The Prophet's Wives

The Zaynab Affair and the Orientalists

In the interval in which the events of the last two chapters took place, Muhammad married Zaynab, daughter of Khuzaymah, Umm Salamah daughter of Umayyah ibn al Mughirah, and Zaynab, daughter of Jahsh, after she had been divorced by Zayd ibn Harithah. The last named is the same Zayd who was adopted by Muhammad and set free after he was bought by Yasar for Khadijah. It is here that the Orientalists offer their highest condemnation, in chorus with the Christian missionaries. Glowing with vindictiveness, they say, "Muhammad who in Makkah called men to asceticism and contentment, to monotheism and abstinence from the pleasures of this life, has now become a man of lust whose appetite every woman could whet. He is not satisfied with three women whom he has so far taken into marriage but has now taken the three additional wives just mentioned. Indeed, he was to marry three more yet in addition to Rayhanah. Nor was he to be satisfied by marrying the widow. He fell in love with Zaynab, daughter of Jahsh, while she was the wife of Zayd ibn Harithah, his own client.

Once, when he passed by the house of Zayd in the tatter's absence, he was met by Zaynab wearing clothes which exposed her beauty. Muhammad's heart was inflamed. It is reported that when his eyes fell upon her, he exclaimed, `Praise be to God who changes the hearts of men!' and that he repeated this expression at the time of his departure from her home. Zaynab heard him say this and noticed desire in his eye. Proudly, she reported what happened to her husband. Zayd immediately went to see the Prophet and offered to divorce his wife.

Muhammad answered, `Hold to your wife and fear God.' Thereafter, Zaynab was no longer a docile wife and Zayd had to divorce her. Muhammad did not marry her immediately despite his love for her. He waited until an express revelation came which permitted him to do so. Addressing Muhammad, God said: `You said to Zayd, to whom God gave of His bounty and you gave of yours, "Hold fast to your wife and fear God." Would you hide, 0 Muhammad, that which God was going to bring to light? Would you fear the gossip of the people? Isn't God more worthy of being feared?

After a term of married life with her husband, We permitted you to marry her so that it may hence be legitimate and morally blameless for a believer to marry the wife of his adopted son provided that wife had already been divorced. That is God's commandment which must be fulfilled [Qur'an, 33:37].

Thereupon, Muhammad married this woman and satisfied his desire and lust. Now, what kind of Prophet is this? How could he permit himself that which he forbade to others? How can he violate the law which he himself had said had come to him from heaven? How would he amass this harem which calls to mind the behavior of the old lustful and pleasure seeking kings rather than the righteous reforming prophets? How could such a prophet fall prey to lust and desire in the case of Zaynab that he would force his adopted son to divorce her only so that he might marry her thereafter? That was definitely taboo in pre-Islamic Arabia, and the Prophet of Islam lifted this taboo in order to satisfy his own lust and fulfill his own desire."

Thus appears the Western Orientalists' claim.

The Orientalists' Portrait of Zaynab

Western Orientalists and missionaries pause in order to give full vent to their resentment and imagination. In this chapter of Muhammad's biography, some of them take inordinate pain to paint a sensual portrait of Zaynab. They relate that when Muhammad saw her, she was half-naked, that her fine black hair was covering half her body, and that every curve of her body was full of desire and passion.

Others relate that when Muhammad opened the door of the house of Zayd the breeze played with the curtains of the room of Zaynab, thus permitting Muhammad to catch a glimpse of her stretched out on her mattress in a nightgown. They then tell their readers that this view of her stormed the heart of Muhammad who was extremely passionate in his love and desire for women. They relate that Muhammad had hidden his secret desire, though he could hardly bear to conceal it for long! This and many like pictures have been painted arduously by Orientalists and missionaries and may be read in the work. of Muir, Dermenghem, Washington Irving, Lammens, and others. It cannot be denied that these stories are based upon reports in fanciful Muslim biographies and Hadith books. But these books are questionable.

And it is extremely regrettable that our authors have used them without scrutiny. It is inexcusable that these scholars had built "Castles in Spain" regarding Muhammad's relations with women, castles which they thought were sufficiently justified by the fact that Muhammad married a plurality of wives, probably nine, or even more according to some versions.

Great Men and the Law

It is possible to refute all these claims with one argument. If supposed to be true, they constitute no flaw in the prophethood of Muhammad, in his own greatness or that of his message. The rules which are law to the people at large do not apply to the great. A fortiori, they have no application on prophets, the messengers of God. Did not Moses-may God's peace be upon him kill the gentile whom he noticed was fighting with one of his compatriots? That was murder, forbidden by God, and there was no war or hostility to justify it. It was a clear violation of the law. Nonetheless, this did not impair Moses' prophethood, his greatness, or his status with God. The case of Jesus violates the law even more flagrantly than either Moses or Muhammad or for that matter any other prophet.

For his case is not one of a unique exemplification of power or desire but a persistent violation of natural law from birth to death. First, the spirit of God appeared to Mary, his mother, in the likeness of a handsome man to give her a fair son. Second she herself was surprised and said, "How can I have a son when no man ever touched me and I have never lost my chastity?" The messenger replied that God wished her son to be a sign to mankind. Thirdly, when she gave birth to her son she said: "I wish I was dead, given to oblivion, and lost before this." Her son, however, called unto her, "Do not grieve, for God has made rivers to issue under your feet." Fourthly, when she brought her son to her people, and they accused her of adultery, Jesus answered them from the cradle: "I am the servant of God . . . etc."

However the Jews may have denied the facts of this story, and however they may have attributed Jesus' paternity to Joseph, the carpenter-a claim believed today to be true by such rationalists as Renan-the greatness and prophethood of Jesus constitute a miracle, and a miracle is precisely a breech of natural law, the cosmic pattern, and the rules of creation. It is surprising that Christians and missionaries call men to believe such breaches of the cosmic pattern in the case of Jesus and yet blame Muhammad for much less.

Muhammad's violation was not one of a cosmic law but one of a social law, which is permissible to every great man. Such status above the social laws of the community is usually accorded to all kings and heads of states. Constitutional law usually grants to such persons immunity which shields them from the pursuing hand of the law.

Incoherence of theOrientalists' Account

It is possible for us to give such an answer and to thereby refute all these Orientalists' claims, the arguments of the missionaries and of those who follow in their tracks. But if we did so we would be doing a great injustice to history itself as well as to the true greatness of Muhammad and the magnanimity of his message. For the fact is that Muhammad was not a man given to passion and desire as the Orientalists and missionaries have pictured him.

He did not marry his wives for lust, desire, or love. If some Muslim writers in certain periods of history have allowed themselves to attribute such things to the Prophet and thereby to present with good intent an argument to the enemies of Islam, that is because their conservatism caused them to adopt a materialistic view of things. In such a manner they pictured Muhammad as superlative in everything including the lusts of this world. But the picture they drew was clearly false. The history of Muhammad denies it outright, and the logic of Muhammad's life is utterly inconsistent with it.

As Husband of Khadijah

Muhammad married Khadijah when he was twenty-three years old, i.e. at the height of his youth, the fullness of manhood, and the apex of power and handsomeness. He remained true and loyal to Khadijah for twenty-eight years until he was oven fifty years old. This had been the case at a time when polygamy was normal among the Arabs. Moreover, since no male offspring of Khadijah survived, Muhammad had all necessary justification to marry another woman considering that newborn daughters were customarily buried alive and male offspring alone were regarded as rightful heirs.

Before Muhammad became a prophet he had lived seventeen years of married life, and thereafter eleven more years without ever thinking of marriage with any other woman. Throughout his married life with Khadijah as well as during his celibate years, Muhammad was never known to be one susceptible to womanly attractions at a time when women wore no veils and showed their beauty and ornaments publicly-the evidence of which is implicit in Islam's prohibition of the same later on. It is unnatural, therefore, now that Muhammad had passed the fifty year mark, for him to suffer such a transformation as would make him fall suddenly in love with Zaynab, daughter of Jahsh, while he was already married to five other women, among whom was `A'ishah whom he loved dearly and constantly.

It is therefore unnatural that such a man would have given Zaynab, daughter of Jahsh, any thought at all, and certainly unlikely that she had occupied his thought night and day, as the Orientalists claim. It is certainly unnatural that Muhammad, now past fifty years old, would collect in the short span of five years more than seven wives, and two years later to increase the number to nine simply on account of sexual desire. Such a claim, first made by Muslim authors and then uncritically imitated by the Western Orientalists, is absurd. It is inconsistent with the natural predilection of the commonplace, not to speak of the great, whose work has transformed the world, altered the course of history, and still plays a role in retransforming the world and reorienting historical development toward radically new goals.

This claim is irrational and does not correspond with the facts. It is contrary to nature to assume that the same man who caused Khadijah to bear all her children before he reached fifty, and caused Mariyah to conceive Ibrahim while he was sixty, could cause none of his numerous wives to bear any children when they were all still young enough and capable of doing so. Nor were they barren, since each of them had borne children before her marriage to Muhammad. This fact, true of each of the nine women, would defy explanation if the Orientalist and missionary claim is true. We must add to this consideration the fact that Muhammad, a man like other men, was certainly anxious to obtain a male offspring. His prophetic status had made him father to all Muslims at once from a purely spiritual point of view. But that does not deny the human urge to fatherhood.

Muhammad's Marriage to Sawdah

History and the logic of its events furnish an unquestionable refutation of the Orientalist and missionary claim regarding the Prophet's wives. As we have seen earlier, Muhammad did not share his bed with any other woman besides Khadijah for twenty eight years. When she finally passed away, he married Sawdah, daughter of Zam'ah, widow of Sakran ibn `Amr ibn `Abd Shams. No one ever described Sawdah as a beautiful woman, and no one has ever reported that she possessed any wealth or social position which might have given a material reason for any one to marry her.

Rather, Sawdah was a wife of one of the early converts of Islam who suffered much harm for the sake of the faith and who migrated to Abyssinia following the instructions of the Prophet in order to find a measure of safety. Sawdah had embraced Islam with her husband and migrated with him. She suffered as he did and bore Makkan oppression as patiently as her husband did. If Muhammad married her thereafter in order to provide for her and to raise her position to that of a "Mother of Believers," [Title attributed to all wives of the Prophet. -Tr.] he certainly did a most worthy and appreciable deed.

`A'ishah and Hafsah were daughters of his two viziers, Abu Bakr and `Umar, respectively. It was this relation of their fathers to Muhammad which caused the latter to cement his relationship with them by blood. That is why he married their two daughters; that is why he gave in marriage his two daughters to `Uthman and 'Ali. If it is true that Muhammad did in fact love `A'ishah, it must have been a love which arose after marriage, surely neither before nor at the time of marriage. He had asked her hand from her father while she was only nine years old, and did not marry her until two years later. It is contrary to logic to claim that he could have fallen in love with her while she was at this tender age.

Further evidence on this point is the report of `Umar that Muhammad's marriage to his daughter was not based on love. His report ran as follows: "In pre-Islamic times, we did not attach any importance to women; but we changed radically after God revealed what He did and assigned to them the rights He did. Once, my wife tried to change my mind about something and suggested that I do otherwise. When I asked her to let my business alone, she answered, `How strange of you, 0 Son of al Khattab! You forbid me to criticize you while your daughter is permitted to criticize the Prophet of God himself-May God's peace and blessing be upon him-and to do so so well that he would spend the whole day angry.'

When I heard this I immediately went to my daughter Hafsah and inquired whether this was true. Hafsah confirmed her mother's report. I was stupefied. I warned her that God's punishment as well as the wrath of the Prophet would fall upon her if she persisted. I told her that she should not count either on her beauty or on the Prophet's love for her, for I knew too well that the Prophet of God did not love her and that were it not for my sake, he would have even divorced her."

There is then ample evidence that Muhammad did not marry either `A'ishah or Hafsah out of any love or desire but in order to consolidate the ties of mutual brotherhood within the new Islamic community, and especially between himself and his two viziers. There is equally clear evidence that the Prophet married Sawdah in order to teach the Muslim fighters that should they fall martyrs in the cause of God, they would not leave their women and children without support but that the community would take care of them.

Another conclusive proof of this sense of social concern is the case of Muhammad's marriages to Zaynab, daughter of Khuzaymah, and Umm Salamah. The former was the wife of `Ubaydah ibn al Harith ibn al Muttalib who fell at the Battle of Badr. Surely she was not beautiful, but she was so kind and gentle that she acquired the nickname of "mother of the destitute." She was past her prime in age and lived only one or two years after her marriage to Muhammad. Besides Khadijah she was the only wife of the Prophet who died before him. As for Umm Salamah, she was the wife of Abu Salamah for whom she bore many children.

It has already been mentioned that Abu Salamah was wounded at Uhud, that he seemed to be recovering from his wound when the Prophet assigned to him the duty of fighting Banu Asad whom he defeated and whose wealth he seized. It was during the second campaign of Abu Salamah that his wound reopened, and it caused his death a few days later. The Prophet visited him in his last days and remained constantly by his bedside praying for him until he died. Four months after his death, when the Prophet asked the hand of Umm Salamah, she apologized by using the large number of her children and her old age as an excuse.

But the Prophet insisted until she accepted and he assumed the duty of caring for and bringing up her offspring. Would then the missionaries and the Western Orientalists claim that Umm Salamah was a woman of rare beauty and that this is why Muhammad had married her? If Muhammad was indeed looking for beauty, there were scores of virgin daughters of both Muhajirun and Ansar far surpassing his women in beauty, in youth, in position and wealth, in vitality, for him to choose from and to take in marriage.

He did not have to choose those women who would bring to him large liabilities of mouths to feed and old people to take care of. The fact is that Muhammad married Umm Salamah because of this noble motivation of his, the same reason for which he married Zaynab, daughter of Khuzaymah. It was this same reason which caused the Muslims to love their Prophet all the more and honor him as the Prophet of God and to see in him a father to the destitute and the deprived and the weak and the poor as well as to everyone who had lost his father as a martyr in the cause of God.

(Continuation)