> Why Prophet married a young girl? One of typical attack at Islam

[IbnAbdulHakim]

MashaAllah Qatada's posts were beautiful.

Islamiclife akhee lol, some atheists/agnostics will raise their noses to your thoughts due to you starting off by mentioning consummation with new borns :| even though i understand your beautiful point.


Just to add to all the previous

If it was seen as barbaric or immoral then why would the qureysh, the idolators at the time of the prophet sallallahi alaihi wasallam silent on this issue? They would knit-pick each and every tiny little speck of flaw when it came to rasoolullah sallallahi alaihi wasallam but stay quiet about this? SubhanAllah they even attempted to make a scene in regards to mi'raj.

Strange thing is in these days muslims tend to have no problem with Mi'raj at all... but they have a problem with the marriage to Aisha?

How times have changed...

[Umm Sufyaan]

:wasalam:

Originally Posted by Acid

The first thing to understand about the marriage of Prophet Muhammad PBUH with Ayesha R.A is to understand that Ayesha R.A wasnt a kid , a 9year old kid of today . Mankind has evolved through time and changed its life style.

too true. Amr ibn al-'as, radiallahu anhu got married at 11 years. Should the marriage of Aesha to the prophet, sallalahu aleyhi wa sallam at her young age be a suprise, then?

also, a few weeks ago my mum was telling me that my grandma (Allah yarhamoha) was married at the age of 14! and i know of/have heard of people who grew up in the same generation that got married at the same age. It was something very normal.

even the kuffar used to get married at a young-ish age. perhaps early 20's but now alot of people would see 20 as too young. its more like late 20's early 30's. it just goes to show that that lifestyles/customs, etc do change.

As for the age gap, one only needs to look at the customs of the Arabs even in this day and age and they will see that it is something very normal for the husband to be much older than his wife. Im talking at least a decade.

[asma]

In that case , i have my aunt who is alive who got married at the age of 13. she had 3 children and now having her great grand children.

[Qatada]

asalam alaikum


remember guys, that the only thing we need to prove in a refutation is the case of Aa'isha. Since she was mature for marriage in all aspects - she was fit for it at that age, and that's why it occured.

Other people will be judged accordingly, and independently based on if they are physically, mentally and emotionally ready for it. If they're not fit for it, they don't need to get married, and if there will be harm - then that marriage may be annulled.

[q8sobieski]

Originally Posted by Acid

More then 1400 years back during the time of our Prophe PBUH a 9 years old girl was much more mature and advanced that a pampered 9 years old girl of today.

Absolutely preposterous! Biologically, people are no different today than they were 1400 years ago. 1400 years is not enough time for humans to "speciate" (form a new species). In fact, early-onset puberty is tied to good diet and health. The diet of people 1400 years ago was significantly worse than it is today! "Pampering" a girl is likely to bring on puberty sooner NOT later. A 9 y/o girl in 1H is the same as a 9 y/o in 1429H! Because of Mohammad and the hadith supporting this odious act; the practice of child marriages continues to this day!

[Umm Sufyaan]

Originally Posted by q8sobieski

Absolutely preposterous! Biologically, people are no different today than they were 1400 years ago. 1400 years is not enough time for humans to "speciate" (form a new species).

ahh but the thing is, we don't believe in evolution. So the argument is more or less dead here!
and for god sake, not everything that develops in an individual revolves around their biological makeup. environment is also a factor.

ask any doc! It is well known that girls in warmer parts of the world mature early than girls in other parts of the world!

In fact, early-onset puberty is tied to good diet and health. The diet of people 1400 years ago was significantly worse than it is today! "Pampering" a girl is likely to bring on puberty sooner NOT later.

who says pampering is exclusive to having a good diet! just because one has a basic diet it dosent mean he/she is deprived of the basic essentials. i mean really, people still did survive and live for a good few decades on a basic diet.

and oh just for your information:rolleyes:

but nutrition has little or no affect on an individual’s timings for pubertal development.

read the rest here

and

Girls are physically maturing earlier, some as young as age seven, and theories about the causes include diet, environmental factors and even societal pressures.

Source

A 9 y/o girl in 1H is the same as a 9 y/o in 1429H! Because of Mohammad and the hadith supporting this odious act; the practice of child marriages continues to this day!

just from a few links.

Are there sex and race differences in when puberty starts?
Yes, there are differences. The normal age range for puberty in girls is 9-16, while in boys it is 13-15. Precocious puberty is more common in girls than boys. In boys, it is much more likely to be caused by an underlying disease.

Source
and

Can occur over a broad range of time and differently for each sex: girls (age 7 to 13) boys (age 9 to 15).

Source

so you see a girl can reach puberty early, which means she ain't no child no more, please don't tell me you need that spelt out! so your whole argument that Our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon his soul) married a child goes down the gutter nice and good!

so dont have the nerve to insult Our prophet before you look at the common facts! with the word 'common' emphasized!

[Assad]

First of all you are speaking all without facts but anyways . So human today are the same as they were 1400 years ago?

Narration: Girls are becoming women younger and younger. In the 1830’s, the average age of a girls first menstruation was 17. Now, it’s 13. And that poses a problem.

Bruce Ellis, Psychologist: Well if you want to ask the question about why does early puberty matter, it really matters because when puberty gets very early it's no longer in synchronisation with brain development. They have a souped up car but they don't have the skills to drive it.

Narration: Scientists already know that most of the drop in the age of puberty is because of better nutrition. But now, they’re worried there’s something more going on. Could the breakdown of traditional families be pushing some girls into even earlier puberty? Jacinta knows how hard it is to face growing up when all her friends are still playing dolls. She’s 19 now, but she hit puberty at nine.

Jonica Newby, Reporter: That must have been strange.

Jacinta: Very. All my friends weren’t going through it and I thought ah. What’s wrong with me? And I didn’t have enough guts to tell my mum, and when I finally did, my mum’s like oh that’s normal bub. It’s alright, it’s alright it’s what happens, I’ve already had a talk to you, you know that’s what happens. And I’m like – but I don’t want to be an adult yet.

Narration: Until recently, this was put down to genetics or nutrition. But there’s growing evidence something in Jacinta’s childhood helped switch on puberty early. Part of that evidence has been collected here, in Christchurch New Zealand. Dr Bruce Ellis is a research psychologist from Canterbury University and he’s on his way to give a public talk about his findings.

Dr Bruce Ellis: What kind of people are in the audience? I think it’s a lot of dad’s and a lot of men.

Narration: He’s speaking to the Christchurch Men’s and Father’s network support group. And what he’s about to tell this mostly male audience is potentially dynamite.

Dr Bruce Ellis: Why are girls growing up faster? Is it the hormones, is it the fat, is it something in the water?

Narration: Astonishingly, Bruce has found one of the most important factors in determining early puberty is the father.

Dr Bruce Ellis: It was really the relationship with the fathers, not the mothers, that was predicting timing of puberty. There seems to be something special about the role of fathers in regulating daughters sexual development.

Narration: This startling claim comes out of long term studies of several hundred families in the US, and here in Christchurch. Natural fathers seem to protect against early puberty.

Dr Bruce Ellis: The more interaction, the more number of hours that fathers spent taking care of the daughter, the more close and warm those interactions were, the later the daughter was going through puberty. But if the relationship with the father was cold, or if the father was completely absent, puberty came early. And the most crucial time for this father effect to occur seems to be the first five years of a girls life. It’s a trend that rings true for Jacinta. Sadly, she never even got to meet her father.

Jonica Newby: Do you think you missed not having a proper dad?

Jacinta: Yeah – I see other girls with fathers and I wish that was me.

Narration: So how could father absence affect the rate of a girls maturity? Bruce suspects it’s not just the absence of the natural father that’s the issue. It’s the presence of other men in the home.

Dr Bruce Ellis: Our data suggests that the intervening mechanism might be the presence of stepfathers in the home. And we found it's not so much the amount of time that the father is absent, rather the amount of time that the girl is exposed to stepfathers that accounts for earlier puberty.

Narration: Bruce can’t be sure what’s going on here. But in the animal world, it’s known that exposure to strange males can bring on early puberty. And the way it happens is through pheromones – imperceptible chemical odours that many animals excrete.

Dr Bruce Ellis: So for instance if you take a female rat and you stick her in a cage where an unrelated adult male has been sleeping and that cage is saturated with the pheromones, she will tend to go through puberty more quickly than if she was just stuck in a cage that didn’t have the pheromones.

Narration: It is possible that undetectable pheremones from stepfathers are causing girls to develop early. But could there be another cause entirely? Could it be all about the stress created when a family breaks up? Here in Melbourne, another researcher is suggesting exactly that. Dr Julie Quinlivin works at the Royal Women’s hospital as an obstetrician and gynaecologist.

Jonica Newby: How many women do you see in a day.

Dr Julie Quinlivin: It varies from about 14 to 20 consultations per doctor in this clinic.

Narration: Last year, Julie ran a study by giving questionnaires to her pregnant clients. She found the most important factors in determining early puberty were divorce or family violence in the first five years of a girls life.

Jonica Newby: How much earlier did girls come into puberty if they had had all these stressful events?

Dr Julie Quinlivin: On average it was a year earlier. And if you look at a population level that's quite important.

Jonica: A whole year earlier…?

Dr Julie Quinlivin: A whole year earlier. So we’re looking at changes from 12 and a half years to 11 and a half years.

Narration: And Julie has her own theory about how stress could bring on early puberty. When we are stressed, we release a hormone called cortisol. And again, animal studies show cortisol early in life can speed up sexual maturity.

Dr Julie Quinlivin: We found that when baby sheep were exposed to higher levels of cortisol than usual, that they went through earlier puberty too.

Narration: But whether the cause be cortisol and childhood stress, or father absence and pheromones, both Julie and Bruce agree on one thing. They suspect that family breakdowns in the first five years of childhood, may be triggering a deep evolutionary mechanism - to bring on reproduction faster.

Dr Bruce Ellis: So what I think is happening is the girls are detecting and encoding something about their family environments, and that is effecting their subsequent sexual development.

Dr Julie Quinlivin: In that sense it is a survival mechanism because it means that you can mature and become independent faster. It means that you can then go along and reproduce yourself and your genes will survive. So in fact it makes good evolutionary sense that if times are hard you want to mature faster.

Narration: And there’s one other uncomfortable fact supporting the idea it’s all nature’s attempt to make girls from stressed or father absent environments reproduce earlier. Both Julie and Bruce have found early puberty is strongly correlated with teenage pregnancy. Jacinta, at the age of nineteen, is already the mother of two little daughters.

Jonica: They seem great your young girls.

Jacinta: Oh, they’re my angels. Perfectly behaved just about all the time.

Narration: With the girls going well, Jacinta plans on finishing her education at Plumpton High School next year. According to Bruce Ellis’s most recent findings, the odds were stacked against her making it through school without a pregnancy.

Dr Bruce Ellis: The earlier the father leaves, the greater the daughter’s risk for both early sexual activity and teen pregnancy. So for example, in NZ the risk of teen pregnancy goes from one in thirty girls who grow up with their fathers present to one in four among girls who grow with their fathers absent from an early age.

Narration: It’s early days in this research. But if they’re right, and family breakdowns are causing early puberty, with all the consequences, it’s a confronting message given the rate of family breakdown now.

Dr Julie Quinlivin: I think at the end of the day we're saying that children need a warm, loving and secure environment, and that's a good message. And we know this in our hearts, and this research is just showing that yes it is important. That we're actually affecting the brains of our children to the extent that they're growing up earlier and faster.

[Assad]

Not to forget , Environmental factors and Global warmings are all concerns of today and yet hiillariously you say that there are no changed over time in humans.

[q8sobieski]

Originally Posted by Acid

Not to forget , Environmental factors and Global warmings are all concerns of today and yet hiillariously you say that there are no changed over time in humans.

Human societies and lifestyles change. But there has been no biological change in humans genetically in the last 1400 years. In fact, there has been no change in humans going back 40,000 years. The fossil record is clear on this.

I like how the two responses above, one from Acid and one from Um Sufyan both contradict each other and make my point. Umm Sufuyan claimed: "It is well known that girls in warmer parts of the world mature early than girls in other parts of the world!" If this were true, English girls who are raised in Queensland AUS or Nairobi ought to reach puberty sooner than English girls raised in London. But there is simply no evidence to support this. Furthermore, Hijazi Arab girls raised in Geneva would have their puberty retarded. Nobody has ever reported this. Umm Sufuyan's claim just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Acid's article states at the beginning; "In the 1830?s, the average age of a girls first menstruation was 17. Now, it?s 13." If this is true, it would be hard to make the claim that somebody 1400 years ago would have been menstruating EVEN younger than 13. And the article even claims; "Scientists already know that most of the drop in the age of puberty is because of better nutrition." Acid's article directly contradicts Umm Sufuyan's comments. Thanks for making my job easier.


Furthermore, Acid's article goes on to make some interesting claims;

"The more interaction, the more number of hours that fathers spent taking care of the daughter, the more close and warm those interactions were, the later the daughter was going through puberty. But if the relationship with the father was cold, or if the father was completely absent, puberty came early."


This is a fascinating thesis. I would like to see more studies on this. I would like to see it done with a larger population and controlled for more variables with both stepfathers and fathers who adopted their daughters at birth. However, Acid, you do realize that this article has make Islam very vulnerable to a serious charge:

If early-onset female puberty is caused be traumatic relations with a girl's father. And, if Aisha started puberty very early (age 9 -- far before the average). Then it stands to reason that Aisha may have had a highly traumatic relationship with either Mohammad or Abu Bakr or both.

[salman]

Originally Posted by q8sobieski

Human societies and lifestyles change. But there has been no biological change in humans genetically in the last 1400 years. In fact, there has been no change in humans going back 40,000 years. The fossil record is clear on this.

what are you smoking? What is your evidence for this? Have you ever read the theory of evolution? Every second, we keep evolving according to the theory of evolution. In order for you theory to work, changes in the species have to occur over period of time. How do you explain evolution in our intelligence and immune system?

As far concerning the age of puberty issue, brother Qatada posted an article about a girl who gave birth at nine years of age. If your theory is correct, how do you explain that? Also, read this wiki article which says: "The first physical sign of puberty in females is usually a firm, tender lump under the center of the areola(e) of one or both breasts, occurring on average at about 10.5 years of age...The first menstrual bleeding is referred to as menarche, and typically occurs about 2 years after thelarche. The average age of menarche in American girls is about 11.75 years."
Puberty

EDIT: Here is another one for you, happy reading:

Could my daughter be starting puberty early?

She could be. On average, girls start puberty between the ages of 9 and 14, but some will start to develop breasts or pubic hair by age 8, and a small number will start to mature before age 7. The technical term for this is precocious puberty..."Kids who start puberty at 7 or 8 are usually heavier and at the higher end of the growth chart," says Francine Kaufman, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
Early Puberty in Girls

It seems you're the only expert who thinks and knows that age of 9 is too early when 7, 8, or 9 are very common. If you want someone to explain to you what does "average" mean, let us know!

'Aisha (May Allah be pleased with her) herself said that she had reached the age of puberty and and in another narration she said that she had physically matured. [Sources: Sahih Bukhari, Sunan At-Trimdhi and Al- Bidayah wa-Nihayah)

You know sometime it is better to act wisely and not let your hatred become better of you; otherwise, you end up digging your own grave.