Aisha
Aisha bint Abi Bakr[a] (c. 614 CE – July 678) was a seventh century Arab commander,[8] politician,[9] muhadditha,[10] and the third and youngest wife of prophet Muhammad.
[15] Her intellect and knowledge in various subjects, including poetry and medicine, were highly praised by early scholars and luminaries such as al-Zuhri and her student Urwa ibn al-Zubayr.
[19][20] Some classical sources converge on Aisha being six or seven years old at the time of her marriage, which followed a failed engagement with another man, and nine at the consummation.
[35][36] All extant hadiths agree that Aisha was married to Muhammad in Mecca but the marriage was consummated only in the month of Shawwal after his hijrah to Medina (April 623).
[39] Early Orientalist writers, even in their condescending approach towards Muhammad and Islam, were primarily concerned with Muhammad's embrace of polygamy and the ethics of marrying for political causes;[40] the few who discussed Aisha's age chose to explain the age-gap by citing the contemporary understanding of the Orient as a hot place, that promulgated sexually deviant practices.
[41] Beginning in the late nineteenth century, with the East and its alleged immoralities subject to increasing opprobrium,[42] the colonizing powers sought to regulate the age of consent.
As such efforts ran into conflicts with local forms of Sharia, Aisha's age at marriage — and the involved Prophetic precedent — became the predominant explanation in explaining "the backwardness of Muslim societies and their reticence to reforms.
"[43] In response, some Muslims[c] chose to align themselves with the projects of modernization and re-calculated her age — using deft stratagems of omission and commission — to fix it at early adolescence, but conservatives rejected such revisionist readings since they flew in the face of ʻilm al-ḥadīth.
[47][e] Since the late-twentieth century, polemicists have used Aisha's age to accuse Muhammad of pedophilia and to explain a reported higher prevalence of child marriage in Muslim societies.
[61][62][63] "Aisha must have felt reasonably equal to and unawed by this prophet of God, for his announcement of a revelation permitting him to enter into marriages disallowed other men drew from her the retort, 'It seems to me your Lord hastens to satisfy your desire!
[66][67] When Muhammad and his followers carried out a raid on the Banu Mustaliq tribe, he brought along Aisha, who was 13 years old at the time.
Aisha recounted that when the raiding party was resting at night on the way home to Medina from the successful operation, she went out to relieve herself.
She only learned of the rumor some three weeks later when Umm Mistah told her on their way back from defecating in an open field at night, as was customary for Muslim women at that time.
[80][79] Muhammad later visited Aisha at her parents' house and advised her to confess if she had sinned, as God was merciful towards those who seek repentance.
She told Muhammad that she could find no better parallel for her current situation than that of Joseph's father, who had endured disbelief despite telling the truth and had no other choice but to remain patient.
[89] Aisha became involved in the politics of early Islam and the first three caliphate reigns: Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman.
Being the daughter of Abu Bakr tied Aisha to honorable titles earned from her father's strong dedication to Islam.
The first to respond to Aisha were Abdullah ibn Aamar al-Hadhrami, the governor of Mecca during the reign of Uthman, and prominent members of the Banu Umayya.
He sent her back to Medina under military escort headed by her brother Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, one of Ali's commanders.
[89] When Muhammad married Aisha in her youth, she was accessible "...to the values needed to lead and influence the sisterhood of Muslim women.
"[104] After the death of Muhammad, Aisha was discovered to be a renowned source of hadiths, due to her qualities of intelligence and memory.
The traditions regarding Aisha habitually opposed ideas unfavorable to women in efforts to elicit social change.
For this reason, Muslim feminists throughout the world are advocating a return to the society Muhammad originally envisioned for his followers.
Despite differences in culture, nationalities, and beliefs, these women believe that the lesson to be learned from Muhammad in Medina is that Islam is above all an egalitarian religion.
[104] Aisha's authentication of Muhammad's ways of prayer and his recitation of the Qur'an allowed for the development of knowledge of his sunnah of praying and reading verses of the Quran.
[50] Spellberg argues that Aisha's political influence helped promote her father, Abu Bakr, to the caliphate after Muhammad's death.
[108] Aisha was also considered to be the embodiment of proper rituals while partaking in the pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey she made with several groups of women.
For the last two years of her life, Aisha spent much of her time telling the stories of Muhammad, hoping to correct false passages that had become influential in formulating Islamic law.
