KS3 / GCSE Religious Studies: Khadija and the founding of Islam

In Islam today, we find few female leaders of the faith, but at the beginning, the story was very different. Two women, in particular, played a crucial role. Islamic sources tell us that Khadija bint Khuwaylid was the daughter of a merchant who built the family business into a commercial empire. Her caravans travelled thousands of miles to the great cities in the Middle East.

From all accounts, Khadija was a powerful and independent-minded woman. Once she was widowed, she vowed she would never marry again. She was clearly accustomed to making her own way in the world. In fact, it was her business acumen that would set her on a path that would eventually change the history of the world.

I’m meeting Professor Leila Ahmed from Harvard University, to find out about Khadija's relationship with a young man she hired to help her with her business. His name was Muhammad.

Leila:
She was a powerful woman, a merchant, with a lot of money and she hired Muhammad because he had a reputation for honesty and she admired him. She was very impressed with him and she actually proposed marriage to him. He was a 25-year-old. She was 40.

Bettany:
That does seem to be key though, the fact that she is choosing this young man. You know, she spots him, she thinks he’s got potential and then she decides to make him hers.

Leila:
That’s right.

From all accounts, their early years were a partnership, both emotionally and in business. But gradually Muhammad withdrew, growing more interested in spirituality, leaving his home to seek solitude in the hills above Mecca, the city destined to become the centre of the Islamic faith. Muhammad had begun his transformation from man to prophet.

Leila:
We know that when he first began to experience Koranic revelations he even doubted himself but it was Khadija who affirmed the reality of his prophet-hood. So we know that she was critical to Muhammad. She became his first convert. She was the first Muslim.

Bettany:
Fascinating it was a woman who was the first convert to Islam.

Leila:
That’s right. The fact that she was a major figure in society meant the tribe respected him, even if they didn’t like his message. Her support was extraordinarily important to him.

Bettany:
For the next ten years, Khadija used her family connections and all her wealth to support her husband and fund the fledgling faith, a religion built on the controversial principle of one god in a society that believed in many.

Now Muhammad decided it was time for action. In defiance of the tribal elders he was going to publicly preach his new faith. “There is one god, Allah,” he said. “To worship all others is blasphemy.”

Khadija did everything possible to help her husband and Islam but, in 619, she fell ill with fever and died.

Muhammad was heartbroken. For 25 years, Khadija had been his best friend and his closest ally. Muslims still remember the year of her death as the Year of Sorrow.

As was the tradition, he took other wives, but we’re told his favourite was called Aisha. Controversies surround Aisha, not least rumours of her tender age when she married Muhammad. I’m meeting academic Myriam François-Cerrah to find out why this young woman became so central to Islam.

She understood the religion. She understood the context. She’s scholarly. She’s smart. She’s eloquent. She wants to be part of the public sphere and she very much is. This was not a sort of shy and cowering woman. She really took to the front and if she had something to say, she said it.

Muhammad's new faith made him many enemies and he was forced out of Mecca. After several years in exile, he returned to defeat his opponents and took control of the city. But a few months later, he was dead. And the person instrumental in maintaining his legacy was his wife Aisha. In its early years, Islam depended on word of mouth to record its core beliefs. Called “Hadith”, which literally means “sayings”, these accounts of the words and deeds of Muhammad were eventually written down to help believers to understand the Koran. We’re told Aisha ‘s intimate knowledge of the Prophet made her central to this development.

Myriam:
She was known for having memorised thousands of Hadith, or the sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, throughout her lifetime. Scores of men learnt from her. In fact, there’s a saying that you can get half of your religion just from Aisha.

Bettany:
Today, the position of women Islam is one of the most hotly debated topics from Baghdad to Bradford. Many see Muslim women as oppressed.

If you think of these great role models, Khadija and Aisha, what do you think they would think of Islam as it’s developed in the 21st century?

Myriam:
I’m not entirely sure that they would recognise the practices that we have today. I’m certainly not sure that Aisha would take very well to being told to move to the back of the room and not speak up. You know, she was very much used to teaching men and educating men. If she had something to say, she would say it. And the idea that Khadija, again a very powerful figure, would somehow be curtailed in her voice, in her rights, I’m not sure that this would be anything that they would be willing to accept or recognise.

Bettany:
It’s easy to see how Aisha and Khadija can be role models for Muslim women. They were key to the early days of Islam and challenged many people’s perceptions of women’s role in the faith. Shocking really that, outside Islam, so few of us have even heard their names.

I've discovered compelling proof that the female of the species and religion have always been inseparable. Forget or ignore them and we impoverish history and ourselves.