No you didn't waste my time this goes back to the point I was making in the thread or the other one about language being quite a confusing thing. No need to apologise I can see how it may have confused you with the word treatment and the usage of an example involving something associated with a medical definition. That would change the context. You know people associate the driving force for wars and conflict to politics, religion, etc sometimes I think actually the driving force is just break down in communication and the largest part of the is the inability of language to condense what people exactly mean for other people to exactly understand.
Woman beheaded in London
- Thread starter friddela
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No you didn't waste my time this goes back to the point I was making in the thread or the other one about language being quite a confusing thing. No need to apologise I can see how it may have confused you with the word treatment and the usage of an example involving something associated with a medical definition. That would change the context. You know people associate the driving force for wars and conflict to politics, religion, etc sometimes I think actually the driving force is just break down in communication and the largest part of the is the inability of language to condense what people exactly mean for other people to exactly understand.
What they did was immoral in their time period as well as ours.
Again, they were crimes then as they remain today. They are only historical in the relative sense rather than the objective sense anyway so the point is moot.
Actually to remain objective you have to consider the moral and social norms of the society and era in which these actions took place to form an opinion, it is disingenuous to suggest that what we would consider underage marriage today is the same as what would be considered underage in the 14th or 7th Centuries. We might consider betrothal and marriage at 9 and 12 years old respectively to be both immoral and socially unacceptable today and rightly judge the moral and legal status of the individual according to that moral imperative , however when we consider the actions of Royal Houses in say the 11th century and their practice of betrothal at birth and marriage at puberty we do not objectify them according to our own social and moral norms but by the norms within their own society when judging their respective social, legal and moral status.
This is a good point. As a society we move forwards towards more enlightened ethical and moral standards. I see them as a positive evolution in humanity. Sometimes I think it is unfair to judge people of the past by the standards of the present. However, on some things then the standards of the past are also being broken.
Another side to this of course is that humans are said by the big 3 religions to be born imperfect. However, god sees all and knows all. One has to answer, for example, why god saw fit to let Mohammed commit what is really paedophilia even if it was acceptable for Mohammed at that time. Surely god had the presence and the power to have established, by any decent moral, what his prophet was doing was drastically wrong and therefore should have done something about it?
If god is infallible he would have known these currents standards back then and future ones now (which no doubt hold us all in shame and are shining bastions of virtue) and then and should maybe have expected his prophets to hold a higher standard. Jesus never seemed to have these problems. It is does require a good explanation.
Humans are the ony species who put these artificial strictures on their development Xordium, if we look at this dispassionately a woman (and a man) is simply ready whenever they reach puberty (so at 12 Aysha was probably at that point). Another point is that God (or the equivalent) according to most religions is not overly onerous in his expectations of mankind at any given juncture, hence in Christianity for example there are differing covenants (expectations) according to the respective development of Man. Expectations of God are supposed to be attainable in the individual as well as the society of which they are part, a significant part of most religions is the concept of moral and ethical development and enlightenment over time, not just aimed at the individual but mankind itself as it moves out if its civilisation infancy and develops as a collective rather than individually.
Also we don't always move forward ethically and morally, in fact there are clear examples that while societal morals change they are not always for the better, it is a matter of perspective and how society defines its morality rather than any objective improvement across human society as a whole. Morality and the promotion of it is largely linked to many other external factors such as societal stability, wealth and institutional provision of law...you, like myself spent time in Congo I recall, look what happens when those societal controls fail, ethics and morals get ignored or are drastically altered to suit the wants and needs of the individual often with horrific consequences.
Also we don't always move forward ethically and morally, in fact there are clear examples that while societal morals change they are not always for the better, it is a matter of perspective and how society defines its morality rather than any objective improvement across human society as a whole. Morality and the promotion of it is largely linked to many other external factors such as societal stability, wealth and institutional provision of law...you, like myself spent time in Congo I recall, look what happens when those societal controls fail, ethics and morals get ignored or are drastically altered to suit the wants and needs of the individual often with horrific consequences.
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That isn't really true, sexual intercourse and especially pregnancy can be biologically damaging at a young age. That is if we just focus on the physical and completely ignore the psychological. Puberty is a process not an end point so reaching puberty shouldn't really be a green light to sex and pregnancy.
Perhaps I should have been more clear, historically and biologically the onset of Menarche or shortly after (look up the term Nubility) has determined the beginning of their suitability for intercourse and subsequently pregnancy (see Maidenhood). Pregnancy is inherently dangerous at any age. Again, this has been how mankind has determined the suitability for reproduction for millennia...(Aysha at 12 would have likely seen her menses and may well have been determined as nubile according to historical definition of the word).
Its disingenuous to call anyone from the 7th century (or any historical period where the biological signs were followed rather than any artificially imposed ethical bar) a paedophile, if Mohammed was a a paedophile then so was pretty much everyone else. Which is why the whole accusation is so infantile, particularly given the difficulty in actually knowing the age of Aysha (the preoccupation is with her virginity rather than age due to the assumption of divinity in the choice of Aysha as a bride) and the point that she was never pregnant (only Mohammed's first wife had children) as she was a political marriage above all else.
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![[FnG]magnolia](/styles/overclockers/avatars/9.png){kind=avatar}
Caporegime
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Something magical is happening in this thread. Can anyone else feel it?
I believe her name is Strike Witch.
But we know a lot more now than we did then. So we know that the pelvic bone doesn't reach it's full size until around the age of 16-18 regardless of when a girl has started her menses. Our knowledge of biology has increased significantly so we know that regardless of how we used to work (or in some cases how it still works) holding off on pregnancy until late teens/early twenties is generally much better for the woman than starting as soon as she has her period (which can be as young as 8). This is a simple biological fact, it is much safer to wait until a woman is fully grown.
To be fair it is never an argument I have used, there are more than enough issues with Islam and Mohammed without having to worry about when he married Aisha.
That said, I agree with Xordium in that, as a man of the time him marrying a six year old and having sex with a 10 year old (depending on sources) is fairly typical of the time. However as a role model of how to live now, it's pretty awful.
That wasn't just my point though I further extended it on to suggest that it is fully understandable for men of the time not to understand what we now know. But for a all-seeing, all-powerful god to overlook it when he remembered all that other stuff to tell Mohammed/Jesus/Moses etc! This is the same god who says do it my way or face eternal damnation so let's not pretend he doesn't ask for quite a lot! God should know the biology after all he designed us did he not?!?
Much of which depends on the individual woman, hence why I asked you to look up the term Nubility and Maidenhood, which were social systems designed to address the suitability of an individual woman and were widespread in the respective Islamic and Christian cultures at the time. It is a common misconception, which you have repeated, that assumes there was an automatic suitability of a woman simply because they reached menarche, there are a raft of other social and cultural factors involved as I mentioned. There is no reason to believe that Mohammed was not following these, given the nature of his marriage to all but his first wife there is no reason to assume he did not.
I did not say you did.
Given that very little is actually know about Ayesha during her childhood it depends upon which source and which interpretation and expression of Hadith you accept. The ages of consummation range from 10 until 19. Historically the younger age ranges were preferred as they inferred the virginity of Ayesha which was the theological expression within the divine nature of the relationship desirable to the authors rather than the actual physical age of Ayesha.
And I addressed that also. The Quran doesn't stipulate a defined physical age for marriage (and therefore consummation) but addresses this in when a person is mature enough, it expresses this for both men and women. The Quran (the word of God) in isolation doesn't assume that an individual is ready for majority at a predefined age, the Hadith (interpretation of man) however expresses a range of defined ages for both (from 9-20), mainly defined by the culture and opinion of the author.
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Bikini-clad catgirls with missiles for legs?
That's weird, man. And I've seen some pretty wacky ****.
I mean the catgirl part is fine and perfectly normal*. But missiles for legs? Just... why?
*(cats are cute, girls are cute, I seen nothing wrong with genetically combining them.)
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