Muhammad - Worthy of respect?

[Ceisiwr]

From my understanding, Muhammad married Aisha at age seven and consummated the marriage at age 9. This makes Muhammad a paedophile as he engaged in intercourse with her before puberty.

This indicates that Muhammad is not a man worthy of religious respect. Not only did he brake the 4th precept, but he did so in the most horrendous way. Muhammad was a degenerate because of this act, although he also engaged in other less than noble acts. True, he had some good qualities. All men and women do, even Hitler, but I feel what was noble in him can be found elsewhere. As Buddhists we should not respect such a man.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

I'm on my phone now so it's hard for me to access, but I'm sure there's suttas which talk of the criteria by which someone is worthy of respect. Or not.

Can anyone think of any such examples, pertinent to this case?

Metta,
Paul.

[DooDoot]

From my understanding, Muhammad married Aisha at age seven and consummated the marriage at age 9. This makes Muhammad a paedophile as he engaged in intercourse with her before puberty.

In Buddhism. the word 'understanding' refers to verified personal realisation. Since Muslims dispute this Aisha matter, why bother with unsubstantiated gossip? Personally, I can't imagine Muhammad (PBUH) would have engaged in sexual intercourse with a pre-pubescent girl given Islam is pretty strict. But in the UK child porn is freely available. It sounds ironic how 'liberals' use the 'paedophile' argument to attempt to discredit the sexual strictness of Islam. I think Wikipedia concludes the matter quite logically, which accords with my intuition :

Muslim authors who calculate Aisha's age based on the more detailed information available about her sister Asma estimate that she was over thirteen and perhaps between seventeen and nineteen at the time of her marriage. Muhammad Niknam Arabshahi, an Iranian Islamic scholar and historian, has considered six different approaches[clarification needed] to determining Aisha's age and concluded that she was engaged in her late teens.[29] Using the age of Fatimah as a reference point, the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement scholar Muhammad Ali has estimated that Aisha was over ten years old at the time of marriage and over fifteen at the time of its consummation.

American historian Denise Spellberg has reviewed Islamic literature on Aisha's virginity, age at marriage and age when the marriage was consummated and speculates that Aisha's youth might have been exaggerated to exclude any doubt about her virginity. Spellberg states, "Aisha's age is a major pre-occupation in Ibn Sa'd where her marriage varies between six and seven; nine seems constant as her age at the marriage's consummation." She notes one exception in Ibn Hisham's biography of the Prophet, which suggests that consummation may have occurred when Aisha was age 10, summarizing her review with the note that "these specific references to the bride's age reinforce Aisha's pre-menarcheal status and, implicitly, her virginity. They also suggest the variability of Aisha's age in the historical record." Early Muslims regarded Aisha's youth as demonstrating her virginity and therefore her suitability as a bride of Muhammad. This issue of her virginity was of great importance to those who supported Aisha's position in the debate of the succession to Muhammad. These supporters considered that as Muhammad's only virgin wife, Aisha was divinely intended for him, and therefore the most credible regarding the debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha#Acc ... f_adultery

As Buddhists we should not respect such a man.

Personally, I honor the Buddha because Buddha taught a path of liberation based in celibacy & viewing the unsatisfactoriness of sex. Therefore, with such clarity of a liberated mind, the Buddha is certainly a superior role model for me. As for Muhammad (PBUH), I never knew him but try to show whatever respect is warranted. Since I have travelled in Muslim countries with morally upright & generous people, I have some mudita (respect) towards the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born —
May all beings be at ease!
Peace be upon them (PBUT)!

[pilgrim]

Given the reputation on Mohd and Islam, if he was alive today, I would steer clear of him. Indeed, I would'nt dare criticise him for fear of my own safety.

[Garrib]

Nevermind the charges - do you know a lot of Buddhists who spend a lot of time revering Muhammad? This seems like kind of a non-issue as far as I'm concerned.

[binocular]

From my understanding, Muhammad married Aisha at age seven and consummated the marriage at age 9. This makes Muhammad a paedophile as he engaged in intercourse with her before puberty.

This indicates that Muhammad is not a man worthy of religious respect. Not only did he brake the 4th precept, but he did so in the most horrendous way. Muhammad was a degenerate because of this act, although he also engaged in other less than noble acts. True, he had some good qualities. All men and women do, even Hitler, but I feel what was noble in him can be found elsewhere. As Buddhists we should not respect such a man.

There are four brahmaviharas.

[SarathW]

It is not easy to make a judgement on what happened 1500 years ago with 21 century standards.
Getting married in very young was very common.
I believe Buddha married very young too.
Marrying your own sister was also common in Buddha's time.

Perhaps we should see what Muslims are doing today rather than what they did 1500 years ago.

[Bundokji]

I agree with SarathW that using today's morality standards to judge what happened 15 centuries ago is not a good idea. Also in Islam, there are many versions of each story (including this particular one). The biography of Muhammad as well as the Hadith were written long after his death, so Muslim scholars who were trying to be objective included everything, and then developed a ranking system of men who conveyed the Hadith using a very strict standards focusing on if they ever lied and whether they had good memory or not ..etc

The above is a cause of much confusion among Muslims who don't know much about their religion as well we non Muslims who approach the books and citing whatever they find in them, and then accusing Muslims of denying the truth about their religion.

As DooDoot said, the story itself is disputed, and most Muslims believe that Muhammad married Aisha when she was 13 and some say when she was 18. Even according to the story which says he married her when she was nine, this is half of the story. He married her when she was six and she stayed in her father's house until she became nine (until she reached puberty i guess).

To use today's standards to judge very old behavior is clinging to the current conventions (civil law). These days, it is punishable by law to allow a man who is above 18 to have sex with a woman who is below 18, but nature seems to have different opinion. When a female or a male reach puberty, they can have children, so it is permissible for them to have sex. The difference between the two moral systems is that one uses nature to build a convention, and the other uses convention to determine what is natural or normal behavior!

The above does not apply to the physical, but also to the psychological aspect of men and women. When you treat people as children, they will behave as such. The leader of the last military expedition (against the Byzantine Empire) before Muhammad's death was 17 years of age, and his name was Usama Ibn Zayd.

Also the story as mentioned by Craig can be somehow misleading. Muhammad had many wives, some of them were older than him. His first wife (Khadija) was much older than him, and he married her when he was relatively young (and assumingly at the peak of his sexual desire) and yet, he monogamously married her for 25 years, and when she died, he described this year in his life "the year of sorrow".

All following marriages were done either for political reasons, which is to form alliances with other tribes and to bring them to Islam, or to honor and cement the relation with some of his closest companions (Aisha was the daughter of Abu Baker, the first Khalifah after the death of Muhammad), or to break a tradition and to introduce a new rule (as in the case of Zainab Bint Jahsh)

[form]

Examining a belief system based on its potential highest attainment will be good enough.

[davidbrainerd]

In Buddhism. the word 'understanding' refers to verified personal realisation. Since Muslims dispute this Aisha matter, why bother with unsubstantiated gossip?

Its from their own books. The only thing they dispute is whether she was 6 or 9, because apparently their sources are contradictory on that point.

[davidbrainerd]

From my understanding, Muhammad married Aisha at age seven and consummated the marriage at age 9. This makes Muhammad a paedophile as he engaged in intercourse with her before puberty.

Its from the Muslims' own books, and its actually much worse than that, but its too pervy to even get into, so I won't.

This indicates that Muhammad is not a man worthy of religious respect.

Even aside from this issue he is not worthy of respect. What did he ever do? Go around lying pretending to be a prophet, command murder, engage in murder, take women as slaves, rape his slaves. I don't see anything positive at all about Mohammed or Islam. And the practice of Islam doesn't spread morality. Islamic societies are just cesspools, literal rape cultures, not imaginary ones like college campuses.

[Caodemarte]

....Its from their own books. The only thing they dispute is whether she was 6 or 9, because apparently their sources are contradictory on that point.

No, that is simply not true. What is the motive for this stream of unreasoning hatred?

[Nicholas Weeks]

The founder of Islam led armies with the motive of conquering and subduing others. His fondness for violence in the name of his cause, does not appeal to me at all.

Suttanipata 540 (or 546) says of our Buddha:

You saw what I was looking for, you knew what I was unsure of, and you carried me across! What mastery! What heights! — this is the ultimate in wisdom. I can give nothing but respect, nothing but honour to this power-house of gentleness, this brother of the sun!

That is the sort of Sage worthy of devotion, not to mention respect.

[dharmacorps]

From my understanding, Muhammad married Aisha at age seven and consummated the marriage at age 9. This makes Muhammad a paedophile as he engaged in intercourse with her before puberty.

This indicates that Muhammad is not a man worthy of religious respect. Not only did he brake the 4th precept, but he did so in the most horrendous way. Muhammad was a degenerate because of this act, although he also engaged in other less than noble acts. True, he had some good qualities. All men and women do, even Hitler, but I feel what was noble in him can be found elsewhere. As Buddhists we should not respect such a man.

Even if you did decide for some reason you could judge the founder of a major world religion as unworthy of respect, how does this help you? Or us as Buddhists? Or as people? Is it skillful to ask this? Would that mean muslims on the whole are not worthy of respect? This is a fruitless and divisive question.

[Garrib]

Even if you did decide for some reason you could judge the founder of a major world religion as unworthy of respect, how does this help you? Or us as Buddhists? Or as people? Is it skillful to ask this? Would that mean muslims on the whole are not worthy of respect? This is a fruitless and divisive question.

Agreed.