Why is anyone angry that the imam Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh is behaving in a manner consistent with Islamic teaching?
The Qur’an tells Muslim men that they can have as many as four wives, as well as “captives of the right hand,” i.e., Infidel sex slaves (4:3).
Note also that Sheikh’s “grooming” victim was 13 years old when he first targeted her. This may have been because Sheikh’s reverence for Muhammad led him to think of children as sexual objects. Islamic apologists in the West routinely deny that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and go through all sorts of contortions to deny the evidence of the texts, but the fact that child marriage is accepted in wide swaths of the Islamic world, even by the directorate of religious affairs in once-“moderate” albeit now rapidly re-Islamizing Turkey, most clearly shows their dishonesty. The Diyanet wouldn’t approve of child marriage if it weren’t Islamic, as it explains in its own defense. And child marriage has abundant attestation in Islamic tradition and law.
“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria
“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law
There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council
“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology
Hadiths that Muslims consider authentic record that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
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. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.
Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
“A Religious Leader Being Sued For ‘Grooming’ A Follower Is Now Under Fire For Polygamy,” by Hannah Allam, BuzzFeed News, December 21, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A Muslim cleric who was ousted from at least two mosques amid claims of sexual misconduct with young women he’d mentored now works at a Texas mosque that’s standing by him despite a former employer’s warning and a civil lawsuit.
The Grand Prairie Islamic Center in a Dallas suburb threw a welcome dinner upon hiring Imam Zia Ul-Haq Sheikh in August and encouraged mosque members to bring their families. The celebration came months after a mosque in nearby Irving issued an unprecedented alert to Muslim leaders across the country warning that Sheikh was asked to resign after a young woman “reported that the imam had engaged in sexual misconduct with her.”
The woman, a teenager he’d counseled since she was 13, filed a lawsuit in July alleging that Sheikh coerced her into sex with him at a Texas motel after years of “grooming,” including lewd requests via video chat. Her claims were at the center of an investigation by FACE, a new Texas-based nonprofit led by Muslim women advocating for victims’ rights in misconduct cases in Islamic settings. The FACE findings, first reported by BuzzFeed News in October, came from witness accounts that wove a pattern: Sheikh would arrive at a mosque as a welcomed imam, then leave abruptly amid accusations of impropriety.
Now BuzzFeed News has confirmed that two decades before Sheikh arrived in Texas, he was dismissed from a mosque in Richmond, Virginia, in the midst of a polygamy scandal involving a young woman convert. A community member involved in Sheikh’s exit corroborated the allegations, first detailed in the FACE report, to BuzzFeed News.
The warning. The lawsuit. The yearlong investigation that dug up previous claims. The headlines. None of it has persuaded the Grand Prairie mosque to sever ties with Sheikh, who remains a part-time employee. None of it swayed other Dallas-area Muslim leaders to demand his ouster. The muted response, said FACE cofounder Alia Salem, is a reminder of the work it takes to change the culture of silence in many US Muslim institutions when it comes to #MeToo-style accusations….