By Dr. John Andrew Morrow
Transcript of Jacob Berman’s History Valley from Saturday, May 3, 2025
Did Muhammad Marry a Child? Yes. No. Maybe. We don’t know. Actually, that is the most honest answer. We do not know. And there is no way for us to know. Why? Because the earliest sources for the biography of the Prophet and the history of Islam are far too late, full of contradictions, and far removed from the historical events they claim to describe.
The sources disagree as to the day and the year of Muhammad’s birth. We speak of 570 to 632 but that is just a recent convention. There is a span of 150 years in the sources. The sources disagreed as to his name. They give dozens and dozens of names for Muhammad. Was that even his name? The Praiseworthy? Or was that just a title, like al-Amin, the Trustworthy? The sources cannot even agree as to his physical appearance.
The sources disagree as the religious affiliation of Muhammad and his parents. Sunni sources claim that the parents of the Prophet were polytheists and are in hell. Shiite sources claim they were monotheists and are in paradise. In fact, Shiite sources claim that all of Muhammad’s ancestors were monotheistic going all the way back to Abraham. Sunni sources paint Muhammad as an idol-worshipping polytheist who made animal sacrifices to pagan deities. Shiite sources insist that he was a monotheist. Sunni sources paint a picture of a polytheistic pre-Islamic Arabia. The Shiite sources stipulate that there were many monotheists and that has been confirmed by archeological and epigraphic research.
The sources disagree as to when and how Muhammad received his first revelation. They disagree as to how long his rule lasted. They disagree as to how many wives he had. Some mention one. Some mention two. Some mention three. Some mention four. Some mention twelve. Some mention fourteen. Some mention eighteen and over a dozen concubines. Some present him as a monogamist; others present him as a polygamist. Some sources claim that Muhammad married Khadijah when she was forty. Others provide different ages, including as young as 28 and 25. Some sources claim she was married and had daughters from her previous husband. Others insist that she was a virgin. According to Sunni sources, Muhammad had five daughters. According to Shiite sources, he only had one, Fatimah.
Some sources present Muhammad as an ascetic, a mystic, and a spiritual sage who performed miracles of all kinds. He sounds just like Jesus. Others present him as a warlord who tortured, mutilated, robbed, murdered, enslaved, and raped. I am talking about the earliest Islamic sources. They provide radically different, incompatible, and irreconcilable views of Muhammad, his life, and his teachings. And this explains why there are so many different Islamic sects. Is Sufism rooted in Islamic sources? Yes. But so is Wahhabism. Is Rumi rooted in Islamic sources? Absolutely. But so is Osama Ben Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Taliban, Hamas, Boko Haram, and ISIS. You find what you seek.
In some sources, Muhammad comes across as an early feminist, filled with love and compassion for women; a man committed to their cause. In others, he comes across as the most vicious of sexists and misogynists who says the most despicable things about women imaginable. Some sources claim that Muhammad was always emaciated from perpetual fasting and starvation. Others present him as a glutton who was so morbidly obese that even half a dozen men could not carry him.
The sources disagree as to the year of his death and the manner of his death. Some claim he died from natural causes. Others assert that he was murdered, and they don’t agree on the cause and the culprit. According to one version, he was poisoned by a Jewish woman and died a few years later from its lingering effects. According to another, he was poisoned by Safiyyah, his Jewish wife or concubine. According to yet another, he was poisoned by his wives ‘A’ishah and Hafsa, the daughters of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar. And according to another, he died during the conquest of Jerusalem.
I could go on for hours, days, weeks, and months. Entire books are dedicated to this topic. Historians, Muslim and non-Muslim, have been struggling to make sense of these conflicting sources for over a thousand years. If one thing is clear it is that we cannot speak of the life of Muhammad. We can only speak of the lives of Muhammad. The historical Muhammad has been lost to history. Only tiny traces of him remain.
What is my point? To answer the question: “Did Muhammad marry a child?” we must distinguish between the historical Muhammad, to whom we have no credible access, and the Muhammad of the Islamic Tradition. However, as I have shown, there is no single historical Muhammad, but a series of mythological Muhammads.
To the complex question, “Did Muhammad marry a child?” I respond with complex questions: “Which mythological Muhammad are we talking about? What are the conditions for marriage? And what is a child?” Let’s start with the last one. It has legal, biological, and psychological definitions. Legally, in modern times, a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18. So, according to that definition, the mythological Muhammad did indeed marry a child according to some equally mythological sources.
Biologically speaking, a child is anyone who has not reached the age of puberty. But what is puberty? Its definition varies through time and place. Muslim jurists came up with many different definitions. Some stipulated that it was signaled by the growth of pubic hair. Others by the budding of breasts. And yet others by menstruation. Some jurists put a minimum and maximum age for puberty. 9 years old as the earliest and 18 years old as the latest. Others ruled that even in the absence of physical indicators of puberty, a girl became a woman at the age of 9.
There are entire volumes devoted to defining puberty according to Islamic jurisprudence. Some rely on physical and biological characteristics. Others rely on age. And yet others factor in psychological and emotional factors. It is not black and white. It is not cut and dry. On this issue, as with others, Islamic jurisprudence provides a vast spectrum of opinions. So, yes, some jurists claim that nine-year-old girls, and even babies, can get married, while others stipulate menstruation, 13 to 15 years of age, and even 18 years of age.
As can be appreciated, menstruation, as opposed to age, is a more reliable biological indicator of physical maturity. However, it is not steady and varies based on numerous factors, including race, nutrition, fat-index, and exercise. According to the most recent studies, the average onset of menstruation in American girls is twelve and a half years. It was fourteen years old in the Early Middle Ages (400-1100s). It was sixteen during the Renaissance (1300s to 1600s). It was fourteen during the Victorian Era (1800s).
From 1830 to 1990, the average age of menstruation for Western European and North American girls has declined dramatically, from seventeen years old to an average of eleven years old. In contrast, the average age of menstruation for a Saudi Arabian girl is thirteen and a half years. When we look at worldwide data, the differences are relatively slight, and the range varies from twelve to sixteen years of age.
But what about age of consent? That is a modern notion. In many cultures, not only Muslim ones, consent to marriage was immaterial. Fathers had the right to marry their daughters off to whomsoever they pleased. In many cultures, age of consent, and age of marriage, are one and the same. If you are old enough to have sex, you are old enough to get married. It’s not like in the modern world where age of consent is far younger than the legal age of marriage. In many cultures, not just Muslim ones, one could get married at any age. However, one could not have intimate relations with the girl until she reached puberty.
To put things into perspective, these are the same type of debates that we find in the Talmudic Judaism and Christianity. According to some rabbis, three-year old girls can marry. According to others, the ideal time is between puberty and age twenty. Some state that the minimum is 13 for boys and 12 for girls. Others recommend 18 for men and 16 for girls. According to Catholic Canon law, girls and boy could marry at age 12. In 1917, that was change to 16 years old for men, and 14 years old for women. So, be careful who you bash. In fact, I would encourage viewers to complete their genealogies, as far back as they can, checking the ages of marriage of their grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents, and they will surely find that their female ancestors married when they were 16, 13, 11, and even sometimes younger. That was the norm. The shorter the average life span, the earlier the age of marriage.
If we survey the laws around the world, the legal age of consent for sexual activity ranges from eleven to twenty-one years of age in the early decades of the twenty-first century. The lowest age of consent is found in Nigeria, where it is legal for eleven-year-olds to engage in sexual activity. In Angola, the minimum age is twelve. According to the Japanese Penal Code, it is thirteen. Other laws in the country stipulate that it is sixteen. In Burkina Faso, the Comoros Islands, Niger, and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, it is legal for thirteen-year-olds to have sex. In thirty-two other countries, it is fourteen years old. That includes Albania, Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Eritrea, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Myanmar, Columbia, and Portugal
The age of consent is fifteen years of age in approximately twenty-six countries, including Greenland, Iceland, Aruba, Croatia, North Korea, and Poland. In another seventy-six nations, it is set at sixteen. These countries include parts of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Taiwan, South Africa, Nepal, Mongolia, and Lesotho. For Cyprus, Ireland, Mexico, and Nauru, one needs to be seventeen to have sex legally.
In forty other countries, including Kenya, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vatican City, Vietnam, Argentina, Rwanda, India, Guatemala, and parts of the United States, sexual activity is illegal for individuals under eighteen. In Niue, a country in Oceania, nineteen is the age of consent. It is twenty in South Korea and twenty-one years of age in Bahrain. In light of these laws, it is hypocritical for non-Muslims to criticize the age of consent in Muslim societies, particularly in seventh-century Arabia, when the age of consent in certain non-Muslim nations was lower and, in some cases, is currently lower than the age of consent in some Muslim nations. In fact, in 1880, the age of consent in the United States was between ten and twelve, depending on the state, except for Delaware where it was seven years old. Hawaii only raised its age of consent to sixteen in 2001. Before that, it had been fourteen.
The age of consent for marriage for females with parental consent is thirteen in New Hampshire and twelve in Massachusetts while twelve states have no minimum age, including California, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. What is more, the nation with the highest age of consent is a Muslim one: Bahrain. And yet, we do not see Bahrainis condemning Westerners for promoting underage sex. In the United States, child marriage, namely marriage with a girl under eighteen, is currently legal in forty-four states. In fact, “nearly 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018,” “the vast majority were girls wed to adult men, many much older.”
To be fair, the medieval Muslim world must be compared, not to the twenty-first century Western world, but to the medieval world. When one does so, one finds that the age of consent in Europe varied from ten to twelve years old. According to eleventh century Spanish Catholic canon law, the age of marriage was seven years old for girls; however, it was stipulated that sexual intercourse was not permitted until they reached twelve years of age. Until then, they were not considered sufficiently physically developed for coitus.
When Leonor and Alfonso VIII married in 1170, the queen was only ten years old. The marriage, however, was only consummated when she was sixteen or seventeen. Furthermore, five centuries after the Prophet Muhammad, King John of England (d. 1216) married Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246) when she was twelve years old. In Scotland, for another example, the age of consent for girls was twelve. It was only raised to sixteen in 1929, after centuries of custom.
So, back to Islam. If the hadith literature, namely, the sayings attributed to the Prophet date from several centuries to a millennia after Muhammad, and his earliest biographies date from 150 years after his passing, the closest we can get to him is the Qur’an which, in the best case scenario, was compiled thirty years after his death, or, according to some, approximately seventy years after his passing. Assuming the Qur’an represents the teachings of Muhammad, what does it say about child marriage? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
According to the Qur’an, if a man divorces a woman, she must wait three months before she marries, to ensure that she is not pregnant. It reads:
As for your women past the age of menstruation, in case you do not know, their waiting period is three months, and those who menstruate not as well. As for those who are pregnant, their waiting period ends with delivery. And whoever is mindful of God, He will make their matters easy for them. (65:4)
For a person pure of mind, and sound of soul, what does “those who menstruate not” mean? They would say: women who does not menstruate — some don’t – or menopausal women. Yes? That is what a minority of Muslim exegetes concluded. However, the majority of them defined “those who have not menstruated” as being “girls,” “little girls,” “minor girls,” “girls not yet nine years old,” and “girls who have not reached puberty.” Forty-seven out of sixty-three Qur’anic commentators came to that conclusion. The majority of commentators, from the eighth to the twenty-first century, maintained that the Qur’an endorses the marriage of minors. The text simply does not support that interpretation. Consensus on a wrong does not a right make.
The verse uses to legalize child marriage is not explicit. However, there are explicit verses in the Qur’an that deal with the topic. It states that the property of orphans must only be released when they “reach the age of marriage” (4:6) [balagun nikaha], which refers to the capacity for reproduction as opposed to a particular age. The verb balagha means to reach puberty. So, the Qur’an clearly states that puberty is the age of marriage. The Qur’an also states that “When the children among you come of age” [idha balagha atfalu minkum huluma] which literally means “when your children reach the age of puberty in which they have dreams,” which is a polite way of saying wet dreams for boys and menstruation for girls. So, we have two explicit verses in the Qur’an that establish that the minimum age of marriage is physical puberty. This is perfectly reasonable and rational.
So just as exegetes were manipulating the Qur’an, through their commentary, to justify marriage and intimacy with pre-pubescent girls, so were the traditionists, namely, the people whose job it was to invent the sayings of Muhammad.
How old was ‘A’ishah when she married the Messenger of God? As we have seen, some sources, such as Bukhari (810-870) and Muslim (c. 815-875), stated that she was six when she married the Prophet and nine when he consummated the marriage. Tabari (839-923) states, on several occasions, that ‘A’ishah was six or seven at the time. Abu Dawud cites traditions in which ‘A’ishah claimed to have been seven when she married. As for consummation, Tabari held that it took place when she was nine, while Ibn Ishaq (d. 767) suggested that she was nine or ten at the time.
According to Waqidi, Muhammad saw ‘A’isha, who has six years old, playing on a swing. He became so infatuated with her that he asked her father, Abu Bakr, to marry her, to which he protested: “she is far too young,” and offered him an older daughter of his. When Abu Bakr said no, Muhammad approached the girls mother and convinced her to allow him to marry her. She was dragged to her marriage while she was playing on a swing. She brought her dolls with her on her wedding night. These traditions are so sick and satanic that they make my head spin. I risk having a stroke every time I read them.
According to other Islamic sources, ‘A’ishah married the Prophet at the age of nine. However, she was between thirteen and fifteen when the marriage was consummated. Some works of history and biography suggest that she was “at least nineteen years old at the time of consummating her marriage.. While al-Ghazali, the Sufi authority, did not commit to a specific age, he concluded that, regardless of how old she was, she only consummated her marriage with the Prophet when she was sufficiently mature.
If you are not confused yet, you should be. What is my point? The sources are not trustworthy. They are not reliable. I am neither an Islamophobe, who wants to beat Muslims over the head with the age of ‘Aishah, nor am I an Islamist apologist who wants to defend these traditions or lie about them. If one thing is clear, it is that Muslims, scholars and laypeople, have choices. Islamic sources state that ‘A’ishah was 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 16, 18, and 19 when her 53 year old husband, Muhammad, married her and had sex with her. When a Muslim says that Muhammad married a child, it says nothing about the historical Muhammad and it says everything about the person who is making that claim. They are believers in a pedo-Prophet and they themselves are apologists for pedophilia.
Some historians believe that the traditions regarding the early age of ‘A’ishah are authentic based on the criterion of embarrassment. The more a story is embarrassing to an author, the truer that it is. After all, why would someone speak ill of himself? I mean, who on earth would invent such sordid stories and attribute them to Muhammad? I will tell you who. His enemies. The Ummayads, who opposed him his whole life, and who took power after his passing. Muhammad is simply slandered and mocked throughout the hadith and sirah books. Who else? Sunnis who wanted to prove that ‘A’ishah was superior to the other wives of the Prophet on grounds of virginity. Sunnis who wanted to exalt ‘A’ishah above Fatimah, the Prophet’s daughter. Sunnis who wanted to give precedent to ‘A’ishah as one of the earliest female converts to Islam. Who else? Men who wanted to marry minors. So, once again, it’s not about what Muhammad said or did. It’s about what others say that Muhammad said or did. In which case, we must always ask: Who said it? When? Why? What purpose does it serve? And what are the consequences. It’s all about agenda baby.
As you can imagine, I am concerned about the consequences of the age of ‘A’ishah. Even so-called moderate Muslim preachers, university professors, and department chairs, defend the fact that Muhammad married a child. They preach that “7- year-old girls are women.” They preach that child marriage can be good. The lunatics are running the asylum. The Islamists have taken over the academy.
I gave up on Islamic extremists a long time ago. I have also given upon on many so-called moderate Muslims. This is where I draw the line. Muslim majority nations have some of the highest rates of child marriages in the world. To be fair, there are some majority Christian nations as well. The problem, however, is particularly accentuated among Muslims and is religiously justified. And that’s the danger. There is a direct correlation between the spread of Islamic law, the lowering of the age marriage, and the increased in child marriages.
Under the Shah, the minimum age of marriage for girls in Iran was 18 for women, When Khomeini came to power, he brought it down to 9. I mean, after all, when he was in his thirties, he married a nine-year-old girl. That was not uncommon among the clerics. Moderates gradually pushed it up to thirteen; however, girls nine to twelve can still marry in Iran with parental consent. Hence, tens of thousands of child marriages take place in Iran each year. Attempts to raise the age of marriage to 18 faces implacable opposition from paleoconservative clerics. One ayatollah, or sign of God, Lotfollah Safi Golpaygani, insists that fathers should have the right to marry off their daughters at any age.
In secular Iraq, under Saddam Hossein, the age of marriage was 18. Judges, however, had the discretion to marry girls as young as 15. So, child marriage reached 20%. However, look at the hell that America has created by overthrowing a secular government and replacing it with an Islamist one? Just a couple of months ago, thanks to the pressure for the Shiite Religious Authorities, the government passed the Personal Status Law. It lowered the age of marriage of girls to nine, even without their consent, and legalized marital rape. As one Shiite Islamist politician asked: “What’s wrong with marrying a minor?” The question should be: “What’s wrong with you? Psychologically. Morally. Ethically.”
As Mona Eltahawy (b. 1967), the feminist activist asks:
Whose Islam deems the “marriage” – or, rather, the de facto rape of girls as young as eight – a “right”? Certainly not mine, nor that of many other Muslims. Yet these influential religious leaders, these ultra conservatives, and proponents of child marriage use what they say is the example of the Prophet’s marriage to one of his wives, Aisha, to justify child marriage. They cite that example, knowing that many people will be afraid to appear critical of anything the Prophet is believed to have done – hence the labeling of those who oppose child marriage as “apostates.”
[For more details, read “The Age of ‘A’ishah” from Controversies in Islam: Religious Law, Qur’anic Ethical Imperatives, and Higher Moral Objectives (2023) which is uploaded to Academia.edu for educational purposes and discussion. (It is available here). Other useful resources include Dr. Joshua Little’s thesis, The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory, which is available here. For a shorter, but equally valuable, study, see Yasmin Amin’s, “Revisiting the Issue of Minor Marriages: Multidisciplinary Ijtihād on Contemporary Ethical Problems,” which can be accessed here.]