In reference to some of the debate that's been taking place for a while...
I'm always irritated when some people insist on judging Muhammed's morals by the standards of the 21st century West. Very little in his personal or political life - other than the creation of Islam itself - was in any way unusual or particularly noteworthy in the political context of the 6th and 7th century Hejaz. In some cases, such as his attitude towards women, he was notably ahead of his time.
Let me stress that I think it's entirely legitimate to ask the extent to which early 7th-century values should be applied unquestioningly in any part of the 21st century world - noting that I'm not for a second accusing Muslims generally of doing so - including the extent to which those 7th-century values should be taken as a moral guide to acceptable behaviour now. But accusing Islam's Prophet of being a 'murderer', 'rapist', and/or 'paedophile' is an exceptionally tiresome attempt at anachronistic moral retconning, and only shows the extent to which individuals attempting that argument know virtually nothing about either Muhammed's biography, or the social context of his place and time.
Also Aisha doesn't make Muhammed a paedophile any more than Khadija makes Muhammed a gerentophile; funny how Khadija's always ignored there.
My point is more that the age of Aisha is irrelevant to the inaccurate charge of paedophilia, and is an unnecessary distraction.
Accusing Muhammed of paedophilia is essentially a charge that the Prophet was specifically attracted to sexually immature girls. The Muslims in the thread will already know this, but Muhammed had 13 wives (not all simultaneously). The first, longest-lasting, and entirely monogamous marriage - to Khadija - lasted 25 years, and produced six children. This was a marriage to a woman some 15 years older than Muhammed. It's often difficult to pin down the specific ages of his other wives - and several of them appear to have been charitable/political marriages (and re-marriages of widows) that weren't necessarily consummated - but a rough estimate of the ages of all of his wives (in Maria's case, legal concubine) other than Aisha gives us:
Khadija: c.40 at marriage to Muhammed Sawda: c.27 Hafsa: c.20 Zaynab bint Khuzayma: c. 25 Hind (Umm Salama): c.29 Rayhana: unknown Zaynab bint Jahsh: c.37 Juwayriyya: c.20 Safiyya: c.18 Ramla: c.26 Maymunah: c.25-30 Maria: unknown, but sexually mature [bore Muhammed a son during their brief relationship]
Whatever Aisha's age, there's absolutely nothing in Muhammed's overall known pattern of sexual activity and marriage (and sincere apologies if discussing Muhammed's sex life is making anyone uncomfortable, but it's relevant here) to indicate a preference for girls. What we do know is that the marriage to Aisha was political, that political child marriage was common in the period, and that - and this crucial piece of history is often ignored - Muhammed wasn't even Aisha's first betrothal. Abu Bakr's daughter had initially been betrothed to Jubayr ibn Mut'im before that betrothal was broken off in order to consolidate the alliance between Muhammed and one of his most loyal followers.
Regardless of how old Aisha was at the point of her marriage - 9, 10, 12, 15, and 19 all have their supporters - that single political marriage is not prima facie evidence of paedophilia, only that Muhammed might, just once, have consummated a marriage with a prepubescent girl or adolescent young women, in keeping with the political needs of his specific situation and the cultural context of his milieu.
Clearly no one at the time thought that the status of the previously betrothed Aisha was particularly worthy of criticism or comment. Importantly, we know that there was criticism of at least one of Muhammed's marriages when it went against social norms. Muhammed's marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh - both Muhammed's first cousin and the divorced ex-wife of his adopted son - was profoundly shocking. As an adopted son was considered to be a full son under cultural laws, Muhammed's marriage to Zaynab was legally incest - Sura 33 devotes an entire verse attempting to justify a marriage that ran entirely counter to established local social norms (Al Azhab 33:37).
But today we don't consider marrying your adopted son's ex-wife to be incest, so Muhammed gets a free pass on that point since it doesn't run counter to our contemporary morality, even though it was by far the most shocking of his marriages in his own day. Meanwhile the political marriage to Aisha - whose age is a matter of dispute anyway - gets held up by a particular subset of modern opponents of Islam as evidence of paedophilia even though no one apparently considered it worthy of comment at the time, and even though Muhammed's other relationships otherwise indicate a preference for sexually mature women, because it potentially (if we argue for the lower age ranges) runs counter to our modern morality.
If anything demonstrates the difficulty of applying modern moral standards to Muhammed's personal life, it's the contrasting examples of Zaynab bint Jahsh and Aisha.
