People who constantly come up with allegations, hoisting up the age difference between Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) and ‘Aisha (R) can be categorised into 3 :

• Far-right extremists
• Christian missionaries
• Atheists

The funniest bit is when we have atheists doing so because, as we all know, the year 2016 witnessed the beginning of a popular hashtag campaign – #LOVEISLOVE. Love is love, irrespective of caste, creed, colour and gender and everybody has the right to indulge in sexual relationships whether it be premarital, marital or extramarital. We see rampant protests and campaigns advocating for the same from the aforementioned group – the atheists. If you were to line up 10 atheists and ask each one of them what they consider to be the most appropriate age for a male and a female to have sexual relationship, you’d get 10 different answers – from 10 years of age to 15 and 21, to age not being a criterion for love whatsoever if there is mutual consent.

This is exactly why the postmodernists and libertarian fathers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell, who the proponents of atheism look up to and applaud as their apostles, negate the existence of something like objective morality altogether and identifies subjective morality as the only real deal [see Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ (1886), Bertrand Russell’s ‘Marriage and Morals’ (1929)]. Now, when these same people raise questions and accusations regarding the ages of Prophet Muhammed’s (Peace Be Upon Him) wives, we are in turn, brought to a standstill at its irony. Over dependence on the socially constructed legalistic definitions of the 21st century is the root cause of this issue. If we were to look from within a postcolonial narrative framework of today to analyse and pass judgments on the lives and ways of people of older generations, we would be committing what is called, an “anthropological fallacy”, a fact accentuated even by the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, who was considered for three decades, the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States.

As cited in Jeremy Rifkin’s ‘The Empathic Civilization’ (2010), up till the 19th century, the criterion for adulthood had been puberty. According to historians, this had been so throughout history. Until the 1880s, the legal age of consent was 10 in America. In Delaware, another state in the US, it was 7. Biologically speaking, let’s ask these indicters what they consider to be the appropriate age for adulthood. “The average temperature of the country or a province is considered the chief factor here, not only with regard to menstruation, but as regards the whole of sexual development at puberty.” [Herman H. Ploss, Max Bartels and Paul Bartels; ‘Woman: An Historical, Gynaecological and Anthropological Compendium’, Volume 1, Lord & Bransby, 1988, p. 563]

Climate, latitude and various other variables affect menarche and we have historical evidences to prove that the average age of puberty was much younger during the time of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). Just within the last 100 years, there has been a dramatic change in the average age of puberty, so one can only imagine the great change that could have occurred within a span of 1000 years. The historical literature does indeed suggest that the average age of puberty was much younger in Eastern countries. The Cambridge World History of Food says:
“Albrecht von Haller (1775), for example, claimed that girls in the southerly regions of Asia, where the climate was warm, were marriageable in their eighth year and gave birth in their ninth or tenth year[…]” [The Cambridge World History of Food, p. 1455]. I ask of the accusing parties, to bring forth studies or observations that prove these notions false if their allegations and claims henceforth, are to be given any recognition whatsoever.

Finally, let’s look into the legal ages of consent. I’d like to query which country’s legal age you are willing to follow or uphold as “the correct one”. How can there even be a unanimous answer to this question keeping in mind the biological, climatic factors just mentioned? Take for instance, the country of India. If it wasn’t for the POSCO Amendment Act of 2012 which protects children from sexual offences, how would you define or identify someone as an adult or a child? If it wasn’t for the same, sexual relations with mutual consent, irrespective of age is what these so-called “rationalists” would have advocated for. A quick glance through the legal age of consent in some countries across the globe:

• Nigeria – 11 years of age
• Philippines and Angola – 12 years of age
• South Korea and Japan -13 years of age
• China, South America, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador – 14 years of age
• Oman – 18 years of age
• Bahrain – 21 years of age

I ask of the so called rationalists who preach an ideology based on subjective morality, the foundation upon which they can rightfully justify their contempt over such a great personality as Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). Perhaps you could release an official statement stating that such and such is the “standard age”, the ultimate one globally, for sexual relationship?
We’ll be waiting.

Suhail Rasheed