(May 9, 2012 at 7:27 pm)Rayaan Wrote: According to my knowledge, the child, Aisha (although it is disputed amongst scholars about her exact age during the time of marriage), was believed to be past her puberty and she was ready to be married and willing to be married. That's the most important thing. Also, Aisha's parents were happy with their daughter being married to Muhammad. And it was a common practice for women to get married at an early age during those times.You know I love you Rayaan, but this is a terribly naive position to take. No, not all muslims are child molesters. No, Islam is not about child molestation. However, given that children/adolescents are abused and taken advantage of even in this day and age, one cannot hold that being past puberty means that the person is "ready to be married" and expect to be taken seriously. Children are incredibly innocent; they will often not understand things like love, sex, relationships, even if they are biologically at the age where they can bear children of their own.
I mean, there is no indication that Muhammad raped his wife nor even hurt in any way. On the contrary, the two of them lived happily with each other, and they helped each other (as a normal couple would).
There are simply too many factors to make any kind of conclusion in this case, so I'm not going to say Muhammad was or wasn't. I just think that to defend Muhammad outright ignores important considerations that need to be made, such as whether Aisha's parents really had their daughters best interests in mind (or were simply trying to gain favour with the prophet), whether Aisha was sufferer of Stockholm syndrome, whether she was too traumatised to do anything, etc, etc.
