Oh Dear. This is an interview with Sherry Jones author of Jewel of Medina on the website AltMuslim. She seems to have absorbed the concept of taqiyya very well.
Well, I did anticipate controversy. I consciously envisioned myself, for example, reading my book in a bookstore on a book tour and having people challenge the things I had written, or challenge my perceptions of Islam. I didn’t think much about people who didn’t like Muslims. Mostly I was aware of the sensitivities of Muslims. Because I have altered the historical record, the historical narrative.
. . . But I did all this in the service of what I see as a truth. My truth - this is my vision of what things would have been like based on my own experiences and my own research and my own intuition and observations of human nature.
How did you decide to handle the sensitive issue of Aisha's age at marraige?
Historians don’t even agree about the age of Aisha. I’d even read that there’s disagreement on the meaning of the word consummate. Did it mean sexual intercourse? Or did it mean the marriage contract was simply completed?
Just to be clear, in the book, do you actually make a reference to her age?
Yes, in the book she is 14 years old. She does marry him at age 9 and then she goes back to her parents to live until she has her period, and then she moves in with Muhammad. But in my book, the marriage is not consummated until she is older. And the reason is because I’ve read some compelling arguments that she was older and would have been older. I consider them compelling arguments, but maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see.
The Muhammad that I came to know in my reading would not have forced a girl who was not ready. He would not have forced a girl. I just don’t believe that if Aisha was scared or she wasn’t ready that he would have forced it. And so I decided that I was going to make her more mature and he was going to wait until she was ready. So I do have a scene where, on her wedding night, when she moved in with him, she started her period – about 12 years old – and they go to her hut and he does approach her, but she’s very frightened. And so he says, you know, “Let’s play with your toys instead.”
He’s my Muhammad (Laughs). She’s my Aisha! And you know, it’s not that it’s an official version of anything, and I’ve never claimed that it was. This is my story, my version, and gosh, I just hope that it brings out many more Aisha stories, Aisha novels.
It gets worse. There is now a sequel.
Well, I wanted to tell you that my second book, my sequel, is finished. It’s about Aisha and Ali and the tension between them that existed that’s written about in the first book. . . So then, as I was doing my research for the sequel, I read several books that were written by Western scholars that are supportive of the Shiite point of view...
So you’re stepping into Shia territory now...
Yes. And so as I read these books, my regard and respect for Ali increased. So my second book goes back and forth between the points of view between Aisha and Ali. They’re both protagonists. You get to decide. As the book goes on, the story is really one of reconciliation and it’s really a story of peace. It’s about revenge as a motive for war.
So the Mills and Boon ladies won’t get the real truth about Mohammed after all. To my mind the defects of Islam hinge on the flaws of Mohammed as “the perfect man to be emulated for all time”.
But let it be published and let it be criticised. It’s the only way.
