davidbrainerd wrote:davidbrainerd wrote:Bundokji wrote:I think his marriage of Aisha was bad, but for a totally different reasons than the ones you are emphasizing. After his death, she waged a war against his cousin (Ali bin Abi Taleb) which was one of the main contributing factors of the major rift between Sunni and Shiaa Muslims, and might serve as another reminder that the focus on her age when he married her, in the wider scheme, is pretty pity concern.
I'm sure she knew more about Ali's character than we do today. Its interesting that the Hadiths record that some verses of the Koran were lost because Aisha's goat ate them. One verse mentioned is some weird idea about women being able to make an unrelated male into a close relative by breast-feeding him 5 times (thus enablding him to be around her without her husband around). That's a very sick idea, that Mohammed supposedly (according to Hadiths) forced upon a particular disciples' wife. Aisha's goat ate it, resulting in it not being in the Koran today. In other words, Aisha purposefully saved future women from that crazy nonsense. She's a hero.
There is also the fact that after Mohammed attacked a certain Jewish city and killed all the men (according to Hadith) and then raped a woman from that town (according to Hadith) he made that woman cook him dinner. As he was eating the dinner, the Hadith says, he realized it was poisoned, and spit it out, after having eaten quite a bit. From that time forward, he was constantly sick, for the next 6 months, until he died. And Aisha took care of him. But he never got better. Although the ancients didn't think of this, some moderns have come up with the theory that Aisha took advantage to get her revenge for him raping her at 6 or 9, by keeping him sick by poisoning him little by little that whole time. If so, she is a hero again.
I came across the breast feeding story, but i missed the goat part though
One of the problems of having a discussion of this sort is that it is easy to come up with random stories exists in the Hadith books, and bring them to a public forum as "quite revealing". All you have to do is to go to one of the anti Muslim websites, even if the website allows the two sides to debate the issue, it would give the impression that those who attack are winning. It is always easy to make a mess than cleaning it up.
Same thing can be said about conspiracy theorists. Just listen to those who claim that 9/11 was secretly organized by the US government (or the Jews). They give you all sort of assertions and present them as facts and reliable info, and along the way, cunningly presenting themselves as the smart asses who don't get deceived. Now, you can spend a lot of time and energy investigating why what they presented is full of non-sense, but why should you bother? If every assertion made by a schmuck is to be taken seriously, the wise would be wasting their life answering fools.
Even some Muslims are guilty of the same thing. They try to present the Quran as a "scientific miracle" full of revelations that only modern science began to understand. They twist both science and the text to make both compatible, using arguments from ignorance and authority. Indeed, there are no limits to human foolishness.
I hate to sound as a broken record, but there are better ways of addressing issues. The feeling of satisfaction we humans get by debunking something we hate is something to be resisted by those who seek wisdom, all in my opinion.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"
This was the last word of the Tathagata.