Aisha (RA) – Mother of the Believers #5 – The Age of Aisha
Date:
Channel: Fatima Barkatulla
Series: Fatima Barkatulla – Aisha (RA)
File Size: 42.91MB
Related
- Yasir Qadhi – Seerah – 70 The Battle Of Khaybar Part 2
- Zakir Naik – Reply to the Critics of Islam Who Say Qur’an Mentions that Where ever you Find a Khaafir
- Hatem al-Haj – Prevention and Treatment of Depression 1
- The Deen Show – God Sent me Back – Scary Near Death Experience #855
- Mufti Menk – Tough times, difficulty and the Prophetic Path
- Abdulbary Yahya – Art Of Dawah Makkah Period Part 5
- Said Rageah – One Life To Live
AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers discuss the age of Asia at the time of marriage and the birth of a woman in modern times. They emphasize the importance of privacy in marriage and the need for a more nuanced approach to learning. They also discuss the dynamic of abuse and the importance of age in shaping behavior. The speakers emphasize the need for a more nuanced approach to learning and encourage parents to provide support for young children.AI Generated Transcript ©
Barbuto Billahi min ash shaytani r rajim Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam?
dear sisters, please let me know in the chat. If you can all see me and hear me.
Okay.
I'll be sure honey. So today we are certainly somebody who looked at me lissoni of Coca Cola.
So while we're waiting for more and more sisters to join, I thought I'd share two other books with you
about that, that would be good resources that you could use for anyone who's interested in researching about eye shadow the man have.
I mean, in English, that is, you know, because obviously, there are fewer books in English about a shot at the Atlanta. But to hear here's one of them is one of the ones that you can find in the shops.
This one, it's a translation from Turkish I believe tokara books.
It says www dot tokara books.com that's TU gh era books.com. And it's I show the wife, the companion the scholar
is a nice overview of her life and aspects of her scholarship. I think
the only shortcoming I would say is that you can tell that it's a translation, you know, it's not really as fluent as it would be if it had been written in originally in English, I think
the other book that's a very good resource for researching the life of a Chateau de Landa is this one.
This isn't the original cover of it, but
the original cover is like, I don't know where it is of someone took it off. So but this is basically the salon. It's the biography of Abu Bakr Siddiq, but because it's very detailed,
and it's actually very nicely translated, I would say,
it has a lot of detail that you can learn a lot about, I challenge Elena from as well, because, obviously, you know, she was his daughter, so.
So those are two, two books that I wanted to suggest to you guys
have the Hila the video for lesson four is now up on YouTube. So if you have missed any sessions, you know, from one to four, you're welcome to go either on the other one, our website, on our YouTube channel or my own YouTube channel, and you're welcome to, you know, catch up with those classes.
What would be great is if any of you do sisters,
if you have the time and ability and inclination
to go and in the comments section of my YouTube channel, if any of you could like provide timestamps, so just go through one of the lectures. And at various points, wherever the topics, check topic changes, you could just provide timestamps that will be really useful, and that would really help us as well and help other students who later on go on there and you know, look up the classes, they will know they'll be able to navigate the classes better
in Charla that would be
a great thing for one of you to be able to do.
So.
I'm going to give you the choice today.
Okay, I'm gonna let you vote. I don't know if I can do a poll on this. On this.
Can I do a poll? I
have an idea.
Okay, I'll just do a kind of a
an inaccurate survey. Okay.
I wanted to ask you, today we could in session five, we could either
really do a deep dive into the age of it shall have the land her, you know, the controversy, so called controversy of the age of Asia at the time of our marriage, and we could talk about, you know, how we can talk we can talk about that topic. how, you know,
orientalist and people who wanted to criticize Islam have brought that up and then how we as Muslims can explain it.
view it. So either we can go really deep into that, or at least go through some of the main points. Regarding that topic. I know that for some
brothers and sisters, it is a topic that bothers them. So, you know, we can either go through that, or we can just carry on with the hegira of the Prophet sallallahu wasallam, and the hedger of Asia. And then we can look at the age of Ayesha in a bit more detail later on when in Medina when she begins to live with the Prophet sallallahu wasallam. So I'm going to let you guys decide, okay, somebody says hold are possible on zoom.
Well, I wish I knew how I wish I knew how to conduct polls on zoom.
Unfortunately, I don't. So I'm just going to ask you, okay, so, if you would like to go through the,
you know, some of the main points regarding the age of Asia
at the time of marriage, and, you know, you can put number one in the chat, okay.
And if you prefer that we just carry on and we go on to the edge of a show, you can write number two.
And I'm just going to count I know, it's not very scientific or mathematical, but
inshallah, next time, by Next time, I'll figure out how to do that.
Because, you know, to some people, that topic of the debate is, like, really tired topic, you know, like, you know, doesn't bother them, doesn't really, it's not something they really want to dwell on. But for others, I know, that is something that
you know, they'd like more clarification or clarity on so
we could get it out of the way. today. Okay. Let's see. I'm just going to count up now. Okay.
Okay, what how many people have said number 212345677? People say, option two, which is carry on with the hedger
and 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 1516 1718. And say number one, okay. I think it's kind of clear from that very unscientific
survey that I just did that. People would like, more clarity on the age of eyeshadow. delana right. So
Hadith in Sahih, Al Bukhari and Muslim. Okay, I should have been on her herself says, okay, she says that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam married me when I was six years old, and consummated the marriage when I was nine years old. And in this Hadith, it says that she lived with him for nine years. So she was married to him and living with him for nine years. Which means that when he passed away, she was 18, right? She's about 18 years old. And it's a Muslim.
Okay, I should have the learner says, The Messenger of Allah married, married me when I was six years old, and consummated the marriage. And I was nine years old, and passed away when I was 18 years old. Okay. So we can see from the like, the most authentic sources of Islam, okay, after the Quran that
that I showed her the land her herself tells us the age that she was when she got married, and the age that she was when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam passed away. So this issue of the age of atisha was actually a non issue. Okay. I would say it was a complete non issue.
From the time from throughout history, you know, it's not really been something that has ever really been brought up. Even at the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right? When the enemies of Islam would try to think of everything they could, right they tried to think of everything they could to, to basically
to basically discredit him.
They never considered talking about the age of Asia, and the law.
They called him a liar. They called him a poet. They called him a soothsayer.
They tried to cast aspersions on all different aspects of his life.
But this was not something that was an issue. And in fact, throughout 1400 years, it has not been an issue. It's very much a modern day issue, you know, and something that orientalists and I would say, you know, Islamic Studies scholars in the West, so Western Islamic Studies scholars have brought up, and then some so called Muslim or Islamic feminists have brought up, and really, of course, islamophobes, right, it's not our folks love this one as well. So, anytime they want to attack the person or the Prophet sallallahu wasallam, they will bring up the age of Asia, and they will, they will mention disgusting or terrible terms to describe the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. But,
you know, so Pamela,
I would argue that this these types of accusations and these types of labelings, that that modern day islamophobes use against the Prophet sallallahu Sallam actually says more about their own culture than it says about Islam, or about the Prophet sallallahu wasallam and his culture.
And I'll explain how in a moment, inshallah. So
the fact that I started the land, I was nine years old, when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam,
you know, the guy living with her. And even before that, the fact that she was six, when they made the nigga, last week, we talked about the, you know, the actual nigga. And we said that, you know, having a nigga
in many ways was similar to a betrothal, you know, which is basically like an agreement that, you know, this person is married to this person on paper.
And it didn't mean that the child was going to go and live with, you know, the spouse at all. And I took mentioned some other things, like, for example, that, you know, marrying young is something that was quite common throughout the world, even we were talking about the European royal families, we were talking about India, Pakistan, and you know, our own grandparents, right, marrying very young. So the idea of getting married, like making a contract to get married, I really don't see that that's a very controversial thing.
Now, we want to differentiate between what happened in history and what we would say is a good thing to happen now, right? Because it could be argued, and this is very much related to Orff, or whatever the customs and norms of people are, could be argued that in modern times, due to various factors, you know, child marriage is not at all, something that we want to do, we want to encourage, and countries can make laws, you know, that prohibits that, if they believe that that's for the best, best betterment of the community and of people, right. And in modern times, there pretty much is, especially in the West, there is pretty much a consensus that, you know, child marriage is not a
desirable thing. Right. So if that's the case, then it's actually okay for a country for a ruler for a government to say, okay, in modern times, we don't believe that, that this, we believe this should be the age of consent, this should be the age when somebody can get married. Okay. So, when we're discussing this topic, we're not making an argument for what should and shouldn't happen in modern day times, right? Just want to make that very clear. What we're doing is we're trying to contextualize What happened then. Right? And there is this phenomenon called presenteeism, right? Which is where
people will take the standards, the norms, the modern day kind of
lens, okay? And it's often a Western lens. And they will judge the entirety of history based on that modern day lens, right? And presenteeism is really unfair. If you think about it, it's a really unfair way of looking at the world. Because you're literally applying the context of one time, to the context of another place and time, right. And as we said, getting married young or making the actual contract for Mary Jones is a normal thing.
You know, throughout history, actually, in pre modern times. We can say that, that was due to various reasons. Let's talk about some of those reasons. Okay, let's compare modern times to pre modern times.
You know, the concept of childhood, let's just look at the concept of childhood, for example, right?
In modern times, children are considered to be innocent, they're considered to be, you know, to need to be shielded from the world.
Childhood is very much extended, right? So we keep children in school and in a state of, I would say, childhood, for as long as possible, right, literally for as long as possible.
And because they spend their years in school, and not in the sort of the, out there in the big wide world working, etc.
Childhood has been extended, right? And it wasn't like that in history. If you look at, in his throughout history, the concept of childhood was different to what it is today. Okay, once a child hit puberty,
and that could be somebody who in modern times we call a child, right? So for example, nowadays, it's not, it's not abnormal for a girl to pick up to hit puberty at 11, right? Even in the West, right?
Those we call children today. In those days, once you hit puberty, you would get married, you could have children of your own. And as soon as you as soon as possible, you would go to work, you know, you'd work and you try to earn a living, right? That was just the norm. And we can see that even in in our communities back in the Indian subcontinent, those of us who are from there,
that our children, as soon as they're sort of seen as they're kind of a little bit what we call a horse yard, right? It's like, they've got a bit of sense.
Their parents are like, letting them take care of the shop, right? They're taking care of other kids. This, this is like adults are like little adults, right?
So
childhood and how long the period of childhood lost has varied over time and place we can say, right?
at different times, there have been different societal expectations, cultures, living conditions, environments, and levels of literacy, as well have shaped how we relate to and understand the notion of childhood.
And, you know, many of the scholars, they say that I shot a deal on her when she reached the age of nine, she had reached the age of puberty, and it's not
any kind of like a
it's not a strange thing, that girls who come from hotter climates, climates, we live in hotter climates. And also in the past, puberty used to be a lot earlier, especially for girls. Okay, and we know that this is something that is quite flexible, you know, even in the Sharia, when a woman doesn't have a fixed period length, right? There are instances where she has to revert to whatever the norm is in her own family. So there's this idea, there's this understanding that the norm of the length of any menstrual cycle, and also the onset of puberty is very much linked to genetics very much linked to a person's climate, the place where they live and the norm of their community. Right.
So that's another aspect.
We said last time as well, that, you know, puberty what happens at puberty, literally, Oh, girl begins to ovulate. Right? That's literally what happens. And because that that egg is not fertilized, what happens?
You know, she has a period and the egg, the ovum and the menstrual blood come out, right. That's literally what a period is. Which means that puberty is actually the most kind of, you could say, the most unnatural marker of a girl's
becoming an adult, a girl becoming an adult, she can literally have a baby now, right? Now, whether we think a girl is ready for that or not, at the particular age that she's at the particular psychology, that she has particular culture, you know, that that can vary, right?
family or country or people can make that decisions. And no, we don't think girls are ready at this kind of age, right? We don't think it's desirable even right. But when we go back in history,
So Pamela, you know, there were various reasons why, as soon as you would hit puberty, it was like, let's make the most of it. You know, like, literally, and one of the reasons for that was people died really young people died really young. If you think about it in our times, right?
The average age, what is the average age?
Do you have it written down somewhere? The average age today? What is it? You can write in the chat?
How old is how old are the really elderly people in your family?
What At what age did your grandparents or great grandparents passed away?
Somebody says 75.
Right.
60 to 70. Yeah, that's what the prophet SAW someone said, right.
So 70 Plus, it says the average global age for life expectancy today is 70 Plus, okay. At that time, okay. The average life expectancy, right, in that time at that time is known as a period of time called late and late antiquity, right?
It was 35 and a half to 37 and a half for women.
Just think about that for a moment, right? Like, I'm older than that now. Right? So Pamela, you know, meaning that if you knew that your life, and the people around you that average life is around 40 years, right? Or 35 years?
How would that change the way that you view life? Would you now be trying to elongate childhood as long as possible? You know, I think we we think about that, right? And it makes complete sense. It makes complete sense. If you literally have life,
we would have childhood. Like seriously, we would be like though, as soon as you're old enough, get on your way, because you know, the average person is not gonna live that long. Right?
So, in those days, people really didn't think of it as though you know, ah, you know, life is long life is. So Pamela, we mentioned in one of the early courses that, you know, they used to give their children names that were kind of like, omens that they were gonna live, because literally, the child mortality rate was so high, right? The infant mortality rate was so high, that
being just living beyond childhood was like, wow, you know, you're lucky Mashallah, right.
So you see, this is why it's so unhealthy and helpful to look at people in history and at different times and at different places, through your privileged or your modern or your Western lens. You know, it's just literally unfair to do that.
So people's lifespans were shorter. Okay.
And children mature biologically and physically at a faster rate than today. And that's probably because they were encouraged to mature quickly, right? I mean, children were literally shepherds of that time, the boys, right, the girls would have just been getting on with life and helping their mothers as soon as possible. Going out in the fields, helping out and then getting married, right, is like the most natural thing to do as soon as you're able to, as soon as you're, you've reached puberty, why would you delay marriage? What would stop you from delaying marriage?
So that's, that's one of the aspects I want to highlight.
So we can conclude, from those few points that
historically, in most societies and time periods, childhood ended, and adulthood began at puberty. puberty might not be a marker of adulthood in modern societies, right. But biologically, it is. It is the marker of physical maturity, and islamically. We know in Islamic law, for example, a person becomes violent, right? We have different stages of maturity in Islam. So the age of seven is considered the age when a child becomes able to distinguish you call it the age of 10 years, right? A child can distinguish between right and wrong. They can distinguish between basic things. And so at the age of seven, there's certain things that we introduce aren't there like the profits or loss
and I'm told us to come on and tell our children to pray from the age
have seven, whether they do it or not, it doesn't matter. But the point is we are told to start telling them to pray. At the age of seven, child becomes a little bit more conscious, they're supposed to not just walk in on their parents, for example, they're supposed to be more careful. They have to, you know, knock at the door, when they come in, we should stop getting them to get changed separately. Okay, at least by the age of seven. Then we have Bulu, which is the age which is puberty, which in Islam and in Islamic law is adulthood, right? When does Salah become obligatory? puberty, when does fasting become obligatory? When does even pangs occur? If you've got the money?
When does it become obligatory? It's puberty. So puberty was the
most natural and most sensible marker of adulthood.
We also find that
in the late and took antiquity period, that the younger a woman got married, the more likely she was to have children, right? And more children and children who actually lived. Right? Think about it. It's not funny, actually, I shouldn't chuckle about it, right? It's like literally Subhanallah imagine you, you know that in an in one lifetime, you're probably going to be able to have X amount of children, and a number of them are going to die. And that's literally what happened to Khadija delana. Right? Many of her children passed away.
And the children that she had left, the girls
were the ones who lived. Right. So Pamela, so before that, she had two sons, and then she had even another son, and they were had all passed away. So that's another important point, or an important thing for us to bear in mind.
But in modern times, having many children isn't necessarily a sought after thing, right.
And so there's no kind of cultural imperative to get married young, and to have lots of children. Remember, in those times, your children were your human resources, right? Literally, if you had a nice family full of boys and girls, and especially boys, which is the way they viewed it, and that time, that means you had like a little army. Okay, and I'm not joking, like Subhanallah, having sons meant that you had strong male figures in your family that were very, that would protect your family, right? I will protect your clan.
And having children in general meant it was they consider children to be like wealth. You know, I'm not just talking about the Arabs, I'm saying people in general, in that time in history, considered that to be the norm, right.
And, of course, in modern times, we don't have that the cultural and legal age of marriage is affected by the value of culture places on reproduction. And we can conclude that, right? That is one of the
key things to bear in mind, as well, when we're looking at history and when we're looking at the ages and things.
So, again, even in modern times, there's a lot of difference of opinion about what the age of consent should be, right? in America. Every state is different. There are states where 12 years old is considered okay. Right.
With parental consent.
But you know, others argue that, you know, being more mature is better, and that children of that age are not mature enough. Okay. So, as we said, if a community agrees on that, that's fine. They can.
But we can't say that even in modern times that there's some kind of consensus about age, there isn't, really isn't. It varies. And we we all know that even though the age of consent in the UK, for example, is 16.
We all remember back in school, that girls were having relations, which is completely different than marriage. They were literally living with or having sexual relations with men
from when they were 1314.
And some of them even younger, right? And that's not even in the safe and secure context of marriage. So there is a lot of hypocrisy there, you know, where, in the West
a blind eye is turned to young people having relations sometimes it will
would be teenage girls with very much older men, right?
And that's not marriage. So there's no security there. And teachers are literally encouraged, not discouraging them, they were literally giving them
telling them how they could get the pill, for example, right. And that was the norm. And that was kind of, okay. Okay, because you know, you shouldn't judge people, right.
And yet, and yet, something that is pure, which is marriage of some of somebody young is frowned upon, right? And the two are not the same, the two are not the same. Because with marriage comes security, which comes responsibility, right?
There's a marriage is not a relationship.
That is kind of, it's not meant to be a relationship, that is a relationship of inequality, right? The man is literally taking care of the rights of the woman, and the woman is taking care of the rights of the man.
So this is what I meant by often in the West, when this topic comes up, it actually says a lot more about Western society than it does about any other society, right? Because in the western context, when they think of
a child, right, or even a young girl, being with a man, they're often thinking of it being outside of marriage, being in an abusive relationship, or being in a situation where the man is exploiting those goals, right? And because that is so seared into the consciousness of the West, okay, through the news, through media, through, you know, we've all experienced and heard all the terrible stories, right? In recent years have been coming up, because that is so seared into our psyches, they then project that image of a young person being married to being with an older person, they try to project that onto the marriage of the profits of the Law Center, which is completely the
opposite, which is completely the opposite. So this is what I meant by it says a lot more about their culture, and what has become the norm in our culture in the West, okay. Our as in Western culture,
than it does about the culture of the Arabs or the prophet SAW salon and his marriages, right.
So, the legal age of marriage, the average age of the first marriage, and the age of first sexual experience will vary between the ages of 11 to the early 30s. In modern day Western society, there is no clear moral Foundation, or legal or cultural opinion, to dictate At what age one should get married, or engaged in sexual intercourse, there really isn't.
Okay, we can say that the definition of a child changes over time due to biology, environment, education, society, and life expectancy. All of these things are important considerations, right?
So let's look at our shadow dilemma in particular, right. So Pamela, I shall not be alone, her her dynamic with the Prophet sallallahu wasallam was not a dynamic of abuse.
panelo was the opposite, right?
I showed a deal on her.
She obviously, matured
quickly, right.
One of our teachers, I remember when we were studying this, he said, you know, in those times, they would, when a girl was going to get married, they would feed her and make sure that she was like, taken care of physically, you know, and that she grew strong. And then when they felt when she'd reached puberty, and they felt that she was physically able, right, to basically get married and live with her husband, then they would allow that they weren't so stuck on numbers, you know, you know, in those times they didn't. People often didn't know when they were born. They didn't know about, you know, there wasn't this obsession with bureaucracy, right? But you have to know your age
and you have to put your you have to put your birthday in every time you do something, right. It wasn't like that. In fact, I don't know if my dad would would like me to say this, but I don't think my dad knows when he was born. You know? Like, I literally think when he came to the UK, he made up his birthday.
Because he told us that he literally made up his birthday and put it in his passport. Right? Because
They in India in the 50 years or whenever my dad was born, they did not record. It wasn't like a big thing to record your birthdate in the village. You know, we can, I don't know if any of you can identify with this, let me know in the chat.
You know,
hope that doesn't put my dad into any problems. But anyway, literally he had to make up a date, right? You have to make up his his birthday. So this idea that, you know, people were like sitting there counting when they're going to become a certain age. I'm sorry, that's like a very modern, very Western or developed country thing. You know, like,
literally, they would have looked at a child. Even my mom said this to me, you know, she said, in India, they just look at a girl and they say, Oh, she's growing, she's getting big now we should get married.
Or they look at a boy and they're like,
Mashallah, you know, starting to grow whiskers, right? We need to get married. So it's not really something they think about, like in terms of age, you know, it's not this obsession with age and numbers and how many times the earth has gone round the sun since you were born, right, which is literally what ages right? That wasn't the marker of adulthood. For them, right?
It was literally you look at a person, you look at your child. And I think my child is ready. I think my child is ready for marriage, right?
So we see that I showed her the line how she did develop very quickly and she was very mature, when she got married.
Also, she was very self confident.
She spoke her mind, she was assertive, right? In fact, there was an incident later on, you will go into this,
about how the wives of the Prophet SAW Selim sometimes raise their voices to the Prophet salaallah. Salam, right. And, you know, word got out, but especially on my Rolando, when he heard about this, he really went and told his daughter off, you know it, is it true that you and the other wives, you raise your voices to rasulillah you know, and abubaker once you really got angry with Aisha, you know, because she would raise her voice to the prophet SAW Selim and, and he heard her. And he came in, and he was about to like, strike her right? Because Danny, how does she How does she right? And
what you get from all that hadith of Arusha dilemma is that she was not a wallflower. This is not a person who's being abused in any, by any stretch of the imagination at all, you know, in fact, she was so happy to be married to the sort of loss of loss alone. All her hobbies are a hadith of pride. she's proud that she was the wife of Rasulullah sallallahu sallam, she is proud that from a young age, she was chosen for this right? That he had a dream about her.
And that she, she had that special place in his heart. She was proud of that, right? So the dynamic here is not a negative power dynamic, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, at one point, the Prophet sallallahu Sallam even offered and allowed his wife to choose whether they wanted to continue being married to him or not. Because the life that he was going to lead with them was going to be a tough life, right? He was going to purposefully lead a life that was frugal, that was not he didn't choose the dunya, he would, even though he had access to wealth, he on purpose wanted to live a life that was going to be very simple, right. And some of the wives found that difficult. So He
even gave out he had the choice to leave if she wanted, right. And he said he would give them a lot of money, he would give them gift, a gift, if they chose to leave. He would give them a gift, a special gift, and he would allow them very graciously to leave. And we will go into that later. But I'm mentioning it here now because I'm trying to show you that. So Pamela, is this a dynamic of abuse? No, rather, because
this abuse has become the reality of abuse is that because it's become so normal, right in our headlines in the West in Western society, where marriage has been completely, you know, decimated, right.
And the value of
you know, women have been become commoditized. And the way women are portrayed has cheapen them, right? Because this is the reality of that type of age, gap or that kind of, you know, the dynamic of abuse in the West. They project that onto
What is pure, which is marriage, which is our profits, our solemn merit being married to a shadow delana, which was not at all, a dynamic of abuse. I took it as a very strong girl. She had a strong voice. She would challenge the injustice in society. She used to tell the Sahaba off, you know, she said, Tell men off. In fact, sometimes she would even challenge something that the prophet SAW Selim said, she would say is it isn't it this, you know, she, she was like, very vocal, she's not a victim by any stretch of the imagination, right?
And she loved Rasulullah sallallahu wasallam. She loved him. She loved him, she loved him. Right. So those are just some of the points that we can highlight. She was one of the most prolific scholars of her time, men and women would gather around her to learn religion, poetry, medicine and ancestry. Right.
The prophets, Allah solemn, never hit a woman. He never raised his hand against a woman. Okay.
And definitely not Ayesha.
He loved Ayesha.
And he really, you know, he said disparaging words against those who, who hit women or who are violent towards women. Okay. So there is no dynamic of abuse there at all.
So really, simply put, I shut it down. I was old enough. She was old enough. Right. If, by the way, if you would like to get further information about this, okay, there's a wonderful infographic you can find, in short, a lot of us the iluminar team to send the link. Okay. But it's actually on the yaqeen Institute website. If you type in age of Ayesha infographic, I think it will come up. And it's a very nice infographic that really kind of puts the whole thing into context, you know, somebody who's having issues with this topic, you know, you can, you can show them that, right, and you can look at it for your own research.
So, in summary, the enemies of Islam they use the age of Ayesha,
you know, unfairly as if it's some kind of blemish on the character of Rasul Allah Azza wa sallam.
We should not be shy to say, no, yes, she was young. That was the norm at that time, it was a norm in Europe as well, you know, there's no problem with it at that time. It doesn't mean that in modern times, if we, if there's consensus amongst people, or in a community or in a society that, you know, child marriage is not desirable is harmful, doesn't mean that in modern times, we want to import that, right.
But looking at things through this present through presentism, which is this lens of God, applying modern day and Western and developed countries,
views on morality, and using that to back project and look at history. It's really unfair, it's an unfair way of looking at history. And often it is very much a Western lens. I'm going to mention a little thing to you that I want you to think about that one of our teachers from Bangladesh, he said to us, look,
even Annie, so Pamela even in modern times, societies are so different. It's very difficult to project your norms onto other people, you know, we should be very wary when we do that. So he was telling us about this area in Bangladesh, there's this railway station, right? where literally parents are so poor, they drop off their daughters onto this railway station and abandon them little goals, okay.
And he said, what happens? every type of evil man and abusive person
is able to come to that railway station and just pick up any girl he wants an abuser, right.
And the reason why they drop their daughters off there, and they just leave them there. They abandoned them, they literally abandoned them, right? Is because of poverty. Because of lack of demand, whatever you want to call it, you know, the realities of you know, their lifestyle or feeling hopeless, not knowing what to do. They literally abandoned
daughters, right little girls onto that railway station. And our teacher was asking us a simple question.
He was saying, Is that better? Is it better in a context where somebody is so poor, that they're
considering abandoning their daughter on a railway station, where every type of abusive person can come and exploit them? Is it better that they do that? Or is it better that there is some way in society for them, for example, to marry their daughter off on Pay pay? In other words, make a contract? So that there is somebody out there who is married to that girl, and inshallah, in a few years, she'll be able to?
She'll be provided for she will be looked after by that husband? What is preferable?
I'm not going to answer that question for you. But it's something that really makes us think, you know, sometimes we in the West in our luxurious, privileged existence, right, we project, what we consider to be normal, because we haven't really tasted poverty. Seriously, we haven't tasted the hardships that many people in the world have.
And we don't see the economic and, you know, other effects of some of these wonderful pronouncements we make, right?
If we ban any kind of child marriage, all throughout the world, unless we create,
you know, the means for poor people to be able to continue living, and for them for their needs to be met. And for there not to be other side effects of that banning. We can't say that we're doing something amazing and great.
I hope that what I've explained, go some way to kind of contextualizing all of this, I know that we're coming close to the end of the session,
but I wanted to share that with you. And for the last 10 minutes of the session, inshallah, I will answer questions. And if there are any comments that you want to make regarding this topic, please do. I'm
going to go through the chat.
One of the sisters says, also worth noting before 1929 Church of England ministers could marry a 12 year old in Britain, in Massachusetts today, the minimum common law marriageable age for girl is age 12. Exactly.
And many of my aunts and my parents don't know their real birth dates. Exactly.
Did they not record it at the hospital? hospital? Do you think people have their babies in hospital in the village? Nope.
No, it's probably a home birth.
Probably delivered by an auntie or something.
I believe my mom isn't exactly sure of her day either. See, we're all we're all admitting it now. So coming out.
Yeah. People saying that their mom's birth dates are not recorded. Exactly. Because it's not. If you're in a village, and there's no need for it to be recorded. Why would you record it? You know, it's a nice day. But it's not. It's not something that you think, you know, is absolutely essential, unless it's legally made essential, right. As you mentioned in the last session, she was even engaged to jubair Exactly. That's how normal it was. Right? That's how normal it was to be vitro that and to be to have your nica that she was already any supposed to marry to bear.
All the siblings of my mom and that birth, have their birthdays put those July the first sorry.
Laughing just think it's really funny that
the old generation kind of just made up their birthdays. My grandfather put the same date when they went for
this hilarious and they all chose the same date. Keep it simple.
Salam aleikum SR is not gonna hand for your talk. There's a book produced by IPC I arguing that it was not six at the time of Nikkor. But 16.
As they say, there are different opinions with regards to when she was born before he July as well as the evidence is, have you heard of this perspective? And if so, what do you think of it?
Yeah, I have heard of this perspective. And when you read those papers, unfortunately, you can see that people do like mental gymnastics in order to justify this age, and why are they trying to justify or try and create her age as being the age of 16 or 18.
magically, it happens to be the same age that the West considers to be the right
aged for concern, right? So in other words, what is our motivation in doing so? Is it honest scholarship? Or is it in order to fit to what the West would like?
Yani what would be acceptable to Western eyes. That's the question we have to ask, right? Why is it they never bothered anyone before. It never bothered anyone until Western Islamic Studies. Any orientalist, right? started questioning it, or islamophobes started questioning it. Why didn't it bother anyone before that? And why didn't they try and justify her ages being 16 or 18? Before that, right? We have to ask ourselves that. The fact is that the most authentic sources of Islam,
and it should have been on his own words, tell us what her age was. Okay. And we have no reason to doubt those. And when you actually add up all the different ages, so the age of a smart, you know, in that from that had the youth and various ages and things, you find that it all actually makes sense. And it all fits. It all fits in, you know, with the historical dates. So
those are just some of the reasons I mean, unless you're going to try and discredit Bukhari and Muslim, right? Because this is literally from Bihari and Muslim.
So I think it brings up more problems than it sold, you know, when people try to do this kind of, you know, revisionist history, you know,
and it's unnecessary. Like I said, perhaps this question is too early, but her age may be argued as very important in that children are better at remembering and memory. Yes. And we actually mentioned this last time that one of the reasons why
the prophet SAW Selim had multiple wives as well is that there'll be more people to narrate the information about his private life, right.
But yeah, especially Arusha, being so young, having such an amazing memory. You know, it meant that she was able to live on beyond his life, and teach. And another whole generation of people could get to know about the hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu Sallam from his wife, right?
According to unchained that last done, all of that is the youngest girls to marry in 2000 to 2010 with three Tennessee 10 year old girls who married men aged 2425 31, respectively. The youngest boy to marry was an 11 year old who married. Yeah.
Yeah, so these things are happening in the West. And
by the way, I'm not trying to justify child marriage in modern times. Right? What I'm saying is we need to have a much more nuanced approach, you know, and not just act like arrogant Westerners, you know, you just look at other societies and think, you know, oh, the natives, you know, the terrible natives, the terrible savages of the Eastern world, you know, we must teach them how to live, right? every society has its own economic issues, Economic Perspectives, social cultural, baggage and issues. And, you know, so panela Who are we, you know, who are we to now project
our norms onto those societies, right.
apologetic use of I should be in her late teens don't settle well with my fifth right after knowing this idea. Exactly.
consent of marriage is important, is more important than age in Islam. Yes, exactly. Consent is essential. Yes, I told them I was given the choice and she chose to be Allah Subhana Allah. Yes.
She was the largest female narrator of a hadith and there was a hikma in being married to him indeed.
Sister writes, it came to me as a shock when my coworker Bangladeshi in boots, the chemist told me that her family didn't remember her birthday, so they adopted her cousin's date. And she was born around that time. lol Yes. lol, indeed. All the all the personal hobbies related by Ayesha
being married at the age related by I should say that, yeah, that she was married at that age. It's important in viewing his life. If I didn't get married at that age, we would not know as much about some
indeed.
Yeah, so I remember once I was in a class with a chef hate them and had that and he was saying
During this quiz, right? And he said, you know, okay, what would you say? If somebody asked you about the age of eight and said,
Your prophet married a girl who was nine years old.
And he was encouraging us, because we started, you know, using all this logic and trying to like, appeal, you know, show the hikma and all that. And he said, the first thing you should do is say, Yes, he did.
And you should be confident and say that,
you know, don't be embarrassed.
It's not something to be embarrassed about.
You know, just because a person has such short term, any a short term lens and can't, can't see past his own culture and his own norms. We don't have to bend over backwards, to make our Dean pleasing to them. Right? You state the facts. And then yes, we can explain some of the Hickman as well behind it. But I want us to start to move away from this constant like, you know, feeling of being apologetic. Now, those of us who come whose parents come from other countries, right?
We should know better. We've seen a different cultural norm, right.
So I think we need to be more mature, we need to help people who have only viewed the world through one lens, to actually start to appreciate that, you know, there are other ways of looking at things. Other people have different realities, different priorities to their lives. You know, that story I told you about the Bangladeshi railway station, when I first heard that I was so upset and shocked, you know, that kind of thing happens. That kind of thing happens.
Right? And
if someone were to say to me, what is better, that we give parents in a very poor area, or very poor country who are who are literally choosing between abandoning their daughters,
right, and death? Right?
We could give them a choice and say, Look, why don't you? Why don't you consider marriage? You know, why don't we create a system where your daughters can be betrothed, they can have a marriage contract. So there's somebody waiting, who is going to be providing for that girl? Or even that person might start providing for that girl from now? Right?
If that becomes, okay, that could actually help that situation. Right.
You know, I'm not saying that that is necessarily the only solution. But I'm saying it is a solution. It could be a solution, right?
Sister saying
if someone was betrayed really young, are they intelligent enough to give consent? Yeah. So how it used to work is that
adults could conduct a nikka. Right? They could conduct the nigga
have children? Okay. And again, I'm not saying that that's something that we should do. Right? Not saying that, you know, in modern times in, in a lot of Muslim countries as well, there is an agreement that, you know, the minimum age should be x, y, Zed, whatever it is, I'm not sure. But it's in different countries is different.
So, we should respect those rules, because that's now the new normal, right? That's become the norm. Well, that's kind of like a consensus that people have come to, right. But I'm saying the way it used to work is
that a child's marriage was contracted. So the contract was drawn up, an agreement was drawn up. But when the child reach the age of puberty, the child could accept or refuse. And that's something in the books, you can find. You know, so the child has the choice, when they become mature enough, whether they want to accept that and then live with that person, the only consummate the marriage, or to break that contract. Right.
So that's how they would get the consent. When the Prophet gave his wives that choice, what kind of difficulties was that due to? Financial emotional physical, does it so they aren't associated with him anymore? Okay. So the story of the choice that the prophet SAW Selim gave, we're going to go into in a lot of detail in in the Medina and period, right. And what caused that what happened? We'll go into that in Charlotte. So please bear with us.
So in sha Allah, it's eight o'clock, and I want to respect your time.
And so inshallah, next time hamdulillah we've got the age of it sure, out of the way, I say out of the way, because it's kind of one of those things that in modern times, kind of like we have to talk about because people want to talk about it. But for me, you know, I find it much more interesting, just really exploring the life, you know, I shall not so inshallah, next time, we will continue doing that and continue with the huge amount of eyeshadow on hair, the birth of a beloved bear. Why was the birth of the Libyans were so amazing? Why was it something that caused the Muslims to cheer and to chant Allahu Akbar.
And he was, you know, her nephew grew up in her house, right? So inshallah we'll go through all of that here drive her arrival in Medina and what happened when she arrived in Medina and I will also share with you some photographs and imagery of I showed up around her house when she arrived in Medina. inshallah, with that, I will bid you farewell mail last month Allah bless all of you. Please share the link for this class with your friends and family and do go on to our various our respective YouTube channels and have a look at the class the classes from before
and if anyone can provide timestamps that would be great, because I come up here and salaam aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa barakato subhanak Allahumma eyeshadow La ilaha illa Anta stuff you got to be like