Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  For Islam man exceeds in dignity the whole of creation and contains within himself the wonders that bear witness to the divine majesty. Second in relation to God, he is first in relation to every other creature. He is the link between natura naturata and ens naturans. And it is no accident if he possesses at once a soul, a sex and responsibility. For the Quran, responsibility is grounded in love. So much so that the traditional exegesis is not afraid to give a sexual meaning to the famous quranic verse concerning the ‘remembrance’ offered by God to the heavens and the earth, which rejected it, and that only man accepted. Sexuality is a precious ‘remembrance’ or gift entrusted to man’s safe keeping.1 This great juvenile lead of creation lives in a world peopled by the invisible. And relations with the invisible are also of a sexual order.

  Islamic theology distinguishes between four sorts of creatures: the malā-ika (angels), the ins (men), the jānn (djinns) and the shaiṭān (devils). All are animated, responsible (mukallafa)2 and, with the exception of angels, sexual beings.

  Only the angels have no sex. Razi remarks that they have no femininity. ‘No femininity, no progeniture.’3 They do not know physical love; they are beings without desire. ‘They know neither hunger nor sexual appetite.’4 They have only spiritual desires: to sing the praises of God, for example. They reflect deeply rooted tendencies in Muslim man to aspire to cross the boundaries of his being. Indeed they express a permanent desire for transcendence and for a sublimation that is all the more ethereal in that the angels, who are essentially a-sexual, are outside our grasp. Angelic oneirism is an oneirism of sublimation, which is not the case with oneirism of the devil and oneirism of the djinns, with whom sexual intercourse is possible de jure and . . . de facto.

  The devil is an angel, but a rebel one. Jealous of man, he swore to bring about his perdition by every means. He obtained from God the power to lead men into error. In Islam he is the tempter who urges man to disobey God, but above all to fornicate and transgress the sexual taboos. Indeed man has received, among other gifts from God, that of distinguishing between good and evil, a faculty that is at the disposal neither of the angels nor of the djinns, who are quite incapable of choice. In Islam temptation does not have the same meaning and significance as it has in Christian theology. It does not derive from human culpability, since Islam has no conception of original sin. The corollary of human responsibility, the ability to be tempted, is a logical consequence of freedom.5

  The devil does not enjoy total power over man. And if the devil likes to tempt men, it is above all to prove to God that they can sin and that the faculty of choosing that was given to them is used by them for evil, not for good ends. Iblis seized upon this as proof of his superiority over Adam and over his descendants and to justify his own refusal.

  Henceforth all human sin is a justification of Iblis. The evil that it makes us do enables him to recover the power given to our race. Iblis is not pure negativity.

  Nevertheless, for orthodox Islam, Adam remains the being of Eden and Iblis the infernal being. Iblis is anti-man and as such he reveals man to himself. He is the other that enables us to place ourselves. Without Iblis there may not have been humanity. He is the underside of ourselves and as such he expresses our own essence.

  The power of the devil is certainly very varied. Nevertheless it is the sexual appetite that is at the centre of the archetype. Iblis, the fallen angel, the a-sexual being, is everywhere a highly eroticized and eroticizing character. One hadith commented upon by Qortobi provides a key to the mystery. ‘After making Adam the Blessed in Eden, God the Most High left him alone there for some time. Iblis then began to walk around the creature and examine him well. When he saw that Adam was hollow and bellied (ajwaf), he realized that he had been made in such a way that he could not control his sexual appetite.’6 There is a continuity from the idea of sexuality, a remembrance or token of God’s trust, to that of Adam, bellied and hollowed and handed over to the power of Satan from the outset.

  Indeed to keep to the chronological order of his making, man was first of a single sex. According to a tradition reported by Abdullah Amr-Ibn El ‘As, ‘the first thing that God created of man was his sexual organ. He then said: “I entrust you with this gift. Use it only according to the truth. If you look after it, it will look after you. The sexual organ is a gift, the ear is a gift”. . . .’7 It was certainly this gift that made Iblis jealous of Adam and his descendants. What the non-sexed devil was jealous of was human sexuality. Depravity, zinā and other perversions are temptations of the jealous devil.

  Of course this in no way excludes the syncretism and the clearly sexual signification of the character of Iblis is an extension of other, earlier Arab or universal beliefs. Gaudefroy-Demombynes observes,

  In ancient Arabic, Shaytan had the sense of ‘serpent’, which was the animal form that the djinns most readily adopted . . . according to the Muslim tradition . . . Iblis got back into Paradise in the belly of a four-footed animal, like a Bactrian camel, in order to trick the angels who were guarding paradise: Allah cursed this fine animal, which became a serpent crawling on its belly.8

  Iblis is the Serpent of the Bible. He is at once the general principle of evil, the archetype of the lower soul within us, symbolized by Satan, the serpent and the scorpion, to take up the trilogy dear to Mme Maryse Choisy.9

  So much does the devil express this underside of himself for the Arabo-Muslim that he is constantly in dialogue with himself and not only in his dreams! From Ma’ariis’s Message of Pardon to Qazwīni’s Marvels of Creation, to Abderrahman Shukri, to Taufiq al-Hakīm, to the Arabic-speaking Brazilian poet Shafiq Ma-lūf,10 what we have, in the final analysis, are so many variations on the extraordinary dialogue imagined by al-Hallaj between Moses descending the mountain where he had received the Tablets of the Law and Iblis the challenger, with his face blackened by divine curse. We have only to turn to the magnificent researches of Massignon.11

  But there is a less well-known text in which Muhammad in person enters into dialogue with Iblis. This anonymous text traditionally appears after Muh’y iddin Ibn Arabi’s The Cosmic Tree.12 It is a compilation in dialogue form of authentic hadiths reported by Bokhāri and Muslim.13 One day the Prophet was surrounded by a group of believers at Medina when Iblis appeared among them. Ordered to do so by God, he had come to reveal to the Prophet the absolute truth about himself.

  So Satan talked with Muhammad the Messenger of God and revealed to him certain truths. He unveiled to him his greatest secrets. This confession ordered by God himself constitutes in a sense an exercise of exegesis and a warning. Hence the injunction addressed by Muhammad to his companions: ‘Understand well what he says to you; listen to what he is about to tell you.’ Omar’s first, spontaneous response was ‘to kill the devil’, but the Prophet advised him to begin by understanding the Evil One, in order to outwit his cunning. We are to understand by this that temptation is a ‘mechanism’, which it is up to us to take apart if we are to overcome it. Knowledge, even when revealed by the Spirit of Evil, is a way of purification. Evil and sin are reduced here to an action that is in some sense mechanical, though insidious on the part of the Tempter, who wishes to lead the most just, most virtuous, most holy men into error.

  Despite the power that he exerts over men the devil is, in the last resort, presented here in a rather reassuring guise and the image that is given of him is far from terrifying, even if on reflection he turns out to be terrible. ‘He was a one-eyed old man with a thin beard. In his beard there were seven hairs like those of the Mare. Both his eyes were split [vertically]. His head was like that of a big elephant. His teeth protruded like those of a wild boar and his lips were like those of an ox.’14 The character is certainly ridiculous. He is ugly, of course, but he is not excessively monstrous. How far we are from medieval Christian fantasy, from the strange monsters of Vézelay Abbey, for instance! How far we are from diabolical hubris! What we are confronted with is almost a ‘de-demonized’ devil. A Spirit of Evil, no more, a r
ebel against God. A continual temptation, nothing more.

  However, when looked at more closely and as a whole Iblis’s features constitute a clever symbolic arabesque. The tempter, who is capable of assuming a thousand and one shapes, chooses that of an old man (shaikh) and therefore in principle and according to the stereotypes of Arabo-Muslim society, he assumes the features of a mature, adult man, who, being beyond the age of love-making, whether lawful or unlawful, ought to have no other thoughts than those of piety and fear of God. Then, little by little, by successive touches, the features shape the character and situate him.

  For this old man is one-eyed. Iblis justifies his reputation: he is often rightly called the a‘war. From pre-Islamic times Arab society, like many others, was ill disposed towards the one-eyed, who were supposed to bring misfortune: they symbolized the more or less deserved loss of the essential instrument of contact with light! God punishes wicked, indiscreet voyeurs, by depriving them of the sight of one or two eyes. The one-eyed is the half-condemned. Psychoanalysis has shed light on this theme of symbolic punishment by the loss of an eye.

  Furthermore, this single eye is split vertically. This is almost as if to stress the sexual signification of this eye. The word shaqq (slit or vulva) certainly designates the female sexual organ in Arabic, whereas the word ‘ala al ṭūl stresses still further the excessive elongation of the thing. The vaginal symbol is obvious. A certain cruelty is also present in it, for it is a diabolical eye that sees everything, lays in wait for everything, watches man’s slightest gestures, observes his slightest weaknesses in order to exploit them and, taking advantage of weak points in our psychical armoury, strikes at the most unexpected moment.

  In this portrait there is a deliberate desire not only to de-demonize the devil, but also to de-virilize him; this is what is meant by the feature of the thin beard. Iblis is not quite beardless (amrad), which would have given his portrait a sodomistic touch. The word used here is kausaj:15 without hair on the cheeks. Just a short, thin goatee with exactly seven mare’s hairs. This last detail demeans Iblis still further, animalizing him and devirilizing him still more.

  The mission of the devil is here a mission of truth and Iblis is ordered to show himself as he really is:

  The Lord orders you to go and find Muhammad, to make yourself small, humble and modest before him and to tell him how you trick the descendants of Adam and inspire wicked thoughts in them. You will answer truthfully whatever questions he asks you. By My Power and Majesty, if you lie once and conceal the truth from him, I shall reduce you to ashes, which will be scattered to the winds, and all your enemies will rejoice at your ill fortune. ‘Here I am, Muhammad,’ said the devil, ‘I have come as I was ordered to. Ask whatever questions you will. If I lie, my enemies will rejoice in my misfortune, and nothing is more difficult to bear for me than that.’16

  Iblis speaks and presents his view of things, which in reality is merely the perfect antithesis of the Islamic image of the world. The holiest being, the Prophet, becomes, in Ibiis’s eyes, the most hateful of beings and, conversely, the most impious is seen by Iblis as the most likeable. The world of the devil is hierarchized; it contains many different levels, as does our own, and is presented as an anti-world. The devil does not care, then, either for Muhammad or for his four companions, who will be his successors, nor for anyone who imitates his holy example: piety allied with youth, humility allied with knowledge, masculinity allied with purity, poverty allied with endurance, wealth allied with gratitude for the gifts of God, prayer in common, fasting at ramadhan, the pilgrimage to Mecca, reading the Quran, the giving of alms, without forgetting the coming together of learned men. Indeed Iblis describes in great detail his own world, his own ritual and gives much useful information on satanic behaviour. This is how he answers the detailed questions put by Muhammad:

  The Prophet: Tell me, Accursed one, with whom do you share your table?

  Iblis: The man who eats from usury!

  The Prophet: And your companion?

  Iblis: The fornicator!

  The Prophet: And who shares your bed?

  Iblis: The drunkard!

  The Prophet: And who is your guest?

  Iblis: The thief!

  The Prophet: And your messenger?

  Iblis: The sorcerer!

  The Prophet: Who is the apple of your eye?

  Iblis: The man who is always swearing by the repudiation of his wife!

  The Prophet: Who is your friend?

  Iblis: The man who has given up Friday prayers!

  The Prophet: Accursed One! What can break your back?

  Iblis: The neighing of horses taking part in Holy War!

  The Prophet: And melt your body?

  Iblis: The return to God of the sinner who repents!

  The Prophet: And burn your liver?

  Iblis: To hear night and day those who ask God to pardon their misdeeds!

  The Prophet: And what makes you blush?

  Iblis: To see alms given in secret!

  The Prophet: And what pierces your eye?

  Iblis: Prayers at dawn!

  The Prophet: And what strikes you violently on the head?

  Iblis: To see people praying together!

  The Prophet: Who for you is the happiest of men?

  Iblis: He who has voluntarily given up his prayers!

  The Prophet: And the most unfortunate?

  Iblis: The misers!

  The Prophet: What, then, can turn you away from your activity?

  Iblis: The meetings of learned men!

  The Prophet: How do you eat?

  Iblis: With the fingers of my left hand!

  The Prophet: Where, then, do your sons seek shade in the heat of the day and when the warm, poisoned wind blows from the south?

  Iblis: Under men’s nails!

  The Prophet: How many things have you asked of God?

  Iblis: Ten!

  The Prophet: What are they, then, Accursed One?

  Iblis: I asked him to let me associate with the sons of Adam, and with their goods and progeniture, and he associated me with them. And he revealed it in his Holy Book. ‘He associated himself with their goods and their progeniture and made them fine promises. But the promise of the devil is only an insane temptation!’

  I also asked him to let me eat my fill of whatever has not been purified by lawful alms and also to eat all food with which usury and unlawfulness have been mingled and also all goods that have not been blessed by invoking the name of God to protect them against me.

  Every man, too, who sleeps with his wife and who omits to protect himself against me, by invoking the name of God, well, I shall sleep with his wife at the same time as he and the child that shall be born to him will be submissive and obedient to me. Every man who mounts a beast and goes off to carry out some act that is not lawful, I shall accompany him. God himself has revealed it: ‘Urge them to foot or to horse!’

  I asked God to assign me a residence and he created the hammam!

  I asked him for a temple and he created souks!

  I asked him for a Holy Scripture and he created poetry!

  I asked him for a call to my prayer and he created the bagpipes!

  I asked him for bed companions and he created drunkards!17

  An admirable speech! The men who live from usury are fellow trenchermen, fornicators his companions; drunkards share his bed; thieves are his guests, sorcerers his lieutenants; to swear by the repudiation of one’s wife is to link one’s fate with that of the devil; to miss one’s Friday prayers is to sink to his level. . . . Iblis eats with his left hand. He likes to take refuge under men’s fingernails; his house is the hammam, his temple the souk, his book poetry; and the bagpipes take the place of prayer.

  What a magnificent constellation of symbols: the left and the fingernails, the hammam and the souk, poetry and wind music. The essence of Muslim Satanism is there. This is because Iblis is able to play with men, to whisper to them from the inside, furtively, an endless stream of
evil wishes.18

  The devil is a tempter, and without being strictly speaking the creator of evil within us, he is highly skilled at using our evil thoughts and desires and turning them against us. We have to admire the highly systematic, perfectly organized way in which Iblis operates, for his strength lies there. As a good ‘manager’ he has structured his strong army of nearly five thousand million little devils (70,000 of Iblis’s own children, each having in turn 70,000 smaller devils). Despite demographic expansion, mankind is still surrounded by evil. There are more devils than men in the world! Indeed this makes possible a systematic ‘partitioning’ of mankind by a series of ‘commandos’ specialized in the art of tempting certain groups such as the learned, the young, the old, the ascetics. He even has at his disposal three highly qualified sons as generals: ‘Atrā, the ‘retarder’, specialized in the art of putting people to sleep during prayers by pissing in their ears; Mutaqādhī, the ‘denunciator’, who drives servants to divulge the secrets of their masters and wives those of their husbands; Kuhyala, ‘he who makes eyelids heavy’, who puts men to sleep at Friday prayers or at learned conferences.19 Only the Ṣāliḥūn, the holiest of saints, really escape the influence of the devil and his lieutenants.

  Indeed the devil has the mysterious power of living in men’s bodies, of wandering through them at will. He circulates in our forty veins and, by inserting himself in our living flesh, he can wear us out. Sometimes he even shares the sexual intercourse of the most lawful of husbands who has omitted to arm himself against Iblis’s evil intentions by speaking the appropriate quranic words. All Iblis then has to do is to install one of his descendants on the wife’s rear and another in her groin for her to become particularly attractive when she leaves her house. Made aware by these two devils of the charm that she can exert over men she has only to provoke them ever so slightly, by revealing just a finger-nail, and she has taken the irremediable road to dishonour.

  Indeed the myth of Satan ends in masterly fashion. For the devil recognizes that he has no hand in man’s wandering astray, just as Muhammad has no hand in their good guidance. The Prophet is one of God’s arguments against his creatures; the Evil One a means of carrying out an earlier condemnation. But the devil has been so sincere that his dialogue with the Prophet approaches the sublime. The devil’s confession makes him so likeable in our eyes and in Muhammad’s eyes that Muhammad suggests to the ‘Father of Bitterness’ that he return to God and thus regain Paradise. But Iblis, faithful to himself, still refuses: ‘my fate is sealed and the pen is dry.’ The devil is on deferment and the temptation symbolized is as perpetual as the race of the sons of man.