The marriage story in question is based on the reports by various companions of the prophet Muhammad, as recorded by others from later generations. There has been much discussion of this topic on the internet, in articles, television programmes and books etc. For those wishing to do further research, opposing articles will be referenced: two highlighting the discrepancies in the traditional sources for this story, and another which was written as a response to this.
This is to show both sides, for and against, of the reported story. Please note, they require some background knowledge in order to understand them fully. If you prefer, you can skip these articles for discussion of what The Quran says about this subject below. Discrepancies are a common occurrence in oral reports from different sources, especially when recorded generations after an event. Furthermore, based on the evidence for the time, what likely compounded the confusion is that celebrating birthdays was not a common practice, thus exact ages were unlikely to be known.
They base this on a saying attributed to Aisha herself Sahih Bukhari volume 5, book 58, number , and the debate on this issue is further complicated by the fact that some Muslims believe this to be a historically accurate account. Although most Muslims would not consider marrying off their nine-year-old daughters, those who accept this saying argue that since the Qur'an states that marriage is void unless entered into by consenting adults, Aisha must have entered puberty early.
They point out that, in seventh-century Arabia, adulthood was defined as the onset of puberty. Interestingly, of the many criticisms of Muhammad made at the time by his opponents, none focused on Aisha's age at marriage. According to this perspective, Aisha may have been young, but she was not younger than was the norm at the time.
Other Muslims doubt the very idea that Aisha was six at the time of marriage, referring to historians who have questioned the reliability of Aisha's age as given in the saying. In a society without a birth registry and where people did not celebrate birthdays, most people estimated their own age and that of others. Aisha would have been no different.
What's more, Aisha had already been engaged to someone else before she married Muhammad, suggesting she had already been mature enough by the standards of her society to consider marriage for a while. It seems difficult to reconcile this with her being six. In addition, some modern Muslim scholars have more recently cast doubt on the veracity of the saying, or hadith, used to assert Aisha's young age. In Islam, the hadith literature sayings of the prophet is considered secondary to the Qur'an.
While the Qur'an is considered to be the verbatim word of God, the hadiths were transmitted over time through a rigorous but not infallible methodology.
Taking all known accounts and records of Aisha's age at marriage, estimates of her age range from nine to Because of this, it is impossible to know with any certainty how old Aisha was. What we do know is what the Qur'an says about marriage: that it is valid only between consenting adults, and that a woman has the right to choose her own spouse. Waliuddin Muhammad Abdullah Al-Khateeb al Amri Tabrizi the famous author of Mishkath , in his biography of narrators Asma ur Rijal , writes that Hazrat Asma died in the year 73 Hijri at the age of , ten or twelve days after the martyrdom of her son Abdullah Ibn Zubair.
This puts the age of Hazrat Aisha at 17 during the same period. As all biographers of the Prophet agree that he consummated his marriage with Hazrat Aisha in the year 2 Hijri it can be conclusively said that she was 19 at that time and not nine as alleged in the aforementioned hadiths.
The Saudi judge also abused another hadith when he ruled that the minor girl shall have the right to seek a divorce only after reaching puberty. According to that, the Prophet is supposed to have given a minor girl the option to repudiate her marriage when she informed him that her father had married her off against her will.
But a reading of this hadith shows that the girl in question was not a minor because the word used to describe her is bikran , which means a grown-up, unmarried girl.
Also, there is no mention of puberty in the report. Therefore, the concept of Khiyar-al Buloogh is bad in law as it is based on a false premise. In short, there is no authentic statement of the Prophet justifying child marriage and hence, the question of his advising any minor to wait until puberty to exercise her right to divorce simply does not arise. The problem with the present day Islamic law is that most of it is not based on the spirit of the Quran.
This is because of the belief of Muslim theologians particularly the Salafi ideologues, commonly known as the Wahabis that hadiths have an overriding effect on the Quran. The truth is that the Quran being the locus classicus of Islam, no authority can supersede it. Even the Prophet was commanded to judge by it , , , and Furthermore, as the Quran claims to be a guide for all periods, it supports the notion that any law formulated on the basis of its framework has to evolve from time to time.
For this to happen, the doors of ijthihad independent interpretation must be reopened and the entire corpus of hadiths must be re-evaluated, to discredit such hadiths that are antithetical to the spirit of justice, equity and fairness embodied in Quranic universalism.
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