Or in this case, don’t say anything about who Muhammed really was and the things he did.
The radio presenter Michael Smith is being investigated by the media watchdog over his assertion that the prophet Muhammad ”married a nine-year-old and consummated it when she was 11”.
Actually Michael was wrong. Muhammed married a six year old and had sex with her when she was nine. He was fifty-three at the time.
In an article called Rationalizing Pedophilia in Islam Raymond Ibrahim quotes a Muslim cleric talking about Muhammed’s nine year old wife Aisha:
“So you see, she was playing with her fellow playmates even though her day of consummation was that very same day—and all that they did was to fix her up for the prophet so he could have sex with her.
Now what do we see when the prophet married Aisha? Did he go to her and say “Okay that’s it, you’re married, you’re now a grown up, you’re supposed to be mature, you need to do this and that; you need to forget about your toys and your little friends; you are now a wife of a man, you have to see to my needs” and that’s it?
No. The prophet allowed her to continue playing with her toy dolls—indeed, the prophet even sometimes gave her such things to play with. [This hadith has more details, including how Aisha’s little girl friends would “hide themselves” whenever the prophet came to her until he called them out.]”
It should be noted that the cleric recounted the above with much awe and amazement—as if to say, “Look how indulgent and open-minded our prophet was!”
For Mulsims, Muhammed is ‘a perfect example of conduct’ not just in his own time, but for all time. Nothing he did can be considered wrong, anywhere, or in any time or culture.
One result of this, as Ibrahim points out, is that Sharia can never condemn the ‘marriage’ of young girls to older men:
Earlier this month we saw—or rather, were once again reminded—that Islam permits pedophilia in the guise of “marriage”: Top Saudi cleric, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for girls to marry, “even if they are in the cradle,” and that the only criterion is that “they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.”
Kathy Shaidle suggests the key difference between Jesus and Muhammed was that Jesus raised a little girl from the dead, while Muhammed had sex with one.
I can think of a few more.
Jesus went to his death praying for those who tortured and killed him. Muhammed instructed his followers to ‘kill any Jew who falls into your power,’ attacked and murdered caravan drivers from Mecca because their city had rejected his message, and ordered the murder of an entire Jewish village. Consequently, Sharia declares that anyone who insults the prophet should be executed.
Jesus had genuine and respectful friendships with women. He listened to them and protected them from violence. Muhammed taught that women were unclean – on the same level as dogs – and took and raped whom he wished of women captured in his raids.
No doubt hearing this will be insulting to some Muslims. But if you don’t want comparisons made between Jesus and Muhammed, don’t ask people to make them.
Asking people to make that comparison is exactly what the ‘Jesus, a prophet of Islam’ billboards in Sydney do.
Anglican Bishop Rob Forsyth has no objection to Muslims buying billboard space to say whatever they like, but notes that billboards advertising Christianity would not be allowed in Saudi Arabia, or any Muslim country.
I dont object either. But Muslim leaders should be prepared for the fact that if they take advantage of freedom of speech in democratic societies to say what they like, they may hear what they don’t.
