Mohammed HijabAs-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. How are you guys doing? And welcome to another video, another reaction video with the champ that you like to watch, that champ that you are addicted to watching, and the champ that you crave to watch. Yes. And if you haven't already subscribed, then shame on you, really, because this is where the discourse is had. This is where the conversations are had. This is where it's at. This is where we discuss matters relating to Islam and Muslims in the West and everything else.
Mohammed HijabAnd today we're going to be speaking about an individual, a far-right individual called Liam Tuffs. Yes, Liam Tuffs. Who, unlike his surname, has actually got weak arguments, weak arguments against Islam and Muslims. He had a conversation with an individual called Brother Da'wah. Let's take a look at a part of that conversation and come back and respond in kind.
Liam TuffsThe Prophet Muhammad at 56 had sex with a 9-year-old. Okay or not okay? Fully grown men do still have sex, rape children. Do you think there's a link between Islam and that behavior?
Brother Da'wahWell, let me go straight in with you, Liam. Yeah, no problem. Straight in, balls deep. The Prophet Muhammad at 56 had sex with a 9-year-old. Okay or not okay?
The Age of Aisha: A Counter-Argument
Mohammed HijabNow, this is the number one interrogation that people have against Islam, I think, in recent times, especially people from the far right. And the response, the traditionalist, conventional traditionalist response has always been to say the following: this is anachronistic reasoning, this is the fallacy of presentism, and that back in the days almost every single state and nation had puberty as the defining factor, and that people were getting married at 9 and 10 and 11, and even your kings were getting married at that time, and even your queens were getting married at that time, and etc., etc., etc. And look at Delaware, and look at these states in America where the age of marriage was until 7 years old until quite recent, and that this situation has changed in the early 1900s, and all of this is a valid historical criticism that almost any historical academic worth his salt will accept.
Mohammed HijabHowever, because the laypeople are not like academics and they don't understand what you call the thick description, what Clifford Geertz called the thick description of sociological and anthropological phenomena, these specious, spurious claims against Islam are continually iterated and reiterated. So, let's give you another angle.
Mohammed HijabLet me ask you a question to start us up. The question is this: if someone does not believe that Aisha was nine at the consummation, if someone believes in the revisionist account, for example, that she was 19, are they excommunicated beyond the pale of Islam? Is your understanding that believing that the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha at that particular age is an undercutter to the whole religion of Islam? Do you believe that this is an article of our faith? Do you believe that this is a pillar of our faith? Do you believe that this is one of the Arkan, one of the pillars of the Iman? No.
Mohammed HijabIt's none of the above. And that's why you actually find some traditionalist scholars of recent times talking about the plausibility of the revisionist account that she could have been 18 or 19. In fact, you had this individual called Abdul Rahman Kandahlawi who wrote an entire book on the matter saying that she could have been 19 years old and explaining why, and you know, the Asma argument basically stating that Asma died at this particular time, and chronologically she couldn't have been this age, and she was 10 years older than Aisha, and therefore Aisha had to have been 19 at the time, and going into details that we can't actually go into right now because you can read the book. It's actually translated into English.
Mohammed HijabAnother person is Sheikh Abdallah, one of the most prominent scholars in the world today. In fact, some could argue the most knowledgeable one. And this is what he had to say about the matter. Okay.
Mohammed HijabNow, as you can see here, all I'm showing you is the plausibility of the revisionist account. All I'm showing you is that this does not take someone beyond the pale of Islam. All I'm showing you is that if you are using this as an argument to undercut the entire religion of Islam, it's a failed argument because it's not actually something we consider to be a pillar of Islam. It's a historical thing. It's a historical matter.
Mohammed HijabAmrun tarikhion. It is a historical matter, and the scholars of the past like An-Nawawi, Ibn Hajar, and Ibn Ashur, and all of these individuals say when it comes to historical things, there's much more lenience anyway. And this is a mawquf hadith in Bukhari. Yes, it is Bukhari, but it's mawquf. It goes back to Aisha, and her. And so, there's more flexibility with the situation. That's number one.
Mohammed HijabSo, even if we went to two for the sake of argument, hypothetically, no problem. For the sake of argument, say absolutely, you know, whatever. Then you could say still that she was 19, and you could believe that and not be you can you can disbelieve the fact that she was 9 years old and still be a Muslim. This is number one. So, it doesn't undercut the entire religion of Islam. You can still be a Muslim and believe that she was older than that. That's number one.
The Christian Dilemma
Mohammed HijabNumber two, which is going to become very detrimental for the likes of Liam Tuffs who I saw recently was getting baptized. And of course, if he had a conversation with me, he'd be intellectually baptized. And that's a different thing because I'm going to physically baptize, yes, his friend Paul Golding in the ring. Okay, I'm going to physically baptize him. But, if you were have to have a conversation with me, Mr. Tuffs, you would be intellectually baptized, and I'm sure that's why you rejected such conversation with Ali Da'wah in the past because, you know, maybe you knew that there'd be some questions that you wouldn't be able to answer. And you're not in the position to be able to answer these questions because, quite frankly, Mr. Tuffs, you're not educated. Quite frankly, you're not qualified. Quite frankly, you are not academic. You have no background at all, zero, in Islam, in sociology, in anything. You are just a far-right pundit that's repeating talking points that you find on social media. You have no knowledge of your own. That's number one.
Mohammed HijabNumber two, since you have been baptized, I have a question. My question to you is as follows: if you believe that the marriage of a 9-year-old is wrong in all times and all places, what do you do with the Bible? Since the Bible in the book of Numbers, in the chapter 31, verse number 18, says that you can have the young girls for yourself. The tough in Hebrew, lahem, for the for them. You can take it for themselves. Like lahem in Arabic, actually. Lahem and lahem are the same. You can take the tough for yourselves. You can take the young girls as mentioned there in the Bible. And the Babylonian Talmud and other biblical exegetes, they all understood that as essentially, you can take young girls and have intercourse with them, prepubescent, who have not known a man. That's what's mentioned in your Bible.
Mohammed HijabSo, my question is this, since you believe that Jesus is part of a triune God, okay, and that he therefore must have been the author of the Old Testament, do you condemn Jesus? Now, listen. No running away here now because the majority of people that are speaking about this situation, yeah, are either Jews or Christians. Let's just say for the sake of argument, far-right Christians. Since you're a Christian and you believe in the Bible, yeah, my question is this, since Jesus is meant to be part of the triune God who authored the Old Testament, my question is simple, do you condemn your biblical Jesus who commanded in the book of Numbers, chapter number 31, verse number 18, yeah, to take the young ones for yourselves? Do you condemn?
Mohammed HijabNo, do you condemn it? Or you say, "Oh, that was for now that was for then. This is the Old Covenant, the New Covenant." But, he at one point in time in historical timeline, he commanded to that. So, do you condemn that aspect? Oh, if you're going to make a historical argument, it was okay then, it's not okay now. Then you can make the same argument for for the Prophet Muhammad's marriage or any other marriage. Then you lost. You failed. It's a dilemma. It's the Christian dilemma. You're finished. You're done. If you go, "Okay, well, actually, no, I do condemn him." Then you're out of the religion of Christianity. You're no longer a Christian. So, which one do you go for?
Mohammed HijabAnd how comes we don't find people speaking about this verse the way they speak about the hadith of in Bukhari about the Prophet Muhammad and his marriage to Aisha. Number one. Number two, if you look at the book of the First Samuel, chapter 15, verse number three, where it says where it goes to go to the Amalek and kill the men, women, the children, okay, the donkeys and the oxen, all of this the children. Let's just focus on the children for now. So, killing a child is okay, is it? Do you condemn Jesus Christ who you believe is is an author of the Old Testament because he's part of the triune God. Do you condemn your biblical Jesus, your Christian Jesus conception? You condemn your Jesus Christ. Of course, we wouldn't condemn Jesus. I we believe he's a prophet. He's he's a he is one of the greatest men who's ever lived. But I'm saying your conception, your Christian conception of Do you condemn that conception? Who told us, apparently, to go and kill the children? Kill them.
Mohammed HijabYou condemn it? Oh, it's okay historically for at one point in time for that to happen and the the command to go into a village and them to ravage everybody and to kill the children. So, you see, it's going to get very bad for you the more we speak because in the book of Deuteronomy chapter number 22, and you look verses like 28, for example. You'll find that it's even saying that someone who rapes a person, he has to then he has to then marry them. Do you condemn Do you condemn Jesus Christ? You condemn the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three of them, for commanding that? That somebody must be forced into marriage with their own rapist or their own rape the person raped them. Do you condemn that?
Mohammed HijabYou see, if you're going to go into a discussion about the age of Aisha, and you're going to go into a discussion about prepubescence, and you're going to go into a discussion about children and stuff like that, trying to link Islam with some spurious and specious claims, as we've said, which can easily be repudiated, then let's start with your Bible. Let's start with the Old Testament. Let's start with the Old Testament, who Jesus Christ, according to a Christian conception, co-authored, okay, at least he co-authored this book with the Father and the Holy Spirit. So, what do you do? What do you go say now?
Mohammed HijabAnd this is how we should respond to these people. If they come from a Christian or Jewish background, and if they attack you with this interrogation, don't go on the back foot. You can answer quickly by saying, "Frankly, this is not an undercut for Islam or a start pillar of Islam. If we don't believe, as Muslims, and this is where it becomes quite If we don't believe, as Muslims, that the prophet married Aisha at that particular age, it doesn't take us out of the fold of Islam. But if you don't believe that Jesus commanded in the book of Numbers 31:18 what he commanded, or the book of First Samuel 15 number chapter 15 verse number three, what he commanded there, or the book of Deuteronomy what he commanded in 22, if you don't believe in that, that takes you out of the pale of Christianity. So, in other words, you're digging a grave for yourself, and you're creating a self-annihilatory argument for yourself, a self-defeating argument. And that's all I have to say, and that is a KO blow, a finish blow to anybody from that particular background who wishes to ask us questions about this. Wa salaam alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.