Recently, I was somehow brought into an email debate between a Muslim (MENJ) and a non-Muslim (Devon Hill), both regulars to the flame wars of usenet newsgroups dedicated to Islam. The debate centered around the marriage of Muhammad to six year old 'Aisha (Ayeshah). Devon Hill, as part of his sophomoric attack on Islam, had the following to say about his counterpart in the debate:

Menj, to his credit unlike his lying Islamic brethren, is honest enough to admit that the Hadiths plainly state that Muhammed consummated his marriage to Aisha at the age of Nine!

For those who do not know, the Islamic Awareness team does not dispute the story about Muhammad's marriage to young 'Aisha. In fact, in the article The Young Marriage of ^cAishah, the team (mainly Robert Squires) goes out of its way to defend the historical reliability of this tale! Due to the fact that the Islamic Awareness team openly accepts this story, the team's supporters (including MENJ) accept it as well. The Islamic Awareness team holds strongly to this stance mainly for the sake of being consistent. They are champions of the belief that the so-called "authentic traditions" of Bukhari and Muslim are, for the most part, historically reliable. After taking such a position, it would seem odd to then turn around and arbitrarily discard the stories that do not seem politically correct. However, as Devon Hill well knows, other Muslims dispute this claim [examples: (1) (2) (3) (4)].

For those who are interested in precise examples of these traditions, we have cited a few in our piece on Vulgar Ahadith. At this point, the question of reliability has to come up. Had the Islamic Awareness team denied the reliability of these stories, they would have come off looking like hypocrites, or what Devon Hill referred to as "[Menj's] lying Islamic brethren." If this is the case, can the same sort of demand for the purging of duplicity be launched at the kuffaar? In other words, what can we say about a critic of Islam who is unwilling to accept the historical reliability of the ahaadeeth (traditions), save for when they can be used in a polemic?

The stance at the FTMecca is that the ahaadeeth are not reliable. These are oral traditions that reflect the sentiments, legends and hyperbole of a religious community, not what "really" happened. Yes, the story about Muhammad and his young wife do have a great amount of value in terms of childish polemics. However, where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not? Do we suddenly pretend that these reports are reliable simply because they can help us malign the character of the alleged founder of Islam? In reality, all we can say is that the literature itself would be illegal were it not part of a religious corpora.

Unflattering Equals True?

Amazingly, many take a stance that an unflattering remark must somehow be a mark of historical reliability. They cannot imagine why the "biographers" of this religious hero would include such a tale unless it were true. Such a mode of thought is wholly fallacious. However, with that in mind, we would like to look at some unflattering stories about the world's greatest religious heroes. Mainly this will be a focus on Muhammad, but we would like to begin with thoughts on a troublesome account from the life of Jesus.

Critics of the New Testament have, at times, pointed to the unflattering depictions of Jesus and cited them as evidence of a historical fragment within the layers of tradition. One story that comes up is the one where Jesus displays some Kahanist tendencies when he calls the gentiles "dogs" [kunariwn (kunarion) - as per Mark 7:27]. Actually, maybe Jesus was even more right-wing than the Kahanists, as at least Meir Kahane spewed nonsense about the value of the "righteous gentile" (i.e. non-Jews who would adhere to his racist ideology). Regardless, the great scholar S.G.F. Brandon captured the level of hatred present in Jesus' words quite well, thus we present his description of the story:

The most illuminating evidence of [the early Jewish Christian's] attitude to the Gentiles has been preserved in the story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman. [...] Jesus is represented as refusing the petition of this Gentile woman that he should heal her little daughter, giving as the reason for this cruel decision: 'Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.' Long familiarity with this story, together with the traditional picture of the gentleness of Jesus, tends to obscure the shocking intolerance of the saying. As the words are uttered by Jesus, a Jew, the 'children' to whom he refers are Jews, and their right to be 'fed' precedes all other needs and considerations. But this brutal assertion of Jewish privilege is not enough: the Gentiles are 'dogs' (kunaria), two whom it is unfitting to cast (balein) the children's food. Jesus is represented as relenting from this attitude of extreme racial intolerance only when the Gentile woman, humbly accepting for herself and her little daughter the designation of 'dogs', renews her request for 'the crumbs' of the children's food fallen under the table. That her request is finally granted does not reduce the contrast drawn between Jew and Gentile.
[S.G.F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, (Manchester, 1967), pp. 171-172]

Our response is that this does not prove that the event really happened. We are not trying to defend the character of Jesus. In reality, this would make for a wonderful polemic, as the sort of Jew that the Romans nailed to the cross was precisely the kind of Jew who would walk around with disciples who carried swords; the kind of Jew who would turn tables over at the temple; the kind of Jew who would see non-Jews as "dogs;" the kind of Jew that was running with the first century Jewish equivalent of Hamas: a zealot.

Regardless, the fact that it appears in both Matthew and Mark does not prove that it actually happened (as much as we would've liked it to have happened). It only proves that the authors of these respective gospels had access to roughly the same oral tradition that was floating around among the religious communities. There is nothing that points to the historical reliability of this oral tradition, in any of its variant forms. Thus, those who doubt the historical reliability of the "salvation history" (heilgeschichte) found in the gospels should not turn around and wonder about this odd tale.

Muhammad and Ibn Sayyaad

According to certain traditions, the early Muslims (or those of an apocalyptic slant) thought the Dajjaal was actually a Jew named Ibn Sayyaad or Ibn Saa'id (both sayyaad and saa'id are from the same root: s-y-d). According to many of these traditions, Ibn Sayyaad was a Jew making an apparently irrefutable claim to being the apostle of God. As Newby puts it:

Early Muslim sources tell of a young Jewish boy named Ibn Sayyad about whom prophetic and messianic claims were made. Ibn Sayyad, who lived at the time of Muhammad, claimed to be the Apostle of God. In one early tradition, Muhammad said to him, "Do you bear witness that I am the Apostle of God?" Ibn Sayyad replied, "Do you bear witness that I am the Apostle of God?" In some versions, Muhammad does not reply and in others he gives a noncommittal answer. In one variant, Ibn Sayyad admits that Muhammad is an Apostle of the Gentiles [rasool al-ummiyyin], while in others his answers to Muhammad's questions indicate that he possesses the right knowledge to substantiate his claim to apostleship. Included in that knowledge is information gathered from the practice of mystical contemplation in which Ibn Sayyad saw the throne of God in the middle of water, surrounded by the hayyot, the Living Creatures of the book of Ezekiel who are identified later as the bearers of God's throne. Ibn Sayyad's vision was induced by wrapping himself with a cloak and murmuring incantations in Hebrew, all of which features David Halperin identifies with Jewish merkabah mysticism. [...] [T]he mystic returned [after going into the trance state] as a messenger from the heavenly realm. Looked at in this way, Ibn Sayyad's claim to be an Apostle of God makes sense. From the Arabian Jewish perspective, Muhammad fitted the pattern of the Jewish mystic. He wrapped himself in a mantle, recited mantic prose, brought a message from the heavenly realms, and toured heaven himself. Interestingly, Ibn Sayyad practiced his mystical exercises in a palm grove where Muhammad spied on him. [...] Later Muslims transformed Ibn Sayyad into the anti-Messiah, while interpreting Muhammad's role as quasi-Messianic. These traditions still, however, preserve Muhammad and Ibn Sayyad as reflexes of one another.
[Gordon Darnell Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia, (University of South Carolina, 1988) pp. 62-63]

It is very hard to see how such an identification could have arisen in the first place, unless we assume that Ibn Sayyad did exist and was infact suspected during his lifetime of being Dajjal! It is therefore prima facie likely that the traditions concerning Ibn Sayyad have an historical basis.
[Halperin, "The Ibn Sayyad Traditions and the Legend of al-Dajjal," Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 96, 1976, p. 214]

The most striking feature of the Muhammad-Ibn Sayyad material taken as whole, is its inconvenience. Muhammad's behavior is awkward and equivocal; Ibn Sayyad's prophetic claims are never refuted. When we consider as well that no political or sectarian tendency can be identified in the units, it becomes wholly inconceivable that they were fabricated by the Muslim traditionists. They are best taken as fragmentary but authentic reports of contacts between Muhammad and a Jewish rival at Medinah.
[ibid., p. 216]

The Apostle of God and Ubayy b. Ka'b set out for the palm-grove in which was Ibn Sayyad, until they entered the palm-grove. The Apostle of God began to hide among the trunks of the palm-trees, deceiving (yakhtilu) Ibn Sayyad, that he might hear something from Ibn Sayyad before he [Ibn Sayyad] could see him. Ibn Sayyad was lying on his pallet, in a cloak of his, in which [or "coming from which"] was a low, inarticulate sound. His mother saw the Apostle of God hiding among the trunks of the palm-trees, and said "O Saf - that was his name - this is Muhammad." Then he was roused. The Apostle of God said "If only she had left him, he would have clarified."
[ibid., p. 219; Halperin got it from, among other places, Ibn Hanbal's Musnad, Vol II, p. 149]

Muhammad is hiding among the palm-trees, trying (unsuccessfully) to eavesdrop. The Prophet's undignified behavior was obviously an embarrassment to the transmitters of the story, some of whom tried to tone it down or explain it away.
[Halperin, "Ibn Sayyad," JAOS, p. 215]

The peculiar and embarrassing nature of this story itself argues for its authenticity; for who would have invented it, and why?
[ibid., p. 219]

Premise 1: The biographers of Muhammad would not fabricate unflattering accounts.
Premise 2: The Ibn Sayyaad traditions are unflattering.
Conclusion: The biographers of Muhammad did not fabricate the Ibn Sayyaad traditions.

Final Thoughts

Regarding these sorts of arguments about the historicity of unflattering traditions, it has to be strongly stated that the belief that this points to historical accuracy is one that is wholly naive. By such illogic, all the poor depictions of Hindu and Greek deities (sleeping with everyone, killing, stealing, et cetera) should be considered evidence that they really existed! Modern scholars seem to be ignorant of how much ancient people enjoyed hearing about their hero's foibles (an ancient soap opera of sorts).

One should never forget the amount of work the imagination plays in the interpretation ancient "historians" apply to their documentary data. Ancient historians were not journalists; they did not cover the past in that fashion, and no appeal to the archaic isnaad-science will ever change this fact. Many may find such sentiments offensive on the grounds that it turns all of ancient history into a black box. Indeed, John Wansbrough, in his Res Ipsa Loquitur: History and Mimesis, a 1986 (pub. 1987) Einstein Memorial Lecture for the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, noted that we may never be able to truly know what "really" happened, and further added that "to historians the factor of ambiguity is not especially welcome." An appeal to emotion (i.e. expressing the desire to know what happened) does not enable one to escape the clutches of this extremely skeptical view.

Our only point is that if we are honest, and admit that the writers of the primitive Christian and Islamic communities churned out wholly tendentious pieces of historiography, then we must avoid setting double standards. So, if there is no historical information on the life of Jesus (assuming he existed at all), we cannot say for sure that he saw the gentiles as dogs. If we do not trust the historical reliability of the ahadeeth, we cannot put 100% faith in the reliability of those traditions that depict Muhammad as loving young girls or being amazed by a Jewish rival.

However, with such a skeptical view before us, should we just throw out the ahaadeeth all together? It would seem that there are at least two separate realms of debate that can inform each other, but can still be taken independently. One may argue that if we take the Islamic salvation history as a given premise, Islam remains repugnant and contradictory. One may also argue from history that the salvation history is not all that it seems, and thus Islam is an accretion of legends and half-truths. Thus we have the double-edged sword of kufr. One can still have these polemics if they are accepting that the ahaadeeth are valid simply for the sake of argument. From this stance, even if you accept our premise that the ahadeeth are ahistorical, and reflect less Muhammad's life than the milleau of early Islam, the ahaadeeth are not totally off limits for polemic.

This works when you are discussing Muhammad the myth and Muhammad the exemplar. That mythic prophet's words can motivate people to taking less than salubrious actions, or providing them rationalizations (e.g. killing apostates). For those of you who take this stance, it could be less a question of if Muhammad really did marry Aisha at 6, than the question of the consequences of Muslims believing that the exemplar of humanity did such.

So, despite our deeply skeptical stance, you can still have your cake and eat it too. However, the point of this article was that if one's only argument against Islam was from the wacky and bizarre happenings in the ahaadeeth, and it's only to repeat ad naseum the bad things that Muhammad is purported to have done, it is fair to say that such an approach is pretty unsosphisticated (though not totally un-called for, in the sense that what "Islam" a la Dr. Saifullah asks a person to believe and accept as holiness might be repugnant in one's view). However, you should make it clear that what you are doing is op-eding with a reactionary slant on who the Muslims claim Muhammad is, and what he has done. Otherwise, to both reject the ahaadeeth and accept them (when it suits your argument) is to commit a fallacy.