RE THE SECOND VIDEO FROM THE END
These apologetics using cultural relativism are repellent, especially coming from a man such as Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, who is American-born, highly educated and has never had to live through or experience anything he is discussing. If it were legal in the USA, would this man give his nine year old daughter to a 53 year old man in marriage?
QUOTE FROM THE VIDEO: “One shouldn’t try to force or superimpose one’s own ideals and principles on another culture”
But didn’t Muhammad force
his ideas on the culture of
his people? (claiming that they were instructions from Allah, of course) Two major examples: 1. According to the teachings of Islam, in his time it was a common practise in Arabia to bury alive unwanted newborn baby girls; 2. The making and consumption of alcohol was widespread.
And yet he saw fit to “force or superimpose his own ideals and principles” on his people and, by extension, the whole future Ummah, and permanently banned both of these practices/activities.
So, when it suits Islam, they hold up the imposition by Muhammad of such sudden, fundamental changes as examples showing how wonderful and ahead-of-their-time these new rules were, but when Muslims today, in the light of healthy, humane acceptable standards on the age of consent/marriage, have to struggle to find an explanation for the marriage of Aisha to Muhammad, critics are told that they shouldn’t try to force or superimpose their own ideals and principles on another culture.
Christians (quoting the bible) justified the slave trade for centuries, Arabs and Muslims were involved in slave trading for millennia, yet there is no way that this American Muslim can find a way to explain how it would be OK to buy and sell his fellow human beings today.
These principles are
not relative, they are blindingly obvious: No little girl dreams of marrying an aging, bearded man and no one wishes to be bought and sold like a commodity.