The Marriage Between Prophet Muhammad & Aisha Is Good.

Thanks Pro. Preface Reliability of Hadith Pro relies heavily on the narrations of the Hadith to make his arguments, and makes no effort to: 1. Demonstrate that these Hadith are reliable 2. Make a logical progression from the narrations to the resolution The former is important because Pro attacks my (limited) use of the Hadith by attacking it’s reliability c.f. “The false account brought up by Con: “Muhammad’s father-in-laws (Abu Bakr and Umar) amused him by slapping his wives (Aisha and Hafsa) for annoying him.” >> It’s a false account, as it doesn’t exist, but the original story is in the Incident of Takhyir”. Besides the fact this is merely a bare assertion from Pro (he makes no attempt to support his claim). The Hadith is in the Book of Divorce of ibn al-Hajjaj’s collection.[ http://sunnah.com... ] Given that all his Hadith are of Sahih (authentic/correct) and that the collection is revered as one fo the most authentic Hadith collections, then Pro has some serious explaining to do to discredit this Hadith as inauthentic, whilst not undermining his own argument.[http://en.wikipedia.org...] If Pro can discredit my use of the Hadith, then I can equally dismiss his Hadith out of hand until he supports his own use of them. He can’t have his cake and eat it. Childhood Grooming & Stockholm Syndrome While this is not directly in response to Pro’s arguments, it establish that something that is clearly immoral, indecent and harmful gives rise to virtually all of the observations Pro makes. It lowers a child’s inhibitions and leaves them more susceptible to sexual activities with the perpetrator. Given that Muhammad was marrying someone who literally could not have known him on a romantic or sexual level (she was six…) then the fact he made such moves is unsurprising, and to be expected. Moreover, as have too reason to expect the marriage was primarily sexual in intention due to the availability of other (more decent & less immoral) options already argued. Furthermore, sexual abuse victims are known to carry increased degrees of empathy and sympathy for their attackers as a result of this grooming process, a phenomenon well-studied in Stockholm Syndrome in hostage situations.[http://en.wikipedia.org...] Pro’s Case Much of Pro’s case is full of assumptions and loose-ends. I will address most of these in their appropriate sections, but I only raise this point because Pro included this in the rules AND Pro accuses me of not making complete logical arguments. Thus, once again Pro cannot both have his cake (criticise my loose-ended arguments, which are not loose ended at all), whilst requiring the reader/voters to complete his unstated premises and arguments for him. That is just asinine. Pro has to burden to show that Muhammad’s marriage is (on balance): “healthy, sound, beneficial, favourable & decent ; not harmful, not defective, not unethical & not immoral” Which is a huge burden to bear since he did not include an “or” operator in the definition of “Good”, thus is committed to demonstrating all of these aspects. Rebuttals The Marriage as a Union: Demonstrating the marriage as a union is insufficient to carry the resolution as already noted (it in no way afforms any of the sections of the definition of “good”). Thus Pro needs to make direct ties to this to this argument to carry any weight. Pro needs to take his arguments to their conclusion and show his logical progress, but he himself unquestionably falls foul of this with this entire line of argumentation as he has not tied it to the notion of “good”. Moreover, this entire line of argumentation concentrates on Abu Bakr’s relationship with Muhammad, however it is implicit that such a friendship would have continues regardless of whether the marriage occurred or not, thus the function of marriage in “enhancing” said union is on dubious grounds as it is anyway. Marriage as a Love Story Again, this does not affirm the resolution. Even if we accepted the premise that Aisha & Muhammad were genuinely in love with each other (which is dubious), it does not show on any level that the marriage was “healthy, sound, beneficial, favourable & decent ; not harmful, not defective, not unethical & not immoral”. It is indisputable that love is not the same as lust, or sexual attraction, and Pro has a long way to go to affirm the former. Human’s are capable of building sexual attractions fo many things, including inanimate objects and corpses.[ http://www.jaapl.org..., http://www.sciencedirect.com...] Moreover given the distinction is a blurry one, it is virtually impossible for Pro or myself to affirm what the relationship was either way. We can both agree that Muhammad and Aisha were sexually attracted to each other, and this would explain virtually every single Hadith Pro presented equally well, but as a consequence, we are not committed to agree with Pro’s extension that it was love. Aisha was *six* years old when she married, and 19 when widowed, the notion that she knew what love is, as opposed to infatuation is quite frankly absurd. This is problematic for pro since none of the Hadith presented are narrated by Muhummad. Furthermore, in accordance with Pro’s rule that “Arguments are required to be taken to their full conclusions, suggestions & questions will be inadmissible” Pro commits this violation throughout this entire section, simply listing quotes and requiring the voters to fill in the logical jumps between what is stated to “The marriage was a love story” to “The marriage was good”. Just how does where one place their lips on a cup demonstrate a love story> Just how does one man’s quote that Aisha was a superior woman demonstrate a love story> just how does Aisha’s jealously demonstrate a love story> These are all incomplete arguments, and by Pro’s own rules, are void. The Marriage as a Relationship: Exactly the same logical jumps made here as in the previous section. No logical progression from each of these (shotgunned out) Hadith and the notion that the Marriage was a relationship, and no progression from a relationship to a good marriage. Moreover, as previously argued, childhood grooming is also about building a relationship with the child before sexual exploitation. Given that none of the Hadith that Pro cites are narrated by Muhammad, we do not have Muhammad’s train of thought here. We only have Aisha’s, and given that the victims of sexual abuse from childhood grooming are simply too young and naïve to understand then of course they are going to believe they are in a relationship. They simply do not know better. This is further exemplified that childhood marriage at the time and place was regarded as more of a social norm, despite the harmful effects it is now known to have, thus we wouldn’t have expected for Aisha to say much directly negative about Muhammad anyway, given her exposed social status and culture at the time. Thus none of these “arguments” prove what Pro wants them to by any stretch of the imagination. Counter Rebuttals Mjuslim 4:2127 My translation is from the University of South California (translated Abdul Hamid Siddiq). [http://www.usc.edu...] Pro provides no reason to accept his translation over this one, other versions, such as one translated by Kitab Al-Salat,[http://searchtruth.com...] Moreover what is to stop me bare-asserting he is using mistranslated Hadith himself> Claims need support. Moreover this is far from the only mention, such as Abu Dawad 2139-2142 , Sahih Muslim 3506 already mentioned, Pro has not addressed any of these. Pro also completely misses the point of my Qu’ranic arguments, which are all written by Qu’ran, and allegedly received from his hallucinations (even worse for Pro, as these are manifest in his delusions). Thus, regardless of whether he condones or condemns these, he is nonetheless imagining/conjuring these within his mind – which raises serious questions regarding his mental stability. Someone today who is having visions of waging war against bestiality is going to have serious mental implications regardless of whether or not he condones or condemns bestiality. Moreover when viewed in context, the meaning is pretty plain as it refers to Jews (“Children of Israel”) “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; Except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.” Pro is simply chopping where he doesn’t like the text to begin. It’s rather unarguable that “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides” is going to raise some serious mental stability questions. Pro drops all of my other arguments, so I extend them to next round where I will summarise.