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| Britain |
| Is it only Mr Bean who resists this new religious intolerance? |
| 2004-12-10 |
| Was the prophet Mohammed a paedophile? The question is sometimes asked because one of his wives, Aisha, was a child when he married her. As Barnaby Rogerson gingerly puts it in his highly sympathetic recent biography (The Prophet Muhammad, Little, Brown): "
the age disparity was considerable: she was only nine while Muhammad was 53". Aisha was taken from her seesaw on the morning of her marriage to be dressed in her wedding garment. After sharing a bowl of milk with the prophet, she went to bed with him. To me, it seems anachronistic to describe Mohammed as a child-molester. The marriage rules of his age and society were much more tribal and dynastic than our own, and women were treated more as property and less as autonomous beings. Aisha was the daughter of Mohammed's right-hand man, and eventual successor (caliph), Abu Bakr. No doubt he and his family were very proud of the match. I raise the question, though, because it seems to me that people are perfectly entitled - rude and mistaken though they may be - to say that Mohammed was a paedophile, but if David Blunkett gets his way, they may not be able to. As I write, I am looking at a Christmas brochure for Channel 4. It contains an interview with Paul Abbott, author of the "current hit show, Shameless". Clever Paul swears a lot, and proudly tells a story about how, when his brothers held him upside down to help him steal a Christmas tree from his Yugoslav next door neighbour, he was so frightened that he started urinating. Ha ha. There follows a two-page pictorial spread of Paul's characters, the Gallaghers, having their Christmas lunch. The tableau is presented (sub-Buñuel) as a parody of the Last Supper. (Do Paul Abbott and Channel 4 believe, perhaps, that this took place at Christmas?) The first page shows a line of yobs - mimicking the Apostles - beginning their meal in reasonably good order. The second depicts them towards its end, violent and drunk. The "Jesus" figure is lurching forward, halo awry, beer can in one hand and cigarette in the other. |
| Posted by:tipper |