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S1E10 - How Important was Aisha (ra)? | DoubleTake
Aisha (ra), the wife of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, was known for her level of scholarship, her love for the Messenger ﷺ, and her love for Islam. Yet these days, many conversations about her life center on the age when she got married. How can we understand this incident considering how we view marriage today? More importantly, what are we missing by reducing her story and contributions to simply a number?
Mohamad Zaoud explores these questions with Ust. Nuriddeen Knight, author of the Yaqeen Institute paper “The Woman Behind the Number: The Irrelevance of the Age of ‘Aisha (ra).”
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. There's a lovely hadith about A'ishah in Bukhari and Muslim where A'ishah r.a recounts an experience she had on Eid with the Prophet ﷺ. She says Allah's Apostle invited me on the day of Eid to watch the Abyssinians who were playing in the mosque, displaying their skill with spears. He asked, would you like to watch? I answered yes. So I stood behind him and he lowered his shoulder so I can put my chin on it. I did and leaned with my face on his cheek and watched. Eventually he asked me several times if I wanted to leave and I replied every time, please wait. I wasn't interested in watching really but on that day I wanted women especially to know my status with him and therefore appreciate a young lady's keenness to be playful. A playful witty wife with a strong personality. Musa ibn Talha said, I have not seen anyone more eloquent than A'ishah r.a. A'ishah, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ was known for her level of scholarship, her love for the Prophet ﷺ, her love for Islam, yet many conversations about her life center around the age in which she got married to the Prophet ﷺ. How can we come to terms with this considering how we view marriage today? But more importantly, what are we missing by reducing her story and contributions to simply a number? Welcome to Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Remember to subscribe to the show on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Muhammad Daud and today on the show we're taking a look at
the life and marriage of our mother A'ishah r.a. And with me is Sister Noura Din Knight, author of the paper, The Woman Behind the Number, The Irrelevance of the Age of A'ishah r.a. Sister Noura Din completed a master's in psychology with a focus on child and family from Columbia University and alongside her degree she studied traditional Islamic knowledge including Islamic law, theology, spirituality and prophetic biography. She's also the author of 40 hadith of our mother A'ishah r.a. A collection of 40 hadith narrated from our beloved sage, scholar and the wife of the Prophet ﷺ, Lady A'ishah r.a. Sister Noura Din Knight, As-salamu alaykum and welcome to Double Take. Wa alaykum as-salam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us. You know this topic, several topics that we cover on this show make their way onto the dinner table at home but this topic specifically, my wife is like fan number one of A'ishah r.a. and of your work and inshallah today we can cover her marriage of course to the Prophet ﷺ but also who she was as a woman, her contributions, why she's so important to Islam and to our tradition and before we talk about her marriage and before we talk about her contributions, why in your mind do you feel people have placed such an emphasis on her age? What is sought after by focusing on that number? Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Hamdillah, we are grateful to be on the podcast and to have an opportunity to talk about Lady
A'ishah maridahu anha. So why is there a focus on her age? Well I will start the whole conversation by saying allahu anhu right, ultimately Allah subhana wa ta'ala knows best. From my view the focus on her age is simply because it is so culturally different and even if we want to say something a bit stronger, culturally reprehensible in our time in the West and so it becomes a focal point as to why the Prophet ﷺ would marry A'ishah maridahu anha at such a young age in our view. And I want to say that you know Islam is here to address any given society, any given time and at the same time the critics of Islam are also going to have their particular criticisms based in the time that they are in. The Prophet ﷺ during his lifetime then there were hypocrites, people who pretended to be Muslim but were not truly Muslim and they saw a line of attack through Lady A'ishah maridahu anha by accusing her of adultery at that time, something that was deeply shameful, something especially for someone of her status that for them would be socially reprehensible and so that was their line of attack. Of course this was not something she did but that was a way for them to attack the Prophet ﷺ. And similarly this is seen almost at that level in our society and so it's a line of attack for those who are non-Muslim and want to attack Islam and the
Prophet ﷺ and to be fair it's also a point of discomfort for those of us who grew up in the West with our own cultural norms. It's so different from that that it's uneasy and so we seek further explanation. You know so I mean they accuse of the Prophet ﷺ of many things Quraysh but they never accused him of marrying a child. That kind of line of argument has only come up recently you know over the last hundred years or so and I guess it sits uncomfortably with some Muslims but also it's a line obviously of attacking the Prophet ﷺ with regards to some non-Muslims as well. We're going to talk more about the marriage towards the end of this episode because I do want to give it justice and focus on it but I also want first if you don't mind to talk more about A'ishah. Like what before we get to that number what are we missing when we start off a conversation or focus a conversation around her age? What is it about A'ishah that is so important that we must kind of read into her life and understand? So who is A'ishah if you don't mind me asking? After your research and after you know putting a book together about her hadiths, who is A'ishah in your mind and who is she to the millions of Muslim women and men who appreciate her as our mother? Alhamdulillah, SubhanAllah. This is one of the ironies of focusing on her age is that A'ishah even by non-Muslim standards would be seen as such a role model especially in our times.
We appreciate and we sort of put on a pedestal women who are leaders, women who are able to fight back against injustice, women who stand up for themselves and others and that's the kind of person that she was and those are traits that we really appreciate in the West. She also had traits that are timeless and are beloved by Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala such as being generous. There are stories of Haidiyah A'ishah where she would give away so much of her wealth, really all of her wealth to the point that she didn't have enough to buy any food for her own self. She was so concerned with her faith and so concerned with being pleasing to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and with the next life that she really lived her whole life in devotion. We mentioned this incident where she was accused of adultery and one of the things that I love about sort of the resolution of that story because Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala clears her name in the Quran is that it is a moment where she has this opportunity to show that this faith is truly her own. This devotion, this love for Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala is truly her own because in that moment until revelation she couldn't depend on the Prophet ﷺ in the same way that she was used to. She couldn't depend on her father Abu Bakr ﷺ. There was really no one who could come to her aid in the way that she needed until Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala did. So there's such a strength in her faith from that story that any Muslim going through any hardship can appreciate. Subhanallah, the way that she lived, you know, we think of A'ishah as someone who as we mentioned stood up for people and she was
very vocal at the same time she was incredibly humble. A'ishah she gave up the place in which she was likely going to be buried for Umar which would have been between her father and the Prophet ﷺ. So she was such a generous character and any Muslim would admire her for all of her traits and as I mentioned in the beginning any non-Muslim would also admire many of her traits that we appreciate in our culture. So in terms of scholarship we could really focus on that aspect of her life. She narrated so many hadiths but one area that I think is actually quite refreshing is her personality. She was witty, she was playful, she was also pretty strong like she stood up for her rights, for women's rights. There's a hadith in Bukhari where the Prophet ﷺ is narrated to have said and there's two different hadiths actually about the prayer being nullified if there's a woman or a dog or a donkey that walks in front of the in front of the man. And according to Abdullah ibn Ubaidullah ibn Umair he said when she was asked about that narration that she said how dare you what's the effect of how dare you equate women to these animals to a dog and a donkey and then she went on to say that actually the Prophet ﷺ at home would pray and I was lying down like the way you know in perpendicular like the way the the corpse is in a janazah prayer in between him and the qibla. So it just sounds to me like
she was a woman unlike many other women at the time that she stood up for what she believed in. She was vocal and she had a lot to say. So is my understanding correct because I'm just relating my wife's understanding who's brainwashed me saying look you know women also have a spine and they have an opinion and they can be vocal look at Aisha. Is that correct? Like is that who she represents as an example of someone who stands up for their rights, who is vocal and who is very much part of wider society? Absolutely that is absolutely what she represents and I want to also make the point that it's a bit of a falsehood and a false notion to even claim that I'm not saying you're making this claim but this idea that we have that all Muslim women were quiet and meek and didn't speak up for themselves. Aisha was clearly not one of those women but there's also an interesting sort of a historical point from Sira that the women of the era of the Ansar were different from the women of Mecca and they were apparently a bit more vocal as well. So allahu alam perhaps that's why she is where she got some of her personality from being there for so much of her life and yeah there are Aisha what I think is valuable to say because it can be tempting to say wow subhanAllah she's almost like an activist standing up for women's rights which I think is fine to say but it's also really valuable to realize that what she said and whenever she corrected someone it was rooted in knowledge it wasn't merely rooted in
a personal perception of something being right or wrong and this is why other companions also depended on her. I want to share another incident of her life where there was an argument between two companions this is after the life of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So one day Omar heard that Amr ibn Umayyah had given a roll of cloth to prostitutes who were excluded from society because of their morals and he became very angry. Omar told Amr that such charity would not be accepted by God so then they start arguing and they say you know what let's go to Aisha right you know Aisha would know so they honor her knowledge and then she says as God is my witness yes I heard. For the sake of God I want you to tell us didn't you hear the messenger of God saying the things you give them are considered as alms for you too and Aisha's reply was clear as God is my witness I heard and then Omar said okay you know if this is what Aisha is saying then we believe her. So that is really valuable because that's the balance that we see in Aisha yes she was vocal but she was also incredibly modest yes she stood up for other people's rights perhaps in particular women but it was rooted in knowledge. And on that point of knowledge I think one of the companions Abu Musa was narrated to have said that there was never a topic that we had except that Aisha had an opinion on in the sense that like she had knowledge of since she witnessed so many of those hadiths and narrated so many of those hadiths so definitely her scholarship's there her wits there the personality's there I guess that activism is
there. Is there wisdom in your studies is there wisdom for her kind of as a role model with someone who doesn't have children and therefore I guess had the time if you don't mind me saying to to be part of wider society like and she wasn't kind of a woman who maybe fit the mold of many other women of the time who was committed purely just to her household like she had that aspect of her life but she also played a big role outside of her household as well. Yeah so Hanala that's so important to acknowledge I'm really glad you brought that up and that kind of ties into again the irony of being distracted by her age because she is a woman that again I do believe that even non-muslims would value there are more conversations in our time in the west in our culture where we are asking if the asking and saying that women have roles beyond their household that they are they can contribute in society in different ways that it's okay to of course be a mother but it's also okay to not be a mother you can make other contributions and so Allah knows but SubhanAllah we do see that she was able to give her time to so many children she was able to give her time and knowledge she was able to give in charity and have so much focus on the outside world perhaps in part because she did not have children of her own and Allah knows. In terms of her contributions like beyond the life of the Prophet when he passed away what did she contribute
to future generations of Muslims? She contributed so much she herself obviously she was she would be considered a scholar woman of great knowledge and she also made a point of teaching a lot of her students were children a lot of her students were women we know that she had a particular admiration for the Ansari women she said and paraphrasing she essentially praised them for being able to maintain modesty while still seeking knowledge and not not letting their modesty keep them from seeking knowledge as sometimes women can do so having that example of her person but then also her legacy her students lived on to be able to teach other people and so much of the preservation of Islam is owed to Lady Aisha. Lady Aisha radi allahu anha. That's such a huge point sister Norah honestly like you're I just want to focus on that the preservation of Islam much of it is due to her efforts and her alhamdulillah being able to to relay a lot of those experiences with the Prophet ﷺ. We hear about Aisha radi allahu anha in the hadith we learn a lot about her life but also there's a reference to her in the Quran and about a particular incident that happened to her the slander of her and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala elevates her status by by clearing her name and referencing her inside the actual Quran. Do you mind just talking us through what happened and and what do we take out from that whole experience? Yes subhanAllah so this is a very famous incident so I do encourage listeners and viewers to
look it up for themselves so they can read it in full but essentially Aisha radi allahu anha was accused of adultery and this caused a lot of fitna in the community this is the Medina community at this time of people taking sides and what really happened and just spreading rumors spreading baseless rumors and so subhanAllah at this time Aisha radi allahu anha I'll try not to do too many details but she happened to be sick at the time so she didn't really she wasn't aware of what was happening and when she finally found out she was in so much shock that people would say that about her because imagine she's not just the wife of the Prophet even before being the wife of the Prophet she's the daughter of Abu Bakr of this noble man of a noble family this is not something she would dream of ever doing and so it's shocking to her and she notices that the Prophet isn't the same with her obviously the Prophet dealing with this issue himself and the difficulty of this issue and then these people who are Muslim accusing your wife of this you know horrible crime and sin but they're saying they're Muslim you know so there's so much difficulty happening here so Aisha radi allahu anha she goes to her parents for a period of time and the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam he tells her he says to her if you are innocent Allah will bring your innocence to life and if you are sinful then repent and seek Allah's forgiveness
Aisha then turned to her parents to respond but on her behalf but they didn't respond and so as we mentioned before you know there was no one to turn to in this incident and so she says should I tell you I'm innocent and Allah knows surely I'm innocent and if I were to admit something of which Allah knows I'm innocent you will believe me then I will have nothing to make recourse to except the words of the Prophet of the father of Prophet Yusuf so for me patience is most fitting and it is Allah alone whose help can be sought against that which you assert so that is chapter 12 verse 18. So SubhanAllah and then Allah reveals verses in Surah Nur and I'll just read two of them 12 and 13 and again this is SubhanAllah Allah not only you know he brought her through this hardship but he also made it so that she would be an example for how do we deal with this kind of circumstance in the future. So verse 12 says why when you heard it did you not did not the believing men and believing women think good of one another and say this is an obvious falsehood and then 13 why did they slander not produce for it for witnesses when they did not produce the witnesses then it is they in the sight of Allah who are liars. So SubhanAllah such a high status that is given to lady Aisha after this difficulty there's so much to say about the story but I'll inshallah I'll end with that.
JazakAllah khair there's so much to talk about Aisha but it just like the fact that Allah mentions the story in the Quran obviously clearly it was a big big deal but definitely that means that there's a lot of lessons to take away from that incident but from her life as well and the fact that we keep kind of gravitating towards her age just you know this whole incident reminds us that there's so much more to her life and we're doing ourselves a disservice by focusing on her age. But can we go to the age because I'd love for this episode to be a complete one let's just kind of turn the page on her age if you don't mind and and you've you've obviously done a lot of research on her life and you've covered her marriage as well. I've personally done a bit of research as well I'd love to to hear from you your take because from where I sit and some people in my circle I'm not saying I'm representative of most Muslims but for me you know when I read that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam married Aisha and she was six and then consummated the marriage when she was nine. You know Allah forgive me but it sits a little bit uncomfortably with me so I'd like to to get your take why am I feeling uncomfortable and should I be feeling uncomfortable? Well that's a you know I think it's hard to not feel uncomfortable from our from where we're sitting right in the west sometimes we'll have this saying in the west oh it's just cultural something is just cultural but actually culture is so much of what shapes us and it's hard to remove.
And subhanAllah Islam is also not suggesting that we should remove it right it's not a mandate to marry at what we would consider to be an extremely young age. However we do see that there is room for different cultures in different times and what people sort of believe is culturally valuable to them. In the paper or culturally appropriate for them in the paper I talk about that even in the west if you think about just the past 50 years there's been a dramatic change between what we think is an appropriate age for marriage and also what we think is an appropriate age for intimacy in general. Those two things used to be tied together that you couldn't engage in those relations with the opposite sex until marriage and then we separated the two and then we continuously change what age is appropriate. And even today there isn't really a set age that people would say is appropriate for engagement in intercourse many would say well nine is too young but if you ask well 13 you're going to have different opinions 15 you're going to have different opinions. So I think that we should recognize that in our society even between my generation my parents generation their parents generation there's been dramatic difference. So what do we think is going to culturally happen for between 1400 years and in a completely different place.
None of that means that well now I'm suddenly going to be comfortable with a nine year old getting married but it does hopefully mean that if you can understand things can change so dramatically within a 50 year time period in the same country. What do we think is going to be the sort of cultural differences and just time differences you know in such a long period in a different place different time. Yeah I get the whole cultural kind of argument or discussion and actually it sits well with me in the sense that knowing that Aisha was actually engaged even before the Prophet ﷺ to Jubayrah bin Mut'am I think it was. I mean it was it was clearly a cultural norm that that young younger women get get engaged or married. I get the whole cultural thing and actually if it was culturally repulsive at the time I mean Quraysh would have found a way to mention it as part of their accusations towards the Prophet ﷺ but clearly they didn't. So I mean they argued that he was he was crazy and that he was a soothsayer but they never they never argued that he married a young woman. So culturally I get that whole argument but as there's so much effort I think from so many scholars to bring her age up to actually negate the whole idea that she was in fact six or nine. Some of them bring her up to to the age of 19. They talk about her witnessing Uhud. They talk about her being 10 years younger than her sister Asmaa and that the fact that she got married a year after Hijrah and her being at Uhud puts her up at something around 19.
So there's a lot of arguments and a lot of effort and time expended to kind of bring her age up from many scholars. How do I reconcile all of these opinions and do I even need to? That's a good question. I'm sure that the scholars who are having those discussions are far more knowledgeable than me. So I'm definitely not going to say that there's no value in that discussion. However I guess what I would say and what I think is the difficult part of that discussion is that when we say her age is six and nine this is coming as far as we know directly from Lady Aisha. And so if we doubt this hadith on what grounds do we doubt it? And that's something for hadith scholars to talk about. Ustadh Faraz Malik, he has an excellent paper as well in the same series where he talks about, he kind of makes his case against I believe what he calls a sort of revisionist history. And again for me it's not really my place to get into that discussion. That's something for real scholars who really know hadith and know what they're talking about to discuss. However when we look at the life of Lady Aisha, first I want to say I agree with you that knowing she was engaged before, that sort of changes my view as well because it makes me say this is not a sixth, if she was in fact sixths which again I don't personally want to get into that discussion.
But at the very least we can say this is not a six-year-old like the six-year-old like my niece. This is not the same kind of person. This is not a nine-year-old like my nine-year-old nieces. She is clearly different so there's a maturity there. And you know, Supranawa, these discussions are very difficult because we absolutely don't want to be on the side of just being culturally relative. And I think for most Muslims we really don't support marriage, most Muslims in the West, we really wouldn't support a marriage at that age. But I think that, Supranawa, I think that the reconciling of the opinions, I will leave that to the scholars having that discussion. Whether or not we need to focus on it, this is my personal opinion, it really depends. If going through, you know, at Yaqeen we had maybe five or so papers on this issue, if going through those papers, if believing that she was 18 brings you comfort, Allah f'allam, I don't know but there is a part of me personally, I could be completely wrong, that says that if that allows you to get past her age so you can get to her person, perhaps there is value in that for an individual. For me, her life is so much more than that moment that she got married. It's almost irrelevant if it wasn't for just our level of discomfort. In terms of her life and her contribution, it really doesn't matter except if we say, you know, alhamdulillah she was young enough to give so much, to contribute so much.
But outside of that, I personally don't see the value in focusing on whether she was 9 or 18. I have one last question. Imagine my 9 year old niece comes up to you and says, Ustaz Anuruddin, you've done an extensive research on the life of Aisha, tell me what I learn if I study her life? And you've only got a few seconds to explain it to my 9 year old niece. SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah. So perhaps the one thing I would say is that it is so valuable and you can be a voice, you can give your contribution to society while also having this balance of humility and love for others and giving towards others. And I think that is something that we're kind of missing sometimes. We want to be more, you know, let's be in public and contribute to society and that's great. But we also need to have the balance of not having an ego attached to that, but having the balance of humility and that everything we're doing is for the sake of Allah. So to simplify that, have the balance of yes, standing up for yourself, standing up for others, but also being humble enough to give and learn from others and ultimately love Allah. Sister Anuruddin, thank you so much for joining Double Take. I really appreciate your work and I have to say many people who have written about the topic have focused on her age, you know, whether she was 6 or 9 or 19, there are difference of opinions.
You went, I say, a step further and focused on Aisha, as a person and all the lessons we can take from her without brushing the age, but putting the age in context. So thank you so much. For those who haven't read the article, make sure you look into yaqininstitute.org for Sister Anuruddin's work. Thank you so much, Sister. Thank you.
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