Except that Mohammed selected his nine year old wife when she was six. He found her attractive at that age. He also married her with the full intent of having sex with her and did have sex with her.
Obviously history is not your strong point.
The prophet Muhammad (SAWS) did not select Aisha for marriage. It was her father Abu Bakr, a companion of the prophet who approached him with the proposition of marrying his daughter.
other companions such as Omar also offered their daughters in marriage to the prophet. no where did the prophet or Aisha say he found her attractive and married for sex. The prophet had an important mission to accomplish and that is to spread God’s religion among his family, the pagan mekkans and then to the world.
whenever you want to examine the prophet’s relationships, they are divided into 3 categories
between the ages of 0 - 25 the Prophet Muhammad (saws) never marries anybody. at the prime of his young age and in a society known for its sexual Promiscuousity, he was known by two titles (sadiq & amin) truthful and trustworthy. In the whole of arabia he was known as never indulged in any sexual activity, he was rather known as the man of trust.
between 25-51, he married only 1 woman. Her name was Khadija (as). In a society where you can get married to 2,4,16…as many as you want, he was only married to 1 woman for 26 years until she passed away.
from 51-63 He married the rest of the 9 or 10 wives that are narrated in the ahadeeth. You will also find that with each one he married for a reason and there are three reasons.
- to introduce a law into Islam
- for political reasons
- the women were widows
an example of the three reasons for his marriage to follow
Introducing a law into Islam
the prophet’s marriage to Zaynab
Zaynab the prophet’s cousin was married to Zaid whom the prophet took as an adopted son. Zaid and Zainab couldn’t get along and got divorced. In arabia, your adopted son is viewed as your real son and as such you can not marry the x-wife of your real son. In the Quran the prophet was ordered to marry Zainab so we remove this idea that your adopted son is like your real son from sharia.
Political marriages
Because he is the Messenger of God, he doesn’t think about his own emotions he thinks about the message of God. One of the political marriages is his marriage to Juairiyah. Juairiyah was from the tribe of banu Mustalaq and the daughter of their leader, they were enemies of Islam and eventually the Prophet of Islam defeated them and asked for her hand in marriage. This marriage served two purposes.
- her father would not seek revenge because now the prophet is part of his family and is considered one of their tribesmen.
- it becomes easier for the tribes to accept the teachings of islam because this is no longer a stranger preaching about a religion, it is one of their tribesmen. The point here is to remove political tension from the tribes and to bring them together
Aisha’s marriage to the prophet would also fall into this category. Abu bakr her father wanted to have the honor of being the father in-law of the prophet, he comes from a big tribe and so does the prophet, in this marriage the prophet had hoped to bring both tribes together into Islam.
widowed women
The third group of women the prophet married were widows who didn’t have anyone to take care of them. Hafsa the daughter of Omar was a widowed woman and Omar approached the prophet asking him to marry her as no one wants her. Umm Salama was a widow, sauda was a widdow. These are older women whom nobody had wanted, whom were not beautiful and many whom were very old.
so there was one group of marriages for legal reasons, another for political and a third women whom had no one to look after them.
now you may ask why a girl of 9 years old?
as I said earlier, the narrator of this hadith Hisham ibn Urwah was known to be a liar. you may say that the hadith was also narriated by other people making this story corroboratred (mutawatir) however, I have not seen the other hadiths by other narrators and i am sure they are not in any authentic books so I wonder how reliable they are.
The prophet’s mission was a successful one in that in 23 years he was able to bring an entire nation of idol worshiping warring divided tribes to unite together under islam. Marriage was one of the many methods he employed to bring people to the religion.