Aisha married to mohammed at 6
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Why Scholars of Islam Disagree About the Age of the profet Muhammad&#;s Youngest Wife
Last year, Nupur Sharma, the former spokesperson for India’s ultranationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ignited a firestorm across the Muslim world when she went on live television and insinuated that the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile.
Some million people took to the streets in cities from Tehran to jidda (stad) and Karachi to protest against the insult. Nevertheless, media commentators sympathetic to the BJP doubled down, arguing that Sharma was correct, Muhammad was unequivocally a pedophile, and anyone who supported him supported pedophilia.
Obviously, this discussion was not in good faith. The Hindutva-inspired government is far better known for discriminatory citizenship laws and bulldozing homes in Muslim-majority communities than fostering interfaith dialogue with India’s Sikh, Muslim and Christian populations. Nevertheless, this does not completely delegitimize talking about the issue.
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Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha
As a historian of early and medieval Islam, the Oxford University scholar Joshua Little spends much of his time studying old texts — yet his trailblazing research has real-world significance in the here and now. Few aspects of the life of the profet Muhammad stir as much debate and controversy as the claim he married his third wife, Aisha, while she was a minor. It is into this explosive terrain that Little has chosen to wade, with results that may change our understanding of Islamic history.
Earlier this year, protests erupted in various Muslim-majority countries after two officials of the BJP, India’s ruling right-wing Hindu nationalist party, made disparaging comments about Muhammad, to the effect that he married and had sex with an underage girl.
A decade ago, the Islamophobic film “Innocence of Muslims,” which similarly depicted Muhammad as a pedophile, caused not only global protests and riots but also political
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The controversy surrounding Aisha's age at marriage
Why would the Prophet ﷺ marry a child? That is the question many want answered, but before we begin to address it, we have to admit it is more than a mere question; rather, it is an accusation and judgment of character. Underneath the question lies the notion that we should be troubled by the age of ‘Aisha at marriage, that whatever her age was, it is concerning, and—worse than that—however great the Prophet ﷺ was, the age at which ‘Aisha was married to him is problematic.
I released my book, 40 Hadith of ‘Aisha, in May, It’s a collection of 40 hadith in English narrated by ‘Aisha, the wife of Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. In that book, I thought it important to give readers an introduction to Lady ‘Aisha, her life with the Messenger of God ﷺ, and her scholarship. But what I did not think was important to include in that brief biography were details of the current-day controversy surrounding he