We’ve heard this tune before and seen the presses shut down too. The effects of sharia are felt just by having to consider the potential for violence by enraged Muslims. The show will go on as they say, and this book will be published. Imagine if they had titled it Does Allah Hate Women? Waiting for protests and riots in 3, 2, 1…

An academic book about religious attitudes to women is to be published this week despite concerns it could cause a backlash among Muslims because it criticises the prophet Muhammad for taking a nine-year-old girl as his third wife.

The book, entitled Does God Hate Women?, suggests that Muhammad’s marriage to a child called Aisha is “not entirely compatible with the idea that he had the best interests of women at heart”.

It also says that Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, was “incorrect” when she defended Islam in a lecture by claiming “it is not laid down in the Koran that women can be beaten by their husbands and their evidence should be devalued as it is in some Islamic courts”.

While it is widely accepted that the girl’s father first offered her for betrothal to Muhammad when she was just six, many argue that Muhammad married Aisha when she was nine and the union was not consummated until she reached puberty years later.

However, Stangroom and Benson cite extracts from a highly regarded historian of early Islam, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, who quotes Aisha as saying: “The Messenger of God consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old”. The authors conclude “religious authorities and conservative clerics worship a wretchedly cruel unjust vindictive executioner of a God. . . a God who thinks little girls should be married to grown men”.

Such assertions could invoke the ire of some Muslims. Anjem Choudary, a self-styled sharia judge and former leader of the banned British group Al-Muhajiroun, said: “Talk of Aisha as a child when she married is not true.

“At nine she reached her menses and in those days a girl was considered to be mature when that happened. No one will swallow talk about child brides. It would lead to a huge backlash, as we saw with The Jewel of Medina.”

via Fears of Muslim anger over religious book -Times Online.

You think they’d choose a source other than the Islamist loud mouth Choudary.