Underage Marriage - Nikah al-Qaasiraat

Under-age marriage, marriage of minors and those who are undergoing puberty, has been a part of human society since the dawn of humanity. In recent times, there has been increasing awareness of the problems it poses and with better education, scientific research and legal reformation, it is being addressed. It remains a problem in Eastern societies including amongst impoverished Muslim communities in those societies. Islam promotes itself as being protective of human health, well-being, both in body and mind, and dignity, yet it permits and even promotes something as harmful and regressive as under-age marriage which contradicts such claims.

Before I go into the religious dimension it is important to understand what is harmful about child and young teen marriages:

• Early pregnancy has a high risk of death or harm to the mother. This risk increases significantly the younger a girl is.
• Early pregnancy also carries a high risk of still birth (born dead), premature birth or early infant mortality.
• Giving birth at a young age can cause life-long health problems and pain for the mother. It may even make her infertile.
• Young girls carry the physical and psychological trauma of sexual activity at a young age, before they are ready, and are left with the burden of taking care of a child as well as the husband.
• Young girls are often pulled out of school to get married and raise a family and are left without an education or skills that can support them or help them get employment in future.
• Often, girls are forced or psychologically blackmailed into marrying, violating their human rights.

These facts and observations can be ascertained from the resources linked to at the bottom of this article should you wish to learn more.

Then, it is also important to define what is meant by child marriages and under-age marriages. A child, or minor, is a person who has yet to go through the human maturation process called puberty. Girls often start puberty from the age of 10-11 while boys start about a year later at the age of 11-12. The age at which it starts can vary significantly. Puberty is an important stage in development when hormones are released into the bloodstream and lead to growth spurts, maturation of the ovaries or testes and changes in physiology and mental maturity. In females, the commencement of puberty is marked by menstruation. The physical process of maturation takes roughly 5-7 years to complete and it may take even longer for mental maturity. We call a marriage under-age if the youth has yet to complete maturation, which in many cases is below the age of 16 or 18.

Puberty and sexual maturity presents a prickly question for those who believe that God fashioned us and created us perfect human beings. The Qur'an [95.4] says: "Certainly We created man in the best stature (mould)". Yet we find that humans become sexually mature and are raging with hormones before their bodies or minds are fully developed or best suited for child-rearing. In fact, this "best mould", is at the greatest risk of harm at this delicate stage in development, so one wonders why God would fill young men and women with hormones that make them insatiable and spontaneously aroused and make sperm viable such that it can impregnate the young woman and make the woman able to bear a child when she isn't ready either physically or psychologically. And on top of this, at this young age, the woman would have a significantly higher risk of death or complications during pregnancy and birth. This is but one example of a flaw in human design.

Marriage at a young age is not something unusual. For the best part of human history, humans have been marrying or forming socially-acceptable relationships at young ages. It is not strange that primitive peoples had relaxed attitudes to child marriage but it should be noted that even seemingly civilised societies have created such laws in the past places like the UK or US and these laws have remained valid well into the 20th century. So when it is found that child marriage was present in the Arabian peninsula during the time of the prophet Muhammed and before, then it does not raise an eyebrow and should not be seen as unusual. Prophet Muhammed was not criticized about his under-age marriage to Aisha until the late 19th century when people started to recognise what was wrong with the practice. What should be criticized is why he didn't stop the practice. In fact I make three criticisms and explain a little about each of these:

1. Islam condones child/under-age marriage and does not clarify anything explicitly wrong with it.
2. Islam does not seem to recognise the full importance of the rights of a person to marry or not marry.
3. The marriage of the prophet Muhammed to Aisha at such a young age raises many criticisms.

(1) Islam Condones Child Marriage.

In Islam, the prophet Muhammed is seen as the greatest human being, with the best of morals, character and action, and emulation of him is virtuous and encouraged. So when the prophet betrothed Aisha at the age of 6-7 and married and had sexual relations with her when she was 9 and he was 53, it cannot be seen as a vile or undesirable act since it was done by a prophet of God and the best human being. In fact, this skewed view is the only conclusion a Muslim can be allowed to form. Ignoring the cognitive dissonance imparted, Muslim will argue that it was acceptable and the will of God and that God had a plan for this union and that everything the prophet did was out of piety and setting a goodly example. We know from history that under-age marriage was perfectly normal then and one doesn't need to look further to prove this than the actions of the prophet himself when he married own daughter Fatima aged 9 - 11 to his cousin Ali Ibn Abu Talib who was aged around 21 at the time. So it is clear from the prophet's actions that no stigma or fault is attached to young marriage and one could argue that there is nothing undesirable in it. Other Muslims claim the reason for the marriage of Aisha to the prophet was to form a firm companionship with her father, Abu Bakr, and build a strong kinship between them. Some people see it as a socio-political arrangement. However, we read a different point of view on the reason for the union in the hadith books:

Narrated by 'Aisha: Allah's Apostle said (to me), "You were shown to me in a dream. An angel brought you to me, wrapped in a piece of silken cloth, and said to me, 'This is your wife.' I removed the piece of cloth from your face, and there you were. I said to myself. 'If it is from Allah, then it will surely be.' " [Sahih Al-Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 57]

Narrated by 'Ursa: The Prophet asked Abu Bakr for 'Aisha's hand in marriage. Abu Bakr said "But I am your brother." The Prophet said, "You are my brother in Allah's religion and His Book, but she (Aisha) is lawful for me to marry." [Sahih Al-Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 18]

The actions of the prophet Muhammed have a profound influence on the legal rulings of Muslim scholars and on Muslim ethicists. If we look at the rulings of modern scholars in this day and age (and I use the example of the well-known scholar Ayatollah Ali Sistani in this case), we find that he does not object to a girl marrying at such a young age even though the world now recognises the ethical problems arising from it.

First, we determine the age of bulugh (adulthood/maturity):

Question: How is [male] puberty confirmed?
Answer: Puberty in males could be confirmed if one of three [sic!] signs was present. 1. Completion of fifteen lunar calendar years of age (equal to 14 years and seven months and fifteen days of the solar calendar). 2. Ejaculation through sexual intercourse, or seminal discharge while awake or asleep. 3. The presence of pubic hair, of the rough type, similar to head hair. 4. The presence of hair on the face and above the lips
Question: When is a girl considered adult from the viewpoint of Sharia?
Answer: She is considered adult at the completion of nine lunar years (equal to eight years and eight months and twenty days of the solar calendar).¹

Notice that he doesn't say anything about the signs of a woman actually entering puberty or having periods. Then we identify if a girl or boy needs to be baligh in order to be contracted into a marriage:

2388. If the father or the paternal grandfather contracts a marriage on behalf of his na-baligh (not-mature) son, they should pay the Mahr... (etc).
2382. If Nikah (marriage) of a woman is pronounced to a man without her consent, but later both man and woman endorse the Nikah, the marriage is in order.²

When we look at the Hadith books we see the attitude the prophet had to under-age marriage:

Narrated by Jabir bin 'Abdullah: When I got married, Allah's Apostle said to me, "What type of lady have you married?" I replied, "I have married a matron' He said, "Why, don't you have a liking for the virgins and for fondling them?" Jabir also said: Allah's Apostle said, "Why didn't you marry a young girl so that you might play with her and she with you?" [Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 17]

And in a verse of the Qur'an, Allah mentions to the prophet about the best women he could marry in place of his disobedient wives:

"Maybe, his Lord, if he divorce you, will give him in your place wives better than you, submissive, faithful, obedient, penitent, adorers, fasters, widows and virgins" [Qur'an 66.5]

Here, the word "virgin" carries the meaning of being young as well as untouched as Arabians at the time married their daughters off at a young age to save face should they grow older and elope or fornicate and bring shame and humiliation to their family. It was seen as a way to prevent any potential future dishonour by the daughter. In order to secure their daughter's future they would betroth the girls from early on in their childhood as happened in the case of Aisha and then when these girls hit puberty they would marry them off to the man they deemed suitable. This was their solution to stopping a girl from straying.

In another verse from the Qur'an also discussing divorce and rulings concerning women who are not menstruating, it is more clear that it talks about young girls who have yet to start menstruating. It clearly implies that young marriage is legal in Islam because it discusses rulings on divorcing old, pregnant and pre-pubescent wives:

And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation [entered the menopause], if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months, and of those too who have not had their courses [because they are too young]; and (as for) the pregnant women [who don't menstruate while they are carrying], their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair. [Qur'an 65:4]

So we can see that marriage of minors and barely pubescent boys and girls exists in Islam and carries on to this day and the father is responsible for the betrothal. Old traditions about how the prophet Muhammed conducted his life directly influence legal rulings in Sharia law and prophet Muhammed's perfect example cannot be treated as something undesirable or unsuitable in this day and age notwithstanding the ethical, social or medical issues it raises. The question of permission and personal choice will be discussed next.

(2) The Right To Choose.

In this section I argue that although Islam gives the right to a man or woman to say no to marriage, which is admirable, but there is a stark contradiction when it allows child marriage and arrangement of such marriages without proper consent from the child or their understanding of what marriage means as they are so young.

Narrated Abu Hurairah: "The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: An orphan virgin girl should be consulted about herself; if she says nothing [out of shyness] that indicates her permission, but if she refuses, the authority of the guardian cannot be exercised against her will.  (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Marriage (Kitab Al-Nikah), Book 11, Number 2088)"

This is commendable and good. Basically, it says permission is required from the young virgin orphan girl to get married. In other hadith they do not make a distinction if the girl is orphan or not, thus affording this right to all girls and boys.

The problem is that it is possible for the guardian, the father or grandfather of a girl to betroth her when she is just a little girl. She could be a 1 year old, or 6 years old for all it matters, but it is obvious to anyone who has met a little girl of that age that they cannot understand the situation or make educated decisions about their future and their future is ultimately determined by their guardian. Remember above we mention that Aisha was betrothed aged 6-7. She explains in a hadith that she was playing with her friends at the time and it was her father who arranged the marriage. It was when she was 9 that the prophet Muhammed paid her dowry and consummated the marriage and it happened very quickly without a chance to reflect as described in this hadith:

Narrated Aisha: The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, "Best wishes and Allah's Blessing and a good luck." Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah's Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 234)

So when we think about a little girl in such a situation we can only conclude that of course a little girl would have no objections when she has already formed an emotional bond from such a young age and had been told that this man was her husband and future maintainer. Of course they would not see the disparity in the age nor see anything wrong with a man aged 53 marrying a 9 year old because they will look at that man as being kind and loving, similar to their father. (Incidentally, Abu Bakr was two years younger than the prophet Muhammed!) If the psychological conditioning of the little girl was not entirely effective or she was might be stubborn, then we could factor in the weight of social pressure on her, the expectations and the coercion of her mother and father and of her husband. Asking a little girl at that age if she is happy to marry her husband is foolish. She would not understand the full scope of the decision nor the consequences. It would not be like an adult makes a conscious decision and understands the repercussions and responsibilities of marriage. If anything, societal and emotional cues to keep her parents and her husband happy enforce her acceptance of such traditions without question. The fact that a little boy or girl can say no is a moot point.

When a guardian betroths a little girl and expects her to marry the man at such a young age I see a problem with the validity of the permission obtained from the girl. A child is not sufficiently emotionally or mentally mature to make the decision to marry. And if the father makes the choice for her I disagree that he has any right to force their child. The job of the parent is to protect and care for their sons and daughters and being pushed into something like this from such a young age can be seen in no uncertain terms as an assault on the childhood of the youngster and their innocence and it robs the child of their right to live a simple and proper childhood. I see the actions of the guardians as parental/cultural usurpation of a child's rights and liberty. Furthermore, knowing how harmful child or young marriage is, especially with the risks of pregnancy, I would call it child abuse.

(3) The Trouble with Prophet Muhammed's Marriage to Aisha.

One of the most potent reasons for not adopting the religion of Islam is the knowledge that the prophet of the the religion was betrothed to a 6 year old and married her at 9 and then had sex with her at that tender age. People tend to be disgusted by this. It demotivates them from even approaching the religion. For many people they hear about the great things the prophet did such as single-handedly stopping female infanticide, bringing peace to warring tribes and uniting the Arabs, enjoining charity and protecting the poor, promoting education and social justice and many other things that attract them to the religion. But afterwards, upon hearing all the great things they begin to find out about the things that raise many questions about the ethical side of the faith and push people away from it such as persecution of non-Muslims, the inequality of different people in the eyes of the legal system of Islam, the lack of eradication of slavery, war crimes and war slavery, harsh punishments for crimes/sins and of course pieces of information such as the prophet's marriages to women like Zainab, Safiyyah, Mariah and Aisha. On learning about the marriage to Aisha, the only word that enters a potential thinking convert's mind is "paedophilia".

When you have a religion that says that it is the truth and the best religion and the completion of the message of God thus making it the only religion that is worthy in the eyes of God and that everyone should follow it at penalty of damnation and eternal hellfire - then you would think that the God of the religion would make it a most perfect religion lacking ethical quagmires and few criticiseable problems. You would think that God would know what would happen in the future and how our morality would progress such that we would understand how evil things such as slavery, paedophilia and other abuses of human rights are and yet he did nothing to eradicate these from the religion by way of revealed scripture or the action of his viceroy on Earth, the prophet Muhammed and all the previous prophets. So what do we see instead? The stark opposite. We read in the Old Testament and Qur'an about prophets who for millennia have supported these things, have promoted them and have themselves partaken in these evils and personally promoted them by their words and/or actions. In the marriage of Aisha, the prophet led by example in saying it is OK for grown middle-aged men to marry girls who are not fully mature either physically and mentally. He advises his fellow companions to marry young virgins. He also promotes the authoritarianism of the parents over their child that they can have almost absolute control and give their children away into contractual arrangements with little or no say from the barely-understanding child. He removes the right of these young individuals to grow up and be able to think and choose their future for themselves and places their independence square in the hands of their parents. While it is true that a little girl or boy can say no and there is an assumption that the parents would do what is best for their offspring, we know that this is not the case in countries where child marriage is rampant and the harm it causes is obvious.

We can also ask about the benefits of young marriage according to God. When we look at the reasons we are presented with a social perspective concerning the value of honour and humility. From the perspective of faith, it is presented as a way to avoid sins and doing evil actions in the sight of God. From a familial piety perspective it is related to inheritance and kinship, a concept that came with the development of property-owning societies. These are just different ways of managing people in society and controlling them. It does not recognise the social, educational, medical, psychological, health or ethical implications of the subject. When Muslims call God the Most Gracious and loving and caring about humanity and many other positive attributes, we struggle to reconcile these things with what we observe. If God had indeed permitted child and under-age marriage then he would have perfected it by giving the child instant maturity and intelligence to form well thought-out decisions about their future and he would have fashioned the human body such that the moment it could conceive it would be able to bear the rigours of aggressive or violent sex and be ready to bear a child and bring it to full term without a massive increase in risks like the death of the mother, death of the foetus and mental and physical trauma to a developing body

In conclusion, we have looked at the concept of maturity, adulthood and suitable marriage age according to Islam. We identified that the religion of Islam fails to respond to the problems arising from the ancient institution of under-age marriage and in fact promotes great injustice by way of scripture and the example of the prophet and to this very day the preachers of the religion promote and carry out this harmful act. We have listed a few of the key harms under-age marriage poses to young people and talked about how it robs them of their liberty and rights. We have analysed the image Islam portrays and hopefully we now recognise that whatever claims it makes of high morality and perfection and the claims of perfect Human design are invalid. Furthermore, we have shown how the god of Islam has been unable to foresee the future moral development of human beings such that they recognise under-age marriage as a great evil, end up accusing the prophet of paedophilia and out-rightly rejecting his religion and the godhood of Allah.


Some more information on under-age marriage:
http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/what-is-the-impact/ (visited 26/08/16)
http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/5-reasons-end-child-marriage-improve-maternal-health/ (ibid.)
http://data.unicef.org/child-protection/child-marriage.html (ibid.)
Nour, N. M. (2006). Health Consequences of Child Marriage in Africa. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 12(11), 1644–1649. http://doi.org/10.3201/eid1211.060510
http://www.plan-uk.org/resources/documents/320014/ (ibid.)

1. http://www.sistani.org/english/qa/01127/ (ibid.)
2. http://www.sistani.org/english/book/48/2346/ (ibid.)

The House of God - The Ka'bah

The chapter of the Elephant (Al-Fil - 105) in the Qur'an relates to us a most wonderous story:

[105.1] Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the possessors of the elephant?
[105.2] Did He not cause their war to end in confusion,
[105.3] And send down (to prey) upon them birds in flocks,
[105.4] Casting against them stones of baked clay,
[105.5] So He rendered them like straw eaten up?

If this is the first time you read this chapter then you will have no clue about it's meaning. You can garner that some people had an elephant and that they were at war with another people and God was angry so he sent a flocks of birds to throw stones on them until they were annihalated.

In more detail, according to the commentators, our story begins with a Christian king of Abbysinian (Ethiopian) origin called Abrahah who marched up to Makkah with an army from Yemen. Abrahah had begun to spread Christianity in Yemen and built a large church called Al-Qullays and had envisioned the Arabs make pilgrimage to it instead of the Kaabah, but the Arabs were not satisfied with the church and stuck to their traditions. The Quraish tribe of Makkah were furious with his demand to abandon the Kaabah and one of them took revenge by going alone to the church and relieving himself inside it before running away! Some Quraishis even went further and set the church on fire. This made Abrahah very angry so he decided to destroy the Kaabah so no-one would visit it again and set off with a large army with at least one elephant towards Makkah.

Approaching the valley of Makkah with his army, Abrahah sent his troops on a foray to capture the camels and other grazing animals of the Makkans, which they did, including about two hundred camels belonging to `Abdul-Muttalib. `Abdul-Muttalib was the leader of Makkah and paternal grandfather to Prophet Muhammed, although Muhammed was not born by that time. Then Abrahah sent an emissary to fetch the leader and also commanded him to inform him that the king will not fight the people of Makkah unless they try to prevent him from the destruction of the Ka`bah.

When Abrahah saw `Abdul-Muttalib approach, he was impressed so he descended from his seat and sat with him on a carpet on the ground. Then he asked his translator to say to him, "What do you need'' `Abdul-Muttalib replied to the translator, "I want the king to return my camels which he has taken from me which are two hundred in number.'' Abrahah then told his translator to tell him, "I was impressed by you when I first saw you, but now I withdraw from you after you have spoken to me. You are asking me about two hundred camels which I have taken from you and you leave the matter of a house which is (the foundation of) religion and the religion of your fathers, which I have come to destroy and you do not speak to me about it'' `Abdul-Muttalib said to him, "Verily, I am the lord of the camels. As for the House, it has its Lord Who will defend it.'' Abrahah said, "I cannot be prevented (from destroying it).'' `Abdul-Muttalib answered, "Then do so.''. `Abdul-Muttalib then went to watch the attack from the mountains that surround the valley of Makkah.

So the next morning Abrahah was ready to march on Makkah with his army but his elephant refused to move towards Makkah. He eventually abandoned it and marched with his army towards the Kaabah. Then Allah sent against them some birds with each bird carried three stones the size of chickpeas and lentils, one in each claw and one in its beak. Everyone who was hit by them was destroyed, though not all of them were hit. They fled in panic and thus the Kaabah was saved.

OK. So that's the story. Indeed it does sound like a nice fairytale but it is related in the Qur'an so Muslims are obliged to believe in it. In some narrations the stones are described as being hot and burnt the army of Abrahah. The birth of Prophet Muhammed happened in the same year as this event and it is seen by Muslims as a miraculous sign or some kind of premonition of the coming of the Prophet.

The simple conclusion from this story - if it is to be believed - is that Allah protects the Kaabah. But we ask ourselves now if he has always protected the Kaabah, the holiest of holy shrines, the house of God, built by Prophet Adam, re-built by Prophets Abraham and Ishmael, containing the holy black stone that was brought down from heaven, and the shrine which God protected from destruction at the hands of Abrahah and his mighty army?

First, let us look at the period of time it was in the hands of the Arabs after the passing of Ishmael, who is considered the father of the Arabs. Ishmael had brought the Arabs the religion of his father - monotheism, but the Arabs quickly reverted to paganism and polytheism after his death and since God had left them by themselves for hundred or thousands of years there was virtually no faithful people left, apart from, so we are told, most of the tribe of the Prophet Muhammed (Quraish) who still believed in the old monotheistic religion. One wonders how the Kaabah was treated in their presence and while knowing that aparently `Abdul-Muttalib was the town's leader?

We are told in the history books of the Muslims that during the pre-Islamic times the Kaabah contained upto 360 Pagan idols! That it was visited regularly by pagans who came as pilgrims offering prayers to their many deities and swearing oaths and making offerings to particular gods. They would carry out rites of worship such as circumambulation, or going round the kaabah, and chanting. Some of these worshippers, male and female, would strip off and do so naked while singing! Some would also come to sacrifice their livestock there in homage to their pagan gods and spill the blood in its vicinity. This is all related in the history of the Muslims. One wonders, considering how angrily God speaks about paganism and polytheism and the worship of false gods, how Allah would allow this to continue happening for hundreds of years and not do anything about it? One also wonders how `Abdul-Muttalib, custodian of the Kaabah and leader of Makkah would sit and watch this happen all the while believing in God and the original religion? Perhaps he had given up on God actually doing anything about the polytheists as he just let Abrahah get on with his attack to absolutely destroy the shrine and cared more about his camels than the holy house of God.

It was only when the Prophet Muhammed captured Makkah at the age of 61, about 2 years before he died, that he managed to destroy all those idols in the Kaabah. Up to this time, for hundreds of years, the Kaabah had been defiled by polytheism with hudreds of idols, false oaths, naked people, the blood of unholy sacrifice and the presence of polytheists themselves, who are considered impure in Islam. It really makes you wonder!

Then what happened after Islam? Did God protect the Kaabah from thereon? Well, no. We read in Sahih Muslim (7.3083): "`Ata' reported: The House was burnt during the time of Yazid b. Muawiya when the people of Syria had fought (in Mecca)". In 683CE, during one of the civil wars of the Muslims after the passing of the Prophet Muhammed, there was an assault on the Kaabah and it was catapulted with missiles and caught fire and by the end was left charred and almost entirely demolished. Also, people were killed and Muslim blood was spilled in its vicinity. The leader who ordered the attack was Yazid b. Mu'awiyah who was the khalif, or leader of the whole Muslim empire and he had previously murdered the grandson of the Prophet and his family, attacked Madinah killing its men and raping its women and afterwards he charged his commander Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafi to attacked Makkah and its people. God did not intervene to stop him at any point, not when he spilled blood in the holy precinct nor even when he destroyed the Kaabah. The Kaabah was left so damaged that it had to be demolished and rebuilt. This ironic quote from the same hadith relates: "After seeking good advice thrice, [Ibn Zubair] made up his mind to demolish it. The people apprehended that calamity might fall from heaven on those persons who would be first to climb (over the building for the purpose of demolishing it), till one (took up courage, and ascended the roof), and threw down one of its stones. When the people saw no calamity befalling him, they followed him, demolished it until it was razed to the ground.". How funny that after seeing it attacked and destroyed the superstitious Muslims are still worried about God seeking retribution against the people who had come to repair it!

Another incident that shook the sanctity of the Kaabah involved the theft of the black stone, a holy artifact described as a stone brought down from heaven that was once white but over time turned black with the sin of man. In 930CE, a crazy Ismaeli cult known as the Qarmatians sacked Makkah, killing pilgrims and dumping their corpses into the holy well of Zamzam. Not only that, they robbed the black stone! They held it ransom for many years until they were paid and it was returned. The Qarmatians were truly a deranged sect and had no qualms about killing innocent Muslims. They were well known for killing caravan-loads of pilgrims during the hajj season. And the Qarmatians also sacked Madinah and murdered its people. The Muslims struggled with the Qarmatians for over a century.

Then under the rule of the House of Saud, in recent history in 1979, a cult leader called Mohammed Abdullah Al-Qahtani and his devout brainwashed followers seized control of the holy mosque where the Kaabah resides. This man claimed to be the long awaited saviour of the world according to Muslim legend, the man prophesied to be called Al-Mahdi and would share the name of the Prophet Muhammed too (Mohammad Abdullah). He and his followers smuggled weapons, much ammunition and explosives into the holy mosque and held the pilgrims hostage. They demanded the Saudi government to withdraw and let the false Mahdi take power so that he would transform the country to its ideal utopian Islamic state and from thereon you would imagine he would spread into neighbouring countries. The Saudi government fought for two weeks (!) to reclaim the mosque and resulted in at least 255 pilgrims killed and 560 injured. The militant deathtoll was 127 dead and 451 injured. So much bloodshed!

OK, ok. So you might say it's the fault of people that these things happened and God was trying to show how vile the pre-Islamic polytheists were, how cruel Yazid b. Mu'awiyah was, how evil the Qarmatians were, and how deluded and misguided Mohammed Al-Qahtani and his followere were... Well, what if I told you that the Kaabah collapsed due to "an act of God"? It is reported in 1629CE, the Ottoman khalif Murad IV ordered the demolishing of the Kaabah so that it could be rebuilt after torrential rain and heavy flooding caused its walls to collapse ⁽¹⁾. It is not so uncommon for it to rain during the Hajj season - it rained when I was there - but for such a heavy rain to come and lead to its collapse means either God sent it or God did not intervene, once again.

So in conclusion, after reading the Surah Al-Fil, the chapter in the Qur'an called The Elephant, we really have to wonder about the whole story and the meaning it is supposed to impart. Does God protect the Kaabah? The only conclusion we can arrive to after reviewing the history of the Kaabah is a resounding NO. We have to ask ourselves what value the original story had in order to be included in the Qur'an. Are we really supposed to believe Allah sent birds with stones to kill an army of Christians attacking the Kaabah when he did nothing to stop the army of Yazid, the Qarmatians, the false Mahdi or the torrential rainclouds destroying the Kaabah? Yet the Muslims are obliged to believe in the story of this surah. When will they realise it doesn't make sense?

(1) The Heritage of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by Wahbi Hariri-Rifai, Mokhless Hariri-Rifai.