Shaykh Muḥammad al-Madkhalī:

The questioner asks: “What is the best way to answer a disbeliever when he asks me about the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to ʿĀʾishah when she was 9 years old?”

Shaykh Muḥammad al-Aqīl:

The Prophet ﷺ is more knowledgeable than us and that disbeliever. It is said to that Western disbeliever: What is the state of your women today?! What is the state of your women O’ miskīn? Cry over yourself O’ miskīn if you wished to cry. Strange statistics show that there are no virgins in secondary schools at all. At all. This is their statistics.

Proverb: “And when I am criticised by a deficient person, this is a testimony of my perfection.”

We put this issue forward to the specialized doctors, and ask: “Does the early marriage harm a girl who reached puberty or not?” Let us see what the doctors say. It is something very normal. When the girl reaches puberty and marries, this does not harm her at all, even if she was nine years old. It does not harm her in anyway.[1]

This is an affair which one should not be embarrassed about, rather, what one should be embarrassed about is obscenity; and that is when the girl brings her lover to her father or mother’s bed without either one of them disapproving this act. This is what one should be embarrassed about. As for what natural disposition is in favor of, and the wise ones agreed upon the permissibility of it occurring and allowing it to occur, then one should not be embarrassed about it.