Dave Silverman has a tweet circulating in which he calls Muhammad a pedophile. The cause of this accusation is Muhammad’s betrothal to Aisha, a seven-year old daughter of an ally. Hemant has the “inside baseball” angle of Silverman’s comment covered: was this a wise thing to say? Will it hurt the movement?
I don’t really know, but it does remind me of this scene from the first Black Adder, (the video should cue to the proper scene, 6:10.)
As always, Rowan Atkinson makes it funny (and Natasha King makes it adorable) but the reality would probably be a bit more grim. Young women were used as bargaining chips whenever families sought to unite for politics or money, and this is true across the world and throughout history.
Here in the west, our hands aren’t clean either. The joke wouldn’t work if the idea of a child bride was completely foreign to us. And since it has nothing to do with religion, we atheists don’t get a dodge. So Silverman can take his shots if he wants, but he needs to realize that the problem is bigger than Islam.
I think that the point is that, just like the Bible, the morals it presents are not those of our modern society.
If Islamic countries *largely* accepted marriage (and sex!) with 7 years old, this would not be a problem for them.
But most Muslim would oppose it.
Thing is, you can’t at the same time punish pedophiles and keep the Prophet as manly ideal.
The dilemma hits a nerve, because it forces Muslims to choose between reality and their Holy Book.
Right, but Islam is supposed to be wise and the only holder of truth. Pointing out incongruities between Islam’s prophet and what is morally right is our job as atheists. After all, we do the same thing to Christianity.
I’m sure David Silverman is smart and well educated, but his job isn’t making detailed criticisms of society and religion. That’s Daniel Dennett’s job. Silvermans job is to make short, outrageous comments that get people stirred up. His job is to start conversations about atheism, and the fallacies of religion. His job is to open the door for people like Dennett, and other educated atheists like the folks here at UF.
I think he’s doing a great job.
the difference is that Enlightenment cultures (to avoid terms like “The West” etc) don’t hold up their baby-marrying forefathers as the perfect paragon of virtue, the example we all must follow. Mohammed, though, is the last prophet, chosen by Allah as the ideal man. Which means the ideal man is a paedophile, at least by practise.
While I agree with the sentiment Silverman is trying to convey, that we should have the right to call Mo anything we want, and that even if you find it offensive it doesn’t justify killing anyone over it, pedophile is probably not the technically appropriate word. First Mohammed probably wasn’t what we think of today as a pedophile, he lived in a time where child brides, as vorjack pointed, where rather common and not only in Arabia. The Talmud for example consider a sex with a girl under the age of 3 as something insignificant so you don’t have to marry her before. According to Maimonides a father is allowed to fuck his daughter as long as she is younger then 3 since it doesn’t really count, at no point does any of them say anything on the line of fucking babies is sick and you shouldn’t be doing it, moral authorities my ass. when you compare it to this Mo marrying a 7 year old look practically decent.
I suppose it depends on your definition of paedophile. In modern, colloquial usage it basically is short-hand for “somebody who is attracted to or has had sex with those under the arbitrarily-set legal age of consent”, which is totally different from the psychological issue of being uncontrollably attracted to prepubescent children. The main thing is we cannot say for sure whether Mo was attracted to his young wife or not – even if he consummated the marriage while she was still young, at the time consummation was pretty much required and part and parcel of marriage, basically signing the contract and sealing the deal. We can’t be sure if he ran at it with relish. Calling him a paedophile is just a very easy way of getting people’s backs up and getting the main issue talked about in the open – that the morality espoused as virtuous in x holy book no longer is considered remotely acceptable to most people in our society.
I don’t think I can blame Silverman for it, and I don’t think his point was anything like “Islam is the reason for paedophilia/child brides”. That’s… just not the issue at all. Of course paedophilia and child brides are bigger than Islam. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a serious problem in trying to merge modern culture with a moral system that thinks marrying a seven year old is a great thing to do. Pointing that out and getting people talking about it seems fair game to me.
Given that all his other wives were 40-year-old widows, I think we can hazard a guess that children weren’t really his type…
Mohammed was not a child rapist, but was very ok with sex with a 7 yo girl.
For modern language, this is still safely in pedophile territory.
I had no idea traditional Jewish law allowed this sort of thing. That’s just horrific. And a good example of religion for its own sake. Rather than actually giving a shit about the abused children, all Maimonides seemed to care about when he formulated those laws was upholding ritual holiness. And the same goes for the rabbis/sages who elaborated on them.
And this wasn’t even written back in the Bronze Age. It’s from the 12th century AD.
Fucking hell.
The problem is that in many countries, particularly countries that base their laws on Islam and use it to justify their morality, this kind of thing is STILL HAPPENING. In many Muslim nations, an older man marrying a teenage or pre-pubescent girl is a common and expected occurrence. It is considered a moral and acceptable thing to do BECAUSE the Koran says that Mohammad did it too.
Nowhere that I know of in the western world is it currently acceptable for an adult man to marry and impregnate a girl who is less than 18 years old. In the west, we generally call this statutory rape.
While some western cultures may have engaged in this practice hundreds of years ago as a matter of necessity, they aren’t doing it now. In many Islamic cultures, they are doing it now. You are creating a false equivalence when you imply that just because we may have done something in the past that we don’t have the moral authority to condemn that practice today.
“Nowhere that I know of in the western world is it currently acceptable for an adult man to marry and impregnate a girl who is less than 18 years old”
Britain, for one. I think Canada and several US states allow it too.
In fact in Germany an adult of any age can have sex with a 14 year old so long as the 14 year old doesn’t make a complaint (well, according to a brief scan of Wikipedia). The Vatican’s age of marriage is 14 for women (with parental or court consent). I think most places in the world actually allow for an adult to marry and have sex with someone less than 18. I think it’s a bit unfair to say that Daniel is creating a false equivalence when it really is something that has been and continues to go on all over the place. It’s not a specifically religious issue, though I would argue Silverman’s point was never that it was.
Also, your definition of statutory rape, while inaccurate, is very, very narrow. It would make an 18 year old who sleeps with his 17 year old girlfriend at the high school prom into an enormous criminal on par with a man in his 50s marrying a seven year old. I don’t think you really mean that, I guess you’re just so used to 18 being the magic number wherever you’re from.
Yup. AFAIK, it’s still legal in New York as long as the marriage is approved by the minor’s parents. There’s a minimum age, I forget exactly what it is, but it’s lower than 18.
Outside of marriage, you can legally consent to have sex in New York at age 17.
I do not know if it still holds true, but fairly recently, there had to be at least four years difference in age between the two parties for it to be considered statutory rape. I.e., a 19-year-old could not be charged with statutory rape for having non-coercive sex with a 16-year-old. We have become more draconian about this sort of thing, so this law may have been changed.
Those are referred to as “Romeo and Juliet laws”, and they vary by state. Generally, though, there’s a reduced sentence (or a more lenient interpretation) if the age difference is less than something like three years.
Here in New Zealand, and in Australia too AFAIK, the age of consent is 16.
16 in most states, 17 in a couple, and I think Queensland has different ages for different activities. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ type defences are specifically accepted in some states under certain conditions.
For age of consent laws for all US states:
http://www.ageofconsent.us/
And once again, Silverman demonstrates the problem I have with him. He’s smart, well-informed, and active, but he’s just too confrontational. The word diplomacy doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary and he just goes straight for the jugular every time. I’d like to see some softer comments from him.
I don’t think we can really apply our modern standards to other ages. Standards were very different in the 6th century, and marrying a child bride was socially acceptable there. Why would Mohammed think it was wrong? Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not arguing for moral relativism, or saying that it was okay for people to have slaves just because it was acceptable in any given time or place. I’m just saying that whatever faults lie with Mohammed, he lived in the 6th century, so by the standards of the time, the charge of pedophilia miss the mark.
However, this is not the 6th century, and trying to impose cultural or moral standards from the Koran, from the old testament or the Talmud, or from 1950 even, is misguided and wrong.
In all, I applaud Silverman’s work at skewering bigotry & ignorance in the world, but I think in this particular case, his aim was a little awry.
Most of the legends of the Virgin Mary that I was told as a child at my church put her age around 12. My Bible study when I was a kid put her at 12, 13 or 14. They even pointed it out specifically to note that, when I was around that age, I should think of “how mature and responsible” she must have been so I should be too…she was a role model. (They didn’t seem to process that they were holding up an unmarried teen mom as a paragon of virtue to be mimicked by their own pubescent children…at that point my church also strictly opposed non-abstinence education…amazing the cognitive dissonance they can just waltz on by…) I don’t remember ever seeing her consistently portrayed as what we would call an “adult,” or even 16 or some more “normal” age for modern readers.
And she, at 12 — if you believe the Christian tradition — “consented” to be impregnated by God via an angel messenger as a “reward” for her virtue. (“Yay, I haven’t been a slut, but everyone can assume I am one anyways! Thanks, God! I will remember to keep being pure so I can be rewarded like this again in the future!”) If you don’t believe in that tradition, she was probably raped and her family came up with a good cover story.
In other words, Islamic tradition is far from alone in taking child brides. I dislike the double standard (not on this particular blog, just in general) that’s often applied to Islamic vs. Christian tradition. “But that’s different — she was chosen by God!,” they will say. “He’s a pedophile though.”
If ANYONE’S a pedo, it’s God, by that measure.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s virtually no difference between Mary and Mohammed’s bride.