By Retired | Published:
June 5, 2009
Here we go again. The Times reports that there are “fears of Muslim anger” because an academic book critical of Muhammad’s marriage to A’isha, his third wife who was six or seven years old at the time of the marriage (according to traditional reports, although consummation did not occur until she was nine) is to be published soon.
This matter, questioning the sexual behaviour of a man held to be a prophet by 1.2 billion people, is unsurprisingly fraught: it is only a few weeks since the conviction of three men for attempting to diesel bomb the UK publisher of ‘Jewel of Medina’.
But it is not just historical novelists and academics who discuss Muhammad’s marriage to A’isha, some people who are not very keen on Islam also tend to focus on it. Here are a couple of examples taken from the comments threads at Harry’s Place.
By Faisal | Published:
May 17, 2009
Beheshti, Mirza, Taj
Three men, Ali Beheshti (41), Abrar Mirza (23) and Abbas Taj (31) who conspired to firebomb the residence of publisher Martin Rynja in September 2008, have been found guilty of recklessly damaging property and endangering life.
Rynja had been planning to publish a novel by US author Shelley Jones called the Jewel of Medina.
Fortunately all three men, who possessed the collective IQ of a cabbage, had been under police surveillance. Officers followed them on the night of the attack and arrested Beheshti, a former member of al-Mouhajiroun and Mirza at the scene. The fire was quickly put out. Taj was the driver of the getaway car.
The men were under surveillance by police who had warned Martin Rynja, 43, and his partner, to move out of their four-storey townhouse, which had an office in the basement.