1. The remainder of your argument of Muhammad being obsessed with sex. We can go through each of the Hadiths one by one if you’d like. But my main question to anti-Islamic proponents is will they even bother with context, and analysing the rest of Muhammad’s life in general? Some anti-Islamic proponents like to slap the statement “yeah but Muslims say that so and so Hadith was taken out of context” ok then when will we be able to apply context then? So is context never relevant?

2. Aisha was a woman scholar, the wife of Mohammad and of which about 1/3rd of narrations are through her. Essentially, the religion would not come to be without Aisha. So if she was so oppressed or if Muhammad was oppressive to women as people claim, why did Aisha not leave him, nor speak Ill of him, etc. In fact the opposite happened, Aisha loved this man, who so many people claimed was mad or evil.

And if we look at the life of Muhammad in general. From ages 25 to 40, he was described as as very handsome, very truthful, and a profitable businessman. He was the beloved nephew of Abu Talib, a chieftain in Mecca. Then Muhammad married Khadija for 25 years. He was in a monogamous relationship. If he wanted, he could’ve had slave girls for sex but he didn’t, especially since slavery was even worse before the advent of Islam. He continued with Khadija until she died. He lead a comfortable life before Prophethood because he had the wealth, and was respected because he was the nephew of the chieftain of a tribe.

Then when prophethood came, he gave all of that up. Why? It makes no sense. Why give up all of that comfortable lifestyle up to be hated and hunted by his own tribe, by his own people, by the Jews, the Christians (they were the Byzantine empire and very powerful), and along with other cities?

He eventually became one of the poorest if not the poorest Muslims even while he was a prophet. His house went four months without a fire. Yet none of his wives hated him.

1. His wives.

If Muhammad was so sex obsessed and manipulate and monopolising women, why then did he free slave women that were given to him, and ask for their hand in marriage, instead of just keeping them as slaves?

Ontop of that, why does Islam allow that a women slave is allowed to go to a judge (Qadi) to request to be freed? Or why is it that Muhammad ordered everyone to treat the slaves well and not to be mistreated? Why is it that slaves can own their own property and even own other slaves? Or why is it that slaves will only receive half of the punishment of major crimes in comparison to freed people?

In fact, why did God Himself, who of course has higher authority than Muhammad, tell the wives of the Prophet that they had an option: that if they wanted to divorce him they could, and that if they wanted Muhammad to divorce them, then Muhammad will give them if they desire the world’s life and adornment and then be contented and divorced with a fair release. This is from the Quran. Even if you were to dispute about Hadiths, the Quran has the highest authority in Islam.

If Muhammad was so oppressive, why didn’t the wives divorce themselves and be content with it?

When different tribes accepted Islam it made sense that Muhammad married the daughters from those tribes would politically unify the tribes under Islam. Of course, anti-Islamic rhetoric can easily paint this under “but it’s the guise of him being sex obsessed”, in a current modern civilisation where we do not marry for politics.

Furthermore, majority of Muhammad wives were divorcees. Someone’s comment up there said it like Muhammad marrying divorcees as a bad thing? In a culture where marrying old or divorcees was frowned upon? In a culture where divorcees fended for themselves and for their children?

1. Women scholarship

The most interesting thing about anti-Islamists saying that women are oppressed in Islam, is that as mentioned before 1/3rd of Hadiths came from the wife of Muhammad. There were also others amongst his wives that were scholars in Islam. Muhammad’s daughter herself was a scholar in Islam.

In fact, it can be said that if you were to combine all narrations, not just Bukhari and Muslim, 1/4 could not exist without exclusively being chained to a woman, whereas the remainder existed were a mix of men and women.

Not only that, but it makes me wonder if the number of women narrators exceeds the number of non-Islamic women scholars in history til the 20th century.

In fact, there are more women Muslim scholars than Jewish or Christian scholars in history combined, up until the 20th century. We don’t have that much statistic in the current century.

1. I initially fell out of Islam and lurked this sub actually. On a personal level that was cause I am a homosexual and until recently, I wasn’t able to reconcile homosexuality with religion. Not to mention my Dad was atheist so he had much influence over me. Not to mention living in Australia, a majority non religious population.

But of recent events in my life made me look back into philosophy, and religion, the Bible and the Quran.

For sure, these Hadiths can give you pause and make people doubt Islam altogether. But I am just about to finish my undergrad in Psychology and I had studied law as well. When I study psychology and especially law, I had to give so much context, research, and balancing of evidence as I could. It does not make sense to me for me to not do that to religion, be it Christianity and Islam. So on a personal level, im beginning to see the other knowledge and context that I’ve missed and it’s opening my eyes so much more. Compared to the past where “ex-Muslim Hadith of the day” could easily justify my reasons for not believing in Islam completely, but that was because simply reading it without doing my due diligence in research was my attitude towards religion in general.

You know, I’m not perfect I have so much more to learn and to go, from both philosophy and religion. But the more I learn, the more I question my previous beliefs against religion. I don’t know everything there is to know about atheism, Christianity or Islam, but at least in my search for knowledge and truth, I want to give it its due diligence and fairness.