At 06:23 PM 1/1/2013, Jojo Jaro wrote:
Lomax, have you actually read the link?
Yes. The post that I made proves that, by quoting from it in detail.
Has Jojo actually read my mail? It appears not, but then he responds
to it. Obviously, if he has not read it, he has *made up* what I
supposedly said.
It seems to me that you are still asserting a lot of things contrary
to Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari..
The seeming is to one ignorant of the issues. I have *included* in my
comments what is in Muslim and Bukhari.
Are you saying you reject the accuracy of the accounts written in
these 2 works.
I generally consider *all hadith* except the "best hadith," the
Qur'an, as being suspect as to accuracy. And that is obvious to
anyone who takes up the study of hadith. They very. Even with the
strongest, we find variations. Then there are *translation* problems.
The Christian critics seem to ascribe authority to translations,
sometimes made by other than scholars, and sometimes made by scholars
whose English is poor.
If you do, how can one have a meaningful debate with you.
You can't. You are utterly out of your element.
You say that only evangelical sources support what I am saying.
No, that's only true about *some* of what you say. Consistently, you
interpret comments as extremes. It's part of how you think.
Now, it is clear that 2 respected and venerated muslim scholarly
sources support what I am saying and you still will not accept it?
I accepted that they say what they say. It's not controversial that
Bukhari and Mulsim say what they say, on the points relevant here.
But the exact meanng of some of the words is in possible question.
Without doing *much more research* -- that could take a long time --
I can't be certain about these things, but Christians who have
certainly *not* done the necessary research are *quite* certain about
what they say and what it means.
The Sahih Muslim and the Sahih Bukhari are corrupt in your opinion?
"Corrupt" as a technical term, yes. That means that it is a certainty
that they contain errors.
Jojo, you are trying to establish what the sources of Islam *mean*.
Yet those sources don't really mean *anything* to you except as a
means of trying to impeach the honor of the religion and those who
accept it. You are not willing and possibly not capable of
understanding what has happened right here, on this list, in these
emails, in a language you supposedly understand, how in the world
could you expect to understand what happened 1400 years ago, with no
immediate authoritative texts except the Qur'an, and hadith only
collected a century later? You seem to think that Islam is like
Christianity, that we have some canon of books that are accepted by
Muslims, like the Christian canon. No, there is only the Qur'an in
that position. One book.
Bukhari and Muslim have respect, but I'm actually a Maliki, as to
school of preference, for whatever that means, and what was important
to Imam Malik was not the stories of the Prophet, so much as how
people in Madina, the city of the prophet, *actually practiced.*
That's frustrating to you because you imagine I should have some
authoritative text that you could then scour for offensive material.
The only truly authoritative text in Islam is the Qur'an. What we see
in the hadith is largely the world-view (including politics) of the
early Muslims, about a hundred years after the Prophet. How much this
affected what was transmitted is debatable, and Muslims certainly debate it.
because they clearly say that A'isha was 9 years old when muhammed
consumated the marriage.
As I've mentioned, translations differ and I don't have the Arabic on
this. I could go to the trouble of getting it, but why?
Muhammad Ali wrote about this that the age of Ayesha was what we
would now call "historical trivia." The collectors of hadith were
very concerned abou the practice of Islam, not about historical
trivia. *Later* scholars used these stories to develop "law" about
age, but I consider that activity to be basically corrupt. The
standard in the Qur'an and in the actual sunna of the people and the
Prophet was about, not age, but maturity. That, in fact, matches what
used to be the law in much of the U.S., not so long ago. It is about
a judgment of the condition of the girl, not about her physical age,
for maturity between girls can vary *greatly*.
If there is a girl who is actually sexually mature, and she is *not*
married, there is a risk of sex outside of marriage, a constant risk.
Is she to be imprisoned, watched constantly? Look what has come from
delay of marriage in the U.S.! While cause and effect are debatable,
there is little doubt but that extramarital sex has increased, and it
is also obvious that *all these women are sexually mature.* -- except
for those who are actually abused, rather than merely technically
abused. (And "statutory rape" does not cover the situation of girls
and boys of the same age.)
The goal in many cultures, not just Islamic culture, has been to
marry girls when they are ready for it, not before, and not later. So
what is "ready"? And who decides? Jojo Jaro?
There is even evidence he did that prior to A'isha's first menses
contrary to your assertions.
Ridiculous evidence, I covered that. There is *abundant evidence* to
the contrary. Many times, I've pointed to the Yemeni case, a society
that would, indeed, accept the age of 9 for Ayesha at consummation,
where a girl was *10* and the marriage was consummated when the girl
had not begun to menstruate. It was adjudicated as rape. Which it
was, statutory rape.
Are you actually saying that we take your word over that
of Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari?
Notice: Jojo wants us to accept *his word* -- when he is plainly
ignorant -- and *the word* of anti-Muslim sources, as to how hadith
should be interpreted. There is a basic law of the interpretation of
sacred texts: *never* interpret them to mean something patently
offensive. If your heart says it's wrong, it's probably wrong, but
you can reserve judgment. Maybe you misunderstood something!
Fundamentalists, though, imagine that meaning is a trait of text
alone. Muslim *and* Christian fundamentalists, it's the same disease.
My word as to what? Muslim and Bukhari reported *stories.* That's
what "hadith" means. They say what they say. What is in opposition here?
If you actually look at the Arabic text of these books, you will see
that each story begins with "isnad." "On the authority of X, who
heard from Y, who heard from [Ayesha] that ..."
Bukhari is respected. There is no indication that he lied. His
judgment of the transmitters may have been good. But ... that does
not translate to "accurate." Error is not only very possible, it's
certain, and Bukhari himself reports variant hadith. Same incident,
variant story.
Jojo is misrepresenting what is being said, trying to fit it all into
his own nightmare.
By what authority or scholarship can you make such audacious claims?
Because I say so? There is no Pope in Islam. There is no central
authority. There are scholars who are respected, and there are
institutions, like al-Azhar. Jojo has shown *zero* respect for these.
What his sources do -- he didn't do this, he is blindly following
others -- is to take a Muslim source, misinterpret it, and then claim
that this with authority of the source. *Even if the source
explicitly contradicts the claim.*
We don't fall for it. These buffoons fool only themselves and
ignorant followers.
Are you still contending that a 9 year old girl who may or who may
not have had her first menses is a "sexually mature" young woman.
What woman? Notice the present tense. How do we judge the maturity of
a woman? By one fact? One fact *may* establish a presumption, but is
not the whoe story. What is "sexual maturity"?
You realize that if you are contending this, you are arguing
against many medical sources which says sexual maturity occurs
about 2 years after the first menses, as I have been contending all along.
That would be full maturity. So, how old was Ayesha when she had her
first menses? Have you seen an authority on that? So far, reviewing
everything I've seen, I've seen nothing on this except a strong
presumption that it was before the marriage was consummated. Given
that this can sometimes happen quite early, we have an unknown situation.
Jojo is essentially asserting that the norm is *required*, that it is
*always true,* Sexual maturity is, in fact, judged by a complex of
phenomena that are not only about menstruation, and, I mentioned, a
woman might even be sexually mature without having menstruated.
Essentially, by preponderance of the evidence.
The evidence is in from reliable sources. A'isha was 9 years old
when muhammed first had intercourse with her.
From most sources, yes, though she also could have been older. A
9-year-old is older than nine except on her birthday. So she might
have been almost ten, and given that nobody gave a hoot about her age
in years, the point that Muhammad Ali made was that they weren't
particularly careful about these stories.
She may or may not have had her first menses.
That interpretation is totally isolated. Maududi makes a general
claim, but doesn't assert this about Ayesha. He actually derives if
from the law on divorce, by a preposterous line of reasoning. Maududi
is an idiot. People like him afflicted Islam for decades, and it's
still going on.
Either way, she was still not sexually mature according to the
medical sources.
You are obviously not reading all the sources. Sources give a median
age. If you read about the range, you would find that puberty can
begin -- and compete, both earlier and later than the median.
And clearly, A'isha was not mature enough to have given consent to
the marriage proposal.
You understand that aspect of Islamic law. The woman must be mature
enough to give consent. That varies not only with the girl herself,
but with culture and circumstances. It is not an absolute attribute
of age alone. Education and upbringing have an impact. Do you have
any children, Jojo?
For creeps sake, she was still playing with dolls, which according
to islam law, she is allowed to do because she was not considered an
adult yet. She was still considered a child.
Basically, you encountered this argument about one day ago, and you
now repeat it as if it were proven fact. You are transparent, Jojo.
Hopefully one day you will realize this. You cannot hide, you are visible.
The narrators were emphasizing that Ayesha was undergoing the
transition to maturity. Playing with dolls was a symbol of that.
There is no story of her playing with dolls after consummation. And
the argument about dolls and puberty was advanced by a fundamentalist
trying to excuse playing with dolls! (images, you know!). (I can
imagine the poor kids of these idiots. The girl gets her period and
the father grabs the dolls and stomps on them. To prove that they are
not respected, those little gods. The girl gets her period and the
father forces her to marry immediately, to "avoid sin." Even most
fundamentalists have more sense, but, my guess, it has happened.)
The evidence is clear and reliable and yet we find Lomax still
clinging to his beloved prophet instead of denouncing his actions,
he still tries to justify it, and continues the same lies. I'm not
surprised. He can lie to protect the "honor" of muhammed.
And, here, Jojo has definitely gone directly into insult, in spite of
his promise to avoid it, firmly and clearly. He could not manage it
for even a few minutes, he began immediately after his promise, to break it.
He started this topic, which is itself an insult to every Muslim. I
covered that argument previously, and I see no sign that Jojo would
hear anything of use here.
Enough? Jojo claimed to want to stop this.
Were you lying, Jojo?
The post I replied to was not about you, and explicitly said so. I
considered only the page you had cited. And, in response, you
directly attacked and insulted me. I don't care about insult, but I
do care about holding you responsible for the damage you do to this
mailing list.
To tell me that I "can lie" is an insult to me and to Islam and all
Muslims. It is specifically bigotry.
the post of mine to which Jojo was responding, which was *not about
him,* and mentioned him only in the first paragraph, to say that. No
insults in it.
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg74957.html
