Introduction

Classical Islamic jurisprudence does not set any minimum age for marriage, effectively allowing child marriage. In a previous article¹ , we demonstrated that the position of jurists is based on the Quran as well as on the example of the Prophet. According to Islamic sources, indeed, Muhammad married Aïcha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, who was only six years old. The marriage would have been consummated three years later, when Aïcha had not yet reached puberty. Today, Muhammad’s marriage to Aïcha is a recurring topic of controversy. Critics of Islam reproach Muhammad for marrying a child, some going so far as to label him a “pedophile” or even a “pedocriminal.” On the other side, Muslims engaged in these debates often retort that if the Prophet married a child of six, this marriage should be viewed within its historical context, where such unions would have been—according to them—common. For several decades, however, an increasing number of Muslims have challenged the claim that Aïcha was six years old at the time of marriage.

The aim of this article is certainly not to “settle” the debate, much less to prosecute a man who died 1,400 years ago. Instead, we will try to provide some elements of response to shed light on these thorny questions. To do so, we will first examine traditional Islamic sources relating to the Prophet's marriage to Aïcha. In a second step, we will analyze the use of this narrative in contemporary debates about Islam. Finally, we will present a historical-critical reading of the traditions concerning Aïcha’s age, opening what can be called an “Islamic dilemma.”

The Prophet’s Nuptials

Muslim sources unanimously report that Muhammad married Aïcha when she was a very young girl: “The Messenger of Allah married me when I was six years old,” she said, “and I consummated the marriage with him when I was nine”² . The marriage took place around 619, shortly after the sudden death of Khadija, the Prophet’s first wife, who was fifteen years his senior. This time, Muhammad chose a spouse who could have been his granddaughter. Due to her young age, the marriage was not immediately consummated, and the girl remained in her parents’ home for several years. In April 623, shortly after the migration to Yathrib, it was decided that it was high time for the young bride to join Muhammad's household and for the marriage to be consummated. At that moment, Aïcha was a frail girl, and a fever had caused her significant hair loss. Moreover, the girl was only nine years old and had not yet reached puberty. Nevertheless, the decision was made to consummate the marriage, and her mother decided to make her gain weight to make her more presentable: “My mother was trying to make me gain weight to present me to the Messenger of Allah, but nothing worked until I ate cucumbers with fresh dates. I then gained weight in the most beautiful way”³ . This weight gain was meant to help the frail body of the girl endure sexual relations with the Prophet, and as we will see later, Muslim jurists established the rule that a girl can have sexual relations once she has the “capacity.”

Muslim sources insist with striking consistency on Aïcha’s youth. Hadiths describe her as a girl still playing with dolls and swings⁴ , and her young age arouses little questioning among Muslim authors. Yet, these same authors point out that the Prophet waited three long years before consummating the marriage with her, and that the decision of their union ultimately came from Allah. It is hard not to see here an indication that this intergenerational marriage did not seem as natural as some older Muslim authors wanted to believe, even to themselves. As noted by Hela Ouardi:

Faced with the obviously aberrant nature of this marriage between a fifty-something man and a girl, Muslim sources are evidently embarrassed. On one hand, it is claimed that marriage with a non-pubertal girl was a privilege exclusive to the Prophet; on the other hand, it is said that this union was wanted by Allah since it was the angel Gabriel who descended from the sky with the image of Aïcha drawn on a piece of silk fabric and presented it to Muhammad, saying: “Here is your wife, here below and in the hereafter”⁵ .

Regardless, Aïcha’s age has become the subject of fierce controversy between Muslims and critics of Islam. For many Muslims, the question has even become a source of embarrassment: how to explain that the Prophet, presented as the best example possible, married a girl of six and had sexual relations with her when she was nine? This last detail seems all the more troubling as it implies Muhammad experienced sexual desire for an unpubescent child. Critics of Islam accuse the Prophet of being a “pedophile,” or even a “pedocriminal.” The topic is so divisive that it has generated two apparently irreconcilable positions within contemporary Islam. Some Muslims outright reject the narratives describing Aïcha as a six-year-old at marriage; others, on the contrary, accept the traditional account and try to justify it. These different positions will be examined in the following pages.

A Controversial Topic

The marriage of the Prophet to Aïcha is a recurring motif in anti-Islamic controversies. Muhammad is thus regularly called a “pedophile” or a “pedocriminal.” In 2012, an anti-Islam film titled The Innocence of Muslims (“`Innocence of Muslims`”) depicted the Prophet of Islam as a slaver, plunderer, and pedophile. The images provoked a wave of protests in Muslim countries, especially in Egypt and Libya, where an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi resulted in several deaths. On social networks, Muhammad’s marriage to Aïcha is frequently a subject of debate between Muslims and Islam critics. On their TikTok accounts, popular influencers under pseudonyms like “Casus Lady,” “Jack Le fou,” or “Alibabal” organize almost daily live streams where they confront Muslim internet users. “You all say that Mohammed is the perfect man. But how can a perfect man have a child?” asks, for example, “Alibabal.”

Sometimes, these debates even take on a judicial dimension. In 2011, an Austrian woman was sentenced by courts to a fine of 480 euros for calling Muhammad a pedophile in a public seminar two years earlier. The judge considered her statement to be defamatory and insulting to Islam. After exhausting all legal remedies, the Austrian woman appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that the courts’ decision violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights on freedom of expression. In 2018, the ECHR ultimately ruled in favor of the Austrian courts, citing that her remarks risked inciting prejudice and threatening religious peace⁶ . In its press release, the ECHR further clarified:

The national courts concluded that Ms. S. subjectively accused Muhammad of pedophilia, seeing this as her general sexual preference, and that she did not provide her audience with neutral information about the historical context, which did not allow for a serious debate on the issue⁷ .

There are many things to say and perhaps to redo regarding the judges’ decision, which has certainly aroused the indignation of some legal experts⁸ . It should be noted that the judges reproach “Ms. S.” for having described Muhammad as a pedophile in a manner they consider subjective. Should “Ms. S.” not have been condemned if her judgment had been “objective”? The entire question is about how to determine “objectively” that an individual is a pedophile. According to its medical definition (DSM-5), pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder characterized by the persistence, over at least six months, of fantasies, urges, or recurrent and intense sexual behaviors involving activity with one or more prepubescent children⁹ . The diagnosis, meanwhile, relies on clinical evaluation that may take the form of a questionnaire or a phallometric test¹⁰ . This is where the core of the problem lies, because it is of course impossible to establish the diagnosis of a man who lived 1,400 years ago. Thus, Muhammad’s alleged pedophilia cannot be clinically proven, and any assertion can only be based on subjective judgment.

The judges also considered that “Ms. S.”’s accusation implied that Muhammad's sexual preference was “his general sexual preference.” This statement deserves closer examination. It is true that, according to Muslim sources, most of Muhammad's wives were relatively old, and some had been married before. Therefore, there is no recurring pattern suggesting Muhammad had a specific attraction for young girls, and his marriage to Aïcha appears more as an exception. However, the fact that Muhammad also had wives of more mature ages does not in itself disprove his attraction to young children. There are, in fact, exclusive pedophiles who are sexually attracted only to children, and non-exclusive pedophiles who show sexual attraction towards both children and adults. A large proportion of pedophiles are of the non-exclusive type. A study of 2,429 sex offenders classified as pedophiles revealed that barely 7% of them were of the exclusive type¹¹ .

Can we assert objectively (that is, through a clinical assessment) that Muhammad was a pedophile? The answer, as we have seen, can only be negative. Did the Prophet commit an act that would be condemned today by most countries’ courts? This time, the answer is inevitably positive. However, we cannot draw any conclusions about Muhammad's sexual preferences because “a significant proportion of known perpetrators of sexual offenses against minors are motivated by reasons other than pedophilia”¹² . Furthermore, talking about pedophilia in the context of Late Antiquity can only be done through anachronism. As noted by Ariane Bilheran and Amandine Lafargue,

recognition of pedophilia implies recognizing the child as a full-fledged being, a person, with the right to be protected in their integrity. This notion emerged in the West, notably with Rousseau in his treatise Émile or of Education¹³ .

Admittedly, the acts attributed to Muhammad would probably today be considered pedophilia—subject to clinical diagnosis. But these acts took place 1,400 years ago and not today.

However, the most obvious issue with the accusation of pedophilia is perhaps that it takes for granted the reliability of the information transmitted by Islamic tradition. As we will see, there are excellent reasons to doubt this postulate.

The Revisionist Position: Aïcha was not 6 Years Old

The age of Aïcha at her marriage to the Prophet has been the subject of a well-established consensus throughout Islamic history. To our knowledge, no Muslim scholar questioned this information before the 20^th century. Over the past decades, however, some Muslims—thinkers or simply believers—reject the official narrative and argue that Aïcha was actually older. It is not uncommon now to find claims that she was 16, 18, or even 19 years old. This “revisionist” scenario is gaining popularity among Muslims for whom the official story of the marriage to a child presents a moral problem. One of the first to popularize it was Rashad Khalifa (d. 1990), an Egyptian-born imam in the United States and a figure of Qurainism, a movement within Islam that rejects the hadiths. Regarding Aïcha’s age, Khalifa wrote:

All the stories circulating on the internet and in hadith books about Aïcha marrying at six or nine years old are lies found in corrupt hadith books¹⁴ .

Several arguments are advanced to support this revisionist scenario. One is that ancient Arabs did not count by tens, so “six” and “nine” would actually mean “sixteen” and “nineteen.”¹⁵ . This claim, however, does not withstand scrutiny. On one hand, there is no evidence that Arabs skipped decades, and no texts to our knowledge support this. On the other hand, the sources also specify that Aïcha was eighteen when the Prophet died¹⁶ . Why would the ten have been counted in this piece of information and not in the marriage one?

Another argument relies on chronological inconsistencies within the sources. For example, it is said that Asma, Aïcha’s sister, was ten years older than her. She would have died in the year 73 of the Hijri at the venerable age of 100, which means she was 27 or 28 during the emigration to Medina. Yet, the consummation of Aïcha’s marriage is believed to have taken place during that same year. Therefore, Aïcha should have been around 17 or 18. This reasoning encounters several difficulties. Notably, many accounts describe Aïcha playing with her dolls or on a swing¹⁷ , which a priori fits better with the profile of a young child than an adolescent or an adult. As W. Montgomery Watt notes, Aïcha “could not have been more than ten years old at that time, and she took her toys with her to her new home”¹⁸ . If Muslim sources are taken seriously, it is actually Asma’s age that should be reassessed considering her sister Aïcha’s age, not the other way around.

Whatever the case, attempts to recalculate Aïcha’s age illustrate the cognitive dissonance observed among some Muslims. In social psychology, cognitive dissonance refers to the tension experienced by a person when several of their beliefs are in contradiction¹⁹ . In the case of Aïcha’s marriage, there is clearly a tension between the assertion that Muhammad is the best of men and the fact that he married a girl of six. To resolve this apparent contradiction, some Muslims adopt a new belief: Aïcha was not actually six years old. This adaptation allows maintaining the belief that Muhammad is an excellent role model.

The Justification Attempts

Contrary to the “revisionist” approach we just saw, many Muslims involved in debates about Islam accept the traditional age attributed to Aïcha at the time of her marriage to the Prophet. Their strategy is rather to rationalize this event, find a justification, if not an excuse. A frequently repeated argument is that it was common in antiquity to marry young children. Unfortunately, this claim is often made without any evidence, while there is an abundant scientific literature on marital practices in antiquity. In a previous publication²⁰ , we saw that in the ancient Near East, the average age of marriage for women was around 16–18 years. In the 8^th century, the Byzantine Empire, neighboring Arabia, raised the minimum marriage age for girls to 13, and seducing an unpubescent girl was considered a sex crime punishable by a rhinotomy (nose amputation). Of course, very young girls’ marriages were not unknown in the ancient world, but the practice was far from as common as some Muslim apologetics would have us believe. To illustrate, we recall the words of the historian Maxime Rodinson, who comments on Aïcha’s age:

It was too little. Even for Arabs. But Muhammad saw her twice and she was a pretty little girl²¹ .

Another argument, which is actually an extension of the first, is that criticism of Aïcha’s age only appeared in modern times with the rise of human rights. The older authors, despite their hostility to Islam, would never have criticized Muhammad’s marriage to Aïcha, which is meant to prove that this union did not pose a moral problem before contemporary times. However, this claim faces many pitfalls. Primarily, it is a clear example of an argumentum a silentio. It is also important to recall that pre-modern Christian authors rarely had an encyclopedic knowledge of Muhammad’s life, and there is no indication that they knew about Aïcha’s age. John Tolan notes that the portrait of Muhammad in medieval European writings was “more an expression of their anxiety […] than genuine curiosity about Islam or its Prophet”²² . Guibert de Nogent (d. 1124), who provides a relatively detailed portrait of Muhammad’s life in his work Gesta Dei per Francos, “admits that he found no reliable texts about the life and conduct of Mathomus”²³ . In his book Misquoting Muhammad, historian Jonathan Brown writes nevertheless:

I have found no example of criticism of the Prophet’s marriage based on Aïcha’s age, nor of accusations of pedophilia against him, before the beginning of the twentieth century. Even in the nineteenth century, most British, German, and French orientalists overlooked the issue²⁴ .

This passage is at the very least perplexing in a supposedly scientific work, not only because the claim is false – we will revisit this – but mainly because of its apologetic undertone, which is not explicitly stated. It is worth remembering here that Jonathan Brown is a Muslim historian, which in itself does not diminish the seriousness and quality of his work in general. However, outside of his academic activities, he has never hidden his apologetic stance²⁵ , and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the historian or the apologete is speaking. In a critical review, historian A. Kevin Reinhart rightly pointed out that Brown’s work carried “an apologetic project”²⁶ , as well as the quotes above clearly illustrate.

Moreover, the assertion that no author had criticized Muhammad’s marriage to Aïcha is simply inaccurate. There is, in fact, a criticism dating from the 16^th century by a Spanish author, Juan Andrés. Little is known about him except that he was a Catholic priest and possibly a former Muslim jurist²⁷ . He is the author of a polemical work titled Confusion de la secte de Muhamed, published in 1515, in which he addresses Muslims (the “Moors”), urging them to abandon Islam and embrace the Catholic faith. Juan Andrés devotes detailed discussion to Aïcha’s marriage:

You must know that Muhamed took Aïcha, aged six, in marriage, and consummated the marriage when she was eight, daughter of Abu Bakr, and he was then seven men²⁸

As we see: as early as the 16^th century, at a time that cannot be suspected of being influenced by modern human rights ideology, the marriage of the Prophet to Aïcha was perceived as morally problematic to the point of being compared to a “murder.” Ultimately, the argument that criticism of Aïcha’s age is anachronistic is at best fragile, at worst untenable. Jonathan Brown himself eventually concedes that “nine years is a very young age for sexuality, considering norms of any culture; the precedent set by him [i.e., Muhammad, footnote] thus established a very low threshold for the minimum age for sexual relations”²⁹ . Another frequent argument is that Aïcha was already pubescent at the time of the consummation despite her young age. This early maturity would be due to the fact that during the Prophet’s time, the age of puberty was lower than today. An alternative explanation claims that the first menstruation appears earlier in hot countries like Arabia³⁰ . But this argument is hard to convince. First, no source reports that Aïcha was pubescent at the time of the marriage. It is especially unlikely since she did not yet have her menstruations at that time³¹ . Furthermore, the decision to consummate the marriage was motivated not by Aïcha’s puberty but by her body weight, which her family believed allowed her to endure the act. Second, there is no indication that puberty occurred earlier in the 7^th century, and available data even suggest the opposite.

Ancient texts generally place the onset of first menstruation (the menarche) between 12 and 14 years old. Aristotle notes the following in his History of Animals:

Generally, the male begins to produce semen around twice seven years of age. It is also at this time that pubic hair begins to grow, just as plants flower before producing seed, as Alcméon of Croton says. […] At the same time, in girls, the breasts swell, and the menstrual erupts; the blood that flows resembles that of an animal freshly killed³² .

Heather M. Prescott, a specialist in medical history, also notes that “examination of Greek and Roman treatises, for example, indicates that the average age of menarche in the ancient world was around 13 and a half years”³³ . It should also be taken into account that ancient texts tend to focus on elite classes³⁴ . Moreover, it is now well established that the age of onset of first menstruation depends partly on socio-economic conditions. Factors such as stress or malnutrition tend to delay menarche³⁵ . As Saskia Hin notes, “the average age at which most women entered their fertility phase may have been considerably higher”³⁶ . The assertion that the appearance of the first menstruation was early in ancient societies is thus completely refuted, and there is no reason to think that Aïcha was an exception. To remain consistent with scientific data, one should rather consider the opposite hypothesis—that Aïcha entered puberty later than normal, due to adverse factors such as resource scarcity, her abrupt exile from her hometown to an unknown land, or illness that caused her hair loss.

A (Re)Critical Historical Reading

Outside of Muslim sources, we have no way to verify that Aïcha was indeed 6 years old at her marriage to the Prophet. However, historian Joshua D. Little has recently demonstrated that this information was likely fabricated to serve partisan interests. In his doctoral thesis titled The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory³⁷ , Little applies a historical-critical approach to these narratives, particularly a method increasingly used in hadith studies called isnâd-cum-matn. This method involves cataloging all transmission chains (isnâd, plural asânîd) linked to a given report (matn), then identifying a “common link” (common link) among the transmitters, which then appears as the probable disseminator of the report. It turns out that all versions of the hadith related to Aïcha’s age date back to a common chain originating with her grand-nephew, Hichâm ibn Urwah (d. 765). Most of the initial transmitters are from Kufa in Iraq, where Hichâm settled after leaving Medina in the 750s. Combining this information, it is possible to trace the genealogy of this hadith: Hichâm circulated it shortly after his migration to Kufa, falsely attributing it to his father ‘Urwah, then it was widely diffused by Iraqi transmitters before being recorded in hadith collections. The Iraqi origin of the hadith holds significant implications for us.

First, Hichâm’s reputation deteriorated after his departure from Medina, to the point that some traditionists like Malik ibn Anas (d. 795) refused to record his hadiths. Notably, Malik’s Muwatta contains 138 hadith transmitted by Hichâm while he still lived in Medina, but none after his departure. It is also worth noting that the Muwatta does not mention Aïcha’s age, although Malik discusses the marriage of minors. Second, when Hichâm settled there, Kufa was the scene of early sectarian conflicts between proto-Sunnis and proto-Shiites. A recurring theme was the responsibility of Aïcha for the death of Ali. In reaction, proto-Sunnis created many traditions to elevate Aïcha’s image. In particular, it was during this period that traditions about Aïcha’s “virtues” (fadâ’il) appeared. Thus, according to Joshua D. Little, the hadith about Aïcha’s age at marriage may be part of pro-Sunni propaganda. By deliberately choosing a low age (even for that time), Hichâm may have aimed to ensure her virginity at marriage, making her the Prophet’s only virgin wife and justifying her title as “favorite.” This hypothesis seems especially plausible given that her virginity is explicitly listed among her “virtues” (fadâ’il) by Sunni propagandists³⁸ . As Kecia Ali notes:

When the earliest biographical sources mention Aïcha, they do so in the context of her role in the early Muslim history. She was a controversial figure in factional struggles for power, prestige, and legitimacy; the reports concerning her could praise her virtues or, as in the hadith sources relied upon by Sunnis, emphasize her purity. The sources link youth, virginity, and purity; it is quite possible that her young age was exaggerated to reinforce her claims to purity and merit³⁹ .

Furthermore, it is very unlikely that Aïcha knew her exact age as recorded in the hadith. Little rightly points out that Aïcha

grew up in a society still lacking a state[…] and certainly without a bureaucracy or literary tradition. Such societies generally pay little attention to birth dates and age (since they do not serve any real function), and, anyway, lack the means to record such data (birth records, official registers, diaries, etc.). This has been repeatedly observed in rural, tribal, and nomadic societies worldwide, including: some Native American societies in the early 19^th century; the Ababda of Egypt in the early 19^th century; the Samoyeds of Siberia in the early 20^th century; and Bedouins in Néguev in the early 20^th century[…]

Ultimately, her actual age at marriage remains unknown, and probably never will be. Little suggests she may have been between 12 and 14 years old, considering it is generally around those ages that the first menstruations occur and girls are deemed marriageable in ancient societies⁴¹ . This is a plausible hypothesis but remains speculative. As for why the author of the hadith on Aïcha’s marital age—Hichâm in this case—chose nine as the consummation age, Little offers several hypotheses. The most promising is perhaps to see an Iranian influence. According to Persian civil law, a girl could marry at exactly nine years old⁴² . Of course, this could simply be a numerical coincidence, but it’s worth noting that the Sassanid Empire, which encompassed modern Iraq, included the city of Ctesiphon near Kufa, where Hichâm probably invented the hadith.

Towards an Islamic Dilemma?

So, the situation is as follows: on one side, Muslim sources report Muhammad had sexual relations with a girl of nine years old. If these were to be reproduced today, such acts would constitute a crime in most countries, and the perpetrator would be considered a “pedophile” lacking morality by the vast majority—Muslims included, undoubtedly. Yet, Islamic tradition presents Muhammad as a perfect example whose teachings and actions serve as law ad vitam aeternam. As such, Muslim jurists will use Muhammad’s marriage to Aïcha to justify the marriage of minors, even unpubescent ones. An example of this reasoning can be found in the work of the Andalusian scholar Ibn Hazm (d. 1064), who wrote:

Whoever claims that [marriage with prepubescent girls] was a specific prerogative [of the Prophet] is not aware that God, the Almighty, [said]: You have in the Messenger of Allah a good example for anyone who hopes in Allah and the Last Day. Therefore, we must follow the Messenger in his example unless a text comes to specify that it only applies to him⁴³ .

This certainly poses an important problem, because except for a handful of fideists, very few would let their nine-year-old daughter go off with a man in his fifties, in the name of the prophetic example.

On the other hand, a hermeneutic-historical analysis shows that the hadith about Aïcha’s age was probably invented by her grand-uncle Hichâm in a sectarian rivalry context. Yet, this hadith is universally accepted by Muslim traditionists. It appears in the most reliable hadith collections (from the Islamic perspective), notably in both “Sahih” collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim. Overall, the hadith, with all its variants, is recorded in nearly 200 Islamic texts⁴⁴ . Therefore, we cannot emphasize enough the “authenticity” of the hadith (again, from the traditional Islamic perspective). It follows that if the hadith about Aïcha’s age at marriage turns out to be a forgery invented more than a century after the Prophet’s death, despite its widespread acceptance in canonical texts, then the entire epistemology of the ’Ilm al-hadith—the science of hadith—established by Muslim traditionists would be severely undermined, and consequently, one of the fundamental principles of Sunni Islam.

Ultimately, this leads to the so-called “impossible triangle”: the three propositions cannot all be true simultaneously:

P1) Canonical hadith collections are reliable.
P2) It is immoral to have sexual relations with a child.
P3) Muhammad is an excellent model.

References

1. 1.« Le mariage des enfants dans l’islam », Al Kalam, accessible à l’adresse suivante : https://al-kalam.fr/islamica/mariage/le-mariage-des-enfants/
2. 2.Sahih Muslim 1422.
3. 3.Abi Dawud 3903.
4. 4.Voir par exemple Al-Boukhari 3894 ; Muslim 1422a ; Al-Boukhari 6130, etc.
5. 5.Hela Ouardi, Muhammad : Nouvelle biographie, Albin Michel, 2026, p. 45.
6. 6.« Tu ne blasphémeras point », France culture : https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/le-journal-de-la-philo/tu-ne-blasphemeras-point-4029438 (dernier accès le 22/09/2026).
7. 7.« Arrêt relatif à l’absence de violation de la liberté d’expression d’une femme condamnée pour avoir critiqué l’islam : E.S. C. Autriche », Cour européenne des droits de l’homme : https://juridique.defenseurdesdroits.fr/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=26376 (dernier accès le 22/09/2026).
8. 8.« La CEDH reviendra-t-elle sur la condamnation d'une personne qui avait taxé Mahomet de pédophilie? », Le Figaro : https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/2019/02/15/31002-20190215ARTFIG00310-la-cedh-reviendra-t-elle-sur-la-condamnation-d-une-personne-qui-avait-taxe-mahomet-de-pedophilie.php (dernier accès le 22/09/2026).
9. 9.Michael C. Seto, Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention, American Psychological Association, 2018, p. 12.
10. 10.Ibid., pp. 31-56.
11. 11.Citée par Ryan C. W. Hall et Richard C. W. Hall, « A Profile of Pedophilia: Definition, Characteristics of Offenders, Recidivism, Treatment Outcomes, and Forensic Issues », Mayo Clinic Proceedings, vol. 82, n° 4, avril 2007, pp. 457-471.
12. 12.Michael C. Seto, op. cit., p. 13.
13. 13.Ariane Bilheran & Amandine Lafargue, Psychopathologie de la pédophilie, Dunod, 2021, p. 5.
14. 14.Cité par Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence, Oneworld Publications, 2006, p. 150.
15. 15.Ibid., p. 148. Kecia Ali cites Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
16. 16.Muslim 1422c.
17. 17.Voir la note 5 ci-dessus.
18. 18.W. Montgomery Watt, « Aisha bint Abu Bakr », Encyclopaedia of Islam (2e édition), vol. 1, p. 307.
19. 19.Joel Cooper, Cognitive Dissonance: Fifty Years of a Classic Theory, SAGE Publications, 2007.
20. 20.Voir la note 1 ci-dessus.
21. 21.Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Éditions du Seuil, 1994, p. 176.
22. 22.John Tolan, Mahomet l’Européen. Histoire des représentations du Prophète en Occident, Albin Michel, 2018, p. 60.
23. 23.Ibid., pp. 62-63.
24. 24.Jonathan A. C. Brown, Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy, Oneworld Publications, 2014, p. 133.
25. 25.Jonathan Brown is for example a member of the Islamic think tank “Yaqeen Institute” (https://yaqeeninstitute.org). He is also an author on the site “Muslim Matters” which states its goal “to please Allah (subhanahu wata’ala) by offering a platform for orthodox opinion leaders to foster positive change” (https://muslimmatters.org/about/). In a post dated August 17, 2024, on the social network “X” (formerly Twitter), he also admits: “My work is resolutely aimed in favor of the Islamic tradition.” To view it, see: https://x.com/JonathanACBrown/status/1824575714785628331?s=20.
26. 26.Kevin A. Reinhart, « Juynbolliana, Gradualism, the Big Bang, and Ḥadīth Study in the Twenty-First Century », Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 130 (3), p. 437.
27. 27.John Tolan, op. cit., pp. 106-107.
28. 28.Juan Andrés, Confusion de la secte de Muhamed, p. 99. We cite the text translated into old French by Guy Lefèvre de La Boderie, with slight adaptation for easier reading.
29. 29.Jonathan Brown, op. cit., p. 132.
30. 30.This explanation is for example advanced by the Muslim influencer known under the pseudonym “Le N,” who has nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok. In one of his videos (url: https://www.tiktok.com/@misterneilyt/video/7560409740644191510), he states that “in hot countries, young people tend to go into puberty earlier.” To support his claims, he cites the work of sexologist John Bancroft, Human Sexuality and Its Problems, p. 191. After consulting the work, it appears that the cited author does not establish at any point a link between heat and early puberty.
31. 31.Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam, Oneworld Publications, 2011, p. 141.
32. 32.Aristotle, History of Animals, VII, I.
33. 33.Heather M. Prescott, « VI.8 ~ Adolescent Nutrition and Fertility », in Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild C. Ornelas (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Food, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 1454.
34. 34.Saskia Hin, The Demography of Roman Italy, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 151.
35. 35.Anastasios Papadimitriou, « Timing of Puberty and Secular Trend in Human Maturation », in Philip Kumanov & Ashok Agarwal (eds.), Puberty: Physiology and Abnormalities, Springer, 2016, pp. 124-127.
36. 36.Saskia Hin, op. cit., p. 151.
37. 37.Joshua D. Little, The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory, doctoral thesis presented at Oxford University, 2022.
38. 38.Ibid., passim et notamment p. 457.
39. 39.Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics, op. cit., p. 191.
40. 41.Ibid., p. 512.
41. 42.Cf. notre article cité en note 1 ci-dessus sur l’âge au mariage dans le monde antique.
42. 43.Ibn Hazm, Kitab al-Muhallā bi'l Athār, vol. 9, p. 460.
43. 44.Joshua D. Little, op. cit., p. 515.