The marriage of the Prophet Muhammad^(P) to ^cAishah bint Ab

Regrettably, for those of us trying to spread the truth of Islam in the West, we often have to agree with the Orientalist W. Montgomery Watt when he wrote: 

Of all the world's great men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad.¹ 

But here, for a change, were are dealing with something that is an authentic part of Islamic history, not an apocryphal or fabricated event that Westerners have been duped into believing is authentic, such as the so-called "Satanic Verses" incident. That a man in his fifties would marry such a young girl - especially a man who is supposed to be a living example of piety - is not only difficult for many "modern" Westerners to come to terms with, but it has even gone so far as to stir up disgusting "sexual misconduct" charges amongst them.  In the face of such criticism, Muslims have not always reacted well.  In the past century, when so many Muslims were so "Westoxicated" and ready to monkey Europeans in almost anything, the usual reaction was to deny the sources that reported the alleged "embarrassing problem".  To Muslim "modernists", who argued that only a legal ruling found in the Qur'