Its Islamophobic to Ban Child Marriage! (Says Muslim High Court)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
178.04857
Summary
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) argues that child marriage is against Islamic teachings and is therefore against the principles of Islam. But what does this actually mean, and is it even against Islamic doctrine at all? And what does it really mean, exactly?
Transcript
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hello simone today we are gonna have a spicy conversation because pakistan did the unsinkable
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or rather something that should be non-controversial which is banning child marriages
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the country's primary like religious authority called the council of islamic theology
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i'm picturing like a rounded table with a big globe icon oh no what what really happened was this
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this is all wrong how dare you you have stolen my dreams people are suffering and greta thornburg
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of course famous anti-semite would go on great with these people but they basically came back
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and they said this is islamophobic is is the term that has been used it is it is against the
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principles of islam wait hmm does islam actually condone well yeah so i was like i know there's
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a whole like if you're on the internet and you're around like the anti-islamic circle like oh well
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he did you know get engaged to a girl when she was six and consummate the marriage when she was nine
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this is aisha no and i and i'd heard this and and then i'd heard muslims say oh no that's not true
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like look at the actual but whatever and so i just assumed you know angry internet atheists being nerds
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right like i was like yeah i'm right like come on that's not real or i'm sure that there's like
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nuance if you really dig into it then well maybe it's one of those things where like people just kind
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of forget their ages so then you ask them how old they are and they're like i don't know nine
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well so we are going to get into the evidence for both sides of this okay i will say what i didn't
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know is that in the conservative muslim world like if you're not in the west almost everyone believes
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the nine age this islamic council most certainly would believe the nine age almost every major
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conservative islamic council or i say every major conservative islamic council particularly the sunni
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ones would go with the nine age does this mean that in turn it is considered normative or
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possibly even recommended that girls as young as nine get married yes puberty is seen as the age
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puberty is getting earlier and earlier these days so that's i guess nine let's go into the data here
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because there's a lot to go over with this case and i think it's really really interesting we're also
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going to go into some unique practices in pakistan where they trade young girls to end blood feuds with
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other families so they will take you know like their nine-year-old daughter or whatever and basically
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give them to another family for marriage for for one of their family with which they have a blood feud
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yes so this kind of reminds me of you know how alexander the great was raised in a in an antagonistic
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court right as like i don't i don't think that that i i assume that in a lot of these cases they
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are pretty severely abused but we will get into this oh yeah actually i've listened to some very very
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long interviews with women who've been in situations like these so i'm not super ready for this but
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let's go we won't get into too many horrific specifics just generalities and things that
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have been caught by the public and stuff by that okay so in may 2025 pakistan's national assembly and
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senate passed the islamabad capital territory child marriage restraint bill a landmark legislation aimed
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at curbing child marriages by setting the minimum legal age for marriage to 18 for both males and
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females in islamabad the bill criminalized cohabitation with minors as statutory grape
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with penalties of up to seven years in prison and fines of at least one million pakistani rupees
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or around 2600 pounds however the council of islamic ideology cii a constitutional body so again this
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isn't like some weirdo council this is part of the constitutional body that advises the pakistani
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government on the compatibility of its laws with islamic principles declared the bill quote unquote
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un-islamic on may 27th 2025 the cii argued that provisions defining marriage under 18 as child abuse
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and describing punishments were not within islamic jurisdictions they also noted that the bill was
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not sent to them for review before its passage i find that very interesting that they assumed that
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it would have been and apparently they had killed similar bills multiple times in the past
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so they big mad about this they argue with them the nerve yeah they argue that islamic law does not
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set a specific minimum age for marriage with some clerics suggesting that puberty which can occur as early
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as nine and with obviously the prophet as precedent you know literally nine is considered okay for them
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is sufficient for marriage eligibility and i did ask ai and ai said that your average pakistani
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by far would believe that isha was nine it's just sort of the the western ones who would think
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something different or the ones who are involved in like online arguing with atheists historical
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context this is not the first time the cii has opposed child marriage bans in 2014 and 2016 similar
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bills were deemed quote unquote un-islamic and quote unquote blasphemous blasphemous mind you not just
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islamophobic leading to their withdrawal the cii has also made controversial rulings such as suggesting
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dei evidence is inadmissible in grape cases why do you just want grape to happen like
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i just don't think it's really seen as such i mean i just in a lot of these i mean okay and i'm pulling
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from interviews from pakistani women who on youtube have done like a long-term interviews of their experience
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growing up as child brides essentially like in houses of their in-laws they're not really
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they're not they're treated this ah they're treated like the level of worse than than your average
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american would treat a pet dog um in terms of like and so like this idea that like you could
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because i think even most people and we you know bring it back sexual relationship with with with
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a dog like i think most people we're not pro that she's we're not pro that what i'm saying is that
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even most americans who do gross things with dogs by our standards do so with consensual dogs but even
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the the pakistani young girls in these households are not given that standard which is really screwed up
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so sorry i should note that what simone is talking about here 70 of people in the united states who engage
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in bestiality believe that the animal is consenting whether or not animals can consent it's one of
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those things that i actually find to be pretty stupid like obviously like a dog i feel like if
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the dog's running away yeah like the dog if you have to if you have to physically restrain an animal or
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if the animal's running away or if you are drugging the animal there is probably not consent i can't
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believe that we're arguing for i'm just trying to point out like to me it seems ridiculous to be like
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dogs i guess in the way that like a child can't consent because a child could say that they want
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something that they don't actually want so i think we need to put consent in multiple categories here
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right like yeah like if you put peanut butter on your junk is it consent or was just like they
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couldn't say no is is you could say the same about children right um so i i would sorry but you could
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say the same thing about the grooming gangs as well like those women were love bombed like they got into
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all of that a lot of them get into it technically with consent but totally the point i'm making here
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simone is is if you consider dogs like children but i don't think you should because the reason why
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a child cannot meaningfully consent is because at a future time they will be at a higher intellectual
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development level that's true where they might you can't expect that of a something they made in
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the past it's not that a child can't actively say i want something right um this this makes us look so
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bad and later in this i'm actually arguing that i don't know if you should ban child brides
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damn it malcolm that we're just gonna look so bad in this episode and and i would note here to for
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anyone who wants to like take us out of context or something like we are absolutely against bestiality
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i think it is really not a good thing but i i tried to add a context there just to be like
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intellectually consistent in the way we're approaching we're trying to have an intellectual
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conversation here which is unmoored from our personal proclivities and morality we're just
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trying to be like weighing the calculus if if either of us was actually into that we would not be we'd
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probably not be openly talking about it no i'd be too scared that it would get out you know
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god and again i want to be clear we find this personally revolting and culturally revolting
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but i have to call out the moral inconsistency of saying that an animal can't consent to this
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but then we forcibly breed animals with other animals as a matter of due course and nobody cares
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or we forcibly kill animals for their food and obviously we don't care when they consent to that
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the other thing that the council had registered before is that men do not need their wives
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permission for a second marriage that is hyper abusive no but that's also hyper normalized and
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we get was in islamic that happens all the time are you kidding me like this is not surprised this
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shouldn't be surprising to people i i i well again we've got to well at the end of this we'll analyze
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this was in the cultural context of islam but let's keep going yeah yeah some religious also though i i just
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want to say though like whoa it's actually really big that they're doing this considering how
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normalized these things are like well i see a form of western cultural imperialism that's what i'm
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assuming the urban monoculture has taken over the political no the u.n basically threatened them and
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said you have to do this okay okay very okay because i'm like wait a second yeah like this doesn't
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seem like politically representative of the voting population so no it's not okay so even mainstream
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parties like the juif the jihad islam fuzzy has opposed the bill with leader mullen falazar raham
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announcing protests claiming the law quote makes fornication easier in quote here basically he's saying
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look we plan to have sex with these people anyway who are below x age you know it's just
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you know they they now won't be our wives right we're still gonna force you know like we're still
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now now you're basically you're forcing us to break islamic law when before we were totally fine
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what are you doing yeah you're making sinners of us and within their cultural context it is true i mean
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i think the way islam treats women is abhorrent and when i say islam i don't mean all islam i mean
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the majority of islam wisdom regions yeah no there's there's farms of islam that are like
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totally yeah whatever and unobjectionable um but i think that what you know in the west is is glossed
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over is those forms of islam are not what is practiced in in countries like pakistan normatively
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right like the more slave with the government body saying oh you can just marry a second wife doesn't
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matter what the first wife said oh you know on grape kits dna doesn't count which just normalizes
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like you should be able to do this that the the you know the the oh well i mean now you're forcing us
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you're forcing us to have sex outside of marriage it's like no we're not forcing maybe stop doing it
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with children my bro that's a great idea right thanks for thinking of that one okay a 2018 demographic
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survey found that 29 of girls in pakistan are married before the age of 18 equating to nearly
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30 million women approximately 30 of the female population 25 that's crazy could you imagine if
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that many women got married under the age of 18 in the u.s hold on hold on it gets worse
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4 of girls and 5 of boys married before the age of 15
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15 what percent hold on hold on did i hear that right 4 of girls are marrying before the age of 15
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that is pakistan ranks among the top 10 countries globally for the absolute number of women married
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before 18 unicef's 2018 report indicates 18 of women 20 to 24 were married before 18 4 before 15
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and in 1993 this is a big decline because it used to be nearly double that so it used to be nearly 40
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what is interesting is pakistan has the lowest prevalence of child marriage in south asia after
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sri lanka but it remains widespread particularly in rural areas so these numbers are low compared to
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other muslim countries in this region and then it talked about practices like sohari or vani the
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marrying off of girls to settle disputes which are common within some regions the girls involved in this
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are as young as five to nine um so and keep in mind i wanted you know exactly what what we what is
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this i want to i want to know what what are these practices and keep in mind these families like blood
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blood that means that like these families have a fight where like somebody was like murdered and
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they're looking so they're mad at these girls right and these girls are typically the daughters or
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the sisters of the person that instigated the blood dispute right of the murderer theoretically yeah
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yeah the murderers so they are not going to be treated well by their mother-in-laws or the
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families they're moving into or these family networks this is basically an s slave that that's what's
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happening here a child and what do they get it what does the originally aggressing family get in
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exchange for giving away one of their daughters they probably don't value that much anyway
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settlement of the the the blood so just like okay now you're not allowed to kill us back yeah
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okay okay so to go into these practices in more detail swara pashton term meaning writing or on the
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back of a practice where a girl often a minor is given to a rival family to settle a blood feud
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typically involving murder or honor disputes this could be like they had engaged one girl to the
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family and the first girl ran away because she didn't want to be forced to marry them that would
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probably count within this category this girl is married to a man from the aggrieved family to
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restore peace symbolically quote-unquote carrying the burden of reconciliation so they put the burden
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of reconciliation for the entire family on a minor like a literal scapegoat yeah just put the sin on
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the goat send the goat off kid wow vani punjabi term meaning voice or speech similar to swara vani
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involves giving a girl in marriage to settle disputes but it's more common in the punjab
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it can also be used to resolve financial debts or other conflicts such as land disputes or perceived
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dishonor decision making disputes are often mediated by a jigra a tribal council of male elders
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or community leaders the jigra determines the number and age of the girls given so sometimes you have
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multiple girls being given from one family to another sometimes as young as five to nine years old
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though marriage may be consummated later often at puberty so and keep in mind the great prophet did
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this he married aisha at somebody waited because he had a lot of restraint until she was nine at least
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by this one interpretation which we'll get into i remember i was talking to someone about this and i was
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like man that that jesus he you know at least at least our prophet was not doing it was minors like
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uh apparently and you're like that doesn't seem to be a high bar and i'm like well you know we've got
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muhammad and joseph smith there you know like apparently it's a bar that you know when you get
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into the prophet territory a lot of people were like rules that no you know you got you got even
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freaking gandhi sleeping in the same bed with they just keep throwing themselves at these men what can
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we say they they just want it yeah oh so bad so bad ah ah selection of girls girls are typically
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chosen from the offending family or clan often daughters sisters or cousins of the person
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responsible for the dispute in some cases multiple girls are given to strengthen the reconciliation
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marriage arrangement the girl is forcibly married to a man from the rival family often without her
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consent or with the consent of her immediate family so this is like basically determined by
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a local court and a girl is is taken from the family often these marriages are legally registered
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in some cases but frequently bypass age verification exploiting weak enforcement of marriage laws
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social context the practice is driven by poverty illiteracy and rigid gender norms families in debt
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or embroiled in feuds may see sohari advani as a way to avoid violence or financial ruin
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i mean it's it just like the the level dehumanization that's taking place here is
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extremely disturbing oh yeah even in 2023 a seven-year-old girl in swat was given to settle
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a murder dispute sparking protests by local activists the marriage was delayed until she reached 15
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but the case highlighted so and this is happening and then people found out about it right but this
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is for a murder case too like what did she have to do with that what did what did
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immoral religious system that would allow this now note here again not all muslims this is
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one cultural system and i believe that cultures have the right to self-governance but i think that
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we need to be aware when we are importing people from these cultures how culturally distant they are from
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us and understand that they are likely not going to understand like the grooming gang phenomenon from
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their cultural perspective is a completely normal thing like they if anything they're being extra
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respectful i mean they're waiting until these girls are like 16 you know no that's that's basically
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had maxing you know that's that's that that is that is what they're doing from their perspective
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they're like why are you guys mad at this let her walk around the house without chains some days
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you know anyway in rajanapur district 2024 jigar ordered three girls aged 9 to 13 as vani to resolve
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a land dispute returned after intervention by a local ngo and media coverage but this is what was
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normal until it's like caught but three girls for land is well and that's i mean it also makes i mean
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you have to question what their home life is like anyway i mean basically i i'm getting this
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impression that parents are just kind of disappointed when they have daughters and this
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is something that's reflected in the interviews i've seen with women who've been through this process
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where their home life wasn't great either like their parents did not value them and you know they
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i mean it was obviously worse at their in-laws but um you know like from day one they've not been
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valued as humans which is also deeply disturbing well it's something that from my cultural background i'm just
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never going to be able to emulate what it's like to think like that you know yeah i really i so my
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problem is that i in turn deeply dehumanize anyone who would do that to any class of people i don't
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care if it's men or women or slaves or a certain group a religious group or an ethnic group like
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whatever like i i see them and i'm like okay we're don't come close to me to be clear here she is not
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talking about muslims because not all muslims treat women this way she is talking specifically
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about groups regardless of their religion that treat women in this way well and i hear about
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atrocities happening in these regions and i'm like yeah but aren't those the ones who like trade little
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girls and and treat women like slaves like i don't mind so much and this is this is one of these
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things where people are like man that's a problem right because like i don't i don't think it is a
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problem i don't know i mean dehumanization just leads to increasingly bad stuff i know i i think
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what it allows is for us to not meddle in their business you know like i don't i don't this is
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their culture it's been their culture for a thousand years i know i know like the the general place where
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i settle in with all this is like all right i have to flourish i have to win i have to create such
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an amazing legacy culture and civilization going forward that anyone who doesn't convert into it
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and become like convert away from these bad practices would be insane because this is just
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so the obvious right choice but the problem is is is what we're seeing it because the urban monoculture is
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like oh that's what we're doing but they're not doing that right like you're showing that when people
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deconvert from these these groups they stop having kids right that's the problem yeah yeah you know if
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your system isn't working and people can be like oh so you're a cultural relativist i'm not at all a
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cultural relativist i i believe my culture is superior but i also believe that the superiority
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of my culture is shown through time it's shown through higher birth rates and through long-term
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human flourishing the problem with the urban monoculture is it puts an end to a lot of we'll
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say human atrocities but then it subsequently what's the word sterilizes and kills off everyone who
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converts in so it's like oh you have it good until we like shoot you in the head no i think it actually
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creates a secondary problem which is it creates the perception that if you try to put the the rules
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and social norms of our country into this region that it you know that these people are just going to
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follow them in the way that people from from our cultural background follow them and i and that's why
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they have this belief of they can just import immigrants from these regions and and all of this is just going to
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poof go away they believe that they're going to just completely eradicate their cultural background
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and and and one that's a psychotic thing to believe because you're you're you know demanding basically
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cultural genocide of these various genders and sexual norms but but but two it it just functionally
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doesn't happen you know these people have have lived alongside this for centuries and you know this
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was something we saw with with soldiers in iraq and and the common practice there of sleeping with
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these boys and they kept trying to stop it and people were like what are you doing like this is
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normal here right like just let us have our fun man like why are you being such a stick in the mud
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about it and and the same way that you know the soldiers may have seen the iraqis looking at them
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for drinking right like you know i know from your cultural perspective this is bad but it happened
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to me when i was a young boy and i'm totally fine now so let's continue the cycle but again i think
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that you you know you the problem with you know having these like absolute cultural norms is
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because we live in the age of the urban monoculture now which means that the urban monoculture can
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define whatever it wants as abuse or an atrocity it can define making pictures of beautiful women an
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atrocity you know oh we got the u.n's claimed to ban anime right it can it can traditional gender roles
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as an atrocity you know even within like a western context it can say the idea that a person is born a
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gender is an atrocity right like this used to work when when sane culture was the dominant culture but
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we don't live in that world anymore so we can't rely on these systems which is why it makes more sense
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to fight for cultural sovereignty and people can be like what about kids and this is why i'm like not
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okay with child brides actually at least within a western context is because it breaks one part of
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cultural sovereignty which is to say that you can leave a cultural tradition when you're fully
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myelinated and mature right and if you are married when you hit 18 and you should be able to have a
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bunch of kids when you're 15 right anymore you're not free you're not really free you can't really
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leave at 18 you can't really make a decision at 18 whereas with other things like say circumcision
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i think that this is good or or corporal punishment or you know raising your kids outside of this public
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school system to believe that certain things about like sexual norms are deviant that mainstream
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society doesn't see all that i think is fine right because none of that prevents them from leaving
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at 18 i also have a would have a strict rule against any culture that threatens to kill somebody who
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leaves which a number of islamic countries it's very normalized but first we're going to argue go
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into why they argue that child marriage was part of islamic culture or religion okay
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quranic silence on minimum age the quran does not explicitly set forth a minimum age of marriage
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verses like surah on nisa 5 6 discusses guardianship of orphans until they are mature
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enough for financial responsibility which some scholars interpret as implying readiness for
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marriage at puberty the cii and conservative scholars argue that since the quran does not
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prohibit child marriage it is permissive under sharia provided the girl has reached puberty often
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defined as menche around 9 to 15 years a prophetic example a key reference is a marriage of the prophet
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muhammad to aisha reported in hadith i'm not even going to try to say those words as occurring when
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aisha was six and consummated at nine conservative scholars including the cii cite this as a precedence
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allowing marriage at or before puberty they argue that the prophet's actions are a model for muslims
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and since seventh century arabia accepted such marriages they remain valid today puberty is readiness
00:25:42.500
islamic jurisprudence fic across multiple schools hanif makif sharifa and hanabali traditionally links
00:25:51.020
marriage eligibility to puberty not a fixed age for girls puberty is often marked by menstruation and
00:25:56.280
for boys by physical maturity e.g ejaculation the cii argues that setting minimum wage of 18 as islamabad
00:26:04.480
child marriage bill would contradicts its flexibility imposing a western standard that ignores
00:26:10.500
biological and cultural differences which i would agree are there and we do need to recognize
00:26:15.740
parental authority sharia grants parents or guardians wali a significant authority to arrange
00:26:23.080
marriages for minors especially girls to protect family honor and economic stability some scholars
00:26:28.920
claim this ensures girls are married into stable families before they face risks like premarital
00:26:34.500
relationships the cii has suggested that child marriage when arranged by parents aligns with
00:26:40.820
islamic values of chastity and family cohesion cultural context in pakistan conservative scholars
00:26:47.220
argue the child marriage is a cultural norm in rural areas the islamic law should accommodate local
00:26:53.560
practices rather than impose universal age limits they claim laws like an alana bob will disrupt social
00:27:00.340
harmony and criminalize traditional families just some notes on why this is so bad of the girls who
00:27:06.080
do this according to who in 2020 30 percent die in in often childbirths that in 70 percent are
00:27:13.600
illiterate and abuse rates are really common so now let's go specifically to the case of aisha because
00:27:18.740
i was like wait what like so first who believes like what categories of muslims believe aisha was 12 to 19
00:27:25.720
okay again not okay but in what categories believe she was six to nine um okay uh so progressive muslims
00:27:32.580
doctors like reza aslan and dr john s brown in nuanced discussions in organizations like muslims for
00:27:39.500
progressive values often argue for the older age westernized muslims some traditional scholars certain
00:27:46.420
traditionalists especially in south asia except older estimates based on alternative sources though this is
00:27:51.860
extremely uncommon she scholars some she sources suggest isa was older 10 to 14 that's not that much
00:28:00.100
older although views vary de-emphasize her role compared to sunni narratives now for the younger age
00:28:05.880
conservative sunni oh so shia you mean what you said she uh she is she it's not or it might be she
00:28:15.240
oh she is sorry i was reading that wrong she okay okay she is some she is scholars um so it's not all
00:28:20.040
shia scholars but there are like almost all conservative sunnis go as a six to nine age
00:28:24.060
and you'll understand why in a second it's like basically part of their religion it's upheld in
00:28:27.940
most traditional conservative sunni institutions including al-azar egypt dara al-moon damon india
00:28:34.320
and many saudi scholars based on the shia hadith most conservative courts and institutions
00:28:39.780
and general public and conservative regions in rural pakistan where literacy is low and traditional
00:28:44.940
scholarship dominates the six to nine age is rarely questioned now oh my gosh this is so like
00:28:50.800
overwhelmingly most people are like yeah she was a kid and they're like yeah and he's a prophet
00:28:58.180
this is normal but if you could they have a completely different view of women in these cultures right
00:29:02.060
and i think you need to understand that that you can say okay now do things my way but that doesn't
00:29:08.080
mean that it's going to happen you know yeah i mean it's kind of like when people have they raise
00:29:13.580
dogs as like show dogs and they're like well when is she old enough to you know start breeding pure
00:29:19.920
breads like it's a very different like is she functionally able to okay good to go like i'm seeing
00:29:24.960
that kind of level of logic i always found that to be a very interesting thing about consent is they
00:29:29.080
don't ask about dogs and consent when you're breeding them yeah they don't hear about dogs and
00:29:33.880
consent when you know some cultures kill to eat them yeah like sorry this is like i just keep
00:29:40.620
bringing it back bringing it back because i have literally zero horse in this race and this can only
00:29:45.960
serve to hurt me i am just trying to be logically well i'm just i mean we're what we're discussing
00:29:51.140
though is the dehumanization of a class of human or a class of being and so we're looking at other
00:29:57.860
examples in which people manage someone else's life an intelligent being's life and the most
00:30:03.580
common scenario in which humans are pervasively managing other intelligent beings lives
00:30:08.700
are through pet relationships especially dog relationships interestingly i think a lot of
00:30:13.480
things that are done to women in these countries would be illegal to be done to pets oh no 100
00:30:18.220
100 yeah so authoritarian hadith and this is this is the arguments for so now we're going to try to go
00:30:25.160
through ourselves and see if we can determine what was aisha's age because i always try to give
00:30:29.220
religions a benefit it's time for investigation i had just jumped on the more progressive western
00:30:34.880
thing i was like oh i usually hear it from people with like an axe to grind you know so whatever right
00:30:40.200
um so who knows if it was like normalized back then you know how like your mother was like what 39 for
00:30:45.960
many years like a decade you know maybe girls are like you know six for like 16 years i don't know
00:30:52.820
so the most compelling evidence comes from the hadith in sahih al-bakari and sahih muslim considered
00:31:00.620
the most authentic collections in sunni islam these explicitly state aisha's age providing direct and
00:31:07.580
widely accepted textual basis exact quote sahih al-bakari the prophet married aisha when she was
00:31:14.060
six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old and they remained together for
00:31:20.360
nine years until his death shahis muslim then for another quote ashits reported allah's apostate
00:31:26.860
married him when i was six years old and i was admitted into his house when i was nine years old
00:31:32.420
the strengths these hadiths are classified as shahahi authentic with strong chains of narration
00:31:37.860
in sad making them nearly indisputable from the perspective of traditional sunni scholarship
00:31:43.240
they are cited by major scholars like imam now we and iban hasar al-kahari as reliable in context like
00:31:50.940
cii's rulings such hadiths are foundational for arguing child marriage is permissible as they reflect
00:31:56.700
the prophet's practice sunnah consistency across multiple sources beyond bakari and muslims other
00:32:03.020
hadith collections and biographies of color abhorate the six to nine age reinforcing its reliability
00:32:08.740
reliability through multiple narrators and texts sunni abadwa ashith said the messenger of allah
00:32:15.320
married me when i was six years old and consummated marriage when i was nine years old iban hassan the
00:32:19.460
life of muhammad while not explicitly stating aisha's age it confirms her to be young age noting she was a
00:32:24.960
young girl at the time of marriage strengths the repetition of ashith's age across multiple sources
00:32:30.260
like abidwar timad and ilbar with similar narrations from ashie herself suggests consensus among early
00:32:37.920
narrators conservative scholars like those from pakistani hanif tradition argue such consistency
00:32:42.800
outweighs speculative revisions as the narrators were close to ashie's time cultural memory early
00:32:50.200
muslim values precise memorization especially of prophetic traditions scholars underwent rigorous
00:32:55.920
training to preserve reports and narrations like hashish ibn urar and were trusted for their proximity
00:33:02.140
to aisha what you're saying is you looked at the evidence hoping to find like oh it was fuzzy
00:33:07.900
we don't remember it really well this is like a game of telephone and it kept getting and you're
00:33:13.100
like actually no everyone's like no no no we're like really really really careful we're like really
00:33:17.740
so so no it came so one of these traditions is directly from her own mouth it is her account of
00:33:24.900
the prophet's life but what i'm noting here is these traditions they they practice a strict chain of
00:33:30.620
passing down information where you were supposed to remember like as a religious order word per word
00:33:37.720
and and this has been studied in cultures that have oral traditions how exactly are they passed down
00:33:43.840
and you actually see a really high degree of fidelity within oral traditions that have this value set and
00:33:50.160
you can see this fidelity respected uh and sorry and reflected in the fact that multiple of these
00:33:55.860
hadiths that are used by different schools all have this exact same age the the speculation that she was
00:34:02.460
older did not come until modern times but then there's the other big issue here which is early
00:34:08.660
marriage was standard practice in pre-islamic and early islamic arabia and the need to reproduce
00:34:14.900
her age aligns with those cultural norms which is which is true right like this would not have been
00:34:21.540
a weird thing it's more that it's a problem because of a modern context and understanding of this stuff
00:34:26.800
not because of the context at the time again if it was super normalized at the time that makes it even
00:34:32.040
harder to argue against like this is just how it was done right it would be weird if yeah it'd be
00:34:37.840
weird if he didn't do it because that's what you just did then yeah and i mean it so to keep going here
00:34:44.920
i she herself was the primary narrator of the hadiths stating her age leading credibility to the account
00:34:51.840
as a firsthand report her lack of objection and her later prominence as a scholar suggests the
00:34:57.480
marriage was socially accepted so she also became an important muslim in the early days of islam
00:35:02.560
and was very open about this apparently i'd also note that we don't have a single islamic scholar
00:35:10.400
on record anywhere before the 19th century arguing that she was older than the six to nine age this is a
00:35:16.900
completely modern argument and phenomenon oh so how do people argue against this
00:35:24.340
okay so first argument historical records suggest aisha was born before the prophets of first
00:35:31.360
revelation 610 ce making her older than six at the time of betrothal 619 to 622 her sister ashi's age
00:35:40.580
provides a key reference point so tabara's history 9th century volume 39 ashma the daughter of abu akra
00:35:49.480
was 10 years older than her sister ashi yeah except this is coming from the nice century bro like that's
00:35:54.940
way later ibar and kastir and and and way later than the other sources that they're saying are too late
00:36:00.360
to use the sources asmar died in 73 the 692 ce at the age of 100 meaning that she was 27 to 28
00:36:10.100
during the hijra this implies ashir was 17 to 18 at the time strengths if asma was 27 to 28 in 622
00:36:20.400
ashia being 10 years younger would be 17 to 18 aligning with the marriage age of 15 to 19 betrothal
00:36:27.860
at 12 to 15 scholars like malalan muhammad ali use this to argue that ashia was likely 15 at betrothal
00:36:36.240
18 to 19 at consummation the problem with this is you're arguing against a consensus in tons of
00:36:44.000
religious oral traditions and written traditions based on oral traditions and like single oral and
00:36:51.560
religious traditions that are shakier than them and relying on two chains of evidence being correct
00:36:56.300
one the age difference between her and her sister and two her her sister's age of birth
00:37:02.780
which to me seems like way weaker than the other argument chain next ashir's participation in
00:37:10.380
battles like bardar 624 or adu 625 suggests that she was physically and intellectually mature
00:37:18.860
likely in her mid-teens as young children are not typically involved in such roles yes we've never
00:37:25.240
seen islamic child soldiers that is not a phenomenon that exists i'm joking there because it's incredibly
00:37:31.220
common he al-baqar ashi accompanied the prophet during the battle of udda carrying water for the
00:37:37.440
fighters and tending to the wounded ibn hasar surah notes ashi's presence in military campaigns implying
00:37:42.700
a level of responsibility inconsistent with a nine-year-old that is not at all inconsistent with
00:37:46.880
a nine-year-old from these regions it's not saying she was a warrior it said she carried water to the
00:37:52.500
warriors and helped him to the wounded that's exactly the type of thing a nine-year-old would do in one of
00:37:57.920
regions during a war like yeah you're applying a modern cultural context onto the past like this
00:38:04.120
isn't even a piece of evidence if anything it further suggests her her age being around nine
00:38:10.780
totally they're saying this suggests that she must earn 14 to 16 during this which is what they need
00:38:16.220
her to be for the kind of like water water fetching errands is total nine-year-old work like six to
00:38:22.120
six to ten year old work yeah okay so terrible argument there okay health reliability and
00:38:29.460
narrative discrepancies the hadith states ashith's age rely on a single narrator hishran bahim
00:38:35.320
aram who reports from later in life in iraq are questioned for inconsistencies alternative sources
00:38:41.320
lack specific ages allowing for older estimates no direct quote disputes hisham's narration but dr jonathan
00:38:48.120
brown um in muhammad's legacy page 147 notes hishram abba iran's reports on ashith's age were
00:38:56.080
transition transcribed late in his life and some scholars like malik questioned their accuracy due
00:39:02.200
to memory and old age so you're basically saying your core religious texts are inaccurate and none of
00:39:08.940
the people around him noticed that he he went from a 15 year old age for one of the prophet's wives
00:39:13.660
to a six-year-old age or a nine-year-old concept that seems like a big detail that other people
00:39:20.440
be like oh yeah i've been hearing this guy talk about this my whole life this nine-year-old thing
00:39:24.920
and the six-year-old thing there's like a big let's take that out you know no nobody thought this was
00:39:30.600
wrong at the time when it was being recorded and there would have been a wide cultural memory was in
00:39:35.440
this region if it of it was long after the prophet's death because it was a popular religion it's not like
00:39:40.860
with jesus where you had such a small community and in the regions in which it really started to
00:39:45.940
grow were not the regions where jesus was preaching the most this is this is like way stronger direct
00:39:52.060
evidence and so i don't i don't buy that either i'd also note here i find it really disingenuous that
00:39:57.220
they're acting like this is just one guy who might have like a misremembered stuff this was an entire
00:40:02.700
religious tradition that was dominant in that city it wasn't one guy the probability that they messed up
00:40:10.560
that monumentally when making these transcriptions it's totally unrealistic and then they there's the
00:40:16.880
ethical and contextual reinterpretation that it was just unethical but it wasn't unethical within
00:40:21.320
the context we know from quran saran al-nisa test the orphans until they reach the age of marriage
00:40:27.140
if you find them to be mature in understanding release their property to them so it's basically saying
00:40:32.500
as soon as they basically have an idea what this stuff is you know have them start engaging in it
00:40:37.860
that doesn't require in an early islamic or saudi arabian context that they be significantly older
00:40:44.380
well i would say like what what this makes me think of too is similar language that we hear around
00:40:49.380
various protestant traditions in the united states decisions around when people can be baptized like
00:40:55.100
when you're old enough to understand like your commitment to your faith and there are many
00:41:01.980
arguments that then deconverts later have being like oh you weren't like is that eight year old you
00:41:06.520
weren't old enough to consent to be baptized and to commit this much to the church but like
00:41:10.360
this is something that happens not just with regard to marriage but like i think there are many
00:41:14.480
religions who are like trying to make decision decisions around when kids are old enough to
00:41:21.820
take responsibility for their commitments in life does that make sense i think of a great example of
00:41:28.100
this you know when when they are arguing look we're like biologically and culturally different
00:41:33.200
from you and people could be like oh my god like people of different groups can't be biologically
00:41:36.720
different and and and that's why one culture can apply to everyone the urban monoculture can apply
00:41:40.400
to everyone and a great example of where this is really hurting people in the united states is black
00:41:45.720
families so you are not told this because this is an offensive thing to mention but black people are
00:41:52.460
biologically different from white people in a number of ways and one that is really important
00:41:57.240
to age of first birth that you may want and the spacing of your birth is black people have specifically
00:42:04.160
black women have a way higher infertility rate than white women um and a slightly smaller fertility window
00:42:11.460
than white women and so a lot of black women they put off having kids into like their their mid-30s
00:42:18.620
because they see their white friends getting away with this and they're just completely boned at that
00:42:22.220
point um and doctors are like oh nobody told you you know because how can you like i'm not a couple
00:42:26.960
racists for saying this but it's like a a studied phenomenon but you're like well then how does that
00:42:31.720
work with black people how do they have the same number of kids you know in an evolutionary context
00:42:35.320
and the answer is they have a shorter fertility window you mean they have a shorter gestation window
00:42:39.980
yeah they have a shorter gestation window by about a week and and so they can they can space their kids
00:42:45.600
closer together and so this is why it makes sense to have different cultural norms for one group like
00:42:51.160
if you actually care about that group have different cultural norms and this creates an interesting
00:42:55.820
phenomenon that i was reading on which is so offensive to talk about but but it is like a
00:43:00.560
measurable phenomenon which is you get developmental problems in interracial white black marriages where
00:43:08.060
the mother is black and the father is white but you don't get these when the father is black and the
00:43:14.520
mother is white if they have shorter gestational windows does that mean like the baby is born
00:43:18.160
earlier but then we're likely to have complications yeah the baby is born earlier but because of the
00:43:23.100
white dad part of the baby's genes expect this extra week a longer gestation so that's interesting
00:43:28.400
like they're born premature um but then the the longer gestational window where you have the white
00:43:33.820
mom and the black dad you don't run into these problems i don't know if you get advantages you
00:43:38.420
probably do get some but yeah that's what that's what this is why like there's all sorts of harms
00:43:44.720
caused to like everyone around by this fantasy of the urban monoculture that there are no differences
00:43:51.320
in human populations and and like these are people actual like i i literally like i've talked with black
00:43:58.100
women and they were like furious that nobody told them about this they're like wait black women have
00:44:03.280
literally twice the rate of pregnancy complications like yes literally twice the rate nobody told you
00:44:08.800
this you know like this is a thing that harms the black population that this is hidden from them
00:44:14.340
like actively wow yeah i mean it's interesting there is this double standard because there are
00:44:21.420
arguments that i've heard arguments made by many progressive outlets and it's you know really messed
00:44:25.980
up that so much of medical science modern medical science is based on research and and foundational
00:44:33.020
theories that were based on researching young men yeah and then they freak out when we try to
00:44:38.660
research different populations like yeah the biobanks have like been intentionally purging dna data from
00:44:43.960
ethnic minority populations and native populations at the request of wokies you're the reason you and
00:44:50.600
then they complain about the fact that like you know health care is not sufficiently customized to
00:44:56.020
different groups it's very frustrating yeah well i mean they used to do experimentation on these
00:45:01.040
groups in very unethical ways well okay leo let's not go let's not do that go back to that let's not
00:45:05.340
go back to tuskegee experiment let's just go back to very very open you know what wide open samples where
00:45:11.840
we get as much variety as possible but keep track of the varieties that we understand how there are
00:45:16.240
differences that need to be accommodated yeah well i love you to death did your mind change about
00:45:22.120
anything from this i really struggle with the drive toward cultural imperialism with the understanding
00:45:31.500
of like allowing cultural imperialism like you know like just actively stealing young ladies for
00:45:39.500
example that we think are abused right like i just want to rescue them right but then i don't want
00:45:45.140
other cultures to steal our children from us and we know for a fact that there are lots of people on
00:45:50.040
the internet all the time like i wish i could like i want to get these like the collins's kids taken
00:45:55.020
away from them so like i know what it's like to be on the other end of it and to vehemently believe
00:46:00.780
that we're doing what's best for our children and then at the same time here i am sitting on the other
00:46:05.340
side of the equation being like i want to take these kids away they're you know being abused so like
00:46:09.420
i really struggle with this right and i think that the only way to to reconcile and the only way i am
00:46:14.240
reconciling with it now which may not be ideal is just like well we just have to provide
00:46:19.580
something a culture that's so compelling that you'd be crazy not to convert into it and that's
00:46:26.400
high fertility and that leads to longer being flourishing and it grows cultures are not going
00:46:31.500
to technologically advance and and therefore that unless they make changes like they could make
00:46:36.380
changes and then but but if we look at current trends it does not look as if you know they are
00:46:43.220
outputting the latest ai systems for example yeah and so you know as technology drives a wider and
00:46:50.660
wider wedge between the capabilities of cultures that are able to produce high-tech devices and
00:46:57.540
cultures that are not um you know they're these groups unless some wokey put some on a spaceship
00:47:03.460
are not going to you know take humanity's manifest destiny among the stars like we're not going to have
00:47:09.960
a dei program for who gets on the spaceship you know we're choosing the best and the brightest of
00:47:16.040
cultures that work the best and the brightest with other cultures because this urban monocultural mind
00:47:21.720
virus of of oh everyone is exactly the same and and and can easily cohabitate like that's just not true
00:47:28.520
like some cultures like if you put them next to another culture they're just going to kill them
00:47:32.920
right like that that's a thing there there are cultures that i could put in this region and these people
00:47:37.640
it'd be a terribly stupid thing to do it would be like leaving a kitten around a herd of lions right
00:47:44.880
like i'm responsible for that i'm the one who put the kitten there it reminds me of the girl who wanted
00:47:50.640
to do this big bike thing to show you know oh for for peace and that you know there's no difference
00:47:56.640
between different countries and different people and everything like that so she goes on this bike
00:47:59.760
tour through europe she goes into a muscle majority country and within 10 miles of the border
00:48:04.440
they found her body graped to death trying to bike through one of these countries as a white woman
00:48:09.940
um and it was just incredibly stupid because she believed this lie that these cultures aren't different
00:48:14.280
and they they are right like their norms are different the way they relate to morality is different
00:48:19.440
and i'm not a relativist but i i do believe that sort of within the conservative movement we all have
00:48:24.640
to fight for cultural sovereignty being the highest value because we none of us have a dominant culture
00:48:28.240
right now in the urban monoculture we'll use that to to peel our kids from us and to restrict
00:48:32.800
the ways in which we parent and so we just have to hope that over the long run that we can be
00:48:37.300
successful that we can have lots of kids and that we can stay engaged with technology
00:48:41.200
yeah it's dark dark yeah love you to death simone have a great day i love you too
00:48:51.540
i got the fetus package handled at least so that's done thank you and we're going to try sushi correctly
00:48:58.040
this time i will come down and help you the last time she made sushi rolls that were like
00:49:04.680
larger than a silver dollar like this big she's like this is what it showed in the thing i was like
00:49:10.180
and it was california i never made sushi before i don't look at sushi because
00:49:15.140
didn't know crazy when i look at it being brown meant that it had gone bad i never use avocados in
00:49:20.940
anything i know i appreciate that you're trying you are trying something new and that is amazing
00:49:27.020
simone i mean you're doing it for me sometimes it just ain't good enough yeah sometimes but now
00:49:33.220
we are going to learn how to do this better with the the avocados and the well and we're going to use
00:49:38.280
the tiny little molt that that we also very yes cleverly got ahead of time very small sushi rolls
00:49:45.240
there's literally no way it can you have an unnaturally large mouth malcolm it shouldn't be
00:49:50.540
a problem okay that's actually us having large mouths is one of the things i noticed when we're
00:49:57.240
around other groups i'm like it's an ethnic thing about like our people is that we have just like
00:50:01.420
giant mouths instead of around other people i'm like god your mouth is so tiny which is not
00:50:07.320
something i've ever seen before and now i i need to look look for it in people look at your look at
00:50:13.500
your face on the screen right now yeah yeah do you not see how enormous that is average human
00:50:21.300
average human face is that what you're googling out i don't know what else do i you know look at here
00:50:31.700
hmm okay i mean we're slightly above average we're not like
00:50:38.980
aerosmith we're not we're not like yeah there's some other really impressive people
00:50:46.780
no baby's head in their mouth you know that's that's really how you know if you have a
00:50:51.660
who was it who ate all the the babies it wasn't zeus was one of the babies who was not eaten
00:50:59.440
chronos chronos yeah chronos mouth yeah i would say you know it's big i'm sorry i'm bad with names
00:51:06.020
it doesn't it doesn't matter who it is malcolm all right it's just difficult
00:51:10.920
where are my undercrested eggs get me all my eggs