3. Mohammed

And Allah claimed, according to Mohammed, that Mohammed was the one who would bring this message that there's no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet through the angel Gabriel who appeared in a cave and gave the Quran to Mohammed – “angels” being one of the five pillars of Islam.

So I look at Mohammed and I compare him with the character of Christ. The Quran speaks more of Jesus than it does Mohammed. And although the other things it says about Jesus are usually in disagreement with what the New Testament says about Jesus – “Isa”, “Yeshua”, the Quran never once faults His moral character. The Quran never once faults the moral character of Jesus. Never once. Never once. It says things about Him that disagree with the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, but it never faults His moral character. The Quran never faults the moral character of Jesus.

In the Hadith, however, we read something that corresponds to Quran Sorah 33:52, where something happened in the life of Muhammad where he was told by Allah, supposedly, it is no longer lawful for you to marry after this unless it is someone you already own like a handmaiden. What was this to which I refer in the Hadith?

“Fe’el hadith Mohammed, fell hadith Musa, ben tur abo baqir mah allude setah. Fe’el hadith ai-eesha ben tur abu baqir mah allude setah. Fe’el hadith Mohammed ho mubaraq oh fe’el hadith Mohammed orva mutah.”

I don't ask that question to offend you. According to the Hadith, Ayesha the daughter of a Abu Bakr, was six years old when Mohammed married her. He took her virginity at the age of nine according to the teachings of Islam. You had a man, perhaps in his fifties – probably around 54, scholars are not exactly sure – who had sex with a nine year-old girl whom he married at the age of six. And the Quran tells him that Allah was somehow displeased, apparently, and said you couldn’t marry any more after this unless it was a slave or something you already owned. Even if you found a woman attractive you couldn't have any more of them. In fact, I've had Muslim scholars admit that Mohammed had one of his stepson's divorce his wife so he could take her. The question I asked in Arabic, and I’m only asking the question, is the Hadith right? Was Mohammed blessed of God or was Muhammad a pedophile? I'm only asking was your religion right in what it teaches? I'm only asking the question; I'm not trying to incite religious hatred, I'm not trying to offend you, I’m only asking the question, “Is the Hadith right?” Did Mohammed marry a six year-old little girl and have sex with a little child? Did he do that? Is your religion right? Is this what he did?

Now if you believe what your religion teaches, if you believe in the historicity of the Quran and of the Hadith, if you believe it is true, then of course you believe Muhammad had sex with a little girl. My question is if it is what you believe, please tell me how you expect me or any other Westerner, any Christian, any Jew, anyone else to believe such a man was God’s greatest prophet? Even in many Islamic countries today, if someone did that with a girl that young, he would be arrested and criminally prosecuted, conceivably executed in some of them.

Now a few years ago in the United States, it showed some very wealthy Saudi members of the House of Saud sheiks who were oil-rich arriving in India on private jets. They did not call it “slavery” and they don’t call it “slavery” in Africa, but essentially for as little as $200 they were giving to families of very poor people and taking little girls, some of them quite young like 14, back to Saudi Arabia. When questioned they said, “What’s wrong with it? Our prophet did it.” These are Wahabbist Saudi Arabians. “Wahab” – fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Sunnis who don't accept any later interpretation of Islam after 950. These are ultra-conservative Wahabbists, they are rigid, rigid Quranists. Yet they found it acceptable to go and do this – and it was on television – because Muhammad did it.

Now I hope you appreciate as a Westerner, although this goes on in Christendom, although there have been a number of Roman Catholic priests who have done it, when they get caught they get arrested. When there’s a conspiracy to sweep it under the rug they get sued. Why is this tolerated in the Islamic world? In Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, why was this institutional pedophilia in a form of slavery tolerated in the modern world today? And they say, “Because Mohammed did it.” That's what they said on television.

That is my second question: “How can you expect me or any Christian or any Westerner to believe that a man who engaged in something acknowledged by the Hadith to be pedophilia is the prophet we should listen to and follow?” I'm asking you a sincere question.