Even so, I thought an article by Robert Spencer at PJ Media on a criticism by Oz of something Barnette tweeted in 2015 was worth highlighting.
Apparently, Barnette tweeted that “Pedophilia is a Cornerstone of Islam,” a tweet that evidently deeply offended Dr. Oz. He has accused her of Islamophobia, and she now claims - incongruously, since she offers no explanation how the words appear on her Twitter feed - that she “would never have said that.”
Spencer notes, though, that what Oz alleges that she said is not unreasonable and that she would have been better off just owning the remark and defending it, as there is certainly ample justification in Islam for thinking it. He goes on to explain:
Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry. Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria, said in 2016: “Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this.”Spencer links to all of the relevant sources in his article, but Oz thinks Barnette should be banned from the race for tweeting something defamatory to an entire religion. Yet, if her allegation is true how is it defamatory?
Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law, said in 2008: “There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.”
Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, declared in 2014 that there is no minimum age for marriage in Islamic law at all and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology has ruled that “Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.”
These authorities say these things because hadiths that Muslims consider [to be an] authentic record state that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage: “The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
This doesn’t mean that all Muslims are pedophiles or approve of pedophilia, but it does mean that what Barnette wrote was not unreasonable.
The question is, is it true? Does Islamic law actually permit adult men to marry and subsequently engage in conjugal acts with children or doesn't it? If it does, then Barnette's tweet certainly seems justified, unless we're so politically correct nowadays that the only religion we can say anything negative about with impunity is Christianity.
Speaking of which, a number of prominent atheists have written scathingly about what they believe are the shortcomings of Christianity. For example, Brits like Richard Dawkins, an Oxford professor and the late Christopher Hitchens, a world renowned journalist, grew wealthy on the proceeds of their best-selling anti-Christian books The God Delusion and God Is Not Great.
Spencer wonders whether Oz would think, had any of these men taken out dual citizenship and run for a Senate seat in the U.S., that their attacks on Christianity, the bulk of which have in fact been debunked, would disqualify them from office.
It's a fair question.
