Beyond the Veil

by Fatema Mernissi

  Imam Ghazali’s emphasis on the identity between male and female sexuality appears clearly in his granting the female the most uncontested expression of phallic sexuality, ejaculation. This reduces the differences between the sexes to a simple difference of pattern of ejaculation, the female’s being much slower than the male’s.

  The difference in the pattern of ejaculation between the sexes is a source of hostility whenever the man reaches his ejaculation before the woman.... The woman’s ejaculation is a much slower process and during that process her sexual desire grows stronger and to withdraw from her before she reaches her pleasure is harmful to her.29

  Here we are very far from the bedroom scenes of Aqqad and Freud, which resemble battlefields more than shelters of pleasure. For Imam Ghazali there is neither aggressor nor victim, just two people cooperating to give each other pleasure.

  The recognition of female sexuality as active is an explosive acknowledgement for the social order with far-reaching implications for its structure as a whole. But to deny that male and female sexuality are identical is also an explosive and decisive choice. For example, Freud recognizes that the clitoris is an evident phallic appendage and that the female is consequently more bisexual than the male.

  There can be no doubt that the bisexual disposition which we maintain to be characteristic of human beings manifests itself much more plainly in the female than in the male. The latter has only one principal sexual zone – only one sexual organ – whereas the former has two: the vagina, the true female organ, and the clitoris, which is analogous to the male organ.30

  Instead of elaborating a theory which integrates and elaborates the richness of both sexes’ particularities, however, Freud elaborates a theory of female sexuality based on reduction: the castration of the phallic features of the female. A female child, bisexual in infancy, develops into a mature female only if she succeeds in renouncing the clitoris, the phallic appendage: ‘The elimination of the clitorial sexuality is a necessary pre-condition for the development of femininity.’31 The pubertal development process brings atrophy to the female body while it enhances the phallic potential of the male’s, thus creating a wide discrepancy in the sexual potential of humans, depending on their sex:

  Puberty, which brings to the boy a great advance of libido, distinguishes itself in the girl by a new wave of repression which especially concerns the clitoral sexuality. It is a part of the male sexual life that sinks into repression. The reinforcement of the inhibitions produced in the woman by the repression of puberty causes a stimulus in the libido of the man and forces it to increase its capacity; with the height of the libido, there is a rise in the overestimation of the sexual, which can be present in its full force only when the woman refuses and denies her sexuality.32

  The female child becomes a woman when her clitoris ‘acts like a chip of pinewood which is utilized to set fire to the harder wood.’33 Freud adds that this process takes some time, during which the ‘young wife remains anesthetic’.34 This anesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris refuses to relinquish its excitability. The Freudian woman, faced with her phallic partner, is therefore predisposed to frigidity.

  The sexual frigidity of women, the frequency of which appears to confirm this disregard (the disregard of nature for the female function) is a phenomenon that is still insufficiently understood. Sometimes it is psychogenic and in that case accessible to influence; but in other cases it suggests the hypothesis of its being constitutionally determined and even of being a contributory anatomical factor.35

  By contrast with the passive, frigid Freudian female, the sexual demands of Imam Ghazali’s female appear truly overwhelming, and the necessity for the male to satisfy them becomes a compelling social duty: ‘The virtue of the woman is a man’s duty. And the man should increase or decrease sexual intercourse with the woman according to her needs so as to secure her virtue.’36 The Ghazalian theory directly links the security of the social order to that of the woman’s virtue, and thus to the satisfaction of her sexual needs. Social order is secured when the woman limits herself to her husband and does not create fitna, or chaos, by enticing other men to illicit intercourse. Imam Ghazali’s awe of the overpowering sexual demands of the active female appears when he admits how difficult it is for a man to satisfy a woman.

  If the prerequisite amount of sexual intercourse needed by the woman in order to guarantee her virtue is not assessed with precision, it is because such an assessment is difficult to make and difficult to satisfy.37

  He cautiously ventures that the man should have intercourse with the woman as often as he can, once every four nights if he has four wives. He suggests this as a limit, otherwise the woman’s sexual needs might not be met.

  It is just for the husband to have sexual intercourse with his wife every four nights if he has four wives. It is possible for him to extend the limit to this extreme. Indeed, he should increase or decrease sexual intercourse according to her own needs.38

  Freud’s and Ghazali’s stands on foreplay are directly influenced by their visions of female sexuality. For Freud, the emphasis should be on the coital act, which is primarily ‘the union of the genitals’,39 and he deemphasizes foreplay as lying between normal (genital) union and perversion, which consists ‘. . . in either an anatomical transgression of the bodily regions destined for sexual union or a lingering at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed on the way to definite sexual union.’40

  In contrast, Imam Ghazali recommends foreplay, primarily in the interest of the woman, as a duty for the believer. Since the woman’s pleasure necessitates a lingering at the intermediary stages, the believer should strive to subordinate his own pleasure, which is served mainly by the genital union.

  The Prophet said, ‘No one among you should throw himself on his wife like beasts do. There should be, prior to coitus, a messenger between you and her.’ People asked him, ‘What sort of messenger?’ The Prophet answered, ‘Kisses and words.’41

  The Prophet indicated that one of the weaknesses in a man’s character would be that

  . . . he will approach his concubine-slave or his wife and that he will have intercourse with her without having prior to that been caressing, been tender with her in words and gestures and laid down beside her for a while, so that he -does not harm her, by using her for his own satisfaction, without letting her get her satisfaction from him.42

  The Fear of Female Sexuality

  The perception of female aggression is directly influenced by the theory of women’s sexuality. For Freud the female’s aggression, in accordance with her sexual passivity, is turned inward. She is masochistic.

  The suppression of woman’s aggressiveness which is prescribed for them constitutionally and imposed on them socially favours the development of powerful masochistic impulses, which succeed, as we know, in binding erotically the destructive trends which have been diverted inwards. Thus masochism, as people say, is truly feminine. But if, as happens so often, you meet with masochism in men, what is left for you but to say that these men exhibit very plainly feminine traits.43

  The absence of active sexuality moulds the woman into a masochistic, passive being. It is therefore no surprise that in the actively sexual Muslim female aggressiveness is seen as turned outward. The nature of her aggression is precisely sexual. The Muslim woman is endowed with a fatal attraction which erodes the male’s will to resist her and reduces him to a passive acquiescent role. He has no choice; he can only give in to her attraction, whence her identification with fitna, chaos, and with the anti-divine and anti-social forces of the universe.

  The Prophet saw a woman. He hurried to his house and had intercourse with his wife Zaynab, then left the house and said, ‘When the woman comes towards you, it is Satan who is approaching you. When one of you sees a woman and he feels attracted to her, he should hurry to his wife. With her, it would be the same as with the other one.’44

  Commenting on this quotation, Im
am Muslim, an established voice of Muslim tradition, reports that the Prophet was referring to the

  . . . fascination, to the irresistible attraction to women God instilled in man’s soul, and he was referring to the pleasure man experiences when he looks at the woman, and the pleasure he experiences with anything related to her. She resembles Satan in his irresistible power over the individual.45

  This attraction is a natural link between the sexes. Whenever a man is faced with a woman, fitna might occur: ‘When a man and a woman are isolated in the presence of each other, Satan is bound to be their third companion.’46

  The most potentially dangerous woman is one who has experienced sexual intercourse. It is the married woman who will have more difficulties in bearing sexual frustration. The married woman whose husband is absent is a particular threat to men: ‘Do not go to the women whose husbands are absent. Because Satan will get in your bodies as blood rushes through your flesh.’47

  In Moroccan folk culture this threat is epitomized by the belief in Aisha Kandisha, a repugnant female demon. She is repugnant precisely because she is libidinous. She has pendulous breasts and lips and her favourite pastime is to assault men in the streets and in dark places, to induce them to have sexual intercourse with her, and ultimately to penetrate their bodies and stay with them for ever.48 They are then said to be inhabited. The fear of Aisha Kandisha is more than ever present in Morocco’s daily life. Fear of the castrating female is a legacy of tradition and is seen in many forms in popular beliefs and practices and in both religious and mundane literature, particularly novels.

  Moroccan folk culture is permeated with a negative attitude towards femininity. Loving a woman is popularly described as a form of mental illness, a self-destructive state of mind. A Moroccan proverb says

  Love is a complicated matter

  If it does not drive you crazy, it kills you.49

  The best example of this distrust of women is the sixteenth-century poet Sidi Abderahman al-Majdoub. His rhymes are so popular that they have become proverbs.

  Women are fleeting wooden vessels

  Whose passengers are doomed to destruction.

  Or

  Don’t trust them [women], so you would not be betrayed

  Don’t believe in their promises, so you would not be deceived

  To be able to swim, fish need water

  Women are the only creatures who can swim without it.50

  And finally

  Women’s intrigues are mighty

  To protect myself I run endlessly

  Women are belted with serpents

  And bejewelled with scorpions.51

  The Muslim order faces two threats: the infidel without and the woman within.

  The Prophet said, ‘After my disappearance there will be no greater source of chaos and disorder for my nation than women.’52

  The irony is that Muslim and European theories come to the same conclusion: women are destructive to the social order – for Imam Ghazali because they are active, for Freud because they are not.

  Different social orders have integrated the tensions between religion and sexuality in different ways. In the Western Christian experience sexuality itself was attacked, degraded as animality and condemned as anti-civilization. The individual was split into two antithetical selves: the spirit and the flesh, the ego and the id. The triumph of civilization implied the triumph of soul over flesh, of ego over id, of the controlled over the uncontrolled, of spirit over sex.

  Islam took a substantially different path. What is attacked and debased is not sexuality but women, as the embodiment of destruction, the symbol of disorder. The woman is fitna, the epitome of the uncontrollable, a living representative of the dangers of sexuality and its rampant disruptive potential. We have seen that Muslim theory considers raw instinct as energy which is likely to be used constructively for the benefit of Allah and His society if people live according to His laws. Sexuality per se is not a danger. On the contrary, it has three positive, vital functions. It allows the believers to perpetuate themselves on earth, an indispensable condition if the social order is to exist at all. It serves as a ‘foretaste of the delights secured for men in Paradise’,53 thus encouraging men to strive for paradise and to obey Allah’s rule on earth. Finally, sexual satisfaction is necessary to intellectual effort.

  The Muslim theory of sublimation is entirely different from the Western Christian tradition as represented by Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Freud viewed civilization as a war against sexuality.54 Civilization is sexual energy ‘turned aside from its sexual goal and diverted towards other ends, no longer sexual and socially more valuable’.55 The Muslim theory views civilization as the outcome of satisfied sexual energy. Work is the result not of sexual frustration but of a contented and harmoniously lived sexuality.

  The soul is usually reluctant to carry out its duty because duty [work] is against its nature. If one puts pressures on the soul in order to make it do what it loathes, the soul rebels. But if the soul is allowed to relax for some moments by the means of some pleasures, it fortifies itself and becomes after that alert and ready for work again. And in the woman’s company, this relaxation drives out sadness and pacifies the heart. It is advisable for pious souls to divert themselves by means which are religiously lawful.56

  According to Ghazali, the most precious gift God gave humans is reason. Its best use is the search for knowledge. To know the human environment, to know the earth and galaxies, is to know God. Knowledge (science) is the best form of prayer for a Muslim believer. But to be able to devote his energies to knowledge, man has to reduce the tensions within and without his body, avoid being distracted by external elements, and avoid indulging in earthly pleasures. Women are a dangerous distraction that must be used for the specific purpose of providing the Muslim nation with offspring and quenching the tensions of the sexual instinct. But in no way should women be an object of emotional investment or the focus of attention, which should be devoted to Allah alone in the form of knowledge-seeking, meditation, and prayer.

  Ghazali’s conception of the individual’s task on earth is illuminating in that it reveals that the Muslim message, in spite of its beauty, considers humanity to be constituted by males only. Women are considered not only outside of humanity but a threat to it as well. Muslim wariness of heterosexual involvement is embodied in sexual segregation and its corollaries: arranged marriage, the important role of the mother in the son’s life, and the fragility of the marital bond (as revealed by the institutions of repudiation and polygamy). The entire Muslim social structure can be seen as an attack on, and a defence against, the disruptive power of female sexuality.

  2

  Regulation of Female Sexuality in the Muslim Social Order

  It is a widely shared belief among historians in different cultures that human history is progressive, that human society, in spite of accidents and setbacks, moves progressively from ‘savagery’ to ‘civilization’. Islam too has a progressive vision of history. The year 622, the hijra, is the year one of civilization. Before the hijra was jahiliya, the time of barbarism, the time of ignorance.1 Islam maintains that one of the dimensions of society in which there was progress is human sexuality.2 Under jahiliya sexuality was promiscuous, lax, and uncontrolled, but under Islam it obeys rules. The specific, unique code of Islam’s s law outlaws fornication as a crime. But what is peculiar about Muslim sexuality as civilized sexuality is this fundamental discrepancy: if promiscuity and laxity are signs of barbarism, then only women’s sexuality was civilized by Islam; male sexuality is promiscuous (by virtue of polygamy) and lax (by virtue of repudiation).3 This contradiction is evident in both seventh-century family legislation and the modern Moroccan Code.

  Polygamy

  Decree No. 2-57-1040 of August 1957 charged a commission of ten men with the elaboration of a Muslim Moroccan code of law, the Muduwana, or Code du Statut Personnel. These ten men reenacted polygamy, whose basis is a famous verse of the Koran.

 
Marry of the women who seem good to you, two, three, or four, and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice [to so many] then one [only] . . .

  A notable peculiarity of this verse is that the only condition limiting a man’s right to polygamy is fear of injustice, a subjective feeling not easy to define legally. The Moroccan legislators, probably aware of the rather outmoded aspect of polygamy, rephrased the verse in such a way that the word ‘forbidden’ closely follows ‘polygamy’, but the content is identical.

  Art. 30: If injustice is feared, polygamy is forbidden.

  This echoes verse 129 of the fourth sura: ‘You cannot be perfectly equitable to all your wives, even if you so desire.’

  The Koran does not provide a justification for polygamy, but Ghazali does. According to him, polygamy is based on instinct. Ghazali’s justification clearly reveals the flaw in the Muslim theory of sexuality, and provides one of the most telling insights into the problem that modern Morocco, as a Muslim society, is obliged to solve. Polygamy entitles the male not simply to satisfy his sexuality, but to indulge it to saturation without taking women’s needs into consideration, women being considered simply ‘agents’ in the process.

  Once the agent [of sexual excitation] is known, the remedy should be adapted to its intensity and degree, the aim being to relieve the soul from tension. One can decide for a greater number [of women] or a lesser number . . . for the man burdened with a strong sexual desire and for whom one woman is not enough to guarantee his chastity [chastity for a married person being abstention from zina, fornication], it is recommended that he add to the first wife, others. The total should not exceed, however, four.4

  Polygamy implies that a man’s sexual drive might require copulation with more than one partner to relieve his soul (and body) from sexual tension. Elsewhere Ghazali implies that there is no difference of character between male and female sex drives. Thus he unintentionally acknowledges a latent reason for women’s reluctant attitude towards the Muslim order.