> Muslim Response (E-book): Refuting the Islamaphobe's Claim that Prophet Muhammad was a Pedophile

[Jaysh]

As-Salam Alaykum,

This is a very thorough e-book refuting the allegation that Prophet Muhammad [s] was a pedophile (God forbid). The first half is offensive and focuses on how Judaism/Christianity/Hinduism/etc all allow women to be married at a very early age, and gives many examples in history.

The second half is defensive and deals with the Islamic position.

Please spread this book and put it up on as many websites as you can. No copyright. Spread, spread, spread!!!

Fi Aman Allah

[Raied]

JazakAllah Khair bro! This is a very important topic which needs to explained. The Non-Muslims do not understand the wisdom behind it. Thanks once again

[Jaysh]

After you read it, please let me know what you think insha-Allah.

[Assad]

Mashallah!

Although I havent read all of the book but the points made in this are very comprehensive and to the point , refuting the lie in all its possibilities!

Jazak Allah for sharing

[Qatada]

asalaam alaikum


its a really nice book bro, jazak Allah khayr. :) if only someone could upload it onto a site in text format without it needing to be on pdf for easy copy and paste access.


I'm trying to do that now.

http://www.islamic-life.com/forums/q...-pdf-1584.html

[Qatada]

:


We'll try posting it up chapter by chapter in non pdf format so its easy to copy and paste from.

[Qatada]

:

The Islamaphobe’s Glass House

Hashimi

Disclaimer __________________________________________________ ___________ 4

Introduction __________________________________________________ __________ 5

The Glass House __________________________________________________ ____ 6

Age of Marriage Under Jewish Law _________________________________________ 7

Age of Marriage Under Christian Law ______________________________________ 13

Historical Age of Marriage in Western Countries _____________________________ 22

Age of Marriage During Biblical Times ___________________________________ 23

Age of Marriage in Rome ______________________________________________ 25

Age of Marriage in Greece _____________________________________________ 28

Age of Marriage in Christian Europe _____________________________________ 29

Revered Christian Figures ________________________________________________ 30

Christian Saints __________________________________________________ ____ 31

Christian Kings, Royals, and Nobles _____________________________________ 33

Jewish and Christian Prophets__________________________________________ _ 36

Historical Age of Marriage in Non-Western Countries _________________________ 41

Age of Marriage in Egypt ______________________________________________ 42

Age of Marriage in India _______________________________________________ 43

Age of Marriage in Russia _____________________________________________ 44

Age of Marriage in China ______________________________________________ 45

Age of Marriage in Mongolia ___________________________________________ 46

Age of Marriage in Australia ___________________________________________ 47

Age of Marriage amongst Native Americans _______________________________ 49

Age of Marriage in Africa ______________________________________________ 52

Age of Marriage Under Hindu Law ________________________________________ 55

Age of Puberty __________________________________________________ ______ 59

Range of Puberty __________________________________________________ ___ 60

Range of Puberty Varies With Location ___________________________________ 62

Age of Sexual Maturity in Ancient Arabia _________________________________ 66

Age of Marriage Under Islamic Law _______________________________________ 67

Marriage of Immature Girls in Islam _____________________________________ 68

Consummation of Marriage ____________________________________________ 83

2




The Islamaphobe’s Glass House

Hashimi

Puberty __________________________________________________ __________ 86

Was Aisha Pre- or Post-Pubertal? ________________________________________ 95

Aisha’s Dolls __________________________________________________ ______ 98

Aisha’s Dolls: Round Two! ___________________________________________ 100

Did the Prophet’s Disciple View Aisha as Immature? _______________________ 112

Who Decides When a Girl is Mature? ___________________________________ 115

Father Cannot Oppress Daughter _______________________________________ 120

Forced Marriages are Forbidden (Haram)

_________________________________ 121

Average Age of Marriage in the Post-Industrial World ________________________ 126

Pedophilia __________________________________________________ _________ 129

Prophet Muhammad’s Marriage to Aisha ___________________________________ 132

A Socio-Political Marriage ____________________________________________ 133

Noblewomen Married Early ___________________________________________ 137

Nothing Much Ado __________________________________________________ 138

Conclusion

__________________________________________________ _________ 140

3

[Qatada]

asalaam alaikum


if anyone wants to help out, they can from here;

Internet Archive: Details: The Islamophobe's Glass House: Refuting the Claim that Prophet Muhammad was a Pedophile


its in rich text format so its easy to simply copy and paste without having to change the format [like had to be done with pdfs]. its a simple copy and paste job.

also, if you want to search through the book on this page, you can look at the page number from the contents - then click CTRL and F - then type the page number or keyword your looking for [i.e. hindu, or jewish] etc. based on what example from history you need as evidence.

[Qatada]

Age of Marriag e Under Jewish Law

7

The Jewish website, says:

The minimum age for marriage under Jewish law is 13 for boys, 12 for girls; however, the kiddushin [betrothal] can take place before that, and often did inmedieval times.

(JewFaq.org,http://www.jewfaq.org/marriage.htm)



The age of twelve approximates the commencement of puberty. According to JewishLaw, marriage at this age is not just allowed, but rather it is actively and fathers are advised to quickly wed their pubescent daughters. We read:

One passage that would echo long and loud for Ashkenazic Jews throughout the Middle Ages held that a man who marries off his sons and daughters near the period of puberty (samukh le-firkan) will receive the scriptural blessing: “you shall know that your tent is in peace” (Job 5:24), 101 evidently understood to mean that if one’s children were married, they would not succumb to sexualtemptation” (Biale, 1997:p49-50)[95]

(G.U.S.: A World Reference Atlas, http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/MIDDLEEASTOLD.HTM)


So Jewish Law allows men to marry twelve year olds, whom today would be considered “child brides”. But th e plot thickens! Even the age limit of twelve is not absolute.

Rather, twelve years old is merely the age at which a girl can decide to getmarried. Before that, however, her father can have her married off, without herpermission.



We read from the website of the to the United Nations:

According to Jewish religious law ( ), which in Israel confers validity on the marriage of Jews conducted within its borders, it is possible to marry a young girl of any age, but the girl h erself may decide to marry only when she has reached the age of 12 and a half.

(U.N. rep resentative, http://www.right-to-education.org/content/age/israel.html)



The authoritative Jewish website, says:

by Rabbi Naftali Silberberg

…In ancient (and not so ancient) times however, marriage was often-timescelebrated at a rather young age. Although we do not follow this dictum, technically speaking, a girl may be betrothed the moment she is born, and married at the age of three. [Shulchan Aruch, Even HaEzer 37:1.] A boy may betroth and marry at the age of thirteen. [Shulchan Aruch, Even HaEzer 43:1]

(AskMoses.com,http://www.askmoses.com/article.html?h=573&o=2488)


The Talmud recommen ds that a daughter be given in marriage at around the age oftwelve (i.e. the commencement of puberty), but Jewish fathers were historically allowed to marry their daughters off even before that age. Surprisingly, th e wife could be as young as three years old. According to Jewish Law, such marriages were officiallysealed by the man having sex with the baby. We read:

In the ancient world, Jewish law seemed to require an act of intercourse for abetrothal to be recognised. The Mishnah said:

"A girl three years old and one day may be betrothed by intercourse […]"

(Mishnah, Nid. V. 4). Maimonides

(A. D. 1180) states: "If she is three years and one day old she may be betrothed byan act of intercourse, with the consent of her father. If she is less than that, and her father has her betrothed b y an act of intercourse, sh e is not betrothed"

([1972:p18][78]). Edwardes (1967a:p168)[79]: "The early-marriage tradition of

Israel found acceptance in Christendom, whose precocious children bedded and wedded at or even before puberty

...

At the time of St. Paul, girls were married at puberty or a little before.

(G.U.S.: A World Reference Atlas,

http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/MIDDLEEASTOLD.HTM)

Although twelve was set as the age, Jewish fathers were marrying their
daughters off well before that. We read:

Although the Talmud recommended that a daughter be given in mar riage when, between the ages of twelve and twelve and a half, a father could marry heroff well before that time…16th century Jewish history reveals a prevalence of girl "child" marriage, many of whom were between 12 and 14 years of age (Lamdan,1996)[86]

The early marriage age may be attributed to several factors: an attempt to preventthe temptation of sexual relations before marriage; the effort to arrange the bestpossible match both socially and economically; the insecurity of diaspora Jews during the age of expulsions from Spain and Ottoman expansion, movingthem to establish ties that would assure the children 's financial future; and thedesire to raise a new generation of Jews as quickly as possible to assure thecontinuity of their people.

(G.U.S.: A World Reference Atlas, http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/MIDDLEEASTOLD.HTM)



According to many Jewish scholars, a girl should be married off as soon as she hitspuberty and no later. The says:

The first positive commandment of the Bible, according to rabbinic interpretation(Maimonides, "Min yan ha-Mi wot," 212), is that concerning the propagation of the human species (Gen. i. 28). It is thus considered the duty of every Israelite to...


[page 10]


...marry as early in life as possible. Some urge that children should marry as soon as they reach the age of puberty.

(Jewish Encyclopedia,http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=M&artid=216)

In the journal entitled , we find that Jews were still marr ying at the age
of puberty up until World War I:

In earlier days, girls got married at the age of nine…[following the] custom of marrying daughters at age eight to ten…if the maiden does not get marrieduntil the age of fifteen she has no hope of marriage, because she would beconsidered an old maid…At the end of the nineteenth century, despite theseregulations, families still married their daughters at the age of twelve andthirteen…On the eve of World War I, the situation changed somewhat for thebetter when the legal age for marriage was raised to fifteen.

(Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal,

http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/journal/vol3n2/sehayek.html



Jewish girls “got married at the age of nine”, a practice which continued up until “the eve of World War I”. Why then are the Jews criticizing Prophet Muhammad (peace be uponhim) for marr ying Aisha (peace be upon her) at the age of nine? Is this not hypocrisy? Isthis not a case of living in a glass house and throwing stones? Why is it that Christian
adversaries condemn Muslims but say nothing at all to their Jewish counterparts?

To conclude, we close with the words of Mark E. Pietrzyk:

According to the Talmud, the recommended age for marriage is sometime after twelve for females, and thirteen for males. Marriage below these ages was generally frowned upon. However, a father was allowed to betroth his daughter to another man at an earlier age, and sexual intercourse was regarded as a valid...

[page 11]



...means of sealing a betrothal. The age limit for betrothal through sexual intercourse was shockingly low. According to the Talmud, “A girl of the age ofthree years and one day may be betrothed b y intercourse.”

(Mark E. Pietrzyk, http://www.internationalorder.org/scandal_response.html)

[page 12]

[Qatada]

:


Age of Marriage Under Christian Law


We have shown how the Jewish Encyclopedia says that under Jewish Law girls can marry at the age of twelve or even younger than that; let us now see what the Catholic Encyclopedia says of Christian laws with regards to marriage.


The Catholic Encyclopedia says:

The marriageable age is fourteen full years in males and twelve full years in
females, under penalty of nullity (unless natural puberty supplies the want of years [i.e. if puberty occurs before the age of twelve])… The canonical age holds in England, Spain, Portugal, Greece (Ionian Isles excepted, where it is sixteen and fourteen), and as regards Catholics even in Austria. While in some parts of the United States the canonical marriage age of fourteen and twelve still prevails, in others it has been enlarged by statutes.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Canonical Age)

Elsewhere, the Catholic Encyclopedia says:

By the common law, the age at which minors were capable of marrying, known as the age of consent, was fixed at fourteen years for males and twelve years for females. Marriages under the age of seven years for both were void, but between seven and the age of consent [14 for males, 12 for females] the parties could contract an imperfect marriage, which was voidable but not necessarily void.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Civil Marriage)

Although twelve was the general guideline, Christian fathers were allowed to marry their daughters off even before that. We read:

Medieval Christianity continued to maintain the age of twelve as a minimal age for females to enter into marriage. However, even this low age limit was not absolute. Using natural law logic, Catholic authorities argued that the decisive factor which determined a child's readiness for marriage and sexual relations was the onset of puberty, and not necessarily age as such.

According to one Catholic scholar, “If it could be satisfactorily proved that puberty . . . was actually attained by the boy before the completion of his fourteenth year, or by the girl before the completion of her twelfth year, then . . . the party could enter upon a valid marriage.” [1]

(Mark E. Pietrzyk, http://www.internationalorder.or/scandal_response.html)


Similar to Jewish Law, Christian Law differentiated between the minimum age of marriage and the absolute minimum age of marriage. Twelve years old was the minimum age of marriage, called the age of consent; in other words, a girl had to be twelve years old before should could arrange her own marriage. But the absolute minimum age of marriage was in fact seven years of age, during which time her father could arrange her marriage without her permission. In the Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, we read:



Age of Consent: A Historical Overview

Age of Consent throughout history has usually coincided with the age of
puberty although at sometimes it has been as early as seven…The Roman
tradition served as the base for Christian Europe as well as the Christian Church itself which generally, essentially based upon biological development, set it at 12 or 14 but continued to set the absolute minimum at seven. In the past century there has been a tendency to raise the age of consent but the reasons for the change have not always been clear and the issue has been further complicated by the reluctance of many contemporary historians to recognize what the actual age of consent in the past has been. This failure has distorted the importance of biology on age of consent in the past.

(Age of Consent: A Historical Overview,
http://www.haworthpress.comstoreArti...XH16E3FKBF7Q9P
3MKLPC82LUJNKC41U5&ID=87429)

[1] O'Dea, 1-3; Rush, 30-3





Saint Thomas Aquinas, considered by Catholics to be the greatest theologian of all time, wrote in The Summa Theologica:

If the parties are betrothed by another person [i.e. the father] before they reach the age of puberty, either of them or both can demur; wherefore in that case the betrothal does not take effect, so that neither does any affinity result therefrom.

Hence a betrothal made between certain persons by some other takes effect, in so far as those between whom the betrothal is arranged do not demur when they reach the proper age, whence they are understood to consent to what others have done.

(The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
SUMMA THEOLOGICA: Matrimony with regard to the betrothal (Supplementum, Q. 43))

In other words, pre-pubertal marriages arranged by the father are recognized by the Church. Once the girl reaches puberty, she has the option of nullifying the marriage. However, there is a big catch to this: if the man has sex with the pre-pubertal girl, then she can no longer nullify the marriage. Catholic popes argued that even if marriage took place before twelve years of age and before puberty, then such a marriage would still be binding by the law. We read:

Sexual intercourse which took place before marital age limits or puberty was not necessarily illicit or sinful. On the contrary, some popes ruled that intercourse below the age of twelve/fourteen had the effect of sealing a marriage contract, as long as such intercourse took place after the age of discretion, which was seven.[2]

Once intercourse had taken place, the marriage could not be annulled.
(Mark E. Pietrzyk, http://www.internationalorder.or/scandal_response.html)

This is a very important point, and shatters the glass house that the Christians live in. The popes—who, due to the backing of the Holy Ghost, are considered infallible when they issue such religious edicts—ruled that a girl could be married off after the age of...


[2] Rush, 32-34.




...seven, before the age of consent. In other words, she could be married against her will.

If the husband had sex with her (even against her will), then this sealed the marriage and the girl could not annul the marriage. In the twelfth century, Pope Alexander III ruled:

If a girl of tender age is betrothed and delivered to her husband, and afterwards desires to marry a different man, her petition is not to be granted if her husband swears that he has had carnal knowledge of her even at the early age of eleven or twelve. [3]


The Christian scholars ruled that even if a seven year old girl had sex before reaching the age of puberty, the fact that she had sex proves that she was mature enough to be married.

In other words, the minimum criteria to marry a girl is that a man can have sex with her. When a man wants to marry a young girl, all he has to do is marry her and then have sex with her. In a very circular logic, the sex he had with her will validate his marriage and prevent an annulment. Christian Law therefore dictates that it does not matter how young a girl is, or whether or not she has attained the age of puberty; all that truly matters is that her husband can penetrate her and have sex. Once he does this, nobody can oppose or annul the marriage.


C. Yandell writes in “Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France”:

In canon law, puberty normally determines marriageable age, although the
minimum age for marriage is seven years, "the age of reason", when a child is deemed capable of consent. The lawyer Estienne Pasquier notes that the Digest compiled by Justinian specifies fourteen years for men, twelve for women, but, he adds, if one is capable of carnal cohabitation before this age, marriage is permitted.

(Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France, by Cathy Yandell
p.37, Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in ... - Google Book Search)


[3] Quoted in John Fulton, The Laws of Marriage (New York: E. and J.B. Young, 1883), 112.


We read further:

Thus even for very young partners, the act of intercourse bound the two of them together for life. As one Catholic scholar has written, “carnal relations between the parties seemed to indicate sufficient maturity and made up for the defect of years.” [4] Sexual intercourse below the age of discretion (seven) was not a crime, but merely “invalid,” and thus, inconsequential, as under Jewish law. [5]

Parents arranged marriages for their pre-pubescent children during the Middle Ages for a variety of dynastic, economic, and cultural reasons. [6] Such marriages were usually consummated at the age of twelve. Although physicians warned of the dangers of impregnating very young girls and implored husbands to wait until the wife reached the age of at least fourteen, such warnings usually went unheeded, and the Catholic Church continued to bless marital bonds with twelveyear-old girls. [7]

Although technically the consent of the child was necessary for a marriage to take place, the child was usually not in a position to challenge his or her parents and resist an unwanted union. This led to a number of abuses which went unchallenged by the Church. In 1526, the Dutch scholar Erasmus complained, “It is no uncommon case, especially in France, for a girl of scarce ten years to be married and a mother next year. . . . It seems portentous, and yet we sometimes see it, especially in Britain and Italy, that a tender child is married to a septuagenarian [i.e. a man in his seventies]. . . . Yet Church laws do not rescind such nuptials” [8]



[4] O'Dea, 8.
[5] For an example, see Charles Edward Smith, Papal Enforcement of Some Medieval Marriage Laws (Port
Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1940), 142-44.
[6] V.H.H. Green, Medieval Civilization in Western Europe (London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1971), 184-85
[7] William J. Fielding, Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage (New York: The New Home Library,
1942), 166-68.
[8] Quoted in G.G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (New York: MacMillan, 1944), 639.




In later centuries, some Christian commentators would denounce sexual relations with young girls as being equivalent to rape. In the sixteenth century, canonist Egidio Bossi argued for this interpretation on the grounds that a child could hardly be considered as being in a position to give consent. However, he recommended that the age of consent be fixed at only six or seven years of age. [9]

At the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, there was some discussion among the Church leadership about possibly raising the age for marriage.

Cardinal Charles De Guise of Lorraine, France, advocated raising the age of
marriage for women to twenty and for men to twenty-five. The bishop of Cordia, Spain, argued for the ages of twenty for women and twenty-two for men.

However, the majority of those on the Council were opposed to raising the age for marriage on the grounds that adolescents would be tempted to commit fornication unless they were permitted to marry. The conservatives prevailed: the age limit remained at twelve for females and fourteen for males. [10]

(Mark E. Pietrzyk, Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse)


In a paper published at a symposium on Byzantine Studies, we read:
Baptism, usually at birth, was the fundamental rite of incorporation into the body of Christ and the Church…Betrothal, sometimes as early as the age of five, marked another stage in the child’s social incorporation.
(Byzantine Studies: 2006 Spring Symposium,
http://www.doaks.org/byz_2006_symposium_abstracts.html )



[9] “Rape and Marriage in the Medieval Canon Law,” in James A. Brundage, ed., Sex, Law and Marriage
in the Middle Ages (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1993), 67.
[10] O'Dea, 4-6




Aisha (peace be upon her) was around the age of puberty when she married. Christians criticize the Prophet’s marriage to her on the grounds that she was too young. Yet, Christian Law not only allowed girls to marry at the age of puberty, but rather it was encouraged by the Church to marry at this young age. In an article entitled “The Practice and Theory of Marriage in Roman North Africa”, we read:

Other canons require that lectors, upon reaching puberty, should either marry or take vows of celibacy.

(The Practice and Theory of Marriage in Roman North Africa,
Practice and Theory of Marriage)

In the article entitled “Marriage: Laws and Customs”, we read:
Legal Age for Marriage Roman law gave the minimum age for marriage as that of puberty which was 14 for boys and 12 for girls; these remained the legal age for marriage until the late 19th Century in Britain…There is however evidence that child marriages were reasonably common in North West England in the 16th century…

(Marriage: Laws and Customs, http://www.isle-ofman.
com/manxnotebook/famhist/genealgy/marr.htm)

In an article entitled “Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe”, we read:

Ordinary people who chose not to devote their lives to ascetic observances were often advised that their best defense against the ever present urge to copulate was to marry early. For this reason, St. Chrysostom warned parents to see to it that their children married soon after they reached the age of puberty.

(Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe,
Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe by James Brundage)



When girls neared the approximate age of puberty, they were considered marriage material. These pre-pubescent and pubescent girls were routinely married off to men who were the same age as their grandfathers. We read:
Christian canon law followed Roman law in setting the minimum age of marriage at twelve for females and fourteen for males. The logic behind these marital age limits was that these were the approximate ages of puberty for both genders, indicating readiness for procreation. In ancient Rome, among both pagans and Christians, marriage at an early age was frequent. Betrothals often occurred even before puberty, although the consummation of marriage through intercourse usually did not take place until after the girl’s first menstruation. Very often, the age of discrepancy of marriage partners was great. According to one historian, “the matching of a man with a woman young enough to be his daughter or even granddaughter was generally accepted.” [11]

(Mark E. Pietrzyk, Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse)



[11] Treggiari, 102; John C. O'Dea, The Matrimonial Impediment of Nonage (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1944), 1.