Response to Jayasabi:
'Aisha and prophet's Nikkah was done when 'Aisha was 7-9 years old and they started living together(consummation) when 'Aisha reached maturity, i.e., 9-12 years old. 'Aisha was mentally and physically matured. 'Aisha was very happy with marriage. If both wife and husband is okay, what's the problem? Also how can a marriage be compared to rape? Both are different.
Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 6, Number 299:
Narrated 'Abdur-Rahman bin Al-Aswad:
(on the authority of his father) 'Aisha said: 'Whenever Allah's Apostle wanted to fondle anyone of us during her periods (menses), he used to order her to put on an Izar and start fondling her.' 'Aisha added, 'None of you could control his sexual desires as the Prophet could.'
'Aisha and prophet's Nikkah was done when 'Aisha was 7-9 years old and they started living together(consummation) when 'Aisha reached maturity, i.e., 9-12 years old. 'Aisha was mentally and physically matured. 'Aisha was very happy with marriage. If both wife and husband is okay, what's the problem? Also how can a marriage be compared to rape? Both are different.
Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 6, Number 299:
Narrated 'Abdur-Rahman bin Al-Aswad:
(on the authority of his father) 'Aisha said: 'Whenever Allah's Apostle wanted to fondle anyone of us during her periods (menses), he used to order her to put on an Izar and start fondling her.' 'Aisha added, 'None of you could control his sexual desires as the Prophet could.'
The problem I have with this is 1) it comes from a religious text which is very unreliable by nature of it being a religious text, and 2) it's not possible for me to conceptualize a 9-12 year-old being "mentally and physically matured" because we live in a time when 9-12 year-olds are without question not mentally and physically matured at that age. Perhaps under a very different value system and many hundreds of years ago, it was socially acceptable to marry and boff children because no one had the sense to know better, but the fact remains that we now know better, and it's not justifiable now.
In our society, we don't consider marriage and rape exclusionary. Rape is capable of taking place inside of a marriage. It has to do with consent. You can be married and not provide consent. And one aspect of consent, is the ability to give consent. And as a society, we do not consider children to be able to give consent because even when they are saying yes, they are too young to understand the emotional and psychological things they are saying yes to. These are important things in our world today that your religious books do not even consider because the concepts did not exist at the time.
Nobody here is 'dumb'
there is plenty of text to point to all sorts of things, in all religions. this is the problem with these sorts of groups and their use of these religious texts. they warp them to their purposes. want to lie? It bad, or maybe it's not. want to kill? that's wrong...unless it is not. and on and on and on.
it is incumbent on those that follow these sects to hold them accountable and to separate the good from the bad. the problem is that the leaders are corrupt, so those that are supposedly leading are leading, but they are leading people off a cliff, so people need to think for themselves and say enough is enough with this religious theocracy madness.
people need to step away from these organized brainwashing schools and ask simple, basic questions. the "leaders" of these religions would prefer that people did not, as if they did they'd realize they were being fooled all along and made to dance to the tune of these individuals for their own power and satisfaction, all in the name of whatever deity they choose to point at.
