Some enlightened scholars say that Aishah (radhiyallahu anha) had taught the seven Fuqaha of Madina.

Answer

These modernist 'enlightened scholars' take things out of context, then add their own interpretations to justify their modernist deviated practices. When it is said, for example, 'Aishah (radhiyallahu anha) taught the first seven Fuqaha of Madina', it creates in the mind of the audience the absolutely false idea that Hadhrat Aishah (radhiyallahu anha) had operated a systematic madrasah where males and females would attend and where she would daily impart lessons in academic style. This idea is the furthest from the truth.

Aishah (radhiyallahu anha) never taught the seven Fuqaha of Madina nor anyone else in the conventional style of teaching. What used to occur in that era was that people would come from far and wide to the Sahaabah to seek guidance and to hear from them the Ahaadith of Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam). They would come individually to the homes of the Sahaabah, and this included Hadhrat Aishah and the other Wives of Nabi (sallallahu alayhi wasallam). From behind a screen in her hut she would narrate to them what she heard and saw from Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam). After hearing the Hadith, they departed. They did not camp there to attend daily classes, etc. Her hut, style and methodology were bereft of the zina paraphernalia which accompany the 'educational' institutions of this age.

This was the system of spreading knowledge in the early stages of Islam. For example, Imaam Bukhaari had more than a thousand Hadith teachers (Asaatizah). This does not mean that he sat in their company and acquired knowledge systematically on a daily basis. What happened was that if someone narrated to him a Hadith, then the narrator was automatically regarded as a teacher although Imaam Bukhaari may have met him only once in his lifetime for a few minutes.

The same stupid and misleading impression is created by deviate modernists and the misguided Tablighis when they say women participated in Jihad during the time of Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam). We have explained this in some detail in our booklet, The Ladies Tabligh Jamaat.