certainly the focus of her jealousy. Muhammad’s ɹrst
wife was the one woman who, precisely because she was
dead, was unassailable. He had made this perfectly clear,
for in all of Aisha’s teasing of him, the one time she
went too far—the one time Muhammad rebuked her—
was when she dared turn that sharp tongue of hers on
Khadija.
It took the form of a question designed, it seemed, to
taunt Muhammad with her own attractiveness. It was
the kind of question only a teenager could ask and only
an older woman could regret as she related the incident
many years later. In language unmistakably hers—
nobody else would have dared be so startlingly direct—
the young Aisha had asked Muhammad how he could
possibly remain so devoted to the memory of “that
toothless old woman whom God has replaced with a
better.”
You can see how she intended this as a ɻirtatious
tease, blithely unaware of the effect of her words. But the
fact remains that they were said with the casual
disregard of the young and vivacious for the old and
dead, the cruel derision of a teenager. And if Aisha
thought for a moment she could gain precedence over
Khadija in such a way, Muhammad’s response stopped
her in her tracks.
“Indeed no, God has not replaced her with a better,” he
said. And then, driving the point home: “God granted me