There’s a fascinating essay here by a former long-term contributor to Charlie Hebdo. (It was written before the murders, in response to an article in* Le Monde* signed by Charb and Fabrice Nicolino, and can be a little uncomfortable to read now as a result.) The author’s (passionately expressed) opinion is that Charlie Hebdo did become racist in the years since 9/11, as they lost sight of the divide between anti-cericalism and racism:
I don’t know enough context to weigh up the truth of this, but he seems to have a fair amount of evidence for his claims and a fairly solid background (c.10 years writing for the magazine) to make them from.
Hang on, I don’t think the cartoon called the historical figure a whore, just that it was more expensive to find a child prostitute to make the film and a pig’s head was cheaper (and though fictional…actually less offensive)
If a religion wants to suggest that a 1500 year old doctrine was perfect at the time and remains perfect and immutable now and the prophet, his actions and his words are set in stone and cannot be challenged then I call bullshit.
Which is it, was the prophet right to do what he did or wrong? Follow his example or not? do what he did or not? Or is it fine to deviate where modern sensibilities raise problematic questions? If so when? and how? and who gets to decide?
Ill judge a fallible human under a different set of criteria than an infallible divine creature but either way I’m free to criticise disgusting behaviour.
Hey, cool ! I’d been wanting to link to Cyran’s piece earlier but couldn’t find an English version and, well, couldn’t be arsed to translate all of that just because some people are Wrong. On the Internet :).
I don’t know how old Aisha was when her marriage to Muhammed was consummated, but if she was nine, she wasn’t an ‘extremely younger woman’, she wasn’t a woman at all.
No, child marriage was not ‘commonplace’ at least in Europe, and marriages were generally not consummated until after menarche (which in the Middle Ages happened somewhat later than it does today, although the exact age is disputed).
It’s a pretty core belief in Islam that Muhammed was the best and greatest of men, so yes, his personal life has a lot to do with Islam.
It’s ambiguous I guess. You could read it as either “I couldn’t afford a 9 year old prostitute [to stand in for Aisha]” or “I couldn’t afford a 9-year old prostitute [which is what Aisha was]”.
The only “perfect and immutable” part of Islam is the Koran, which AFAIK provides no guidelines whatsoever re:the proper age of majority.
The bio of Muhammad (the sira) and the stuff he said besides what Gabriel had told him to say (the hadith) certainly have a large influence on Muslim doctrine, but they are absolutely subject to debate, interpretation and so forth. The individual authenticity of each hadith is judged differently by the various sects (or even individual teachers within each sect). Which one trumps the other in which cases, when multiple hadith seem to say different or even opposite things, is also up for (a lot of) debate.
It’s a religion codified by a Semitic people. They argue about things. It’s what they do. Ask the Jews, they know.
And I don’t believe anybody claims Muhammad led an absolutely perfect existence either, though I’m just a historian, not a theologian. Only Allah is perfect and so on.
Does it have to be one or the other ?
Now, bear in mind that I’m really not a specialist on Islam per se, but from what I understand :
The ummah (that is to say, the community of the faitfhul, collegially) does. The fiqh (that is to say, the practical application of the teachings and jurisprudence) is mutable, with generally speaking sunnis being more attached to traditions and shias generally speaking having a more analytical, philosophical, reason-based and subjective approach.
In actual practice, scholars and imams study the hadith and history of Islam along with the huge body of analysis already written, to try and find guidelines on how to treat new situations whenever they arise ; and proclaim what **they **believe this or that bit means, whether or not that hadith should be dismissed or not etc… And when a consensus is reached by the imams of a community, the faithful tend to follow their advice.
But ultimately, the fatwas and the proclamations are just opinions, they’re not dogmatic law to be executed OR ELSE like a papal bull would be.
Muhammad wasn’t and never claimed to be an infallible divine creature. He never claimed one bit of divinity at all. He was just a bloke, and always insisted that he was just a bloke, who happened to be the receptor of a one-way phone line with Allah - that’s why you’re not supposed to create representations of him in the first place.
Granted, this concept got turned on its head over the centuries but the purpose of the prohibition was to steer clear of any form of personal veneration or idolatry centered around his likeness (such as the ones practiced by his Byzantine neighbours, where people were even attributing magical powers to paintings of Jesus and the saints) ; while according to him, and his bro Gabriel, the only thing a good Muslim should ever venerate and hold sacred is Og and his revealed word.
So he kinda failed on that front. Which only goes to show how infallible he wasn’t ;).
You’re joking I presume ?
Among the aristocracy, for whom marriage was all about diplomatic alliances, there was only therule of expediency. Isabella of Angoulême was married at 12. Judith of Bavaria was 14. Matilda of Frisia 10. Constance of Castille 13. Isabelle of Hainaut 10. Blanche of Burgundy 12. Need I go on ? All of these would be “pedophile kings’ wives”, yeah ?
Muhammad really wanted to cement a long term alliance with Abu Bakr’s family, right now. So. Aïsha. 9 or 10. Or 12. Or maybe 19. Sources vary. Baptismal records could not be found (:it is a genealogy joke:).
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
To be fair, there are lots of ways to interpret that cartoon. I took the it as a dig against the producer of the movie, not necessarily against Islam. The Innocence of Muslims was a pretty ignorant movie, ripe for ridicule.
True.
I guess I’m not inclined to give Charb the benefit of the doubt in this case, because I’m not analysing this cartoon in isolation if you take my meaning. Nor the “Muhammad the pedophile”… dogwhistle ? No, that’s not quite the right idiom. Rallying cry maybe.
But hey, I reserve the right to be blatantly unfair - 'cause fair’s fair, right ?
My understanding is that the life of the Prophet is of overwhelming importance because of his perfection. As the perfect man it means that unless Allah deemed an action in his life an error he had to confess to his actions are a guide to living and a guide to interpretation. It also makes writing a non-hagiographic biography as an Islamic scholar a rather risky business as the Egyptian scholar (whose name I forget) found out. Not to mention Rushdie.
[The Importance of Prophet Muhammad and His Status as a Role Model](The Importance of Prophet Muhammad and His Status as a Role Model)
This is what the leading scholar of the Salafi (who apparently are synonymous with wahhibism in Saudi) has to say on child marriage on Islam Question and Answer.
In discussing various scholarly views it quotes on of the great jurists (without endorsing)
The life and actions of the Prophet (as elaborated on in various external sources that are pillars of different schools of islamic law provide the context in which these different schools interpret the Koran) are of huge significance in Islam.
It’s particularly important if a jurist interpretation considers the chronology of his life can be used to reconcile the differing and contradictory nature of the Koran. With regard to the islamic justification modern terrorism this is crucial because this means the ‘sword verses’ over-ride all the earlier ‘play nice’ religion of peace parts.
