The Heart's Witness Against Muhammad: Sex With Aunt Khaula

By Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq.
10/25/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Muhammad's acceptance of polygamy in the last ten years of his life is nothing less than a moral degeneration

The Qur'anic provision that Muhammad could enjoy sexually any Muslim woman who offered herself to Muhammad appears to have been broad enough to include even maternal aunts, given the ahadith that relate to a certain Khaula bint Hakim who presented herself to the prophet in just such a manner.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - The number of wives and concubines that Muhammad collected as if he were a cock in a hen-house, is, as we have noted in prior articles here and here, not consonant with the natural moral law. It suggests a disordered sexual desire and a lack of internal discipline or virtue on the part of Muhammad. Moreover, such behavior is intrinsically misogynistic in that it treats women as if they were pets or playthings or property. This is not appropriate conduct for a supposed man of God who should be solicitous to the good of both men and women equally.

Before Christianity and Judaism were forcibly ousted from the Arabic peninsula, tribes that were Jewish or Christian flourished in the area. Muhammad, therefore, would have been familiar with the practice of monogamy by these groups. As a result of Christ's clear teachings on marriage, Christians were called monogamous. Moreover, the practice of polygamy appears to have been abandoned by the Jews of the time of Muhammad and monogamy held out as the standard.

Muhammad's acceptance of polygamy in the last ten years of his life is nothing less than a moral degeneration relative to the moral life among the Christian and Jew. It appears strangely insensitive to the beauty of the Christian and Jewish monogamous witness. It also is strangely aberrant to his earlier monogamous practice with his wife Khadija before her death. In this area, Muhammad was clearly morally retrograde.

In the text by the Muslim scholar Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi, the Kitab al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, we read that the Jews, when they witnessed the self-professed prophet Muhammad marrying more than one woman, commented:"''Look at this man who never has enough of food and cares for nothing else as he does for women.'" While the Muslim scholar Ibn Sa'd attributed the Jews' complaint to envy (a classic way of handling objections to Muhammad's behavior), he did mention that they pointed to it as counter-indicative of any claim to prophethood: "'If he were a prophet,' the Jews said among themselves, 'he would not desire women.'" The Jews' suspicions regarding Muhammad seem rather well-placed.

The Kitab al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir continues to discuss Muhammad's sex life with great candor. We learn, for example, that Muhammad's desire for women seems to have possessed him after the death of his wife Khadija.

"I was the least man in sexuality," Muhammad is related to have said, "'till God brought down on me the kafit." This kafit--the allegedly divine gift of sexual prowess coupled with the opportunity to express it, a sort of divine Arabic-Islamic-Viagra--was readily given to Muhammad by his Allah: "Whenever I seek it I find it." According to the dictionary Lisan al-Arab (2:71), kafit is the ability to have sex and to express it. The Tabaqat Ibn Sa'd also relates: "The Messenger of God said, 'Gabriel met me with a pot, of which I ate, and I was given the kafit [sexual ability] of forty men.'"

Gabriel, it may be noted, who served as the divinely appointed pharmacist of the self-proclaimed prophet, was expressly named as Allah's interlocutor only after Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina, which is also when Muhammad's sexual practices changed. So Gabriel with one hand gave Muhammad sexual food and with the other the word of Allah. This is an unseemly and unfitting blend of the worldly and the heavenly: sex and heaven are joined at the hip in the self-proclaimed prophet of Islam. Even the Muslim paradise is infested with sex and the promise of houris or virgins (hur).

In addition to the practice of polygyny, which of itself, as the Jews of Muhammad's time noted, puts Muhammad out of running as a legitimate prophet, we saw in the last article that the manner in which Muhammad captured and then married Safiya, the Jewess from the Banu al-Nadir tribe, raises serious questions of his moral sensitivity. He displayed all the moral sensitivity of a rapacious animal in marrying the young woman whose father, uncle, husband, and kinsmen he had killed. While we may recognize the behavior as one in keeping with a warrior chieftan, it is not the sort of behavior that one would ascribe to an ideal or perfect man, one with the title al-insan al-kamil.

Muhammad's marriage to young Safiya is ...

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1 - 9 of 9 Comments

David Carlon
6 months ago
Amen.
Jorge
6 months ago
This is an excellent article: it explains why devout muslims are so prone to incest and bestiality, which all reports show to be true, specially in counries like saudi arabia, pakistan and afghanistan.islam is demented and evil! It must be exposed for the wicked satanic cult it is.
Gail Finke
6 months ago
I did not know any of this. So Mohammed was more like a cult leader of today than I realized -- in many cults, leaders have many and varied sexual relationships that are not available to anyone else, because they are the leaders and live by their own rules.
Wes Lisitza
6 months ago
@Karen Dickerson: While I share your feelings of being bothered regarding the specific interest Mr. Greenwell has taken to criticizing Islam, I have to say that I have a very different position and foundation for the matter, which I will address later. Of issue I have with your post is that you cite Ghandi as an authority over Christian matters. That doesn't work here. Leave Ghandi to preach to his own religion what is right; for me, I'll follow the Lord.

As for your excessive use of "examples" from the Bible, such figure heads engaging in such activity were sinners, and they sinned. Those stories are there to teach that even great men who follow God are still capable of sin and weakness, and that God's favor does not give free reign to anyone to go forth and sin freely. They're not there to condone what they did. You wouldn't open a history book, read about the holocaust, and assume that the author is advocating genocide just because he wrote about it.

Lastly, regarding your instinct to cite the "falling away" of Catholics, if that's all you've got (and apparently all that the NY Times has got) then give it a rest. Nobody forgot the sex scandals here and what it did to Catholics worldwide. And there's nowhere in the Bible or the Church canon law that condones what those priests did - they committed a sin, and God's wrath is justly coming down on them. But the last time I checked, the Catholic Church is still baptizing new converts every year, particularly at Easter; so many, that your silly statistic really doesn't hold much weight. Sure, the Catholic Church may lose attending members annually, but the rate at which we lose members isn't any different from other religions where members become disenchanted and leave. Why don't you ask the NY Times and your Catholic Informer how many people left the Mormon Church, Islam, the Jewish Synagogues, the Watchtower, Scientology, the Hindi Temples, the Buddhist order, or even the National Association of Atheists? If you can't find a statistic, it's probably because bashing Catholicism in America is more profitable for those 2nd rate propagandists of the Socialist party to bother. Some points you may want to ponder is that you don't have to be a Catholic to molest children; you don't even have to be a priest or take a vow of celibacy. The NY Times would have you believe otherwise, but here in the real world, we all know better.
Paul-Emile Leray
6 months ago
1. Pope Stephen VI (late 9thC): I hope I am never put on trial as was Formosus!
2. Pope Sergius III (early 10thC)
3. Pope John XII (10thC)
4. Pope Urban VI (14thC)
5. Pope Alexander VI (15thC/early 16thC)

If we are to point "out", let us at least have the intellectual integrity to also point "in".

Let us try, for one moment, imagining someone being put on trial as was Formosus. It almost seems like a stooge act in some fictitious play that some of this stuff actually took place, does it not?

If any of the above 5 popes were to be alive today, show up on my doorstep, I would hope to have beened informed a day or two earlier. Why? To make a trip down to the local pet-shop to buy some dogs to greet them when the doorbell would ring.

As much as I love and believe in the truth of the Catholic Church, let us not forget there were plenty of power and control hungry monster-maniacs inside there as well throughout history. Compared to some of them, some of the Pharisees quite possibly would have looked pretty good!

And after all this, I remind myself that Jesus is Jesus. Also, life comes with an expiry date on the milk carton. And then, I soon realize that God the Father knew exactly what he was doing when he put existence into existence. I, for one, am truly happy that humans are just that.....humans. Nothing more, nothing less. Humans. And I am very happy God is in charge, because humans are often NUTS!

The fact that I think and feel so highly about Catholic priests and sisters is explicit proof of how many good people I have met throughout my life who were and are priests and sisters. I will back them with my life, if necessary. However, let us not be naive and unfair to history either. Even our dear wonderful St. Augustine had his share of problems before his full conversion. Human nature exists in all of us. Why? Because we are human. As Christians and Catholics, we will be taken much more seriously if we are HONEST about our own flawed history. And while I am at it, many Shinto and Buddhist priests are not taken seriously in Asia; other than for the exorbitant fees charged for funerals in certain lands! A funeral in certain countries can practically wipe out the family saving account, while the priest smiles and offers his condolences (while often being over-weight). Let us not be naive, gullible and ignorant of our own problems within our own house.

Paul-Emile Leray
Andrew M. Greenwell
6 months ago
@Karen. Thanks for your comment. From the perspective of a Catholic, I make the following observations. First, whatever merit Ghandi may have, I find it curious that you would use the highly undogmatic Ghandi to espouse the dogma that God is indifferent to religion and that God is unconcerned about how we communicate with him. If this is true, then what is the significance of Jesus? It seems to me that that is the crux of your criticism: indifferentism. All religions are the same, which is to say religions do not make a bit of difference and so are irrelevant.

You say I have no love. But I think by love you mean "indifferentism." Your accusation against me is not "where is the Love?" but "where is the indifferentism?" How can it be unloving to tell the truth? How can it be unloving to rely on the Muslims' own historical sources? How can it be unloving to insist that one live according to the right? How can it be unloving to say that a man who claimed to be an example for all men was not, in fact, an example for all men?

I do not think love requires us to ignore history, or truth, or the Word of God made Flesh.

Finally, that the article may have been published on the Muslim feast day of Eid al-Adha was unintended. I would point out, while we are on that topic, that the Abrahamic sacrifice celebrated by the Muslims has no relationship to history, There is no historical evidence that Abraham was in Mecca. I would also point out that, in the Islamic unhistorical view, Abraham sacrificed Ishmael, not Isaac. So to honor Eid al-Adha is to implicitly hold that the Old Testament story is false.

I have no doubt that polygamy was tolerated in the Old Testament. So what? The point is Muhammad's behavior is upheld as perfect, as normative, as worthy of imitation. Show me where, in Jewish or Christian sources, Lamech's polygamy, Jacob or Abraham's bigamy, David's adultery, or Solomon's concubinage were held up as moral standards to be imitated. Ditto for the priest's scandal. Nowhere. That's the big difference. Sinners the Bible is full of, but the Bible does not hold sinners out to be good. Sinners the Church is full of, but the Church does not hold out the sinners out to be good. The Qur'an, to the contrary, does hold that all Muhammad's behavior is a good to be imitated,and, at least when it comes to certain behaviors of Muhammad, unacceptable to someone who has not fallen into indifferentism in morals.

I have a hard time seeing what the nuns on the bus in the 21st century have to do with Muhammad in the 7th. Maybe you can clarify on what relationship Muhammad's sexual mores has to do with the nuns on the bus.

I'm sure there is much the Church must and should do to re-evangelize the world and former Catholics. One of the things I am quite certain it should not do is capitulate to Muhammad, a man who hated Jesus, who denied that Jesus was God, who denied the crucifixion, who denied grace, who denied the redemption, who denied the religious (monastic) life, who denied the priesthood, who hated church bells, who insisted that Christians be subdued, be kicked out of Arabia, pay a tax (jizya), and who treated women as chattel, who advocated that men beat their wives, who legitimated divorce and temporary (muta'a) marriage, and on and on.

On a final note, let me also suggest one thing. Rather than what the Church can learn from 30 million former Catholics, perhaps we ought to ask the question what 30 million former Catholics could have learned from the Church but didn't.

Good day,
Andrew
Karen Dickerson
6 months ago
This is my second submission of this comment. I do hope that it was not found inappropriate or UNconstructive to the conversation --but rather INstructrive to the author, unless of course the publication is not open to accepting criticism of any kind that does not agree with its side of the story.

Ghandi said..."God has no religion. Each one prays to God according to his own light."

Ironic Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. choose to publish this 'negativity' & criticism on a holy day in the Islamic calendar >> "Eid Al-Adha," marking the feast of Abraham's sacrifice and the end of Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Where is the LOVE?

He writes that this is "insensitive to the beauty of the Christian and Jewish monogamous witness." Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. Uhh...FACT CHECK!!...in the Christian Bible, polygamy was apparently accepted: Lamech took unto him two wives Genesis 4:19 and throughout Genesis Genesis 25:6, Genesis 16:1-4, Genesis 26:34, Jacob sits his TWO wives upon Genesis 31:17 and on and on, Judges, Chronicles, Kings...Solomon checked in with 700 and 300 concubines! And he's says "this is not appropriate conduct for a supposed man of God"???

And then I won't even go into the whole Nuns on a Bus issues & the Vatican's rebuke and THEY need to be reformed? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/us-nuns-weigh-response-to-scathing-vatican-critique.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Want to talk "moral sensitivity"? You want to talk about "relationships that raises eyebrows" ...in the Catholic Church? The apparent consistent abuse/molestation of little boys and abuse of children. Shame, shame on you Mr. Greenwell. Show some respect, at least. It's things like this that make me evermore disenchanted with Catholicism.

Maybe this article (http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/ny-times-print-ad-calls-on-catholics-to-leave-church-live-free-of-incense-fogged-ritual/) is right after all? Or this one , from catholicreview.org (http://catholicreview.org/blogs/fertile-soil/2012/05/07/thirty-million-former-catholics-what-can-we-learn) discussing Pew's research and what can be learned. It states that "one third of all adults raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholics, and 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. What can we learn from thirty million former Catholics?"

Tsk tsk and shame on you Mr. Greenwell and Catholic Online for allowing it. I think I've just reached the "tipping point." Good Day.
Andrew M. Greenwell
6 months ago
@Mrs. Rene O'Riordan: It is hard to tell why Muhammad was faithful to Khadija. He always seemed to hold her in high regard and fondness, and the ahadith seem consistent on this point. But this may be because she was the only wife who bore him children. (Other than his concubine Mariyah who bore him a son whom Muhammad called Abraham, but who died in infancy.) My impression is that she was a very strong woman, encouraged his revelations. I'm sure her wealth and influence was important to Muhammad since he seemed adverse to work and certainly needed financial support to be able to enjoy the leisure required for his religious activities. There is some evidence from which one could argue that Khadija was a Christian, or at least acted under Christian and Jewish influence (her cousin Waraqa Ibn Nawfal was a Christian, and she solicited advice from him regarding Muhammad's revelations.). However, most Christians were members of heretical sects, mainly of the Nestorian kind, and orthodox Christianity was not well-represented in the region. If she was influenced by Christian and/or Jewish teachings that would explain her insistence that the marriage remain monogamous and probably, as a condition of marriage to Muhammad, required him to agree to such. He seemed to be thought of as faithful, and so he obtained the nickname Al-Amin, the faithful one. The surrounding pagans, of course, accepted polygamy. Upon Khadija's death, of course, he would have been released from any promise to her to remain monogamous. Shortly before he left Mecca for Medina he married Sauda and then shortly thereafter his child bride 'A'isha, and then the ball got rolling.
Mrs. Rene O'Riordan
6 months ago
Correct me if I'm way off, but I figure mohommad's fidelity to Khadija was because she was wealthy and if he displeased her she would have divorced him and left him penniless. Again a great piece - Blessings - Rene

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