1. The title of ‘mother of the believers’ was not bestowed upon them because it shows any kind of merits of their own.
2. ‘Motherhood’ was further endorced in this verse to prohibit the Muslim men from marraying the wives of Holy Prophet [s] in evetuality of divorce or after His death.
3. Being mother of the beliver is a concept/title which is ‘dependent on the believers’ and its not the vice versa. Its like: *‘Meet her, she is the mother of Dr. A Q Khan’. *A Q Khan’s mother’s identity is dependent on A’Q Khan, thus the merit is of A.Q Khan not of his mother.
4. A mother can be good or bad. I know mothers who doesnt care for their child and leave them to wander on to the streets no matter where the child goes and what bad company he keeps, the mother just want to remain busy with chitchat and related stuff. No one is going to call such a mother as a good mother in fact her acts have opened the door of criticism (for her acts, not the personal slander or character assisination)!.
5. You talked of people’s intentions, then in its relation we see that Holy Prophet [s] predicted that hz Ayesha will:
**- do a rebellion (which is a big thing since it is said that the funeral prayer of a rebel is not to be recited and one who dies without recognizing the imam of his/her time dies at the death of Jahilyah period)
- will be accompanied by infidels (this shows what status those people had in the eyes of Prophet [s], whlist they were Sahaba and how grave their crime/sin was)
- The dogs of Hawab will bark at her and that will be the sign of her being at wrong path (yet she didnt pay heed to this massive sign of her being on wrong path and moved on persisting with the war, resulting murder of thousands of Muslims).
**- **Ali bin Abi Talib [as] will be on the right path
**- **Whoever sees such a situation look for Ali bin Abi Talib [as] and adhere to him [as].
I hope I have summarized the whole lengthy debate it one post.