The Women’s History of the World. Rosalind Miles

to the aged Muhammad when she was only nine and widowed before her eighteenth birthday, ’A’ishah became famous for her courageous intelligence and resistance to the subordination enjoined on virtuous Islamic wives. She had no hesitation in opposing or correcting Muhammad himself, arguing theology with him in front of his principal male followers with such devastating logic and intellectual power that Muhammad himself instructed them, ‘Draw half your religion from this ruddy-faced woman.’ Her courage extended even to resisting the will of the Prophet when it came through the hotline of a revelation from Allah himself. When in answer to his desire to take another wife Muhammad was favoured with a new batch of Koranic verses assuring him that Allah permitted his prophet to marry as many women as he wished, she hotly commented, ‘Allah always responds immediately to your needs!’¹³

      What else would a father god do? And how were women to respond? ’A’ishah, still only a girl of eighteen when Muhammad died, outgrew this rebellion and went on to become a leading figure in Islam, where her active political power and influence on Muslim evolution and tradition were enormous. But the challenge she had thrown down remained unanswered. It could only gain in immediacy and urgency in the years that followed.