Mustafa Umar – The Prophet Muhammads Marriages Clarifying the Confusion
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Alright. Alright.
So welcome to our program,
about the prophets'
marriages.
There's an s missing here.
It's what happens when you make the presentation
quickly.
But,
this is gonna be the program. We're gonna
try to get through,
all of a little bit about all of
the wives of the prophet, peace be upon
him. So normally, this should take about
a good 4 hours to do justice
to a presentation like this.
But inshallah, we're gonna try to make it
within about an hour and have some time
for q and a. So just so you
know, this is something that if you don't
know me, I tend to do often is
try and cram as much as we possibly
can. So this topic is not gonna be
any exception to the rule.
So when it comes to the prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him,
you know, some people will question his character
because of his marriages.
And, this is something that is quite common,
today, in today's society in particular.
And usually they do that because they don't
understand the context.
And what context means is the surrounding
environment,
the circumstances
in which the marriages took place, the circumstance
in which Arabian culture was at the time,
and the reasons for the marriages,
or who were these women actually. Most people
who make this criticism couldn't even name, you
know, even a few of his wives.
So it means that when you don't have
a lot of knowledge, you also don't have
a proper context.
So ignorance
is part of the problem when it comes
to understanding
the marriages of the messenger of Allah, peace
and blessings be upon him. So the cure
for ignorance
is to have knowledge. So the more we
know about the marriages and the more we
know about the woman, the more knowledge we
have, and therefore, the more context we will
have to understand things properly.
Now
there are also some objective
or more objective historians today,
who don't criticize the marriages of the prophet
because they understand the context. Even though they're
not Muslim,
even though they're contemporary scholars who are living
in today's day and age, those are people
who still
would object to
that type of practice happening in their own
society,
but they understand
the context of the prophet Muhammad. So some
of those scholars would be like Montgomery Watt,
who wrote a book on the life of
the prophet in 1956,
Karen Armstrong, who's a scholar, I think, in
the UK at Oxford or or Cambridge,
professor John Esposito,
all of them, they understood, and they say
very clearly in their books that most of
the marriages of the prophet, if not all,
they were for sociopolitical
reasons, and they were not just done out
of lust, like people make a claim
that supposedly that was the reason.
So
the prophet married about
12 or 13 women. So I like to
say I like to say he married a
dozen women because a dozen is a nice
term because there's a regular dozen and then
there's the baker's dozen. Right? So the word
dozen works very well, and I'm gonna explain
why there's a discrepancy in one number.
2 of them died during his lifetime.
So at one point of, one point in
time, he had maybe 9 or potentially 10
at a time.
But what's really interesting to understand is that
before the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
got married for the first time,
understand what his character was. Nobody was questioning
his character. So before even his first marriage,
he got married at the age of 25.
He was not the type of person who
went and
visited a brothel or visited any prostitutes.
He was not someone who was drinking alcohol.
He did not have girlfriends
like many young people do today, and many
people back then also did. So he lived
a very pure lifestyle. He was not into
any of these things. So there's no indications
of these things from the beginning.
And then what happens is that was the
introduction. Then what happens is he marries
lady Khadija. He marries a woman by the
name of Khadija,
and she was his first wife, and she
was his only wife for a period of
25 years.
Now he married at the age of 25.
So if he was married to her for
25 years, it means from the age of
25 to 50, she was his only wife
that, that he had.
Now if you look at that, that is
quite significant because usually between the ages of
25 to 50
or before 25 even, this is when the
desires of a person is very strong. This
is when people who wanna engage in a
lot of relationships
or illicit relationships
or get involved with prostitution or whatever it
may be, going to clubs, doing all sorts
of things, this is the age when they're
gonna do it. So if he was hypersexual
or a * addict as some people, you
know, make a claim,
then he would be fooling around and having
fun during his peak years. That's the time
to really do it. That's the best time.
And most people who who are engaged in
these things, they'll do it during their peak
time. But he wasn't doing that because he
was married to one woman during all of
that time. Now Khadija was older than him.
So sources some sources say that she was
28 years old, and some sources say that
she's 40.
I mean, that's a huge discrepancy, but that's
just the way the sources are. Most probably,
she was 28.
Neither of the narrations are very authentic, but
probably she was 28.
But what's significant about that? One, she's older
than him, number 1, and number 2, she's
been widowed twice. So she was married twice
before, and that's certain,
or at least strong evidence on that, before
she married him. So
marrying an elder woman
and marrying a widow
doesn't,
you know, fit the profile of someone who
is hypersexual.
It doesn't fit the profile
because at in that society,
usually people are interested in marrying
the ideal is seen as marrying a young
virgin woman whom no no one has ever
had a relationship with, but he's not doing
that in his first marriage.
So this doesn't mean that she was unattractive
or something like that, by the way. Just
wanted to clarify that. But this is her
background. This is what Khadija was like. Now
her reputation
before she
married him was that she was known as
a Tahira and Al Afifa. Tahira means the
pure. Afifa also kinda means, like, pure, noble,
virtuous woman.
So why is that significant?
It's significant because when people are known for
something specifically,
she was not primarily known for her beauty
in society. She was known more for her
character.
So, like, so for example, if he had
chosen, like, a supermodel,
Right? It would someone can make a claim.
He's just going for beauty. Right? With all
due respect to supermodels
who have beautiful character out there. Right? I
mean, he's not that's not the most important
thing that he's searching for. So if you
look at the background and you look at
his character,
we understand that was not the case. So
Khadija was a businesswoman.
She actually hired him to trade on,
her behalf,
and she was so impressed with his character,
she went and she proposed marriage to him.
And when she became,
you know, his wife,
and she became a Muslim and the revelation
of Islam came when the prophet was 40
years old, she was actually helping to finance
projects of the early Muslim community. So she
was spending a lot of her wealth in
the cause of Islam.
And she was also a very important emotional
support for the prophet, peace be upon him.
So much so that she actually believed in
the messenger of Allah even when he was
unsure and he was doubting himself
in the beginning of, you know, when revelation
was first coming down to him. And when
she died, she died in the 10th year
after,
revelation came down
when the prophet was 50.
And this year became known as Amal Husn
or the year of sadness.
Not because his uncle died in the same
year, but primarily because she died.
Why was why was that happening? Because of
their relationship, because of how much
emotional support
that she had given to him and how
important she was even in the mission of
Islam. So if you just analyze these things,
just looking at them very quickly in a
nutshell,
you find that this is
not a purely, you know, just lustful is
is not a relationship just built on, you
know, lust.
There is a much deeper relationship taking place
here, and that's during the prime of the
life of the prophet, peace and blessings be
upon him.
What happens after Khadija dies is a woman
by the name of Khola was a family
member and, you know, a friend of his.
She came and she saw that the messenger
of Allah just went through the year of
sadness.
He is very sad.
It's very difficult for him to, you know,
continue his life. And at the same time,
he has 4 daughters. Some of them are
a little bit older, some of them are
younger. And these daughters need a motherly figure
in their life. So Hola comes to the
messenger of Allah, she comes to the prophet,
and she's a Muslim, and she says, you
really need to get remarried.
So she gives him the advice and tells
him,
I recommend,
I suggest
that you get remarried
for
number of reasons. One reason is that,
you know, you have young daughters. You need
someone to take care of the household. So
my suggestion would be
either Sauda Bismar'a
or Aisha,
the daughter of Abu Bakr. So I recommend
one of these 2. So what happened was
the prophet, peace be upon him, first married
Souda Bidsama.
Now why did he marry her? He married
her for two main reasons. Reason number 1
is
that, you know, he needs to get remarried.
Right? In in society, people don't re in
Arab society,
people don't get remain
unmarried for a very long time in that
culture. Number 1. Number 2, he has 4
daughters,
and he needs a motherly figure for them.
And number 3,
Souda herself
had gone through many hardships in her life
as a Muslim. So she was one of
the early converts to Islam, and she had
a lot of difficult times. And she was
previously married to her cousin. His name was
Asakran, and she had about 5 or 6
children from him as well. So
it was difficult for her, and he wanted
to give her that support as well. And,
also, he's gonna be getting the support. So
this is how marriage usually is. It's a
it's a it's a give and take,
relationship.
So he goes ahead and marries her in
the 10th year after revelation,
and she was about 55 years old. So
he was about 50. So again, he's marrying
someone who is older than him a second
time. And again, it's important to understand Arab
culture at the time. So Arab culture, basically,
all women or most women in that society,
whether they're divorced
or whether they're becoming a widow or their
their husband is passing away, they get remarried
very quickly
because it was abnormal to not get married.
That's the way the culture was. You know,
in our culture, in our society, it's very
different.
A woman may lose her husband in her
twenties,
and she may never get remarried for the
rest of her life, and it's totally normal
in in some cultures. But that wasn't the
case. Like, for example, Abu Bakr,
when he was a Khalifa, when he died
2 years after being Khalifa,
immediately his wife married Ali radhiallahu an.
As soon as, you know, she completed her
Ida, right after the mourning period
for for her was
over, she got married. Many of the women,
as soon as they get divorced or as
soon as they get, widowed, they would get
remarried. And like like likewise for the men
as well. Now our societies is different.
Right? So this is considered to be normal
in their society, and our society is a
different norm. So it's under it's important to
understand
that and how that plays a role in
the marriage of Souda and the marriage of
many other women in this society.
Then what happens is few months later,
remember that,
Aisha
was also suggested by
Kaula,
to get married to. And who is Aisha?
Aisha is the daughter of Abu Bakr, and
Abu Bakr is the closest companion of the
messenger of Allah, of the prophet, one of
the first one of the first people to
become Muslim.
And Aisha at this time was previously engaged
to another Muslim by the name of Juba
ibn Mutaim.
And
as soon as they found out that the
prophet, peace be upon him, you know, had
lost his wife after Khadija died, then there
was some consideration. There was some talk about,
you know what? Maybe Aisha would be a
good match for,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So
so what's the reason
why he also chose to marry Aisha as
well?
There's a number of reasons. Again,
people don't disclose exactly why they're marrying someone.
So we're looking at history and we're kind
of trying to understand
what are some of the probable factors.
There's never just one reason.
There may be five
variables, 10 variables of why somebody gets married.
Even today, people don't disclose all the reasons
why they get married. So to go back
and try to read into the mind of
someone, it's a, you know, it's a historian's
job to do that, but not to overstretch.
But when we look at his mind, we
can see a few things. Number 1,
he recently lost his wife Khadija.
Number 2, she was recommended by Khawla. And
number 3, she was the daughter of Abu
Bakr.
Okay? And Abu Bakr is his very, very
close friend and closest companion. And there's another
part of Arab culture that a lot of
us today, we don't understand, and it was
part of the culture
to marry the daughter of your close friend.
So it's it's for us, it's like, wait
a minute. You know? You have a close
friend? Better not come near my daughter. You
know? What are you talking about? But that's
the way it was. Why? Because it was
a tribal system, and they wanna cement the
relationships
between each other. And that was the way
it worked. So you have a best friend
and you're just like, you know what? It
would be great, you know, if, you know,
you you offer a daughter to marriage or
something like that. So that is something that
used to happen. It was very, very common
in society. You can go through and we
can go through a bunch of examples,
but we won't because there's no time for
that. But there's a lot of examples. But
just look at the look at how this
relationship took place. Look at how this marriage
took place.
The prophet was not meeting her in private.
She was not his girlfriend.
He was not going around stalking her, you
know, around Makkah or Madinah.
These are her his her parents are involved
directly,
and these are honorable people coming from a
noble class within the Quraysh tribe. So there's
no basis to go and accuse them of
sacrificing their daughter and, you know, giving giving
them to the prophet or something like that.
It's very important to understand that background. And
anyone who studies anthropology
and the study of different human beings and
different human cultures, whether of the past or
even of today, they'll realize that what a
lot of people are doing
when they go and they look at the,
marriage of Aisha to the prophet or any
of the other marriages, what they do is
they will impose their own cultural norms
that exist today,
and they will project them
they will project the morality
of those norms
onto other parts of the world, or they
will back project them onto different periods of
history. So the same thing happens today.
If you go to certain African countries, and
forget the fact that they're Muslim. Go into
certain Christian African countries,
and you will find people getting married at
a very young age. You will find people
getting married to more than one woman, and
they're not Muslim.
They're Christian. And even though many churches are
saying, don't you're not allowed to do this.
Right? They're still doing it anyways because that's
part of their heritage, that's part of their
tradition, that's part of their culture. So to
go and take our norms and judge those
people means that you don't really have an
understanding of their society.
Now to do that today is if that's
problematic,
to go back and say 1400 years ago,
this is the way society should have been,
it's also very problematic.
So it's important to understand the social situation
in Arabia at the time.
First of all, what's happening, he's married to
Soda.
So he's married to Soda. He's marrying Aisha.
Now he's taking 2 wives at the same
time. So I'm gonna pause for a moment
here and talk about polygyny. And polygyny
is another term for what we call polygamy.
Polygyny means multiple spouses.
Polygyny
basically means a man having multiple wives and
not the other way around, which is polyandry.
So polygyny was something which was very common
in Arabia. It was very common for people
to have more than one wife. In fact,
it was not only in Arabia.
Historically, in ancient society,
many parts of the world, it was polygyny
was something that was very, very common.
So understand where the prophet, peace be upon
him, is coming from. His lineage, 1, he's
an Arab.
2, the Arabs are descended from the family
of prophet Ishmael or Ishmael.
Ishmael
and Isaac are the children of Abraham.
So according to even the bible
that people read today, the Jews and the
Christians have today, according to the bible, Abraham
had 2 wives and then he took a
third one as well. He had Sarah, he
had Hagar, And then later on, he took
on Keturah.
It says prophet David
had many wives. It says that Solomon in
the bible had 700 wives, which is probably
a huge exaggeration,
you know, but the fact that he had
more than one
is is sufficient to to make people understand
that the people who are being praised,
even in other religions, even in Judeo Christian
tradition,
what's happening with them? They're having multiple wives,
and there's not one word of critique
against that.
So it's important to understand that when when
talking to people who, you know, are coming
from that tradition, yet they don't they're not
very familiar with their own scripture.
Now another thing is when it comes to
polygyny,
there is a tribe and then within the
tribe, there's various clans. And the tribes and
the clans are the building block of society.
So the reality of the society was that
the way in which you increase your clan
and you build up a tribe is by
having a lot of children.
And the reality is a man can father
more than one child at once when they
have more than one wife. And you you
couple that with the high mortality rate due
to war, due to disease, probably infant mortality
rate, and all of that. And all of
this plays a role in why polygyny made
a lot of sense to people in the
pre modern world or especially in the ancient,
ancient world,
especially among, you know, more tribal cultures. So
there's a very good reason for that. But
what Islam came to do, it came to
limit
polygyny.
So, generally, across the board for Muslims, Islam
came and said, no. We're gonna set a
maximum number of 4. You can have a
maximum of 4 wives. And this is mentioned
in Surat Al Nisa chapter 4 verse 3.
And if you look at all the other
religious books,
the Quran is the only religious book that
I've come across, you know, that basically says,
if you that one has a limit and
restriction on wives. And 2 that says, if
you can't be fair
to your wives, then you have to only
marry 1. So it came with this restriction.
You look at the bible, new testament, old
testament, it's not there. You look at the
Gita, it's not there. You look at the
Vedas, it's not there. You look at many
other religious, you know, books, you won't find
that restriction there. And that's why many people
of those different religions throughout society have engaged
in polygyny at oftentimes
unlimited or unrestricted levels, whereas Islam came to
limit that and restrict that. But anyways, back
to the point, he marries Aisha. And Aisha
was married at the age of 9 according
to the strongest reports that exist.
Now, technically, his marriage was contracted earlier, kind
of like almost like you can say in
engagement,
but she only moved in with him at
the age of 9. The question is why.
Why wait until that age is because they
were waiting for her to become an adult,
and she had not become an adult until
that age of 9.
So we need to stop here and
take a little analysis as well.
Why age of 9? It's because she hit
puberty at that age. And puberty in pre
modern society, most pre modern societies,
puberty was equivalent to adulthood.
So when someone reaches the age of puberty,
they're considered to be an adult. A 12
year old, 13 year old, they're leading armies
in the past. Right? Today, I mean, 30
year olds are playing PlayStation and not getting
a job. Right? So it's a very different
society. It's a very different culture in which
we're living.
So this concept we have to understand this
very well. This concept of, you know, *
and all of that, this is a 20th
century concept because the idea of a child
is a very relative concept. Is a child
12, 14,
16, 18? When does a person
go from being a child
into being an adult? And what happened was
there's this idea or this modern notion or
creation of this transition period of these teenage
years. So this idea of,
you know, adolescence and all that, this is
like a modern construction.
People are people generally used to be viewed
either as a child or an adult. And
what changes them from being a child to
an adult? It was gonna be puberty.
This is important to understand,
number 1, because a lot of people don't
understand this history. And number 2 is because
there's
people who make an argument
about the age of Aisha
on when she married the prophet peace be
upon him,
it's a totally modern argument. And it makes
sense that it's a modern argument. So it
has to be a modern argument because it
was never an issue for anyone including the
biggest enemies of Islam.
The people who wanted to undermine the message
of Islam, who wanted to undermine the prophet,
they couldn't come up with this argument because
it didn't make sense to them, because that
concept didn't exist at the time. So pretty
much there was not a single person who's
ever made this argument
prior to the 19th century.
And then this argument
started gaining force and someone came along and
said, oh, look. She's too young or something
like that because it was the norm in
most societies in the world at the time.
9 years old, 10 years old, 11 years
old, 12 years old for marriage was not
a problem as long as they've reached the
age of maturity.
And many females, they reach the age of
puberty by either age 9, 10, 11, something
like that. And there's good evidence to show
that people who live closer to the equator,
they reach puberty at an earlier age.
So, you know, there's some data on different
ages, even in the United States. If you
look at from the 18 eighties,
just going back a 140 years, 150 years,
most states in America,
marriage was very common. People used to get
married at the age of 10. People get
married at the age of 12. And today,
it would be illegal.
It would be completely illegal. Right? Does that
mean that an illegal marriage is equivalent to
being an immoral marriage? That would be something
very problematic.
That you have, for example, an elderly grandmother
who got married at age of 14 in
America. But if her granddaughter got married at
the age of 14, it's illegal. Therefore, you
look back at the grandma and say, you
know what? You were a victim of abuse.
You,
you know, what you have done is completely
immoral. What your husband did to you was
immoral. This is not the way we should
be judging cultures. Our culture has changed.
That's fine. Did all of the people the
moment the law changed and they put a
different age for marriage, did all of the
people who were married, did they start claiming
that they were abused?
No. It didn't happen. So we have to
understand how laws change, how more you know,
norms and culture changes and all of that
stuff. And also, we have to understand
that there's a difference between
psychological maturity
and biological maturity.
So this concept of
restricting,
marriage to a particular age has to do
with the differ the difference between
psychological maturity and biological maturity
to determine
if coercion is actually taking place or not.
So
Islam is one of the few, maybe one
of the only
religion that has very clear cut regulations
that has restrictions on prepubescent
marriages. How many other religions do you have
that have clear cut guidelines
that have limitations on that? Very few, if
any.
So the question becomes,
if Aisha got married at age of 9,
and if it's normalized, and if there's no
problem with it, does that mean that
you cannot put a rule
on a minimum age limit for marriage, whether
it's 12 or 14 or 16 or 18
or 21 or whatever you want it to
be? And the answer is no.
It doesn't mean you can't put a rule.
So there's a concept in Islamic law,
the science called,
which is the principles of Islamic jurisprudence,
which is called, which
basically means that
you
can you can invent a law,
you can formulate a law,
in order to protect people from
experiencing
some type of harm, if that harm is
really gonna be actualized within a society.
So maybe
there should be an age restriction,
on marriage, whatever that may be.
We're not gonna discuss that, but that wouldn't
be contrary to the teachings of Islam. But
you may not wanna
impose that same age limit on every single
culture.
And part of the difference between the age
limits on marriage in cultures and how this
is evolved had to do with the amount
of education that's taking place during those periods
where,
marriage is generally considered to be illegal nowadays.
Nowadays. So it's important for us to realize
that, yes, you can set a limit. No.
Not everyone needs to get married at a
early age. Yes. There can be rules and
restrictions.
And a 100 years ago, it used to
be completely different.
And a 100 years from now, it's gonna
be completely different.
The age is gonna either go up even
more or the age is gonna go down
even more. We don't know what it's gonna
be like. So, again, we have to be
careful of making our decisions and our judgments
on this on another culture
based upon our own culture.
The next question is,
is it possible that Aisha was actually older
than 9 years old? There are some Muslim
scholars who make an argument that she was
actually older,
and the answer is maybe.
Potentially, she could have been. Some scholars say
that she was 16 or 18 or 14
or something like that. Where did they come
up with that from? Because there are some
reports
that are contradictory within books of history. So
the report about being 9 is probably the
has the strongest narration,
but there are other anachronisms
or there are an other kind of contradictions
in some of the reports. So the answer
is maybe.
It could be the case that maybe she
was a different age. So some people who
just cannot get their head around it. Okay?
Just they no matter how much you explain
it to them, they will never be able
to understand
that Aisha was 9 years old when she
got married to the prophet, peace be upon
him, then, you know, it's we shouldn't try
to do intellectual gymnastics just to get a
stronger defense of Islam for people who have
a hard time, but at the same time,
there is some room for that. And if
someone can't, then you know what? Maybe she
was. Maybe she was older. And I'm telling
you, I have a feeling that on the
day of judgment, when we die and we're
resurrected and and we stand in front of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he's not gonna ask
us. One of the questions is not gonna
be what what do you think Aisha's age
was on marriage? You know, he's gonna ask
did you believe only in Allah? Did you
pray your prayers? Did you do this? Did
you do that? He's not gonna say what
do you think about Aisha's age by the
way? It's probably
not gonna be one of the very important
life questions. Okay? So people who get stuck
stuck on that,
it's okay. Maybe it's not the biggest, issue
that you need to worry about. But let's
talk about Aisha a little bit more. So
what else do we know about her? This
whole biography is written about her, but she
memorized the entire Quran. She was one of
the companions who memorized the entire Quran. She
was one of those people who who was
known to ask very tough and very aggressive
questions to the prophet, peace be upon him.
So and and that was her character. And
she was 18 years old when the prophet,
peace be upon him, died, but she lived
for another 44 years, and she was serving
the Muslim community for that time. And she
was known to be one of those people
who was the one of the scholars of
of the Muslims.
So much so that she used to be
a very,
a challenging scholar. So she used to challenge
other companions
when they were narrating hadiths and saying, no.
You misunderstood the hadith. In fact, there's an
entire book written by imam Badruddin
Zarqashi who died in the year 794,
which is 13/92
CE.
So therefore, he cannot be accused of being
like some kind of pre modern feminist or
something like that. He wrote an entire book
on the subject called al ijabba
lihiradi
mastadraka
to Aisha al suhaba, which basically means the
answer about
all of the he basically goes through every
single case where Aisha
argued with other companions and saying, no. Your
your opinion is wrong. Your hadith understanding is
wrong. You didn't understand this issue. So just
look at what kind of woman she became.
She became a top scholar among all the
companions
after the prophet's death. And it said that
maybe because she was so young when she
got married, that's what helped her to excel
and have a very sharp mind,
and living with the prophet, obviously.
She was well versed in poetry. She was
well versed in medicine.
She narrated 2,210
hadiths. So if you look at how many
companions narrated hadith,
Abu Hurairah is number 1.
Number 2 is Aisha, but
Abu Hurairah is known to not be a
scholar
among the companions. He's known as a hadith
narrator, but it's very clear cut he's not
a scholar. Which means that the most prolific
scholar to narrate hadith among all of the
companions was Aisha, which means a very large
portion, if not the majority portion of our
religion of Islam, is coming from Aisha. It's
very important to understand.
And lastly,
Aisha was a happy wife. It's important to
understand that. Right? Aisha was not traumatized.
So the question is why are other people
traumatized with her age that she got married
at when she herself was not traumatized?
When a when a girl is molested,
a girl is raped at a young age,
what it happens to her? She becomes dysfunctional,
usually.
It affects her throughout her entire life. Aisha
was living by herself throughout her life, constantly
teaching. And if you look at what she
became, you can understand
that
there's not any type of major trauma. There's
not any good reason to believe that any
type of major trauma or coercion or anything
like that was taking place because of the
young age at which she got married.
And then
a few years later,
the prophet
married Hafsa. Now who is Hafsa? Hafsa is
the daughter
of Umar ibn Al Khattab.
Again, another very close companion of the messenger
of Allah. And what happens is Abu Bakr
becomes the first khalifa, Umar becomes the second
khalifa.
Right? So what it's interesting. What ends up
happening is Abu Bakr's daughter marries the prophet,
Omar's daughter marries the prophet, and then the
3rd khalifa was Uthman.
The prophet's daughter ends up marrying Uthman.
And Ali was the 4th Khalifa. The prophet's
daughter ends up marrying,
Ali. Right? So all of them, there's family
relationships between each and every single one of
them. So anyways, Hafsa,
she is married,
and her husband is named Khunais.
And he fights in the battle of Badr,
which takes place 2 years, after the Hijra,
after the migration to the city of Medina.
So when he dies in Badr, again, Arab
society, what happens? When a woman lose her
husband, someone is gonna come and marry her,
and polygyny is normal in that society. So
the prophet, peace be upon him, marries her
in the year 3 a h
for reasons which are clear, cementing relationships between
friends, taking care of a widow who had
lost her husband, etcetera etcetera.
Hafsa is a very important person as well.
When the Quran is compiled into one official
state copy during the time of Abu Bakr,
When Abu Bakr is khalifa and when he
dies,
that copy passes on to Umar. And when
Umar dies after being khalifa,
that copy, the only official copy from the
state of the Quran
is put in the possession of Hafsa, and
she keeps it in her house as her
personal copy until it's finally taken by Uthman
and then recopied and distributed.
So she plays a very important role in
the history of Islam in many cases as
well. Moving on.
Zainab bin Khuzaymah.
So Zainab was the wife of a man
by the name of Ubaydah, who was a
Muslim, who migrated to the city of Medina.
And he fought in the battle of Uhud,
and he died. Like many companions died in
the battle of Uhud, he died in the
battle of Uhud. So the following year, the
prophet peace be upon him married her in
the year 4 Ah.
She was a woman that was nicknamed Umul
Masakin.
Umul Masakin means mother of the poor. And
the reason why she had that nickname was
because she was extremely generous woman. She used
to give out in charity so much that
they nicknamed they gave her that nickname.
We don't really know much about her life.
So other the other wives so far, we
know
quite a bit, which I'm not covering, but
we know a lot of other incidents.
Zaynab, we don't know very much about her
life because
she died 3 years after her marriage to
the prophet. So she died in about the
year 7 due to an illness that she
caught. Therefore, there's not too many reports about
the rest of her life, and she's not
that well known. There's 2 Zainabs, by the
way. So this is the less well known
Zainab.
Then you have Salama.
So Salama means mother of Salama. Her actual
name was Hind. K. And she's not from
India. K.
Hind meaning India in in in Arabic.
The Hind was a common name. So Salama,
she had a husband
who's named Abu Salama, father of Salama. That
was his nickname.
So she loved him very much. He also
fought in the battle of Uhud and he
was wounded, but he didn't die in the
battle. But a few months later, his wounds
opened up and he ended up dying from
his wounds. So he technically died from the
battle of Uhud or as a result of
fighting in the battle of Uhud, which was
in the year 3 a h.
She had very young children, so she needed
someone to help take care of her children
as well. So some Muslims came, and they
went and they proposed to her. Abu Bakr
comes and proposes to her. Umrah goes and
proposes to her. Other other companions are coming
and proposing to her, and there's a really
nice beautiful story about this. And she declines
all of them and says, no.
I'll my husband was so awesome. None of
you can compare. She really, really loved her
husband very much. Said none of you none
of you could ever get there. So the
prophet, peace be upon him, finally proposes and
says, okay. I will marry you then, and
she accepts that marriage. And even she in
the beginning, she was still a little hesitant
too in the beginning because she was missing
her husband so much, but she ends up
marrying him in the year 4 a h.
And she is someone who, you know, played
a very important role in Islam as well.
One of the most important incidents that happened,
or at least a significant incident
was when the prophet, peace be upon him,
went towards Mecca and the treaty of Hudaybiyyah
was being negotiated.
When the Muslims signed the treaty of Hudaybiyyah,
which was a peace treaty between the Quraysh
and the Muslims to stop fighting,
the terms of the treaty
were unfair towards the Muslims. So the companions
were very distraught. They were very disappointed, and
they were upset, and they said, you know,
these terms are not fair. We should, you
know, we should be willing to fight. We
should not compromise like this. So the messenger
of Allah, the prophet, peace be upon him,
he's getting very disturbed because he's telling the
companions,
we're leaving.
I want everyone to pack up.
Go shave your head because you're getting out
of the eharam state of pilgrimage that you're
in, and we're we're going back to Medina.
We're leaving Mecca.
And they weren't moving. They weren't budging. So
he was getting very, you know,
shocked that my companions for the first time,
they're not listening to me. They're they're so
disappointed about this treaty. They're not even listening
to what I'm saying.
So salama
came with him on this journey. Sometimes different
wives would accompany him on different journeys. So
salama was one of those people who was
there. So she gave him advice,
and she says, messenger of Allah, this is
what you should do. You should go stop
just stop talking.
You don't need to talk anymore. You're telling
them do this and they're not listening to
you. So don't talk anymore.
Just go
shave your own head and change your own
clothes, and jump on your animal, and just
start moving, and you see everyone's gonna follow
you.
So he did it and it worked. So
basically she had a very good principle and
she understood that, you know what? Sometimes
it's better to just lead by example and
just stop talking when people are not listening
to you, and they'll they'll follow. You know?
And this is something that really it makes
a lot of sense. You know. I I
I tested this on my kids. I had
the same problem with my kids. You know.
And I'm like, they're not moving. You know.
They just won't move. And I'm like, you
know, let me try the umm sallama, you
know, technique.
You know. And when I read it and
I'm like, and it works really well. You
know. When you say like we're leaving from
this party, or we're leaving from the mall,
or whatever it is, just start walking and
maybe it's my kids, but hamdulillah, they start
following. So they get the point. Sometimes talking
you could sit there, negotiate, talk. It just
doesn't work. This salama thing works very well.
So she played a very important role. Then
you have Rehana bint Zaid. This is another
woman we don't know very much about. So
she was a Jewish woman.
Initially, she didn't really want to accept Islam,
although some of her other tribe people were
accepting Islam. Later on, she accepted Islam, and
she married the prophet in the year 626
CE,
according to a lot of scholars. But according
to some scholars,
they say that the prophet actually didn't marry
her,
and he just let her go back to
her people and
she left, basically. So this is, supported by,
half a report by Hafiz ibn Manda. It's
also supported by,
scholars like Shiblid Naumani and other people. So
it's kinda questionable whether or not she was
actually one of the wives of the prophet
or not, which tells you something about history.
We don't have all the little tiny details
that you might want. So even questioning the
age,
like, you know what? Was Khadija 28 or
was she 40?
Was Rehana
even married to him or did she not
even marry him? Sometimes we don't have every
single detail of history,
so we should be careful about reading too
much in or taking too many accounts,
you know, and and building up our entire
foundation of faith upon some historical report that
may or may not be correct. But again,
I don't think you're gonna be asked on
the day of judgment by Allah whether or
not really he married her or not. It's
probably not the most important thing, so we
don't have that much information about her. Then
you have Zainab bint Jas, which there's a
lot of information about her because this was
the only marriage
during the lifetime of the prophet and pretty
much throughout
premodern
history
that was a controversial marriage,
okay, that people criticized.
Okay. Now why did people criticize?
Well, 1, Zainab was the cousin of the
prophet, peace be upon him, but that's not
why they criticized him. So that was not
an issue.
But what happened was Zainab was coming from
the tribe of Quresh, and she just like
the prophet. And she's a noblewoman.
So she has a very high status in
society.
Now what happened was that Zayd ibn Haritha,
who at that time was technically
the adopted
son of
Muhammad, of the prophet. He was nicknamed Zayd
ibn Muhammad. Zayd the son of Muhammad because
the prophet had adopted him before Islam.
So the prophet came and he encouraged Zayd,
who he loved very much. He loved like
his own son.
He told Zayd, he says, Zayd, I want
you to marry Zayd. And Zayd is his
cousin, so he's telling and she's a Muslim.
So he's telling them, you know, you 2
should really get married to each other. And
there's some indication that Zayd was not very
happy with marrying Zayd. Now why didn't she
really wanna marry him?
It's because he is coming from a family
where he was actually a slave. He's not
from the Quraysh tribe. And he was a
former slave and he was freed by the
prophet and then he was adopted by the
prophet. So, of course, she's a Muslim.
You know, she she wants to follow
what the prophet is saying, but at the
same time, she doesn't like this idea of
marrying someone who is of lowly status.
But most likely, what is the prophet trying
to do? He's trying to,
you know,
break this
classism that existed within society thinking that, you
know what? Someone who's coming from nobility cannot
marry someone who's coming from a different social
status. So he's trying to encourage them. You
know, you 2 will be a great role
model for everyone else. If you get married,
it will set a good example to everyone
else.
So she married him,
probably somewhat reluctantly, but, like, it wasn't like
a forced marriage or something. But she she
agreed. She said, okay. Fine. I'll marry him.
So she marries him, but it was a
problematic marriage. The constant, you know, arguments, and
there's complaints
about each other and all of that stuff,
and she just, you know, he had issues
with her and she had issues with him.
So what happened was the marriage is seem
seeming to not work out. It seems like
their marriage is gonna be breaking up.
So what happens is around this time,
the prophet, peace be upon him, is told
by Allah
that you
should you know, Zayd is gonna divorce her.
K. So it's already known. Zayd is on
the verge of he's about to pronounce divorce
to her. So he is told the prophet
is told to marry Zaynab.
Now
he doesn't understand the I mean, well, he
doesn't understand the greater wisdom at this moment.
So for the prophet,
this is a huge problem.
Okay?
Not because Zainab is not, you know, good
looking or Zainab is from a bad family
or she's a bad woman or something, but
the prophet really has a problem with this
because
she is
it's not the problem that she's his cousin.
The problem is that she was married
to his adopted son.
And if the adopted son is considered to
be like a real son,
then you are marrying the ex wife
of your own child of your own son,
and that's a huge problem. And in Arabian
society,
very similar to American society today,
adoption was considered to be something where you
adopt a child and you claim them to
as if they're your own child. They're 100%
your own child. You don't even oftentimes, you
don't even tell them, you know, who their
real parents are, and you just kinda pretend
that you're actually their parents.
So
now the prophet is like, yeah. This is
gonna almost be like a incestuous marriage. This
is what people are gonna say about me.
So the verses come down, chapter 33 verse
37.
I'm I'm gonna summarize what it says. It
basically says when you when we gave her
to you in marriage so that there might
be no fault
why? So that there will be no fault
in believers marrying the wives of their adopted
sons
after they no longer want them anymore. Jose
didn't want her to be married with her
anymore, and she didn't wanna be married with
him either. And it's basically explaining
that this is the wisdom behind it. The
wisdom behind him marrying her is that
just like salama said, you can talk to
people all day long and tell them, look,
an adopted son
is not a real son. There's a difference
between an adopted son and a real son.
So you tell them, you tell them, you
tell them, but they're just gonna have an
aversion in their heart. The idea of adoption
is not gonna break
in Arab society
just by talking.
So just like omm sallamah said,
you gotta do it with with action. You
gotta set someone has to set an example.
So so the Allah mentioned in the Quran,
you're gonna set the example to break this
so that no one can come along and
say, you know what? This idea of adoption
is a real adoption and all of that
stuff. And the issue of adoption and all
of that, that's
it's another concept. You know, adopting someone,
but
declaring
that
you're not their real parents
and taking care of them,
but not,
you know,
not considering them to be your real children
while treating them like your real children is
allowed in Islam. So, you know, that's another
topic I won't get into right now, but
I just wanted to clarify that.
So,
in the beginning of this verse, Allah says,
when you, talking to the prophet, when you
said to the man who had been favored
by God and by you,
keep your wife and be mindful of God.
So what happened when the when Allah was
telling,
the prophet to marry her, he goes to
Zayd, and Zayd is like, you know what?
I'm I'm I'm our marriage is done. I
wanna divorce this woman. And the prophet goes
to him and says,
you know, keep your wife
even though he's not supposed to do that.
So what does Allah say? He says, you
hid in your heart what God would later
on reveal.
You were afraid of people,
but it is more befitting that you fear
Allah.
This is Allah saying to the prophet in
the Quran, you were scared of the people,
but you should only be scared of Allah.
And imagine that, and he has to recite
that now for the rest of his life
in the Quran when he's reciting. It's difficult
thing to do, but, you know, sometimes the
Allah would correct him in something. So this
was the issue.
So he ended up marrying Zaynab bint Jaish
for this reason, to break that stigma of
adoption.
And what's interesting is this, if you look
at what's happening here,
so Zayd and Zayd got divorced.
Zayd got remarried. He was extremely happy. That's
an old another story for another time. And
Zayd got married, and she's extremely happy. So
everyone's happy in this scenario. Right? It was
not a problem.
So this idea of the name, Zayd ibn
Muhammad, Zayd the son of Muhammad, this was
banned. No one's allowed to take the name.
Now adopted children are not allowed to take
the name of their, you know, their adopting
fathers or whatever the term is, but they
have to take the children the name of
their real father. Right? So this broke that
culture.
And what happened in this marriage, because it
was breaking that culture, it was going against
the cultural norm,
the hypocrites that lived in Medina, who were
pretending to be Muslim, and the non Muslims
who were Quraysh, who were at war with
Islam, they criticized the Messenger of Allah on
this. So this was the only real controversial
marriage, Controversial in the sense of it went
against Arab cultural norms.
The age of the marriage of Aisha did
not go against Arab cultural norms, so no
one had a problem with it. Nobody had
any issue with it. But this one was
a problem because it went against the norm
of
the adopted child being treated like a real
child.
Now when it comes to the story of
Zaynab bint Jaish,
there's a story,
who that some scholars have put in their
books on the life of the prophet, and
it's very unfortunate that they put this story
because the story has no chain of narration
at all. Okay? It's a it's a baseless
story,
yet it somehow made its way into many
very popular books of of Seera or on
about the life of the prophet. Even the
one that many people read,
Martin Ling's, which is a pretty interesting well
written book, even it made its way into
that book. And the story is completely wrong.
It's totally fabricated.
It's basically a story about,
how the prophet,
he one day, while she was married to
Zaid,
he saw Zainab,
and Zainab kind of didn't dress herself up
completely. And he went to the door one
day, and he was just shocked. Wow. Wow.
This woman is so beautiful. And then he
fell in love with her, and he kind
of wanted Zade to divorce her so that
he can marry her.
This story is completely baseless. Number 1, it
has no chain of narrators.
Number 2, it's absurd to think
that he's never seen the beauty of his
own cousin that he meets throughout his entire
life. Right? That makes no sense at all.
And the third thing it makes no sense,
why would he insist on Zayd marrying her
in the beginning,
if he was so interested in her in
the first place? He could've just married her
in the first place. So the story is
not it's it's baseless, but for some reason,
it keeps getting copied into different sources.
People who don't really do their full fact
checking,
maybe because that's not their specialization.
That's the marriage of Zainab. Then there's Jeweriyyah.
Jeweriyyah was,
just like the first three letters of her
name indicate
this is a joke, by the way. She
was a Jew. So she was she was
a Jewess. Right?
So she is from,
the tribe of Banu Mustalik,
and Banu Mustalik
was at war with the Muslim community.
So
the chief of this Jewish tribe, his name
was Al Harith,
and
she is the daughter
of the tribe
of,
the the daughter of the chief
of the tribe of Banu Mustalak that is
at war with the Muslims. So they lost
the battle, and and she ends up accepting
Islam. So when she accepts Islam, the prophet,
peace be upon him, marries her. Now look
what happens when he marries Jua'iriya.
There was a battle that took place between
the Banu Mustalak and the Muslims.
So the companions,
they had captured a lot of prisoners of
war. And normally, when it comes to prisoners
of war, either you're gonna execute them or
you're gonna ransom them or you're gonna keep
them as captives for a while. So what
happened was as soon as she married him,
the companions started thinking for a while, and
they said, you know what?
The Banu Mustalik
tribe
is actually from the family of the prophet.
Like, they're actually from the family of the
messenger of Allah. How can we keep
these prisoners of war who who were fighting
us and trying to kill us, but how
can we keep them like they're technically family
members with the prophet now.
So
100 families were freed with no ransom whatsoever.
And Aisha made a statement on that,
on that occasion.
She says there's no woman that has ever
been more beneficial to her tribe than because
all these people were saved,
because of her and because of her marriage.
So, again, it gives you an insight into
the reason behind the marriage here. The next
one was Sofia, and Sofia was also
from the Jewish
tribe of Banu Quraydah, which was at war
with the Muslims. And she was the daughter
of the chieftain,
Hayyeh,
of the tribe of Banu Qurayza, who actually
betrayed the Muslims
during the battle of the trench or the
battle of Khundak.
So the prophet, peace be upon him, after
Banu Qurayza and war takes place and everything,
there's another battle that takes place known as
the battle of Khaybar in the year, like,
7, which is, like, 628.
So he ends up marrying Sofia, and she
accepts Islam.
She's a very pious woman. So she makes
a few statements about the prophet. She says,
I've never seen such a good natured person
like the messenger of Allah.
Ibn Kathir, one of the scholars of Islam
around 8th century or so, he says that
she was one of the best women in
her worship,
in her piety,
in her asceticism, which means basically she was
very simple.
What do you call it? She was minimalist.
She was very devout. She was very chaste.
So she was a very, very pious woman,
and she used to pray a lot.
According to Ibn Saud, who's another very early
scholar, about 3rd century
or maybe
late 2nd century. No. I think I think
early 3rd century.
She said Sophia was very charitable, very generous.
Whatever she had, she used to give away.
She even gave away an entire house that
belonged to her when she was still alive.
So what happened one day is some of
the wives she was close with some of
the wives, and she was not close with
some of the other wives. Some kind of
competition comes between the cowives.
So some of the wives, they were
feeling a little bit jealous of her, so
they criticized her descent,
And they said,
oh, she's just a Jewish woman. There was,
like, some kind of stigma against that. So
the prophet, peace be upon him, came and
defended her and said, do you know who
she is?
She is the husband of Muhammad, who's the
prophet.
She her father is
Harun,
meaning going back prophet Aaron, prophet Harun, and
her uncle is prophet Musa, is prophet Moses.
So we basically just silenced all of them.
Like, who do you think you are? You
know? Yeah. You're also wife of the prophet,
but who's your uncle?
Who's your who's your great grandfather going back?
So you got
you got 3 prophets.
You're you're she's connected with 3 prophets.
You're connected with 1 or maybe, you know,
2 at most.
So
this is the kind of the way it
was treated. So what you find is his
marriage to Sophia or his marriage to any
any of the Jewish women,
it's gonna change the perception that Muslims have
towards Jews in the entire society, in the
entire community. So there's a very important benefit
that's taking place as well through this marriage.
Then you have Habiba, or her name was
Ramla.
Means mother of Habiba.
She was the daughter
of Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan at that time was the chief
of the Quraysh who is at war with
the Muslims. So again, we're finding a lot
of daughters of chieftains who are fighting against
the Muslims.
So think about what the potential benefit of
marrying them in addition to just taking care
of them, because obviously their family is gonna
be disowning them because they're following Islam. In
addition to that, there's this
peaceful reconciliation
taking place because this family relation is taking
place. So the prophet, peace be upon him,
married her after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah took
place.
And one of the reasons why he married
her was because her husband
had died. Now where was she?
Her father is Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan is in Makkah, chief of the
Quraysh, who's fighting against the Muslims who are
in Medina and the prophets in Medina. Where
is Habiba?
She is all the way in Africa.
She's in Abyssinia
because she's one of the people who fled
Makkah early on with her husband, and they
remained in Abyssinia
during this time, and now all of them
migrated back. So as soon as her husband
dies in Abyssinia,
now she's
in a distant land by herself,
So the prophet, peace be upon him, says,
okay. I'm gonna marry you, and he goes
and sends a proposal from Medina all the
way to Africa.
Right? And she's been a Muslim for a
long time against her father. Her father obviously
was very against her becoming a Muslim. But
he goes and marries her, 1, because she
needs his support. 2, because now is the
perfect time. There's a treaty between the Quraysh
and the Muslims.
This can further cement the
relationship between them. And, obviously, Abu Sufyan,
you know, softened a little bit in his
hostility now that his daughter is married to
the prophet, and eventually, he ends up accepting
Islam as well.
Next one is Maria. Maria is Egyptian. Maria
Al Kirtia.
She is an Egyptian,
and she's a Coptic Christian.
And she comes and she marries the prophet,
peace be upon him,
from she comes over to Medina.
And,
she actually was one of the wives outside
of Khadija, the only wife to have a
child named Ibrahim,
but this child also died in infancy.
And then there's a hadith about her that
later on in history when the Muslims came
and
fought with the people of Egypt, the Roman
empire was occupying Egypt at the time. So
when Muslims later on get into a clash
between the roman empire in Egypt,
they remember that
the prophet, peace be upon him, had said,
be good to the Egyptian people
because my wife Maria is from Egypt. So
they're being extra nice and careful to the
Egyptian people because of the marriage of the
prophet to her.
And then you have Maimunah, the last one.
Maimunah was the sister-in-law
of the chief of 1 of the tribes
who ended up killing 70 Muslims and ambushing
them in one place. So, again,
very hostile
father,
but she's not the daughter this time. She's
the sister-in-law of that tribal chief. Later on,
the person changed.
She was she became Muslim
after the treaty of Hudaybiyyah,
and
she comes
and she proposes marriage to him, to the
prophet, peace be upon him, and he accepts.
And now there's a alliance between this tribe
known as the Banu Mahzum,
who used to be his opponents and his
enemies,
and she goes and she moves to Madinah
with him, and this softens the
hostility between the
2 clans
or 2 tribes.
So here is a chart
of the
duration,
and the people, the women that the prophet,
peace be upon him, married. As you can
see, Khadija is on the top, and she
was his only wife for the longest period
of time. And then later on comes
later on in his life comes these things.
And you have to understand, later on in
his life, he became
a
political leader.
He became the head of state
at the time. So the head of state
has an important role and function
in
forming alliances,
in taking care of his own followers, etcetera,
etcetera. So all of that plays a role.
So then there's a question about, well, why
was the prophet, peace be upon him, allowed
to marry more than 4?
The false assumption that some people will have
is, well, the only reason is because he's
he's perverted or he's
a * addict or he's hypersexual or something
like that. But the reality is if you
analyze his life and you look at the
reasons why he's getting married and you look
at what the verses of the Quran are
saying, if you look at 3352,
it's restricting
marriage to to 4 as a maximum. Why?
Because
it's saying that,
sorry. That's not 3352.
That was another verse that other people are
being restricted. Why? Because they may not be
able to be deal justly with more than
4,
and there's a danger of opening that door.
But
3352,
it says, you, oh, prophet,
are not permitted to take any more wives
after this point in time nor to exchange
any wives you have for others
even if
they attract you, even if other women are
attracting you with their beauty.
So basically what Allah is saying in this
verse after he had these wives, he says,
you know what? Even if you're attracted to
another woman now, and you really like someone,
you find her to be very beautiful,
you can't marry her. It's off limits for
you. So there was a limit, and it
was capped. He's not allowed to marry anyone
else. So the thing is
people who say, oh, well, you know, the
so convenient.
The prophet made an exception for himself so
he can get all these different women and
stuff like that. Look. Understand something.
If the prophet was interested in *,
in that society,
number 1. Number 2, him being the leader
of the entire community,
if he wanted *, he could have had
a lot of it. Right? It's not it
would not have been difficult for him to
get that if he's inventing these verses and
he's manipulating people and he's like some kind
of cult leader or something like that. It
would not have been a challenging thing. But
you have all these restrictions coming into play,
number 1.
He's not the type of character and person
that he has, number 2. And number 3,
it's mentioned in chapter 33 verse 50.
It's talking about,
you know, the reason why this is an
exception for you and not the rest of
the believers because we know exactly what we've
made obligatory for them,
and it's giving certain things that the prophet
has specified for himself. So
some people will say some people will make
the argument, well, it's so convenient that he
gets the exception
to get this great benefit.
It's not necessarily a benefit.
In spite of burden. Okay? With all due
respect to women. Right? It can be a
burden to have so many wives, especially when
you're in a leader and you're in that
position. Number 1, you're married the type of
woman you're marrying to is also not it's
not an easy thing. K?
Number 2 or number 3, whatever points I'm
bringing up,
the exceptions that were made for the prophet
were not always for his convenience.
So another exception was made is that Qiam
ul Layl was a requirement for him. So
praying tahajjud or praying at night, during the
night outside of the 5 prayers,
recommended for other Muslims who can do it.
For him, it's not a recommendation. It's mandatory.
He has to do it. K? So exception
number 1, is it
in line with his lust? Is it in
line with his desires? No.
Number 2, when he's fasting,
he is the only one who's allowed to
fast 2 days in a row without breaking
his fast. No other Muslim is allowed to
do that.
And there's a reason why he said other
people will get tired. They won't have the
energy, but the prophet is an exception to
the rule. Is that an exception that is
following his desires? Oh, by the way, you
know what? You've been fasting all day in
Arabia, hot desert heat.
Oh, you get no dinner, by the way.
Oh, breakfast? Oh, you get no breakfast either.
You're just gonna keep on fasting straight for
the next day. Is that
a a convenient
concession for him, an exception to the rule
for him compared to the rest of the
believers? No. It's not. It's not it's not
a convenient exception to the rule. So when
you comprehensively
look at all or the few exceptions to
the rule that that exist
in Islamic law for the prophet that other
believers are not allowed to do, you will
find when you analyze them, you will find
that they're not just all for his personal
convenience when you look at them. They're actually
usually
quite
difficult for him to actually engage in. And
the reason why it was made an exception
for him is because he has a greater
burden or a greater responsibility, and he can
handle that responsibility.
Now what was the status of the wives
of the messenger of Allah? They become known
as the mothers of the believers.
Chapter 33 verse 6 says the prophet is
closer to the believers than they are to
their own selves,
and his wives are their mothers.
So the nickname for all the wives of
the prophet are Umma'atul mumineen,
which means the mothers of the believers. They
have a special status.
And his second wife,
Souda bint Zam'ah, the one who is a
little bit older,
at one point in time, a few years
later,
she became afraid and she thought
she just had this fear that she thought,
you know what? She's the oldest.
Maybe she's a little bit least attractive. She
was very, very heavy as well. She, you
know, she would sometimes slow down,
the entire group because she would travel slow.
Maybe she had some illness or something like
that. So she thought that, you know, the
prophet is gonna divorce her. So he was
she was afraid. So she's like, you know
what? Please, messenger. Well, I'm willing to, you
know, give up my day or whatever it
is. Just just I want to remain your
wife. I don't need
I don't need all the time with you.
I don't need the physical, you know, all
of that stuff. Just I want to remain
your wife at least in status.
So her fear was probably not very
grounded,
but she had this fear for whatever reason.
But what does it do? It shows you
the status
of being
a wife of the prophet or being a
mother of the believer, and she wanted to
maintain that status.
So all of the wives, they were very
proud to be wives of the prophet. These
are not women who were traumatized. And, again,
many of them knew that when you marry
the prophet,
they're not gonna be able to get remarried
to another man. Why? Because they're gonna marry
a Muslim. And for a Muslim,
this is the mother of the believer. This
is your mother,
right, of the believer. You can't marry your
own mother. So you're not gonna be married
they're not gonna be getting married afterwards, but
they're very, very proud
despite the fact that they know they're gonna
be living in difficult circumstances.
Look at how they were living.
The prophet and his family, they would live
in very small apartments
that were right next to the masjid or
the mosque in Madinah.
Each of these little homes that they had,
they were
about 5 and a half feet
in width
and about 7 and a half feet tall.
When you stand, you could pretty much touch
the ceiling.
And the length, you can just pretty much,
you know, sleep. And you're you've expand you
you spent you know, that's the that's the,
area that you get. Right? And they're living
in that kind of simple circumstance knowing that
that's what's gonna happen, but at the same
time, they're getting the status, and they're generally
content. You know, sometimes they complained a little
bit, you know, but they were content with
that, and they were pretty much happy throughout
their lives.
So recapping,
to sum up, what were the reasons why
the prophet, peace be upon him, got married?
Again, we cannot
analyze in detail
every single decision that he's making or that
his wives are making when they're getting married,
But some of the things can tell us
very quickly that his marriages were not just
for *.
His if he wanted *, he could have
gotten in other ways. Most of his wives
that he married, they were over the age
of 36.
And in that society, younger women were more
valued.
Some woman came and proposed to him, and
he didn't wanna say no. So that's one
reason for us for some of the marriages.
Number 2, he's creating close ties with his
companions
by marrying into the family of his close
friends, and this was something very common in
Arabia at the time. Number 3,
he married 3 daughters
who were the daughters of chiefs
who were at war with the Muslims and
one one
sister-in-law of another chief. This is very significant.
Right? So
4 people he's marrying who are basically their
family is biggest enemies against Islam.
This softens up their hearts.
Number 4.
Right? Just like Salama's advice about leading by
example,
he,
was commanded by Allah to redefine the concept
of adoption
through this marriage.
He was
marrying
Jewish woman who accepted Islam, but from still
Jewish background
in order to remove hatred
of the Jewish people or any type of
hostility or animosity that Arabs may have had
towards the Jews to break that break down
that barrier as well,
to lead by example for everyone else,
who is in the Muslim community.
Another reason
that he's marrying widows
who are in need of support. And in
this society, they don't just need financial support.
Again, you say, oh, well, he could have
just given them money. Again, this again, you're
looking at it from
our cultural norm in society.
Widows,
maybe in our society, they're they're like, I'm
fine. Just give me some money. And financially,
if I'm fine, I'm good.
But the widows at that time, they just
didn't want just financial support. They wanted emotional
support. They wanted a societal reputation support that
they're not sitting by themselves, and probably they
had, you know, physical desires as well. So
he's marrying widows, and marrying widows is taking
care of them, and also it's encouraging other
people to do the same in order to
take care of other people, especially his own
followers who are who are Muslims.
And he's uniting different clans through marriage as
well,
clans that are hostile or clans that may
not be have been so hostile. And the
last reason is he's increasing
the credibility
and the amount of sources
for conveying his own private family life, because
his own family life is an example for
all other believers.
So what happens is, you know what, sometimes
people, they look at his marriage and say,
you know,
this
puts his prophethood in question. But, actually, it's
the other way around. So it it actually
gives more credit
to him being a prophet. Why? Because it's
a lot tougher to discredit
multiple people who are living with him and
saying amazing man.
Right? Versus if it was just one person,
yeah, she's biased or, you know, she paid
she, you know, he paid her off or
something like that, you know, or they were
threatened or whatever it may be. So increasing
the sources
of
adds to his credibility,
and it adds to the ability of people
to actually imitate him in his life as
well.
So the conclusion of all of this is
that, look,
for a Muslim, some parts of Islam
may not make sense to some people.
And no matter how much
they try to understand it, you know, some
of them will
you know, they need to realize it's part
of their own cultural upbringing
in in the society in which they live.
But regardless, whether you get it or you
don't get it, don't allow something like this
to break the foundation of your belief. Your
belief that God is 1, your belief that
the Quran is sent by Allah, your belief
that, you know, all of these other things.
People are going through
faith crises because of
the society in which they live in, the
the way in which they grow up. So
it's important to understand that, you know what,
sometimes
you can reserve judgment on things that don't
make sense to you. It's number 1. Number
2, the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is insulted
by people who think he's a womanizer or
he was hypersexual or whatever it may be.
And when it bothers you and you see
people saying those bad things about the prophet,
we have to remember that
other prophets were insulted by their people,
right, by their own people. And,
you know, they felt that pain. They were
called different names. The prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, himself, he was called Sahir. He
was called a sorcerer.
He was called Majnoon.
He was called insane. He was called kazab,
a liar.
Right?
And not only was he called those things,
but the verses of the Quran mentioned those
names that they were calling him. And he
has to memorize those verses, and he has
to recite those verses in prayer,
reminding him of when they were saying those
hurtful things to him. So just think about
that. Right?
Very difficult thing to do. So when stuff
like that happens,
we are patient. We have to be patient.
Allah says, be patient
over what they are saying to you. During
the battle of Uhud, this was not only
in the beginning period of Islam, even when
they were physically fighting. Allah
says, you're gonna hear
hurtful words.
You're gonna hear hurtful words from these people.
They're gonna harm you in certain ways. And
it says, and if you
have if you if you are patient
and you're mindful of Allah, it's one of
the best things that can ever happen. So
you know what? People are gonna criticize. Don't
let it get to your heart. Don't let
it bother you so much. And the irony
of all of this you know, the interesting
thing about all of this is
the prophet was criticized
in so many different ways in the past
by the Quraysh and by the by the
people who lived during his time. They called
him all these names, poet, sorcerer,
insane,
you know, magician, all of these things. And
the the funny thing is the people who
criticize him today, many of them, they don't
believe in sorcery anymore.
They don't believe in magic anymore.
They don't even understand poetry anymore. Right? It's
not a they're too much in technology or
other sciences or whatever. So they're not using
any of those critiques.
So actually some of those are completely gone
and they're just bringing this new one about
being a womanizer or being a lustful person
or something like that. But
even when they're saying
that, the irony is
that look at what's going on. Look at
who look at who is making this criticism.
In western society,
right, in America, for example, just look at
the statistics.
They say that men will have 6
one night stands
before they find their ideal partner.
A woman is gonna kiss on average 15
men before she meets mister right.
The average man in America has 10 sexual
partners in their lifetime compared to an average
of 7 sexual partners for women.
Now this is the irony.
The irony is
that the people
who are criticizing the prophet of being a
lustful person, they're coming from the most *
crazed and lewd society in the history of
the entire world, and they have the audacity
to go and malign the messenger of Allah.
So this is this is almost a laughable
accusation
looking at who it's coming from. But of
course, at the end of the day,
for many people, at best,
this is unintended
hypocrisy.
This is due to the ignorance of people,
and it's our responsibility and our job to
educate them, to teach them what Islam really
says. And at the end, we say Allahu
Alam. Allah
knows best for everything that we don't really
know and we don't really understand.
So inshallah, we will conclude here.
And
I'll take some questions
inshallah. So can we can we leave the
recording on for questions? Oh, you turned it
off already. Okay. Good, guys. I got scared.
Okay.
Yes. Any questions people have? Yes.
Karbala,
yes. I believe she did.
Keep in mind, the battle of Karbala,
which happened later on with Hussein,
it was a very tiny little battle. So
no one was really in not many people
were involved in it. So, yeah, in terms
of what her opinion was or something like
that, yeah, her opinion was this was a
horrible thing that took place. This should not
have taken place.
If she was alive I have to double
check myself. But if she was alive, all
the companions were very clear that the death
of Hussein was a tragic incident, and it
was unjustified. Alright. Can you clarify that for
me? You remember the date? No. You don't
remember the date. You can do a quick
search, but hey. Go ahead. Next question.
Zainab and Aisha, you're saying? Okay.
The the what?
Okay. Yes.
Okay.
Yep.
Okay.
Okay. So you're saying it's connected to,
connected to the Islamic law. Okay. Good. I
just checked real quick. So no. Aisha died
2 years before,
Karbala. So
so and so no. She didn't.
Okay. Okay.
Very good. Okay. 2nd. Okay. It was yes.
Mhmm.
Yep. The psychological maturity of a 9 year
old back then
is different than the the maturity of a
9 year old today living in an urban
society. And the psychological
maturity of a 9 year old living in
a different part of the world, in a
rural part of the world, growing up in
a very different family is completely different than
someone who's growing up in urban environment. So
environment plays a role and age
and and,
history,
the the the era in which you live
plays a huge role as well.
Yep.
Okay. So so I'm gonna repeat your question
for the camera. Alright. For online. So, my
rephrasing of your question is,
how did,
Middle Eastern Arabs change their culture to stigmatize,
divorced women and widowed women, whereas the Ahfani
people have kept the original sunnah and correct
way of of still marrying them?
No. No. I got you. I'm I'm being
a little sarcastic.
Yes. Yes. So basically, what happened in the
Muslim community that this stigma
started becoming prevalent that, you know,
guys stop marrying older women
or divorced women or
widowed women.
So the answer is I really don't know.
I agree that it happened somewhere.
Where did it happen? I I don't know.
Probably, it wouldn't surprise me if it was
quite recent within the past 100 years.
Alright. Most likely, I would assume it's in
the past 100 years. Yeah.
So may Allah
cure us from that.
Yes.
The the who?
Jewish lady. Yeah.
Okay. So interesting question. So you're saying basically
when he married different women, like she married
Jewish women, and
the good treatment towards them went back to
their tribes and brought them closer to Islam
and,
made them
respect him much more.
The question is why didn't it keep going
further, and why are people attacking him? So
the thing is, I would say it did
go further, and that's why Islam spread so
quickly.
Right? And Islam spread so fast, and it
spreads in so many vast regions.
Again, this attack that's coming about him and
his relationships and all of that stuff, this
is something completely new. So this is, you
know, 18 fifties,
coming later. So the question is why hasn't
it reached
that audience
or other people?
Again, you know, my my theory is that
there are
a few loud voices
that criticize Islam and criticize the prophet,
and those loud voices
make it seem like everyone thinks the same
way. Alright? And the thing is, the reality
is whoever if you just take the average
person,
the first person to explain to them and
give them
the context
behind who the prophet is
is gonna really determine
what they think about the prophet and who
is getting to them first.
It's usually gonna be some sinister
academic orientalist
writing some book against Islam with some agenda,
or it's gonna be some Fox News, or
it's gonna be some, you know, something else
that they have an underlying agenda to, you
know, not really promote
the concept of Islam among the people. So
that's what's gonna happen. I think that that
is where the root cause of of the
problem is.
K.
Any other questions?
Yes.
The author was Badruddin
Zarkashi.
Yes.
Sure. If you email me, I can send
you whatever you like. Your note my notes.
Sure.
My email is pretty public. You can just
search on Google and you'll find it. Sure.
Yes.
Correct. They had to they had to divorce
the rest. Yes.
Correct. That's correct. So the there there were
there were men who had more than 4
wives, and when the verse came down restricting
it to 4, they had to divorce and
bring it down to 4. Yes.
And and and after that like, I'm just
repeating for the camera. And after that, no
one married more than 4.
K.
Any other questions?
I expected more questions. Okay.
Hopefully, that's a good sign.
Stuff was covered.
We ask Allah
to purify our hearts, give us a correct
understanding of Islam, and give us the wisdom
and the proper logic to convey the message
of Islam to other people.