Islamaphobia?

StarTrek

Even Eleanor of Aquitaine had trouble getting an annulment from her first husband Louis. She was effectively forced to sleep with him by edict of the Pope. It was only after her second daughter was born that they both decided to call it a day.

She only married Henry II because she feared she would be kidnapped and forced into another marriage. He was the lesser of two evils.

Really? You don't get it?

You can't judge historical figures by today's standards. Marriage at a young age was common and not against the law. Stop being deliberately offensive.

By your reasoning all those men who expected sex in marriage before 1992, were only doing what was common and anyway it wasn't against the law.

Or am I being deliberately offensive?

No one is 'disparaging' anyone.

Marrying a 9/10 year old child, when you are an adult man is wrong. End of. It doesn't matter a jot whether she is educated afterwards to a high standard, a scholar (and I love this bit) 'in her own right'. Plus she was his favourite wife. Nice. Or was that just the tradition then?

It's all a load of patriarchal nonsense. All religions.

cote I think you mean men. When power was concentrated in men's hands things went bad for women. I dispute that women in the middle ages had it worse than women in the days of the roman era. At least in the middle ages women had some (admittedly very minor) legal protections. In ecclesiastical courts women could divorce or annul a marriage for example.

I am not saying women lived a feminist utopia but it certainly was better than the roman empire.

Yes and she challenged the sexism and misogyny of her time. A famous story in the Quran is about the slander of Ayesha, when the Quran defended her honour over and above the suspicions of the townspeople of Madinah and even her husband Muhammad himself. A story of how she was left behind/lost in the desert and was found by a good man who took her back to Madinah, but because they both rode into town on a camel together after her gone for three nights people assumed that the two of them must have been having an affair and even her own husband was conflicted. Lady Ayesha was so angry that she left and went to her parents house and even after the verses in the Quran came to warn people away from suspicion and slander of women the stories all say how she held her head up high that it was 'God' who had repudiated her not Muhammad who doubted her. As much as she loved her husband she was also very much her own person, always known as 'the very intelligent and very clever' wife.

Slugs It was only until 1992 that rape in marriage was outlawed. You cannot argue someone is being offensive, because it was the law at the time.

Jesus lived a life as a single man. Now this can be interpreted in several ways, one I was told was because he wanted to remain pure like his parents - I laughed at that.

Another explanation was he didn't have the time to settle down and have a family. His need to change society was so great, so involved, it would be unfair to have a family and then leave them - that was the more to my liking.

My children have never had religion in their lives, for that I'm grateful, however even they recognise that Jesus was a great man that brought about change. All the other son of god nonsense, born of a virgin birth, part of the holy spirit, raised from the dead etc, they dismiss.

Moon, that is because most non muslim women know nothing about her and only talk about her in order to disparage Islam and Muslims.

It might be a good idea to start a thread in Feminist Chat about Ayesha and other kick ass Muslim women. I'd love to read it.

I always find it sad that the only time LadyAyesha is ever mentioned amongst non muslims as the nine year old wife of Muhammad. She lived until she was 63 and made many achievements, he pbuh had her educated in medicine and language and many famous principles and lessons feature her. She also led an army of 60000 men against the cousin of Ali, Ayesha was very crucial to the Sunni Shia split in early Islam and part of the egalitarianism of sunni Islam is because of her. Muslims name their daughters Ayesha so that they might grow up to be as smart, intelligent and as visionary as her. In some muslim cultures they DONT name their daughters Ayesha For fear she will grow up to be argumentative and forthright!

"Mary was married off when she got her first period, but they did marry her to a widower, reasoning that he would keep his hands off her for a while longer than a young man would. "

What kind of "reasoning" is that?

Does that make sense to anyone here? Like, a man won't want to have sex for a while if he has previously had sex on a regular basis? What?

"(They also married her off because they had to, not because someone "fell in love" with her)"

And you think that is what happened to Mohammad? That he married the daughter of the man who then became the first Caliph to succeed him because... um.. he fell in love with a kid?

Please say you are not this clueless about how power and alliances worked through marriages back in those days.

Regardless of what Jesus tried to do in his brief lifetime, it all got rather terrible (and not just for women) once power was concentrated in the hands of the Church. It took many centuries and a bloody Enlightenment to get to the point where religious dogma does not get to dominate and control people's lives anymore

I am very glad the European Enlightenment happened.

Jesus and Muhammad were completely different personalities for the time and people they lived in. Muslims reverence both of them for different reasons. on women's issues Muhammad spoke out against forced marriage, female infanticide, legislated that women must inherit from their fathers/brothers/husbands, that women can divorce, own their property that is separate even after marriage Muhammad specified that, that modern muslim women use birth control without the conflict that catholic women face is because of the statements of Muhammad, abortion in certain situations and within certain time frames is also a recourse for muslim women because of hadith of Muhammad. He was against wife beating and abuse and gave women recourse to leave their hhusbands in such cases or even general unhappiness with their husbands. We contrast that with how communities operate now on the subject of divorce for women. Out of respect and maturity we muslims do not compare Jesus to Muhammad and say 'what did he do huh huh?'. They had completely different societies and destinies to follow. muslim feminists look at the quran and hadith and generally see Muhammad pbuh as someone who tried to do so much to ease the plight of women and girls in his time of 6th century arabia and many centuries afterwards.

Roman society was nowhere as bad for women as Medieval Europe, though. And that society was built by the Church.

Regardless of what Jesus tried to do in his brief lifetime, it all got rather terrible (and not just for women) once power was concentrated in the hands of the Church. It took many centuries and a bloody Enlightenment to get to the point where religious dogma does not get to dominate and control people's lives anymore.

Islam started 600 years after Christianity and is unsurprisingly going through its "dark ages" at the moment, just like Christianity did with witch hunts in the 15th Century and Inquisition's long reign of terror from 12th Century onwards. It will probably take another bloody period of Enlightenment for Islam to modernise, sadly.

What did Jesus ever do or say that people dislike or feel was wrong. Come on?

Nothing wrong insofar as how we should treat each other and behave towards each other. I don't believe he was the son of god, if one could remove that aspect there is little a non - believer could object to.

wicked bashing another faith I see. I wont stoop to your level though cant because Jesus (pbuh) is a Prophet to us, I guess you never read up about respect as a Christian, forgot that huh?

I could list you many things Jesus(pbuh) did that modern society in the west would call barbaric today, but no point debating here people have already made up their minds.

vestalvirgin could you answer my question? What are the horrible Mormon men doing to me?

cote I can't speak about Mohammed as I know very little about the prophet or Islam. I was talking about Jesus. Many people assume that the misogynistic practices of Christianity originated with him (and Christianity has some awful practices and terrible acts committed in gods name). That's not true. Early Christianity was egalitarian and women preached and proselyted as much as men. It wasn't until Constantine converted to Christianity and the Roman empire with it, that it emulated contemporary roman society.

Sorry for the essay, I am interested in the history of early Christianity. Especially as it pertains to the role of women.

Not wrong per se, but from where I'm sitting, Jesus's one achievement in life seems to have been that he managed to get himself killed in a particularly gruesome way.

Who knows what he really said? Long after he died, some other men managed his legacy and created a huge myth around his name.

Wicked - You don't sound terribly objective about all this

What did Jesus ever do or say that people dislike or feel was wrong. Come on?

Jesus didn't do any of the expected practices....but you are saying we should overlook the so called prophet Mohammed, when he treated girls and women like chattel?

Jesus was worth a MILLION of that Mohammed. Jesus led a faultless life...time and again when people run down Christianity they have to resort to the OT because NOTHING Jesus said can ever be pointed to as wrong.

You think about that.