime-gang’s crimes by hiding and destroying the evidence of same, and thus to be a willing accessory to those crimes. Since islam is a murder-gang, and the penalty for committing and enabling the commission of murder is DEATH, anyone and everyone who calls an opponent of muslims, islam, and their global jihad, a “racist!” should be lawfully put to death.
Everyone who defends islam and muslims endorses crime.
Endorsing crime IS a crime, so those doing it are criminals.
Right in the Qur’an is: the obligation to murder Jews and Christians (Surah 9:29), to terrorize all non-Muslims (8:12), to rape young girls (65:4), to enslave people for sex (4:3), to lie about one’s true goals (3:54), and the command to make war on all the infidels (9:123) and subjugate the entire world to Allah (9:33).
Are death-threats legal? NO.
Is extortion legal? NO.
Is slavery legal? NO.
Is murder legal? NO.
Is rape legal? NO.
THEN ISLAM IS ILLEGAL!
Rape, slavery, robbery, extortion and murder are never OK!
Everything muslims pretend to see as “holy” is already a crime!
So nobody has a legal right to practice islam anywhere on earth!
IN TRYING TO MAKE CRITICISM OF THE GLOBAL CRIME GANG CALLED “ISLAM” INTO A CRIME, TO PROTECT THAT CRIME GANG BY HIDING THE EVIDENCE OF ITS CRIMES, SUCH PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS AND TRAITORS TO RATIONALITY, CIVILIZATION, AND HUMANITY ITSELF.
But hadn’t you heard?! Being angry at (“hateful” towards) criminals is now the most vile sin, while pitying (“tolerating”) them all as “fellow victims,” is to be deemed the highest moral virtue, these days!
So much so, that the only advice we hear from “our” hypocrite governments, their pet media, and the corporazi globalist banksters who own them all, seems to invariably be:
“Anyone who doesn’t automatically pity all criminals as fellow victims should be hated!”
Which is why hurting the feelings of criminals by accusing them of their crimes, is now a “hateful” crime itself!
elee says
This is the Turkish Diyanet, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, a government office charged with telling (Sunni) Muslims what their religion permits them to do or prohibits them from doing.
Toilet paper is first mentioned in history from about the time of the Prophet, in a land far from Arabia. In 2015 the Diyanet decreed that Muslims would be permitted to use toilet paper, as long as they did not make it their primary means of cleaning themselves. Regarding primary means of cleaning themselves they are still required to emulate the Prophet.
roberta says
“Oh, what a beautiful child, is she your wife or your daughter?”
Wow, and these people talk bad about pigs.
Older Canadian says
Roberta. Great post. Love it and should be repeated as much as possible. It really says it all quite succinctly.
Prabh108 says
Nasty – is anything worse than an illiterate mother?
gravenimage says
Well, raping children is worse.
Prabh108 says
Agreed.
gravenimage says
Thanks.
Michael Copeland says
Consent?
Mohammed said that silence (from a young girl) means consent.
Nine years old?
To be precise, it is nine lunar years, namely eight years nine months.
Robeaver says
That’s not the example of mo!!! Call for rioting in the streets to allow 6 year olds to marry. This is the example from mooham.
Cheer Bear Girl says
9 year olds are practically babies compared to adults.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
Any comment from the NATO high-command?
LeftisruiningCanada says
The sad undoing of M Kemel’s hard work in trying to part religion and state.
It was a heavy task, and it seems that the tiring job of keeping ones head lifted out of savagery is finally leading to exhaustion.
“This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.”
This is arbitrary legislation, not arbitrary acts of one vicious 7th century kiddie fiddler enshrined as law
gravenimage says
Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs says that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry
…………………….
I was wondering when things would get so bad with the re-Islamization of Turkey that there would be an open push for child marriage.
God, I hate Islam.
LeftisruiningCanada says
Yeah, it’s really sad. Before and after the protests in 2013, people there really saw the writing on the wall.
Turkey has a lot of people who don’t want the religious to get control.
We can only watch to see how things go, but if we know anything here at JW, it’s how the hard core mohammadans are willing to use every underhand and violent trick in the book, their book, to get what they want.
Freedom lovers, it seems, don’t have much chance unless they also get heavy handed (at least in some ways).
gravenimage says
Spot on, Jay Boo.
Sam says
Well, what can I say, Turks are becoming GOOD MUSLIMS again. Back to the 7th century.
Take Turkey off NATO also.
MFritz says
So much for the most secular and democratic country in the far East (except for Israel that is). Ataturk will be spinning in his grave. Say hello to 7th century barbarism!
762x51FMJ says
Islam is not a torch of freedom
it is an extinguisher upon its flickering light.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Actually, it all makes a sick kind of sense, when seen in historical context.
According to the books of such embedded cultural anthropologists as Raphael Patai’s “The Arab Mind” and Carl Salzman’s “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East,” Arab “culture” (which is codified in the Qur’an) glorifies the tribe over the individual, so each tribe engages in us-versus-them, might-makes-right wars all the time.
The best way to keep your tribal numbers up is to have each man marry four or more wives, which guarantees he will breed four (hopefully male warrior) children each year, while also depriving his enemy’s tribes of those same women and warrior-breeding ability.
This is also why they marry their own cousins all the time (so the enemy tribes can’t steal their women and potential warrior-children, thus weakening their own tribes) and it’s also why they have “honour” killings (because if they can’t control even their ‘weakest’ members, then they will invite attack from other tribes AND they’ll have lost those women’s warrior kids to their enemies, too)!
So if they don’t kill their own women, then those women’s actions will eventually get them all killed!
Moreover, it’s also why they glorify and emulate Muhammad as a pedophile, simply because they want to marry the females as young as they can, and have sex with them as soon as possible, in order to further gain the numerical edge on their tribal competition, by producing more offspring earlier and more often than everyone else.
Libtards in the West refuse to see this easy truth, and pretend it’s the moslems’ “cultural (read: racial) right” to out-breed and conquer everyone.
You believe in “Democracy,” in voting-might-makes-rights?
Allowing polygamy destroys your children’s future rights.
PS: Not surprisingly, the only non-Arab or non-moslem, so-called “Christian” countries which also have honour-killings, are all colonies which derive their cultures from Spain – because Spain was violently conquered and enslaved by islam for 780 (for almost 1,000) years, that’s why!
gravenimage says
+1
Chris Evans says
Please note the following quote from the Diyanet found in the above article:
“Forcing a young girl to marry someone before they obtain the psychological and biological maturity, and before they gain the responsibility to make a family and become a mother, would not comply with Islam which puts consent and will as a condition in a marriage,” …
Aside from the fact that this statement seems to be an attempt to soft pedal their initial statement that stated that Islamic law allows marriage to and sexual intercourse with prepubescent females, it also is in direct contradiction with other Islamic scholars who specifically have said that it is *NOT* necessary to gain the consent of such prepubescent females before marrying and having sex with them.
Please read the following Islamic fatwa regarding “consent”..
The father must seek her permission if she is nine years of age or above. Similarly, her other guardians may not marry her off except by her permission. This is obligatory upon all of them. If one is married without permission, then the marriage is not valid. This is because one of the conditions of the marriage is that both partners accept the marriage. If she is married without her permission, by threat or coercion, then the marriage is not valid. The only exception is in the case of the father and his daughter who is less than nine years of age. There is no harm if he gets her married while she is less than nine years old, according to the correct opinion. This is based on the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) marrying Aisha without her consent when she was less than nine years old, as is stated in authentic Hadith.
Shaikh ibn Baz
Anyone who wants can read this fatwa for themselves at:
web. archive. org/web/20040216151301/h t t p://w w w. uh. edu/campus/msa/articles/fatawawom/marriage. html .
(Note: I put spaces in the link because some sites do not allow “clickable’ links. It can still be cut and pasted into one’s address bar, but the spaces need to be removed before the site can be reached.)
Politicianophobia says
I hate Islam. Like Ibrahim, all the men have small minds and a small penis, so they look for little girls to make themselves look big. It is 2018 and the barbarians are alive and active. Filthy slime.
Falsafa says
“One of the biggest misconceptions about Islam is that it permits child marriage….The Quran equates marriageable age to a mature and sound judgment:
“And test the orphans [in your charge] until they reach a marriageable age; then, if you find them to be mature of mind/sound in judgment, hand over to them their possessions…” (Quran, 4:6)
Please pay close attention here. Marriageable age is equated to sound judgment; an age in which a person can responsibly handle their possessions. For heaven’s sake, are you really trying to tell me that a person is sound in judgment at the tender age of, say, 12? Give me a break!
It is illogical to assume that a 12 year old child has a mature intellectual level. After all, those years are meant to be a learning curve for the child: a crucial time in which a child shapes his whole personality by exploring different paradigms and attaining valuable experience on life. Undertaking such a huge responsibility would greatly affect the child psychologically, as they would be deprived of the time and space required to undergo a personal change and discover themselves.”
The above excerpt from a sound rational source is what all rational people including 99% of people living in Turkey and anyone else who believe in Islam would understand and apply…as much as hate to deflate the anti muslim agenda whipped up by Mr Robert Spencer and his motley crew of anti muslim bigots!
LeftisruiningCanada says
But mohammad did it, so it’s good.
gravenimage says
How then can Falsafa explain Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs–or the “Prophet” Muhammed himself?