{"id":2477,"date":"2011-08-03T22:30:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T22:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=2477"},"modified":"2013-03-19T22:32:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T22:32:53","slug":"rationalizing-pedophilia-in-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rationalizing-pedophilia-in-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Rationalizing Pedophilia in Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n

Jihad Watch<\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier this month we saw \u2014 or rather, were once again reminded \u2014 that Islam permits pedophilia in the guise of “marriage”: Top Saudi cleric, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan,\u00a0issued a fatwa<\/a>\u00a0asserting that there is no minimum age for girls to marry, “even if they are in the cradle,” and that the only criterion is that “they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.”<\/p>\n

While this practice speaks for itself, it is interesting to witness the great lengths some Muslims go to justify or rationalize it \u2014 or even to turn it into a source of pride.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example,\u00a0this Muslim cleric<\/a>\u00a0discussing Muhammad’s marriage to the child Aisha when she was nine. Far from blushing for shame, the cleric actually uses this anecdote to boast of the prophet’s “patience” and “magnanimity.” Translation of relevant excerpt follows:<\/p>\n

The story of the prophet’s marriage to Aisha reveals to us aspects like the prophet’s conduct with Aisha, and more importantly the aspect regarding the relationship between the husband and wife, to show how one should treat his wife, just as the prophet did with Aisha.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We know that Aisha’s mother went to take her down from the swing that she was playing on to fix her hair and prepare her for the prophet so he could enter her [have sex with her] \u2014 and she did that all on the same day.<\/p>\n

Aisha’s own account in\u00a0Sahih<\/a>\u00a0Bukhari<\/a>\u00a0is telling enough: she talks about how her mother hurriedly prepared her and then “handed” her over to Muhammad, and how “nothing surprised me but the coming of Allah’s Apostle to me in the forenoon.”<\/p>\n

The cleric continues:<\/p>\n

So you see, she was playing with her fellow playmates even though her day of consummation was that very same day \u2014 and all that they did was to fix her up for the prophet so he could have sex with her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now what do we see when the prophet married Aisha? Did he go to her and say “Okay that’s it, you’re married, you’re now a grown up, you’re supposed to be mature, you need to do this and that; you need to forget about your toys and your little friends; you are now a wife of a man, you have to see to my needs” and that’s it?<\/p>\n

No. The prophet allowed her to continue playing with her toy dolls \u2014 indeed, the prophet even sometimes gave her such things to play with. [This\u00a0hadith<\/a>\u00a0has more details, including how Aisha’s little girl friends would “hide themselves” whenever the prophet came to her until he called them out.]<\/p>\n

It should be noted that the cleric recounted the above with much awe and amazement \u2014 as if to say, “Look how indulgent and open-minded our prophet was!”<\/p>\n

In fact, such was the cleric’s whole point: to show that Islam, according to the example of Muhammad, expects older Muslim husbands to be patient with their younger wives: “The older husband should not expect the younger wife to be at his level of maturity; rather, he should go down to her level, for he is capable, whereas she is not.”<\/p>\n

As “gentlemanly” as this ostensibly sounds, it is yet another example of how Muslim scholars deal with Muhammad’s lifestyle: because they cannot condemn or ignore his practices, they inevitably go to great lengths to rationalize or justify them \u2014 to find the good in every situation their prophet was involved in, while being oblivious to all the bad.<\/p>\n

Thus here we have a cleric straining to find a positive aspect to Muhammad’s pedophilia \u2014 that he was patient and indulgent of his child-bride \u2014 while ignoring the heart of it: that the man Islam is built around desired to have sex with a child in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Earlier this month we saw \u2014 or rather, were once again reminded \u2014 that Islam permits pedophilia in the guise of “marriage”:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[29,33,227],"tags":[1017,464,30,1018,677],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-DX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2509,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-saudi-fatwa-defends-pedophilia-as-marriage\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":0},"title":"New Saudi Fatwa Defends Pedophilia as ‘Marriage’","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Muslim \"child-marriage\" \u2014 euphemism for pedophilia \u2014 is making headlines again, at least in Arabic media:\u00a0Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia's highest religious council, just issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6840,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslim-cleric-incites-children-to-slaughter-christians-and-alawites-in-syria\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":1},"title":"Muslim Cleric Incites Children to ‘Slaughter’ Christians and Alawites in Syria","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 A video recently appeared of an Islamic Sunni cleric in Syria inciting Muslim schoolboys, most of whom appear \u00a0to be between the ages of five-twelve, to hate and kill Christians and others. According to a\u00a0reportin Arabic (scroll down for video), among other things, the sheikh calls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6911,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/armenian-christians-pressured-to-convert-to-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":2},"title":"Armenian Christians Pressured to Convert to Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/ RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Arabic language websites\u00a0reported\u00a0earlier this week that the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant\u2014which, throughout the course of the war against the Assad government has committed any number of atrocities, from decapitating \u201cinfidels\u201d to burning churches\u2014has successfully \u201cforced\u201d two Armenian Christian families to convert\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3265,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islam-and-innocence\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":3},"title":"Islam and Innocence","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Just recently, a high ranking Pakistani cleric, one Munib ur-Rehmen,asserted\u00a0that \u201cIslam does not allow anybody to take lives of innocent people by any means.\u201d However, when he was grand mufti, two years earlier, he alsosaid\u00a0that \u201ctruly Islamic\u201d states must kill the apostate from Islam. Considering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1476,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberalism-and-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":4},"title":"Liberalism and Islam?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Top Muslim cleric Qaradawi urges western Muslims to 'liberalize' outwardly, anyway. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media A\u00a0recent episode\u00a0of the popular Arabic show\u00a0al-Sharia wa al-Haya\u00a0(Law and Life), which airs weekly on Al Jazeera and features renowned Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, addressed the important yet little known Muslim concept of\u00a0taysir\u00a0(pronounced \"tey-seer\").\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islams-predictability-apostasy-execution-and-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":2477,"position":5},"title":"Islam’s Predictability: Apostasy, Execution, and Lies","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch As one ponders the fate of Yousef Nadarkhani, the Iranian pastor on death row for refusing to renounce Christianity, it is well to reflect that, for all the talk that Islam is perpetually \"misunderstood,\" it is actually immensely predictable and consistent; not only do its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2479,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions\/2479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}