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Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
This is a long, complex piece on research into a Hadith. It covers controversy around the Hadith, the reality of age of marriage in that era, the use of historical-critical analysis as a general valid tool applicable to Islam and Christianity and those that say it's not, possible reasons for the Hadith having been fabricated, the "isnad-cum-matn analysis" technique, "tadlis" (a form of academic deception), the history of when that Hadith appeared, the use of rival lineages for Sunni and Shiites to claim religious authority, the honor attached to the time of entry into Muhammad's household, that the "Hadith" about Aisha is not really a Hadith because it's not attributed to Muhammad and the use of age to indicate symbolic importance (40 years for example).

For those that care, it's well worth reading. I wonder what @firedragon 's analysis of all of this is.

Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha

New scholarship suggests the story of Islam's prophet marrying a minor is baseless propaganda fabricated for political and sectarian motives

Author: Javad T. Hashmi Research Director at Muslim Public Affairs Council and a PhD candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University
 
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exchemist

Veteran Member
This is a long, complex piece on research into a Hadith. It covers controversy around the Hadith, the reality of age of marriage in that era, the use of historical-critical analysis as a general valid tool applicable to Islam and Christianity and those that say it's not, possible reasons for the Hadith having been fabricated, the "isnad-cum-matn analysis" technique, "tadlis" (a form of academic deception, the history of when that Hadith appeared, the use of rival lineages for Sunni and Shiites to claim religious authority, the honor attached to the time of entry into Muhammad's household, that the "Hadith" about Aisha is not really a Hadith because it's not attributed to Muhammad and the use of age to indicate symbolic importance (40 years for example).

For those that care, it's well worth reading. I wonder what @firedragon 's analysis of all of this is.

Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha

New scholarship suggests the story of Islam's prophet marrying a minor is baseless propaganda fabricated for political and sectarian motives

Author: Javad T. Hashmi Research Director at Muslim Public Affairs Council and a PhD candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University
The odd thing about this is that there is no mention of any research paper or the journal in which it was published. Looking on line I cannot find anything by Joshua Little. What I do find is a number of muslim websites quoting it.

I am now uneasy. Can anyone find a reference to an actual paper on this research?
 
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Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
New scholarship suggests the story of Islam's prophet marrying a minor is baseless propaganda fabricated for political and sectarian motives

The story is found in Sahih al-Bukhari, the most authoritative hadith book in Sunni tradition and the most widely used one in multiple Islamic countries.

Narrated 'Urwa:

The Prophet (ﷺ) wrote the (marriage contract) with `Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

Sahih al-Bukhari 5158 - Wedlock, Marriage (Nikaah) - كتاب النكاح - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)

Are the numerous Sunni scholars and believers who contend that Sahih al-Bukhari is entirely correct fabricating baseless propaganda for sectarian and political motives? Perhaps some are, but the most problematic aspect of the narrative about A'isha's age is that it is primarily sustained from within the Muslim world, not from outside it.

It seems to me that the only way for dogmatic and textual reform to occur in the Muslim world is for scholars to start acknowledging the root cause of the problematic teachings—that is, outdated and anachronistic texts—and seek to reform, reinterpret, or shelve them. A claim from a researcher at an illustrious British university that Ai'sha's stated age is just "baseless propaganda" doesn't even begin to address the problem and is more akin to ivory-tower intellectualism than effective, practical reform.

In my own country and other struggling Muslim-majority countries, I can bet that this study will have little to no effect as far as beliefs about A'isha's marriage go. Ivory towers are always far away from the ground and real-world occurrences.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
The story is found in Sahih al-Bukhari, the most authoritative hadith book in Sunni tradition and the most widely used one in multiple Islamic countries.



Sahih al-Bukhari 5158 - Wedlock, Marriage (Nikaah) - كتاب النكاح - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)

Are the numerous Sunni scholars and believers who contend that Sahih al-Bukhari is entirely correct fabricating baseless propaganda for sectarian and political motives? Perhaps some are, but the most problematic aspect of the narrative about A'isha's age is that it is primarily sustained from within the Muslim world, not from outside it.

It seems to me that the only way for dogmatic and textual reform to occur in the Muslim world is for scholars to start acknowledging the root cause of the problematic teachings—that is, outdated and anachronistic texts—and seek to reform, reinterpret, or shelve them. A claim from a researcher at an illustrious British university that Ai'sha's stated age is just "baseless propaganda" doesn't even begin to address the problem and is more akin to ivory-tower intellectualism than effective, practical reform.

In my own country and other struggling Muslim-majority countries, I can bet that this study will have little to no effect as far as beliefs about A'isha's marriage go. Ivory towers are always far away from the ground and real-world occurrences.
I sympathise with your sentiments, but scholarship is nonetheless valuable in questioning a previous consensus.

What bothers me at the moment is I can't find any reference to any of this scholarship. Is it real, or did someone make it up for propaganda purposes? Christopher Melchert is real, an American prof at Pembroke College, Oxford, but I cant trace this Joshua Little person, or his research.
 

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
I sympathise with your sentiments, but scholarship is nonetheless valuable in questioning a previous consensus.

What bothers me at the moment is I can't find any reference to any of this scholarship. Is it real, or did someone make it up for propaganda purposes? Christopher Melchert is real, an American prof at Pembroke College, Oxford, but I cant trace this Joshua Little person, or his research.

I wonder the same, now that you have mentioned it. It would be good for an Islamic researcher to question harmful traditions and narratives where it is safe to do so (e.g., in the UK), but how do we know that this is not itself a propaganda piece?
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
This is a long, complex piece on research into a Hadith. It covers controversy around the Hadith, the reality of age of marriage in that era, the use of historical-critical analysis as a general valid tool applicable to Islam and Christianity and those that say it's not, possible reasons for the Hadith having been fabricated, the "isnad-cum-matn analysis" technique, "tadlis" (a form of academic deception), the history of when that Hadith appeared, the use of rival lineages for Sunni and Shiites to claim religious authority, the honor attached to the time of entry into Muhammad's household, that the "Hadith" about Aisha is not really a Hadith because it's not attributed to Muhammad and the use of age to indicate symbolic importance (40 years for example).

For those that care, it's well worth reading. I wonder what @firedragon 's analysis of all of this is.

Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha

New scholarship suggests the story of Islam's prophet marrying a minor is baseless propaganda fabricated for political and sectarian motives

Author: Javad T. Hashmi Research Director at Muslim Public Affairs Council and a PhD candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University
Sounds like Muslim apologetics. The denial is deep when it comes to this subject.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I sympathise with your sentiments, but scholarship is nonetheless valuable in questioning a previous consensus.

What bothers me at the moment is I can't find any reference to any of this scholarship. Is it real, or did someone make it up for propaganda purposes? Christopher Melchert is real, an American prof at Pembroke College, Oxford, but I cant trace this Joshua Little person, or his research.
Yep. More is needed than Muslims denying it and non-Muslims affirming it. Some real scholarship would be nice.

Though history tells us that if thorough scholarship showed that it was likely to be true we would still see Muslims denying it. And if it went the other way we would still see many non-Muslims still making the claim.
 

Yerda

Veteran Member
What bothers me at the moment is I can't find any reference to any of this scholarship. Is it real, or did someone make it up for propaganda purposes? Christopher Melchert is real, an American prof at Pembroke College, Oxford, but I cant trace this Joshua Little person, or his research.
Quote from the article:

However, according to Little’s unpublished doctoral thesis — which he recently defended successfully — the charge is without foundation. According to Little’s findings, the report of Aisha’s young marital age is an eighth-century historical fabrication.

 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Quote from the article:

However, according to Little’s unpublished doctoral thesis — which he recently defended successfully — the charge is without foundation. According to Little’s findings, the report of Aisha’s young marital age is an eighth-century historical fabrication.
That raises the question of who did he defend it in front of? It will likely be published and then historians of the world can try to tear it apart.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Quote from the article:

However, according to Little’s unpublished doctoral thesis — which he recently defended successfully — the charge is without foundation. According to Little’s findings, the report of Aisha’s young marital age is an eighth-century historical fabrication.

Thanks. I was searching for something and you spotted it in the article.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
As far as some of the posts here go, it's clear that a number of people did not bother to read the article but just regurgitated their opinions. Not everyone, of course, but those that did say more about their biases than about the arguments in the OP.
 

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
As far as some of the posts here go, it's clear that a number of people did not bother to read the article but just regurgitated their opinions. Not everyone, of course, but those that did say more about their biases than about the arguments in the OP.

The article echoes one researcher's opinion, and that opinion doesn't address the complexity of the cultural and religious status quo in the majority of Muslim countries. It's counterproductive to dismiss disagreement with an analysis that is so disconnected from real affairs by labeling the disagreement as "regurgitating" an opinion.

Anyone can look up the majority of Islamic scholars' currently prevalent opinion on A'isha's age and read it for themselves, and the same goes for the texts about her in authoritative hadith books. To simply overlook all of these assertions about her age as "baseless propaganda" is simplistic at best and propagandistic at worst.
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
As far as some of the posts here go, it's clear that a number of people did not bother to read the article but just regurgitated their opinions. Not everyone, of course, but those that did say more about their biases than about the arguments in the OP.
I'll read it later. Some of us are at work.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Quote from the article:

However, according to Little’s unpublished doctoral thesis — which he recently defended successfully — the charge is without foundation. According to Little’s findings, the report of Aisha’s young marital age is an eighth-century historical fabrication.
Well done, I missed that. So that explains why there s no trace of it. Of course, what that means is nobody has had a chance to scrutinise it, apart from the examiners who evaluated the D Phil. I wonder, then, how these people got hold of it and started putting its findings into the public domain. It all seems highly unsatisfactory. Let's hope something eventually does get published. One for the prof perhaps.
 

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
If it's good scholarship I'm sure we'll see it at some stage.

More likely: if it's good scholarship but, due to favoring tradition and fearing backlash, scholars in Muslim-majority countries refuse to acknowledge or accept it, we may not see it have any effect unless or until they do.

This is exactly why Western liberals unfamiliar with the deeper nuances of the Muslim world's sociopolitical realities often don't have the tools to tackle or productively address the region's deep-rooted issues.
 

Yerda

Veteran Member
Well done, I missed that. So that explains why there s no trace of it. Of course, what that means is nobody has had a chance to scrutinise it, apart from the examiners who evaluated the D Phil. I wonder, then, how these people got hold of it and started putting its findings into the public domain. It all seems highly unsatisfactory. Let's hope something eventually does get published. One for the prof perhaps.
Where do history paper preprints get published? Is there a thing like arxiv for history?
 

loverofhumanity

We are all the leaves of one tree
Premium Member
This is a long, complex piece on research into a Hadith. It covers controversy around the Hadith, the reality of age of marriage in that era, the use of historical-critical analysis as a general valid tool applicable to Islam and Christianity and those that say it's not, possible reasons for the Hadith having been fabricated, the "isnad-cum-matn analysis" technique, "tadlis" (a form of academic deception), the history of when that Hadith appeared, the use of rival lineages for Sunni and Shiites to claim religious authority, the honor attached to the time of entry into Muhammad's household, that the "Hadith" about Aisha is not really a Hadith because it's not attributed to Muhammad and the use of age to indicate symbolic importance (40 years for example).

For those that care, it's well worth reading. I wonder what @firedragon 's analysis of all of this is.

Oxford Study Sheds Light on Muhammad’s ‘Underage’ Wife Aisha

New scholarship suggests the story of Islam's prophet marrying a minor is baseless propaganda fabricated for political and sectarian motives

Author: Javad T. Hashmi Research Director at Muslim Public Affairs Council and a PhD candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University

Very good post. I think it’s difficult for non believers to ever find an answer academically because they have no concept or knowledge of God or His Prophets so cannot ascertain the matter without bias and prejudice. To say that no God exists then claim one is academically objective is an impossibility as no human is without bias.

There is either a God or there is not. That is the real issue and atheists are the last ones to give a judgement on religious matters as their views are tainted and biased against the existence of God so I take their views on judging religion with a grain of salt.

The view of the Holy Quran is that Muhammad is an example to humanity. Also the Qur’án says that IT is the only true hadith and not any other, clearly stating it as the ultimate authority in Islam. So the case for any wrong done by Muhammad is refuted by the Quran itself no matter what accusations appeared later and now.

The only people who falsely accuse Muhammad are those biased against God, religion or Islam and some misguided believers who accept child marriage and pedophilia due to ignorant clergy. But no just and fair minded person would accept a baseless hadith over the authoritative Quran.
 
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