A Muslim is “one who submits” to Allah, and the model for submission is the prophet Muhammad: “In the Messenger of God you have an excellent example for whoever has hope in God and the Last Day, and remembers God often” (Quran 33:21, hereafter abbreviated Q).[1] Thus, Muhammad ought to be, among many other things, a model husband. He does show honor to his wives. After all, they are “not like any other women” (Q 33:32), are the mothers of the believers (Q 33:6), and will have double the reward/punishment for their behavior (Q 33:30–31). Ironically, however, Muhammad’s example as a husband and his teachings about women recorded in the Hadith literature[2] cast doubt on his claim to be a prophet.
Most Christians are unaware of the earliest descriptions of Muhammad. In this article, I have sought to employ the Golden Rule by appealing to only the Islamic primary literature and by refraining from inflammatory statements. All the following accounts come from those who were closest and most sympathetic to Muhammad. This is not a balanced presentation, because I have collated the passages that I find most concerning regarding his dealings with women. Nevertheless, I have sought to present the material as factually as possible, intentionally limiting my own voice and evaluation to be more provocative: to provoke Christians to consider and to provoke Muslims to reconsider.
Muhammad’s Early Years
Muhammad’s first wife was Khadija, a prominent and wealthy merchant who proposed to him after he turned a great profit in trading her wares[3] many years before he was called to be a prophet.[4] As a brief timeline, Muhammad received his first revelation in AD 610 (at age 40), led a persecuted minority in Mecca for twelve years, migrated to Medina in 622 and quickly established Islam as the dominant religion there, fought his first major battle in 624, captured Mecca in 630, and died in 632. He was a monogamist the whole time he was married to Khadija,[5] who died three years before he migrated to Medina.[6]
Muhammad’s Marriages
But Muhammad became a very different man when he gained religious and political power. Soon after Khadija died, he wrote a marriage contract for the daughter (Aisha) of his chief adviser (Abu Bakr) when she was only six years old.[7] Abu Bakr objected to the marriage, saying, “I am your brother,” but Muhammad insisted, “She is lawful for me to marry”.[8] In fact, he pled special justification for this one virgin he married,[9] claiming an angel brought Aisha to him three nights in a row as a wife wrapped in a silk cloth, whereupon he said, “If this is from Allah, let Him carry it out”.[10] Muhammad consummated the marriage after migrating to Medina,[11] when he was fifty-two and she was nine—and still playing with dolls.[12]
The account of Aisha is certainly the most troubling, but it also fits into a broader pattern in which Muhammad appears to use marriage to intertwine political and familial loyalties.
Not only did he marry the daughter of Abu Bakr, who ended up succeeding him as the first Caliph, but all four of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” were connected to Muhammad by marriage. He married Hafsa, the daughter of Umar (the second Caliph), after her husband died in war.[13] And he gave his daughter Ruqayya in marriage to Uthman, the third Caliph,[14] and his daughter Fatima to Ali, the fourth Caliph.[15] Notably, the Muslim world was united only so long as one of Muhammad’s in-laws was ruling.
Muhammad’s Sexual Appetite
Aisha was often jealous of Muhammad’s older wives. What made her most jealous was that Muhammad “used to remember and praise [Khadija] too often”,[16] and that Allah had ordered Khadija a palace in paradise.[17] Aisha’s jealousy arose despite her being Muhammad’s favorite wife. He said that she would be his wife “in this world and in the Hereafter”,[18] and that “the superiority of Aisha to other women is like the superiority of Tharid to other meals”.[19] Nevertheless, Aisha was jealous of how often women would offer themselves in marriage to Muhammad; and when Muhammad received a revelation that he could defer or take to himself any he wished (Q 33:51), Aisha retorted, “It seems to me that your Lord hastens to satisfy your desire”.[20]
Muhammad frequently satisfied his sexual desires. He kept as many as nine wives at once, and is recorded as either spending a nightly rotation with each of them[21] or having sexual relations with all of them in one night.[22] So common was his practice of taking on a new wife that it is notable that he once turned a woman away by saying, “I am not in need of women these days”.[23] Muhammad is portrayed as having an extraordinary level of sexual vigor. But even he did not present himself as the supreme example of masculinity, for he spoke of King Solomon as having slept with far more women in a single night to produce knights for Jihad—depending on the narration, the number of wives was 70, 90, or 100.[24]
Muhammad encouraged his followers to marry a woman for her religion rather than for her wealth, family status, or beauty,[25] but it is not clear that he followed his own instructions. After sacking the Jewish settlement Khaibar, he permitted one of his men to marry Safiyya, one of the prisoners. However, after another man praised her as being worthy only of Muhammad, he married her himself.[26] Surprisingly, one of Muhammad’s soldiers encircled their marriage tent all night with his sword drawn, but explained in the morning, “I was afraid for you with this woman for you have killed her father, her husband, and her people, and till recently she was in unbelief,” whereupon he blessed the soldier for spending the night to preserve him.[27] The soldier was right to fear for Muhammad’s life, because another captive woman had just tricked Muhammad into ingesting some poisoned lamb earlier in the aftermath of Khaibar.[28] His willingness to accept food and marriage from recently captured women put his life in jeopardy.
We not only have accounts of Muhammad’s own practice but also his teachings about sex. He claimed that the following “answer” was revealed by Gabriel to prove that he was a prophet: “If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife and gets discharge first, the child will resemble the father, and if the woman gets discharge first, the child will resemble her”.[29] And in response to the Jews forbidding a certain sex position,[30] Muhammad received the following revelation: “Your wives are like farmland for you, so approach them as you please” (Q 2:223).
Not surprisingly, Muhammad’s soldiers enjoyed certain privileges. While on an expedition with no women among them, his men proposed castrating themselves to curb sexual temptation, but Muhammad gave permission for “temporary marriages,” granting the men an opportunity to have sex with a willing woman for up to three nights before needing to decide whether to keep her permanently as a wife.[31] And while Muhammad forbade intercourse with pregnant captive women,[32] he permitted it for breastfeeding women.[33]
Muhammad’s Threats of Divorce
Muhammad personally took part in twenty-seven raids, and he fought in nine engagements.[34] But when he was home, he often had to extinguish the fires of jealousy amongst his wives. Once, while he was at one wife’s house, another wife attempted to feed him by sending a meal; the receiving wife broke the dish, and Muhammad declared that she “felt jealous” and must keep the broken dish.[35] At another point, Muhammad had a practice of staying a long time at his wife Za(i)nab’s house to drink honey, so his other wives, Hafsa and Aisha, tricked him to stay away from her by saying that it made his breath stink.[36] When Muhammad found out he had been duped, he received a revelation where Allah warned Hafsa and Aisha against future collaboration: “It will be better if you wives both turn to God in repentance . . . Perhaps, if [Muhammad] were to divorce you all, his Lord would replace you with better wives who are submissive to God . . . previously married or virgins” (Q 66:4–5). And Muhammad taught all his wives a lesson by staying away from them for a month; this rebuke was so public that others noticed and began to question whether he had actually divorced them.[37]
Not only does Allah give voice to Muhammad’s divorce threats, we seem to find them in the form of a parable elsewhere. The parable goes as follows: there was a man named Abu Zara, who gave his wife, Umm Zara, everything she could possibly need. However, Abu Zara divorced her and married another, whom he saw breastfeeding her children in public; Umm Zara also remarried, but her new husband (a nobleman) was not able to bestow upon her even the least gift of Abu Zara. Muhammad then told Aisha, “I am for you as Abu Zara was for Umm Zara”.[38] Perhaps Muhammad only meant to say that he was as generous as Abu Zara, but it is hard not to hear the threat of divorce and how destitute Aisha would be if Muhammad ever put her out.
Threats alone, however, were not always sufficient to subdue women. Sometimes, Muhammad found that force was necessary. Umar recounted the situation: “We were such people among the Quraish who dominated women, and as we reached Medina we found there people who were dominated by their women, and our women began to learn (the habits) of their women”.[39] To counteract this “arrogance,” Muhammad claimed that Allah prescribed a three-stage correction process: “Advise them, forsake them in bed, and strike them” (Q 4:34).[40] True to form, Muhammad was a perfect example of how to live out Allah’s instructions. As described above, he was willing to forsake his wives in bed for a month[41] and, while he never struck a woman with his hand,[42] he did teach on how others should do it: “None of you should flog his wife as he flogs a slave and then have sexual intercourse with her in the last part of the day”.[43] However, it is not clear what the positive injunction should be from this teaching. Should a Muslim flog his wife in a gentle way—or, if he does flog her like a slave, should he simply wait to have intercourse with her until the following day?
Muhammad’s Teaching about Women
All of this is consistent with a view of women as inferior to men. The inferiority is presented as a math equation in the Quran: “Call upon two of your men to witness. If two men cannot be found, then one man and two women of your choice will witness—so if one of the women forgets the other may remind her” (Q 2:282).[44] Indeed, Muhammad elsewhere uses this verse to prove that women lack common sense and to explain why a majority of them are in Hell.[45] He insists that they are deficient in both “intelligence and religion”,[46] and that the latter defect is due to them not fasting or praying while in menstruation.[47]
These women provide both a threat and an opportunity for men. Muhammad taught, “Evil omen is in the women, the house and the horse . . . After me I have not left any trial more severe to men than women”.[48] Similarly, he taught that prayer can be annulled by a dog, a donkey, and a woman.[49] When Aisha heard this teaching, she seemed to take offense, saying, “Is the woman an ugly animal?”,[50] but she did not receive an answer. Inferior women may prove to be a threat, but they are also an opportunity: “The woman is like a rib; if you try to straighten her, she will break. So if you want to get benefit from her, do so while she still has some crookedness”.[51] Breaking her is defined as divorce,[52] so a man should not attempt to fix his wife but focus on acting kindly toward her.[53]
Conclusion
The Quran claims that Muhammad is “an excellent example” (Q 33:21), so he should be a model husband. But when we look at his track record in the Hadith literature, we see a man who put women down, used them to satisfy his own sexual desires, leveraged them to strengthen political loyalties, and resorted to manipulation and threats to keep them under his control. Could such a man really be a prophet of God? Should anyone follow his example in marriage, let alone in religion?
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of the Quran are taken from The Clear Quran, translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab. ↑
The Hadith are the reports typically about what Muhammad said or did, transmitted by later generations, and preserved in written collections. The two collections of Hadith viewed as most authentic by the majority of Muslims, although they weren’t gathered until ~250 years after Muhammad’s death, are Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. I will cite from these collections exclusively, translated by Dr. M. Muhsin Khan and Abdul Hamid Siddiqui respectively, available online at sunnah.com. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. Alfred Guillaime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 82–83. Ibn Ishaq was one of the earliest Muslim historians to compile a continuous biography of Muhammad (~150 years after his death). His work, preserved through Ibn Hisham, organizes the oral traditions into a narrative account of Muhammad’s life. Later canonical Hadith collections, such as Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, arranged reports primarily by topic rather than as a continuous biography. ↑
I have heard, but not been able to confirm, that Khadija was 40 and Muhammad was 25 when they were married, which means they were married for 24 years. Ibn Ishaq does record their marriage as occurring between two different accounts of Muhammad being 20 (Life of Muhammad, 82) and 35 (Life of Muhammad, 84). ↑
Sahih Muslim 2436. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 191. ↑
Sahih al-Bukhari 5158. ↑
al-Bukhari 5081. ↑
al-Bukhari 5077. ↑
Muslim 2438a. ↑
Muslim 2435a. ↑
Muslim 1422a/c. ↑
al-Bukhari 5122, 5145. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 146. ↑
al-Bukhari 4240. ↑
al-Bukhari 5229. ↑
al-Bukhari 7484. ↑
al-Bukhari 7101. ↑
al-Bukhari 3411. ↑
Muslim 1464a. ↑
al-Bukhari 5067. ↑
al-Bukhari 5068. ↑
al-Bukhari 5141. ↑
al-Bukhari 3424, 5242. ↑
al-Bukhari 5090. ↑
Muslim 1365c. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 517. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 516. ↑
al-Bukhari 3329. ↑
Muslim 1435b. ↑
Muslim 1404a; al-Bukhari 5119. ↑
Muslim 1441a. ↑
Muslim 1442a. ↑
Ibn Ishaq, Life of Muhammad, 659–60. ↑
al-Bukhari 5225. ↑
al-Bukhari 5267. ↑
al-Bukhari 5191. ↑
Muslim 2448a. ↑
Muslim 1479e. ↑
This quotation comes from the Sahih International translation. The Clear Quran instead translates the phrase for striking as “discipline them gently.” ↑
Muslim 1479a. ↑
Muslim 2328a. ↑
al-Bukhari 5204. ↑
Similarly, in giving instructions for divorce, Allah says, “Women have rights similar to those of men equitably, although men have a degree above them” (Q 2:228). ↑
Muslim 79a. ↑
al-Bukhari 1462. ↑
al-Bukhari 1951. ↑
al-Bukhari 5093, 5096. ↑
al-Bukhari 511. ↑
Muslim 512c. ↑
al-Bukhari 5184. ↑
Muslim 1467b. ↑
Muslim 1468a. ↑
