Child marriages are not permitted in Islam Muhammad al-Massari in his book ‘Women in Islam’ mentions: “Child marriages, like the ones practised in some backward societies around the world in which an infant is married to another infant or sometimes a foetus is married to another foetus or children are married at an age when they don’t know even the meaning of marriage, find no approval in Islam. A boy or girl’s personal consent is necessary in marriage, which they cannot give unless they are mature enough to take a decision about it. Some scholars, influenced by such pre-Islamic customs and cultural background, take the marriage of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to ‘Aisha, which was consummated at her young age of nine years, as an evidence for the permissibility of child marriage! This is not correct. That marriage was contracted, according to the, then valid, Arab tradition, in Mecca and consummated in the first year of the Medina time long before the new detailed laws has been revealed about women and their rights, specifically …

Dr Jonathan Brown, an associate professor of Islamic Civilization discusses in this video the controversy surrounding the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ marriage to the mother of believers Aisha (May Allah be pleased with her). This honourable marriage is being used nowadays by the enemies of Islam to attack the character of the greatest human being and master of the prophets Muhammad ﷺ. Dr Brown also discusses the idea of universal moral codes and the ever-changing western value system of ‘human rights’. Background Dr Brown in his book Misquoting Muhammad gives some background to the origins of this attack: Although recent research has shown that medical reforms in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt had identified child marriage as a health concern, it was modern Western opprobrium that brought the problematic precedent of the Prophet’s marriage with Aisha to the fore. The Prophet’s sexuality and married life had been a lurid magnet for criticism even during his own lifetime, and it has remained the most consistent theme in Christian/Western polemics against Islam ever since. His marriage to Aisha did feature in …