Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  The second condition of janāba is intromission. When intromission takes place in one of the two partner’s openings to the extent that the glans disappears entirely, ghusl becomes an obligation both for the active and for the passive partner, whether or not there is ejaculation. If the man’s glans has been cut off, ghusl becomes obligatory as soon as the length of the penis equivalent to the glans is introduced. . . . Intromission in the vagina of an animal, a corpse or a child not normally capable of intercourse, does not make ghusl obligatory. . . . If a woman has been penetrated elsewhere than in her vagina, if the sperm nevertheless reaches her vagina and if she is a virgin or widow she does not have to wash, for in this case there has not been an intromission of a length equal to that of a glans, nor emission of sperm.14 If a woman recognizes that she has a djinn [as lover] who visits her and makes her feel what she feels when her husband lies with her, this woman does not have to wash. . . . If a ten-year-old boy has sexual intercourse with a pubescent woman, the woman must wash but not the boy; however it is advisable to get him to do so, so that he may acquire good habits [sic]. Intercourse with a castrated man involves an obligation of ghusl for the active and for the passive partner. . . . In the case of a man who surrounds his penis with a rag and practises intromission without ejaculation, there is a divergence of opinion. . . . The safest course is that if the rag is fine enough for one to feel the warmth of the partner’s penis and derive pleasure from it, one should wash, otherwise not. In the latter case it is more prudent to wash all the same. . . . A man who practises intromission in the sex of a true hermaphrodite must wash himself. . . .15

  Behind the evident and sometimes complaisant casuistry appears the clear concern to draw up strict boundaries for the state of janāba. A single concern emerges from the chapter traditionally devoted by the fiqh to the premature interruption of the month-long fast of ramadhan. This occurs when, accidentally or not, one eats or drinks something. But sexual pleasure is also a form of breaking the fast, in so far as fasting also involves an exercise in sexual abstinence. Let us turn once again to the fatāwā hindiyya on the question. We learn with a mass of details and specific examples the limits assigned to the exercise of sexuality during the fast.16

  Thus purity and impurity are not automatic. They result from a dialectic of the psychical and the biological. Indeed all the tests previously mentioned involve considerations of a psychological order (the intention of ejaculating, fasting, or simply ‘playing’, by indulging in foreplay) and of a very biological order (partial or total intromission, mechanical ejaculation or complete coitus, masturbation, etc.). As one can see ethics has nothing to do with the question, for ethics is concerned only with the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the act. An unnatural act perpetrated on a boy, while being condemned and regarded as a terrible sin, does not break the fast if it is not followed by ejaculation!

  For the woman coitus followed by orgasm is not the only case of impurity. Janāba also derives from the menstrua, lochia and pseudo-menstrual emissions.

  The fiqh merely passes on here an almost universal, in any case very widespread, attitude among ordinary people. Menstrual blood arouses considerable revulsion. More or less everywhere in the world popular tradition accuses it of aborting serious projects, of turning milk sour and food rotten.

  The fuqaha have defined in great detail the notion of the menstrua by distinguishing between the lawful impurity (ḥaiḍ) of the woman and evident impurity (istiḥāḍha).

  The menstrua are made up of blood that emerges from the woman’s vagina at other moments than during childbirth. The blood that emerges from the anus is not menstrual. . . . The menstrua are lawful if certain conditions are fulfilled. First if they take place between the ages of nine and fifty-five. . . . According to the greatest authorities, the blood that appears beyond that age does not constitute lawful menstruation. . . . The blood must flow outside the vagina, even if that condition is fulfilled only by abstaining from the use of a cotton tampon. If this tampon prevents the menstrual blood from passing from the uterus into the vagina, there is no menstruation. If a pure woman observes on the tampon or on her underwear some trace of blood, she is said to have menstruated. A menstruating woman who does not see any trace of blood on the tampon is said to have completed her menstrual period. . . . Menstrual blood must be one of the six following colours: black, red, yellow, lemon yellow, green and grey-green. One considers the colour of the cotton at the very moment when it is removed, not when it has dried. . . . The legal duration of the period is a minimum of three days and three nights, and a maximum of ten days and ten nights. . . . The period of purity between two menstrual periods must be at least fifteen days.17

  The legal duration of the lochia (nafās) is forty days. Childbirth involves an obligation to proceed to major ablutions unless the birth occurs without the shedding of blood. In that case one has only to proceed to minor ablutions. There is lawful childbirth when the greater part of the newborn child has emerged. Supposing that for some reason or another the child is cut up into several pieces, a legal birth is said to have occurred when a normally formed part of the body (a foot, a head) has emerged; otherwise only menstruation has taken place. When the delivery has taken place through the navel (in the case of a caesarian operation), there is a lawful childbirth only if at the same time some blood flows from the vagina.

  Children are said to be twins when two births occur less than six months apart. If the interval is greater, there are two separate childbirths and therefore a double prescription where purification and fasting are concerned. (Menstruation and the lochia, of course, annul the woman’s fast.) The minimum duration for a childbirth is one hour, with a maximum of forty days.

  The blood that flows after the lawful duration of childbirth or of the menstrual period or what appears between two lawful menstrual periods or two lawful childbirths or between a legal menstrual period and a legal childbirth is regarded as an apparent menstruation. The same applies to blood emissions occurring before the age of nine and after the age of fifty-five.

  Of course the lawful impurity of the woman does disturb her order and confers on her a status that places her outside the ordinary norms. Ipso facto she is dispensed from prayer and fasting. If she is performing either, she must break off at once. She will take them up again at a later date, when she is once more pure. She must not enter a mosque, unless there is an absolute need for her to draw water in a well placed within the sacred precincts. The same tolerance is applied in case of danger: if, for example, one has to flee a wild beast, a bandit, or if one wants to take refuge against cold, hail or lightning. Similarly it is prohibited to carry out the tawāf, or circumambulation around the ka‘ba, or sacred black stone of Mecca. Similarly she is forbidden to read, to recite, to copy out or to touch the Quran, the Gospels, the Bible or the Tora. If she is obliged to do so, she must pronounce the words one by one, spacing them out.

  Lastly, intercourse is forbidden with a woman during her period or lawful confinement: ‘The husband may embrace her, lie next to her and enjoy her whole body except the part comprised between the navel and the knees.’18

  Furthermore, purification is not an end in itself. It is merely a way of returning to the ritual practices: prayer, fasting, profession of faith, reading of the Quran pilgrimage. Purification is not gratuitous. It is a state that makes possible a dialogue with the sacred. It cannot be substituted for it. That is why Ghazali denounces the carrying out in either a mechanical or an exaggerated way of what after all is merely a preparation.

  For him the ultimate aim of purification is the peace of the soul and mastery over the body.19 He attacks the tendency, which was fairly widespread among his contemporaries and which is in fact a permanent feature of Arabo-Muslim societies, of cleaning the body in order to conceal the sinfulness of the soul. The purificatory technique then becomes a form of deceit, of deceiving others and deceiving oneself. This is why Ghazali lays such stress on the famous verse: ‘God does not desire to make any impe
diment for you; but He desires to purify you.’20 And Ghazali maintains that what is most important is to purify the mysteries of the private being; it is the heart, the mind, the entire soul that must first of all be purified, not the body.

  The true aim of purification, therefore, is to be able to see God. Now, knowledge of God is exclusive and can be attained only if one has first prepared oneself by abolishing in oneself any other viewpoint. But one cannot reach that state if the heart has not itself been previously purified. One must first furnish it with virtues, faith and noble beliefs. One must rid it of vices and false beliefs. It is in this sense that, for Ghazali, purity constitutes ‘half of faith’.21 Purity of heart rests in turn on cleansing the sense of concupiscence, desire, jealousy, cowardice and cupidity. But all this requires, by way of preparation, the purification of the body, ṭahāra, in the ordinary sense of the word.

  Thus purification is an ascesis, the various stages of which support one another. The purification of the body is merely a preparation for the true purity of the spiritual being. It is not an end in itself.

  Of course man has become so blinded that he is no longer aware of this hierarchy of levels and of all these stages of purity keeps only the last. But this last is merely bark, exteriority, appearance; the bottom step in a scale of values; a springboard to a centre that, alone, is the target to be reached. One sets out on a hopeless quest for exteriority! One spends all one’s energy on it! One devotes all one’s time to cleaning one’s anus, washing one’s clothes – cleaning the outside, looking for plentiful supplies of running water. And this obsession (waswasa) and these fantasies (takhayyul) lead us in the end to believe that the noble ṭahāra being pursued is no more than these practices alone! If one does so one is ignorant of the conduct of the ancients, who devoted all their efforts, all their power to purifying their hearts and who, on matters of mere appearance, were on the contrary full of tolerance!22

  And Ghazali remarks not without a touch of humour and disenchantment:

  But the ultimate today is reached by those who confuse popular medication (ra-wana) with cleanliness and who regard it as the foundation of religion. They spend most of their time polishing their fingernails as a beauty specialist might for a bride preparing for her wedding night! While the inside is stuffed with vices. Pride, infatuation, ignorance, ostentation, hypocrisy do not shock them, do not stir them up to any condemnation. But if someone is content to practise istinjā with stones, if he walks barefoot, if he says his prayers on the ground or on the bare earth of a mosque without a carpet, if he does his ablutions with water taken from the recipient of some good old woman or of a man whose piety cannot be guaranteed, they will seek a quarrel with him, track him down, call him every bad name they can think of, excommunicate him, cease to share their food with him and even to see him.23

  In the history of Islamic ethics, Ghazali succeeded in reviving the question of purification in an admirable way. With authority and using the most sacred texts as support, he put an end to the dichotomic, Manichean opposition of the pure and the impure. He substituted for it an ascending, Platonic dialectic of progressive ascent to ever purer states.

  Purification is not a technique of physical cleanliness, but a permanent, private quest for spirituality. Without expatiating too long on the historical character of Muslim thought, it should be pointed out how far we are from the sterile opposition of ultimate good and ultimate evil.24 To pose the problem in terms of a quest is to say that purification has a meaning and that this meaning is to be sought in a transcending of one’s own body. This notion is quite crucial if we are to situate correctly the Islamic conception of ṭahāra.

  Of course, purification involves bodily elements of all kinds,25 but it cannot be reduced to mere hygiene. Again it comprises a level that might be called that of cleanliness. And it is quite normal for a physician to make use of Islamic ‘hygienism’, which postulates from the outset the integration of faith and cleanliness. ‘Cleanliness is part of faith. Dirt is the work of the devil,’ says a popular saying. But if cleanliness is at the service of faith, it is not coextensive with it.

  It is also true, of course, that the particular care with which the fiqh tries to define the rules of lawfulness, lawful purity, is directly related to social life. This is because it involves the very organization of the historically embodied community. Paternity, widowhood and inheritance are directly involved. It involves an affirmation of the limits that God places on his community, which is made up of men and women who have relations between themselves that involve their most vital temporal interests. The chapters of the fiqh that deal with these questions confront explicitly, therefore, a series of facts perceived in their totality. It may be said without hesitation that, in Islam, purification is a total phenomenon, at once social and psychical.

  But this total vision should not blind us to the fact that what is in question, above everything else, is the relationship of two forces: that of the sexual and that of the sacred.

  Islam is a constant attention paid to one’s own body. A Muslim upbringing is a training that makes one permanently aware of the functioning of the physiological life. Eating, drinking, urinating, farting, defecating, having sexual intercourse, vomiting, bleeding, shaving, cutting one’s nails. . . . All this is the object of meticulous prescriptions, of which we have provided only a few examples. There are formulas to be recited before, during and after each act. There are ways in which the acts are to be performed, certain gestures to be carried out, a style to be respected. It comes very close to obsession, as Ghazali saw very clearly when he recommended, at each step of the monumental summa that makes up the Iḥyā, a sense of balance (i‘tidāl), which is alone capable of banishing obsessional waswās.26

  Perhaps more than any others, Muslim societies have produced men and women who are sick with cleanliness. The meat that is bled, then washed by certain people as many as seven times, sometimes even in soapy water; the receptacles that are washed seven times; the long, frequent visits to the Moorish baths; this unhealthy fear and mistrust of uncleanliness in every form and especially the meticulous and excessive attentions that one lavishes on one’s body in the form of minor purification, all this points directly to anality. Like orality, anality seems to me to be an essential part of Arabo-Muslim upbringing. Istinjā is, among other things, an eroticization of the anal zone. One may apply to the fiqh Ferenczi’s term ‘morality of the sphincters’. Is it not a matter of rigorously supervising the movement of everything that emerges from the body, solid, liquid or gas, to be aware of it and to behave as a consequence in a canonically adequate fashion?

  This leads to a total, complete and absolute cathecting or investment of the body. The fiqh is a way of experiencing one’s body, of apprehending it, of assuming it positively and fully. Islam is a way of taking charge of one’s physiological life, the art of living one’s corporality and of continually resacralizing it. The fulfillment of each physiological action is immediately and unfailingly followed by a set of techniques that reestablish the purity that Ghazali sees as the natural, normal, truthful state of things. Purity is not the conquest of some deep, original impurity. It is a restoration of and return to an originally positive situation. In this sense the fiqh is in itself liberating. It appeases our scruples and gives us back our confidence. Through an adequate attitude to his body the Muslim achieves security.

  Where sexuality in the strict sense is concerned, this role of purification becomes even more marked. Sexuality is desacralizing: it brings into play forces that have always appeared to man as alien, mysterious and necessarily involving a break with the sacred. Purification is precisely the resacralization and reconciliation of man with himself.

  We know the famous theory of Georges Bataille, largely borrowed, it is true, from Durkheim, that this is one of the origins of life. The great problem is to overcome anxiety.

  ‘Anxiety, it seems, constitutes humanity: not anxiety itself, but anxiety overcome, the overcoming of anxiety.’27r />
  Now, we can say quite clearly that ghusl has metaphysical implications: it is precisely an overcoming of anxiety; the mysterious forces of orgasm, menstrual blood and childbirth are, as it were, reabsorbed by this ‘resumption of control’ over my own body. These forces are forces of delusion, mystery, overflowing, ecstasy. Purification captures them, canalizes them, integrates them. Organic life is loss, despiritualization. Ritual purity is restoration and resacralization. The way of assuming one’s body will assuage anxiety, and anxiety will be replaced by peace of mind, the necessary condition for complete internal balance. Ghusl, then, has both a compensatory and an integrating function.

  We can see in actual cases how the sexual is placed at the service of the social and how the social serves the sexual. Muslim society exploits for its own ends the drives of the sexual mystery and integrates them into normal, stereotyped behaviour. What might have been an unconscious, destructive drive both for society and individuals alike is transformed into ritual and myth, and thus loses its morbid, alien and supposedly dangerous characteristics. Purification is in the full sense of the word an end to that most dangerous of alienations: janāba.

  CHAPTER 6

  Commerce with the invisible