The critics of Islam...

The critics of Islam, in their ignorance of the truth, betray their prejudice in their venture to criticise saying that the Holy Prophet was extremely polygamous.

Such prejudiced critics should know that when the Holy Prophet was in the bloom of his youth, he was not only contented but was the happiest husband of a lady in the decline of her age and the death of the lady who was older than him- self, he observed the whole of the year following the death,as Aamul-Huzn, i.e., the Year of Grief It is an elementary truth of human life that if a man be lusty in his sensual desires, particularly matrimonial, he would be such in his youth.

When the Holy Prophet was in the fullness of his youth and when he had an aged wife, and if he had only desired to have a young lady, there was already the offer from the people of Mecca to give the fairest woman of his own choice, if he only spares his condemning idolatry, but he bluntly refused. The fact is that the attachment of the Holy Prophet to Lady Khadija was so much that none dared to offer his daughter and no woman had the courage of even thinking of offering herself.

It was only at the departure of Lady Khadija that Abu Bakr could offer his daughter Ayesha who was of about nine years.

History is there to vouch that when Ayesha was offered to him, at Mecca, the Holy Prophet refused and it was only in Madina after the migration that the Holy Prophet could not reject the offer of Abu Bakr any longer, just to please the companion that the offer was accepted, other- wise he would not have asked for the hand of a girl of only nine, when he had already crossed the fiftieth year of his age and when there were only a few years before his departure from this world.

And the alliance of Hafsa with the Holy Prophet, was only to please his other companion Omar. Similarly, came one after another, ladies, some of them far advanced in age imploring the Holy Prophet to give them the honour, privilege and the pride to be the wives of the Apostle of God. As the Mercy unto the Worlds which he was, the Holy Prophet could not deny the grace asked for, from him.

To know how happy and harmonious was the life of the Holy Prophet with his aged wife Khadija-let us hear what Carlyle reports about it:- This young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: " Now am not I better than Khadija? She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks : you love me better than you did her?"- "No by Allah!