Rev. Jerry Vines while speaking to the Pastors’ Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention, St. Louis, Missouri on June 10, 2002, called the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) a paedophile and demon-possessed. The Muslims all over the world were deeply offended by his remarks, as were many people of other faiths. While certainly both of these allegations about the person of the Prophet of Islam can be effectively refuted, the author of this article proposes to present the Qur’anic concept of marriageable age as well as an in-depth analysis of the issue of Sayyida Ayesha’s age at the time of her marriage with the Messenger of Allah (pbuh). This critique is based on many historical reports as have reached us through the history books of Islam.
It is to be pointed at the very outset that a vast majority of the Muslims professes two sources of the Divine Guidance--the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The Qur’an is the actual Word of Allah (God) revealed by the archangel Gabriel to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) over a period of 23 years during the period 610-632 A.D in the Arabian Peninsula. The Qur’an that was revealed as Guidance and Light (17:9) for all mankind was written and properly documented by some forty scribes during the lifetime of the Prophet. There is historical, as well as internal evidence right from within the Qur’an to that effect (80:11-16 and 25:5). Of prime importance is the fact that one does not fail to find God’s Personal guarantee against any possible corruption in the Scripture (15:9). Furthermore, the Qur’an was not only written and documented but it was committed to memory in its entirety during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh). This noble tradition of double preservation, namely, memorization and writing of the Qur’an, continues to this day. For the last more than 1400 years, hundreds of thousands of individuals have always been around in the world who have known the entire Qur’an by heart. It is noteworthy that although there are several sects in Islam, the Qur’an remains perfectly preserved to the letter in its pristine original Arabic language as it is recited, understood and referred to on a daily basis for explanations by all sects. Thus, while the interpretations of some verses may vary, the original Arabic text has remained the same without sectarian bias.
The Author of the Qur’an, Allah, the Most High, enjoined Prophet Muhammad (and all believers) to strictly follow the Quran (6:106; 10:109; 33:2) and it stands witness to the fact that Muhammad (pbuh) and his followers did exactly that all their lives (7:203; 46:9; 6:50). In fact, Muhammad (pbuh) himself was warned in rather stern terms not to go against the Qur’anic teachings (17:39, 10:94-95, 69:40-48). Furthermore, the Qur’an declares the Prophet (pbuh) to be a man of highest moral standards (68:4; 33:21) and the best exemplar for humanity. The Qur’an enjoins the believers in scores of verses to follow Prophet Muhammad’s teachings and accept him as a final authority in all their affairs.
The Second generally accepted source of Islamic faith is the Sunnah. The Sunnah is the summation of Islamic teachings related to faith and code of conduct as personally practiced and perpetuated by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). TheSunnah remains the second source of guidance in Islam for all believers in their personal as well as collective and communal lives. It also provides a framework of proper Islamic governance. Many Sunnah protocols are related to articles of Islamic faith and rituals that are continuous from the day of the Prophet but a great many others are largely derived from a huge body of compilations of oral narrations transmitting reports of the sayings and actions of the Prophet collectively referred to as Hadith. The corpus of Hadith, also known as traditions of the Prophet, consists of narrations extracted from many compilations of reported accounts of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, actions, and tacit approvals. There are six books of Hadith (Sihah Sitta) that are generally considered authentic by the main stream Sunni Muslims. There is also an entirely different set of four Hadith books, devoutly followed by the Shia Muslim community, that were also recorded at about the same time or even later. Nevertheless, even though these chest-to-chest reports of the Prophet’s sayings and actions that were said to have undergone intense scrutiny for authenticity, a large body of narrations prevalent at the time was rejected by some notable original compilers of the Hadith as many of them failed one or more of the tests of ascertaining authenticity. Thus, these compilers of Hadith, who lived some 200-300 years after the passing away of the Prophet (pbuh), were believed to be able to finally separate wheat from chaff with the result that they committed to writing only those ahadith that fitted their criteria of authenticity. Thus, in essence, the process of oral transmission (word of mouth) made the basis of all these collections. This process commonly known as‘Isnaad’ or ‘chain of narration’ typically comprised a chain of 4-6 narrators (including, of course, many of them who had been long dead at the time of writing) going back 200-300 years in time to the companions and to Prophet Muhammad himself. These accounts also seek to portray a fair amount of Muslim history and culture during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. Nonetheless, it must be pointed out that the only true surviving book, call it Islamic history or Divine Guidance, that was memorized by thousands of Companions of the Prophet, and written in a completely and carefully documented form many times over, is none other than the Qur’an itself. The most well-known earliest Islamic history books, ‘Seerat Rasool Allah’ (Seerah) by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 A.D), and Tabaqaat by Ibn Sa’d (d 175 H) , was written more than 90 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The Seerat Rasoolallah that gives the account of Prophet’s life and his involvement in defensive battles was also based on oral transmissions. Ibn Ishaq was severely criticized by some contemporary notable scholars of Islam such as Malik bin Anas, the originator of the Maliki School of thought in Islamic jurisprudence, now mainly practiced in Africa .
The majority of Muslims considers two of the six Hadith books, those authored by Al-Bukhari (d. 870 A.D) and Al-Muslim (d. 875 A.D), most authentic after the Qur’an despite the fact that they were written 200-300 years after the passing away of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). As mentioned earlier, these scholars of Islam exercised great caution in selecting what they called correct traditions and proceeded with purest of intentions but one must not lose sight of the fact that they still collected ‘narrations’ from living people who were not the primary or even secondary or tertiary sources of the accounts of the life and sayings of Muhammad (pbuh) and his companions. Some Islamic historians (and/or exegetes of the Qur’an) whose books about early Islamic history are considered of high importance and who derive their history from the earliest works of Ibn Ishaq’s Seerah, or Ibn S’ad’s Tabaqaat include Ibn Hisham (d. 827 A.D), Tabari (d. 923 ), Ibn Katheer, and Ibn Hajar Al-asqalani, to name a few.
This introduction of the generally accepted two sources of Islam (the Qur’an and the Sunnah/Hadith), I believe, is necessary for the reader to understand the issue at hand---the age of Ayesha, the third wife of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) at the time of her marriage with him.
