Regarding the Marriage of the Prophet Muhammed (ﷺ) to Aisha (RA)

 

One of the most overused criticisms of the Prophet Muhammed (ﷺ) and of Islam is the marriage of the Prophet (ﷺ) to Aisha (RA). 



Context: According to Sahih al-Bukhari 5134, Aisha was married (engaged) to the Prophet (ﷺ) when she was 6 and the marriage was consummated when she was 9. 

The modern criticism is that this constitutes pedophilia. 



Here are the facts that dispute this criticism: 

People in the past aged faster:

"In a 2018 paper entitled “Is 60 the New 50?”, scientists from Yale University and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, looked at what they call “biological age.”... The result is that the people in the 2007-2010 group were a little bit younger, biologically, than their counterparts in the 1988-1994 cohort. Women in their twenties or thirties were a few months younger, whereas men had “shed” a year and three months. The difference was at its most extreme in the group of people in their sixties and seventies. In the more recent cohort, these women were, on average, three years and eight months younger than their peers from the 1988-1994 cohort; men had “lost” four years and a little over three months. Same chronological age, but younger biologically."

"Using age-related mortality data for 40 countries, it is shown that the rate of aging does not change significantly over history and is almost the same for different countries from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. However, since the mid-20th century for the first time in history, slowing of the rate of aging in all parameters, including maximum life span, which is apparently associated with pronounced success in the economy, health and social care, has been noted... The effect of the decrease in the rate of human aging since the mid-20th century is the most important phenomenon, which is significant both theoretically and practically in the conditions of the constantly increasing proportion of older ages (aging of the population) and an increase in the retirement age."

"In the past few decades, as puberty has advanced, biological maturation has come to precede psychosocial maturation significantly for the first time in our evolutionary history Although this developmental mismatch has considerable societal implications, care has to be taken not to medicalize contemporary early puberty inappropriately."



People in hot climates age faster:

"New research suggests that extreme heat may cause people to age faster at a molecular level... The passage of time leaves markers of aging in our genes. For a new study, researchers looked at such markers in 3,800 Americans over the age of 55, comparing the data with local weather records. They found that people living in places with more hot days tended to have more genetic markers of age... The research, presented at a recent conference on the science of aging, finds that people living in hot places age up to 0.6 percent faster than those living in cooler places, Nature reported."

"It has been concluded that climate exerts a significant influence on age at menarche because the relatively easy availability of food in the tropics increases energy intake while the absence of cold weather decreases energy expenditure on maintenance and activity."

By this standard it would make sense for Aisha (RA) to have reached puberty by the age of 9.

This was something that was well understood even by European intellectuals of the 18th century:

"Women, in hot climates, are marriageable at eight, nine, or ten years of age; thus, in those countries, infancy and marriage generally go together. They are old at twenty: their reason therefore never accompanies their beauty. When beauty demands the empire, the want of reason forbids the claim; when reason is obtained, beauty is no more." - Spirit of Laws (1748), Baron De Montesquieu, French Philosopher and Jurist.


Furthermore, if the criticism is from a Christian perspective, it would hold no ground as Christians have the same concept. 

Up until 1917, the Canonical Age for marriage was 14 for boys and 12 for girls:

"Betrothals [sponsalia] require seven full years in the contracting parties. The marriageable age is fourteen full years in males and twelve full years in females, under penalty of nullity (unless natural puberty supplies the want of years)."


Opinion of Thomas Aquinas:

"Now for the most part this age is the fourteenth year in males and the twelfth year in women: but since the ordinances of positive law are consequent upon what happens in the majority of cases, if anyone reach the required perfection before the aforesaid age, so that nature and reason are sufficiently developed to supply the lack of age, the marriage is not annulled. Wherefore if the parties who marry before the age of puberty have marital intercourse before the aforesaid age, their marriage is none the less perpetually indissoluble."


Origen says Ezekiel 16:8 when God marries Israel is metaphor for Israel reaching age of puberty:

“And I came to you, and I saw you, and behold! [it was] your time, and the time of lodgers.” What is the [meaning of] the phrase “your time”? It indicates the time of adolescence—at which now, because of their age, they are able to commit fornication. And again, he says, “and the time"


Tertullian says that a child becoming a woman is indicated by her menstruating:

"And accordingly, among Israel, it is unlawful to deliver one to a husband except after the attestation by blood of her maturity; thus, before this indication, the nature is unripe."


The Protoevangelium of James recognized Mary to be 12 at the time of her marriage:

"And when she was twelve years old there was held a council of the priests, saying: Behold, Mary has reached the age of twelve years in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her, lest perchance she defile the sanctuary of the Lord?"

Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5134

Source: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-history-general-science/we-used-look-older

Source: https://atlasofscience.org/historical-stability-of-the-human-aging-rate-and-its-decline-in-our-time/

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043276005002602

Source: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/heat-aging-
study#:~:text=They%20found%20that%20people%20living,in%20cooler%20places%2C%20Nature%20reported.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0018442X16300336

Source: https://classicliberal.tripod.com/montesquieu/sol16.html

Source: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01206c.htm

Source: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.XP_Q58_A5.html

Source: https://archive.org/stream/OrigenHomiliesOnEzekielEdHooker2014/Origen-Homilies_on_Ezekiel-ed_Hooker-2014_djvu.txt

Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0403.htm

Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm