I was raised as a Southern Baptist and I still suffer from the trauma. There are some good, intelligent people who are Southern Baptists, but many of them switch their brains off when garbage like this is spewed. How anyone can nod their heads in agreement with this and still profess to believe in a God of love baffles me and always has.
Ah, just the maunderings of another raving bigot. Every church ( and faith ) has its lunatic fringe. Most of my mother’s side of the family are Southern Baptist and only some of them are bigots 
( and the ones who are I mostly chalk up to cultural upbringing rather than religious teachings ).
Anywho, as to Muhammed and his wives - A contentious and somewhat hazy topic, as these things so often seem to be. Most of the writings on his wives and his relationships with them come from the Hadith, the collected ‘sayings’ of Muhammed and his close companions, and the problem with that is that there are multiple hadith and they don’t always match up perfectly. In fact there is something of a hiearchy of accuracy as regards different hadith, depending on which tradition you follow. Anyway the exact number of wives is in dispute. Some counts go as high as fifteen, but I believe at least five or six of those are considered dubious because they are only referenced in one source. As to the better confirmed wives…
His first and most significant wife is completely uncontested. Muhammed was first married at the age of 25 to the widow of a rich merchant fifteen years his senior, Khadija. They had a previous business relationship and it appears she proposed to him ( via intermediaries ). This marriage lasted 25 years and was apparently monogamous throughout. She bore him six children, two sons ( who both died young ) and four daughters, including the famous ‘favorite’, Fatima, who later married his nephew Ali and through which the modern Shi’a tradition considers the only true succesors of the Prophet to descend. Khadija was the first convert to Islam and if one wants to indulge in a bit of pop psychology, I might imagine that Muhammed’s relatively enlightened ( for his time ) views on female property rights might derive in good part from her influence. She died of natural causes at the age of 65.
Muhammed then married another widow, his own age ( 50 ), Sauda. Shortly thereafter, as attested to by two sources, he supposedly received a revelatory dream that led him to contract a marriage ( purportedly with Sauda’s approval ) with A’isha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, the first adult male convert to Islam ( Ali was the first male convert, period ), his closest companion and ally, and the man who would eventually be his immediate successor as the first Caliph. It’s A’isha that is the controversial one. She was, again purportedly, six years old at the time and went to actually live with Muhammed three years later at the age of nine. By at least one account, that is also the point when the marriage was consummated. But I have seen some dispute over that as well as her age. Regardless, the political significance of this union seems pretty apparent ( Muhammed also apparently married one of the daughters, a widow again I believe, of Umar, who would become Caliph #2 after Abu Bakr died ).
At any rate, the rest of his wives, of whatever confirmed or unconfirmed status, seem to fall into two clumps. The largest group seems to be made up of middle-aged war widows. A couple were manumitted slaves who were teenagers ( 17, I think ).
As to the provision in the Qur’an that allows only four wives ( or a de facto one, if you accept the reasonings of certain theologians ), I have seen at least one source that claims that all these marriages took place before he had that revelation and that this caused him to stop “collecting wives”, as it were. But I can’t really confirm that right this moment. If false, it would of course, make Muhammed’s behavior in this respect a pretty spectacular case of “do what I say, not what I do” :D.
So therein lies the basis for the charge of pedophelia at least. As for ‘demon-possesed’, I guess that’s just a matter of interpretation as well ;).
- Tamerlane
I always enjoy your posts on the history of the Middle East and Islam. They are invariably enlightening and well-written. However, I must quibble slightly with your comments on the SBC. The biggest problem I have is that these folks are NOT the raving lunatic fringe. The sources quoted are an immediate past president and current president. They are the raving lunatic leadership. And that makes them more frightening and dangerous. The SBC was at one time very pluralistic as far as the mix of conservative and (relatively) liberal Baptists was concerned.
However, the conservative takeover of the leadership is actively trying to push the more moderate and liberal elements out of the church. Evidence of this is the pressure put on the missionaries, the revision of Baptist Faith & Message slanted heavily in favor of an authoritarian view and the strong-arm tactics they’ve taken with individual area conferences, such as the DC Conference. The SBC has gotten so obviously authoritarian and conservative that the Texas Baptist Convention has taken to actively trying to stop their actions.
Jesus H. Kee-rist.
::: shaking head :::
This is enough to make one believe in possession by evil entities. Fuck. If there is a hell, I guess that’s where this fuckwad is going.
Elly.
Homebrew: Well my comment was more in regards to Southern Baptists generally, rather than SBC specifically.
But I guess I would have to agree with you that in this case the “lunatic fringe” is getting to be lot less “fringey”.
- Tamerlane
<fights the urge to make a TOTALLY tasteless joke>
“Give in to the dark side, CRorexSkyWalker”.
Regards,
Darth Shodan
It’s not too useful to go into (or spent much time reviewing) the posture of Dr. Jerry Vines (Jax First Baptist Church) at the moment; time for him, later.
Neither is it useful, beyond certain legal movements, to dig into the problems of the Catholic Church; there’s plenty of time to address those problems somewhere down the road. (Hey, they’ve been around for how may thousands of years and we wanna fix the problem right NOW?!?!?)
On the other hand, there are some folk out there who’d die to see you and I go up in a big ball of fire or some other hideous method of death.
For the moment, I’d suggest we concentrate on the wackoid-loony-tune-radical-islamists who’d love nothing better than to have you kneeling several times a day to their so-called god.
Aren’t these the kind of people who drove Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter out of the SBC?
As for twisted religious figures, I think they should look up good ol’ Lot. Who offered his daughters up to a bunch of rapists and then later had sex with said daughters.
**Guinastasia, ** I know I am picking a bone here, but Lot was not what I would call a religious figure. What I mean is he wasn’t any sort of clergy or religious spokesperson. He was a *figure * in a religious book/story, what I would call a layperson. Of course that doesn’t cut the jerk any slack, offering up his girls that way. And the father/daughter sex thing was the *girl’s * idea. They thought they were the last people left on earth after the destruction of their city, and Daddy was the only guy who would be able to give them kids(the measure of a woman’s status in those days) I would call them one of the original “dysfunctional” families in literature.
I know-but usually you hear fundies, the anti-gay ones especially-holding Lot up to be a paragon of virtue-because he protected the angels from those “godless fags” in Sodom.
Guin: I always considered Lot to be one of the most reprehensible characters of the Bible (aside from God himself, that is). He turned his daughters over to a rape mob to give shelter to grown men! At some point, you have to ask yourself what’s more important: My own kin, or these strangers who are asking for my help? Maybe I’m missing something, but Lot isn’t painted in a good light and to hold him up as a paragon of virtue is twisted beyond belief.
Ok, not really ‘beyond belief’, but only because of the radicals who actually believe it.
Wow! I always knew Trent Lot was an asshole, but I had no idea!
What?
It gets better - the author of 2 Peter holds Lot up as a paragon of virtue:
Ch.2, vv.7-9. IIRC, Heinlein had Jubal Harshaw wax eloquent on this passage in Stranger in a Strange Land.
I think what the preacher said was right on the damn money.
Muslims are a jealous, warring people, have been ever since Ishmael was born.
Name me ONE Muslim society that is well … civilized. Democratic. Remotely supportive of equal rights.
Furthermore, name me ONE Muslim organization that has publicly denounced what happened on September 11th.
I don’t know about Muhammed being a pedo, but everything else he said was right.
Generalize much?
Um. How about Turkey? Or France?
Yassir Arafat: “We are completely shocked. It’s unbelievable. We completely condemn this very dangerous attack, and I convey my condolences to the American people, to the American president and to the American administration, not only in my name but on behalf of the Palestinian people.”
I don’t know about Muhammed being a pedo, but everything else he said was right. **
[/QUOTE]
I was pleasantly surprised to find this come out at the conference (it’s the last line in the article, quoted from a different minister):
Hansel hopefully every pedo religious leader will be exposed, whatever religion they are.
This sentence makes roughly as much sense as saying “Christians are a jealous, warring people, have been ever since the days of Attila the Hun”.
Good for you WV_Woman. I am only sorry that you beat me to it.
Welcome to SDMB. By the way, did Muhammad marry a 9 year old?