it’s not that big

Yeah exactly. Thats the point. There is no record of Aisha herself saying her age was 9 at marriage. Nor is there any hadith from medina (where the marriage took place) that mentions aisha age. Only more than a generation later, in Iraq, someone who has poor memory, claimed that he has “heard” from someone else that Aisha said she is 9. So there is no reason to believe him over anyone else. Its a babble. No one knows Aishas age for sure. Historians and timeline analysis say she was 19-20. Pedophiles and Islamophobes say she was 9. People can choose to accept whatever they want. There is no good debate.

Well you have a point. But I would suppose that the idea is child marriage was a very common thing even upto the last century, and is still common today in less developed parts of the world. Since no one considered it an issue, no one questioned the particular hadiths either. Also there is no “centuries of scholarship” done specifically on Aishas age, it was a hadith that everyone ran with because there were no reason for ppl to doubt it. Islamic jurisprudence were about laws and ethics, not history. And whatever scholarly work has been done have pointed strongly to the idea Aisha was not 9. (Even tho ibn-kathir, in the 1300s, ran into timeline issues and has reported about how Aishas age dont match up, and the timeline that he compiled suggested aisha was in her late teens. So it is technically mot even true that no one had any issues before the west pointed it out)

I find it weird that everyone is getting so defensive here, quick to calling it apologia and bullshit. You are allowed to believe whatever you want about Islam (or christianity, or religion itself). But what I was just trying to point out in my original reply that not all muslims especially in the west and academia today, agree or accept the fact Aisha was 9. Again many still do. But it does not really help that the excuse is used by Islamophobes all around the world. Its the same as quoting the worse parts of Talmud and calling every jew a violent person. Even though most prolly never though abt it and might be conflicted if u tell this, or outright deny its supposed to be taken literally, or contextualize whatever. You can say that is all apologia, so whatever really ig, at the end people just believe whatever they want to believe, and hurling insults and accusing them of promoting child rape is unlikely to bring a change in their worldview.

That paragraph is supposes to highlight the difference between hadith from the prophet vs haditths that are just oral collections from diff ppl. The author is saying here that the hadith does not carry the same weight as other bukhari hadiths because its not attributed to the prophet and is merely an oral claim by hisham(someone who has memory issues) that “someone said that Aisha said she was 9”

You are quoting the ending parts of the article which have nothing to do with the original argument it presents and simply is there to cleanup and establish the new status quo, and these tiny “things” whatever you call them are meaningless in the context of the greater discussion.

The symbolic part is discussed all through the article (for eg age 40 as a symbol for being wise, and for extra info age 70 in islamic world is considered the timeline for eternity(sorry if I cant explain it well, english aint my first language, but for eg u say to smone like “bro why r u so weak, r u already 70yo?”)

You not liking it does not change the fact that ages were used a lot more for symbolism back then than the actual time since the person has been born. There were no objectively correct ways of knowing smones birthdate back then except for word of mouth (if ppl cared to remember, because islam uses the lunar calendar, its much more complicated to track birthdays and date than how we do today)

Why not quote some of the earlier longer parts about timeline inconsistencies and sectarian incentives, those are up for discussion.

There is a small but existent group of Quranic muslims, who accept only Quran as the complete and total revelation from Allah.

But I resist the urge to start going through different sects and their views on their religion, rather I’d focus here on the historical aspect of what an arabian couple did or did not do on their wedding night some 1400 years ago, and that the strongest evidence is something that has passed through six people until eventually written down a couple of hundred years after the event.