Before the World Learned to Call It Holy

Before the world learned to call it holy, there was a child. Mary, perhaps fourteen, carrying a destiny too enormous for her small shoulders; Scripture remembers her yes, but who has ever dared imagine the weight of saying no to God? Rebecca, described as ten in the Book of Jasher, given in marriage to Isaac, a man of forty. Childhood buried beneath covenant, innocence swallowed by custom, little girls becoming wives and mothers while the world called it divine order. And somewhere beneath centuries of incense, scripture and unquestioning worship lies a question so terrifying that religion itself seems afraid to hear it: Who was protecting the child while everyone was protecting the prophecy?

Then came Aisha, remembered in traditional accounts as six at marriage and nine at consummation, though her age remains historically disputed. And across the centuries echoes that ancient, convenient defence: “Those were different times.” As though time were an accomplice capable of absolving every wound. As though normality were morality, and tradition could turn vulnerability into consent. Perhaps the greatest horror is not what humanity once permitted, but how desperately it still labours to justify it. For the most dangerous evil does not always arrive wearing the face of a monster. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in scripture, crowned with authority, defended by generations, and called sacred. And the children? God help us. The children are never the ones who get to write the story