At 11/24/07 09:39 PM, Proteas wrote:
At 11/24/07 08:53 PM, seventy-one wrote:
it was a culmination of many other events that culminated itself in this form.
Like what, for example?
A percieved Western Imperialism, and a percieved attack on Islam from the West. First you have the mass protests where the pictures were drawn originally, Denmark where the majority of Muslims have had a hard time economically and socially. Islam isn't a recognized religion in Denmark, the Danish government hasn't approved the building of any mosque, at the time of the cartoons there was no Muslim cemetery in Denmark, so dead Danish Muslims had to be flown out of the country to get a proper Muslim burial (that's changed now), and a percieved anti-Islam party has risen to high power in Denmark (the Danish People's Party).
Similar stuff across the rest of Europe, coupled with a centuries old conflict between Christian Europe and Islam, made it a powder keg.
With regards to the Middle East, I think that area's pretty obvious to explain. Also, we shouldn't forget about the Akkari-Laban Dossier which certainly had a factor in the response of the locals.
Now, I'm not justifying any of the actions taken. I was and still am a Muslim who not only condemned the cartoons but also the violent response to them. I'm just merely trying to explain the response.
Are we? The Que'ran specifically states that Mohamed and Aisha consummated their marriage when Aisha was 9 years old, that was pointed out on the first page of this topic. Unless there is some weird Islamic tradition for consummating a marriage that doesn't involve penetrative sex that we don't know about, you're going to have an uphill struggle with this one.
We need to cover a couple of things first.
First, the age of Aisha has always been a matter of controversy in Islamic study. Estimates range from the 9 the topic starter presented, to as high as 20. Here are a couple arguments to the notion that Aisha was 9 when the marriage was consumated, mainly dealing with both the validity of the Hadith that said she was 9, and logical reasoning using her age in relation to historical events to determine her age of marriage.
Now with regards to consummation itself, I honestly don't know what the custom was for Muhammad's tribe involving marriage. And as there is no exact way of marriage in Islam, there aren't any modern precedents we can go by. Also, to consummate a marriage as we know could be very different in the Middle East, in Arabic, in the 7th Century. Since you and I both aren't scholars of the sort, I won't make an argument as to what that exactly means (for all we know the custom may have been sacrificing an animal). I also don't know Arabic so I don't know if the translator translated the word to fit what we know as consumating (the original Arabic text could have explicitly said sexual intercourse) or if he just translated the word "consumated" exactly. Most editions of the Hadith have the translators footnotes after every one, so I'll look that up and look more into that specific point later.
As far as my reasoning to why I think they didn't have sex, the only undisputed part about Aisha's age is that she had reached puberty at the time of her marriage. Now, as we both agree that they bore no children together, the circumstancial evidence would indicate that Muhammad never had sex with her (as I assume that weren't any reliable condoms back then). Also, I've yet to come across a specific Hadith that said explicitly that she had sexual relations with Muhammad.
As I've said before, the marriage was not out of lust but out of politics.
