Contrary to popular belief, the Prophet Muhammad spent the majority of his life monogamously, which was almost unheard of at the time, with his first wife, Khadijah, and his subsequent marriages were largely for political and humanitarian reasons
For crusade chroniclers in the Middle Ages, writes historian John Tolan, the Prophet Muhammad was either ‘a golden idol that the “Saracens” [Muslims] adored or a shrewd heresiarch who worked false miracles to seduce the Arabs away from Christianity.’ Tolan notes the depictions made the Prophet ‘the root of Saracen error and implicitly justified the crusade to wrest the Holy Land’ from Muslim control.
The Crusades were not just wars. They were a divinely argued bid to eliminate Islam and Islamic civilization, which rose in the seventh century and made pivotal contributions to literature, learning, thought, and science over the next eight centuries. An estimated 40,000 Jews and Muslims were killed in the first crusade in the 11th century on Pope Urban II’s call.
Enduring Misrepresentations
The misrepresentations of the chroniclers persisted in modified forms in the European discourse. They have been used to justify the colonization of Muslim lands and to promote missionary activities. The distortions gained fresh currency beyond the Western world in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Demagogues globally have since sought to tap into Islamophobia the attacks fuelled to disenfranchise Muslims and delegitimize their genuine aspirations and grievances.
Distortions and character assassination related to the marriages of Prophet Muhammad have been an important part of the ideas these misrepresentations shaped. Much of this has centered around his polygamy and betrothal to Aisha.
Joshua Little, an Oxford University historian of early and medieval Islam, subjected the traditional Islamic sources to the historical-critical method and found the report of Aisha’s young marital age is an eighth-century historical fabrication. He analyzed versions of the report and concluded it was fabricated ‘whole cloth’ by a narrator called Hisham ibn Urwa after relocating to Iraq between 754 and 765 CE.
Javad T Hashmi, the Research Director at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, cited Little’s research in a 2022 New Lines Magazine piece and wrote not only would this put the circulation of the report almost a century and a half after the events it purports to describe, but it would also mean it was fabricated in the altogether different environment of Iraq, almost 1,000 miles away from the Arabian city of Medina (where the marriage would have taken place). He wrote the findings of Little’s research line up with the work of several modern Muslim scholars and authors who have tackled the same topic before:
What makes Little’s contribution especially noteworthy is that he argues the case from a rigorous academic perspective, even refining a scholarly methodology…This method involves looking for correlations and patterns between the text of a hadith and its chain of transmitters to reconstruct the original from which the other texts disseminate. The process can help identify when a particular report originated (and from whom). Using this Western historical technique, Little’s conclusions vindicate the reformist Muslim position.
Javad T Hashmi, Research Director, Muslim Public Affairs Council
Mostly Monogamous Life
The Prophet in reality lived mostly a monogamous life. He was 25 at the time of his first marriage to his employer, Khadija, who had been married twice before and had children. The union lasted for over 25 years. In a society where polygamy was a norm, Khadijah remained his only wife until her death.
After Khadijah’s passing, a woman named Khawlah bint Hakim is reported to have suggested to the Prophet to either marry Aisha, who was unmarried, or Sawdah, a divorcee, to look after his daughters as he was busy with preaching. When Hakim proceeded following the Prophet’s go-ahead, both proposals were accepted. Since they were made on his behalf, he could not have backed out as per tradition. He married both but only consummated the marriage with Sawdah, who was of the Prophet’s age.
Aisha came to the Prophet’s home years later at her father’s insistence. In his book No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Reza Aslan notes the Prophet’s union with nine-year-old Aisha was just a betrothal. The marriage was not consummated until after she reached puberty and became eligible for marriage as per norms in Arabia.
Islamic theologian Javed Ahmad Ghamidi has argued that the Prophet agreed to send the marriage proposal when he learnt Aisha’s parents were looking for a match. He maintains the proposal would not have been sent if she had been just nine years old and that she was around 20. Ghamidi notes the Prophet spent almost 25 prime years of his life in the companionship of a single wife, Khadijah, and never thought of having a second wife and remarried only when his first wife died.
The Prophet’s second wife was a 50-year-old widow. According to Ghamidi, the Prophet delayed bringing Aisha home for years so that his older wife taking care of his household did not complain of any lack of attention. For Ghamidi, only someone with a sick mind can think that at 55, the Prophet suddenly became obsessed with multiple marriages. He argues in the last eight years of his life, the Prophet married eight more women for the sole reason of taking care of the widows of those killed in the battles of Badr and Uhud:
… [it] became a collective issue faced by the small state of Medina. The Quran, therefore, stated that if the relatives and guardians of these orphans thought that they would not be able to take care…since it was no easy a task to be able to do it alone, they should marry the mothers of the orphans. This appeal was made by God…. It was but natural that the Prophet…take the lead in responding to it.
Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, theologian
Preferred Model
The Prophet married further to honour women, who were held as captives in military campaigns, and to lead by example in liberating enslaved people. Aslan notes wars resulted in hundreds of widows and orphans who had to be provided for and protected by the community even as the Quran calls monogamy the preferred model of marriage. The Quran says that ‘no matter how you try, you will never be able to treat your wives equally.’
Aslan argues the community that Muhammad was trying to build in Yathrib, following his flight from Mecca, would have been doomed without polygyny. He writes Muhammad married nine women in 10 years in Yathrib mostly for political reasons. ‘…as Shaykh of the Ummah, it was Muhammad’s responsibility to forge links within and beyond his community through the only means at his disposal: marriage.’
He married Umm Salamah to forge a relationship with the Makhzum, a powerful Meccan clan. ‘His union with Sawdah—by all accounts an unattractive widow long past the age of marriage—served as an example to the Ummah to marry those women in need of financial support,’ writes Aslan.
Aslan notes that Jewish patriarchs Abraham and Jacob; the prophets Moses and Hosea; the Israelite kings’ Saul, David, and Solomon; and nearly all of the Christian/Byzantine and Zoroastrian/ Sasanian monarchs, all Shaykhs in Arabia had either multiple wives, multiple concubines, or both. In seventh-century Arabia, a Shaykh’s power and authority were largely determined by the size of his harem:
The most shocking aspect of the marriages is not that the Prophet Muhammad observed 10 years of polygamy in Yathrib, but his 25-year monogamy in Mecca, which was almost unheard of at the time.
Reza Aslan, scholar of sociology of religion
Yet medieval Popes of the crusades, the European Enlightenment philosophers, and American evangelical preachers alike have subjected the prophet to vicious attacks over hundreds of years over marriages, especially with Aisha. The distortions are a legacy of the Dark Ages when Europeans languished in the intellectual darkness mired in barbarism after squandering ancient Greece and Rome’s achievements while the Muslim world carried the light of learning, which eventually paved the way for the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It is about time that they are dispensed with for a more inclusive world when Abrahamic religions, in particular, have more that unites rather than divides them.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and the author of the Penguin Random House book The Other Side of the Divide
MyPluralist seeks to spotlight blind spots and help bridge gaps for a world, where we can live in peace with ourselves and harmony with others
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