Reading about Aisha—how she’d fret over the Prophet staying out too long in the sun, or how she’d recite scores of poetry verses from memory—I was exultant. So much of Aisha’s life closed the gap between Islamic traditions of womanhood and my own feminist sensibilities. In Aisha we find a woman, and a woman’s interpretations, at the core of a religious tradition. “Take half your religion from Humayra [the Little Rosy One],” Muhammad advised his Companions, using his nickname for the fair-skinned Aisha.
