Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  Hearing is not neglected, for there is music typical of paradise. The universal melody is the sonorous ground against which the voices of the Elect, angels, prophets and God himself stand out. It is significant that human speech is integrated into the paradisiacal world for the recital of the sacred texts forms part of the delights of the hereafter.

  In this clutch of symbols it is striking to observe that little place is given to vegetative symbolism. From time to time of course there is a reference to vegetation. It rains sperm. There are trees, birds and flowers that decorate paradise. But even the trees are in a sense lithified, for they are made of precious stones. The vegetation of Eden is lithoid. The lithic symbolism dominates over any other form of symbolism. Sensuality dialecticizes matter. This is because the whole of life is placed on the side of love, which abolishes differences, unites contraries, and, dematerializing matter, gives a full, positive content to invisible immateriality. A full meaning is given to existence in the world of post-existence.

  So the Muslim projects on to matter his own depth. Hence the need to multiply and accumulate metaphors, images, symbols. A profound, exuberant dream, the myth of paradise is merely an oneiric affirmation of self. Bachelard remarked: ‘In dreaming of depth, we dream our depth. In dreaming of the secret virtue of substances, we dream of our secret being. But the greatest secrets of our being are hidden from us, they are in our most secret depths.’40 What is typically Muslim is that this is achieved through the mediation of lithic symbolism. A hyacinth, yāquta, can arouse within us a symphony of images, fantasies and dreams, assuaging all pain, past, present and to come! The hyacinth is the Throne of the Lord. It is also the ‘queen of stones’, which, again according to al-Mostatraf, ‘gives esteem and dignity to those who wear it. . . . It facilitates the solution of affairs . . . assuages thirst, neutralizes the effects of poisons and strengthens the heart’.41

  It is as if the reconciliation of man with God were mediated through the reconciliation of man with nature. This is the meaning of the pleasure that is the fulfillment of the body and the end of frustration. Thus the individual texts show quite unmistakably that the pleasures of paradise, while sensual, are not material. It is not paradise that is materialized, it is the nature of man that is immaterialized in a sense, for it is reduced to pure pleasure and absolute sensation. Moreover, the pleasure is produced without any earthly counterpart. There is no excretion or pregnancy in paradise.

  The meaning of paradisiacal pleasure is certainly that it takes the body seriously. Far from derealizing our desires, Islam teaches us to realize them more fully. The evocation of Paradise is a vigilant oneirism. It is not the theological that is at issue here, but the psychological. The image of the Muslim paradise is positive and affirmative of self. Islam does not repress the libido. In paradise our desires will be accommodated, taken seriously. This means that the peace of paradise is achieved through self-fulfillment. For paradise is first of all a meeting with others. Love is in a sense multiplied by the presence not only of wives, but also of houris. This pluralization of love implies its own transcendence in others. In paradise everyone will have at least one companion, for ‘there is no celibacy in paradise’ (mā fil jannati min a‘zab).42

  Paradise, then, is crowded. Without the Ahl al-janna, the ‘people’ of paradise, it would lose all meaning. An empty paradise is inconceivable. Moreover the myth shows us that the desire of the believer to meet the houris is not a one-way affair, for the houris, too, await impatiently the arrival of the blessed to whom they have been promised. Sometimes the houris ardently wish to see their earthly masters. They leave their palaces. The archangel Radhūan sometimes takes them to the summit of paradise from where they can contemplate their masters.43

  Man, then, is expected. He is the object of desire, of attention, affection; even while still on earth he is already the object of paradisiacal love. Transcendence to others is certainly a fundamental element in the happiness of the afterlife. Hence that perpetual, eternal pleasure. Paradise is the time of suspended pleasure. It is also the place of perpetual erection and orgasm that lasts for twenty-four years. If earthly orgasm gives some foretaste of paradise, one must admit that life in paradise is an infinite, eternal orgasm.

  In fact the very image of paradise activates the consciousness of the believer, who assumes through it the plenitude of his being and projects himself straight into this total vision.

  Of course the erotic is not the ultimate pleasure. It is merely one stage in the reconciliation of man, a stage that comes after harmony with things and which prepares him for the dazzling vision of God. The final scene narrated by Suyūti describes the summum of life in paradise, which is communion and universal oecumenism, that is to say, the passage from the meeting with the other in the form of the eternal feminine to the meeting with others within the community of the Elect and lastly the meeting of the latter with their Supreme Creator.

  What is striking is this unity of the theme of creative, purifying love. The true beatifying transubstantiation passes through love. What results is a veritable revalorization of Eros, which alone enables us to understand the first stages of the dialogue with God himself. It seems to me that a loop closes and begins with the creation of the original couple of the verge of paradise. From Eden to Eden, there is a remarkable continuity. The odyssey is only apparent and seen from this point of view the passage through earthly life is merely a stage, an essential one of course but a stage none the less. To realize himself man must undergo an apprenticeship in life and history. He must become earthly in order to become heavenly: this is man’s great way. Now, if this continuity implies no tragedy it is because it passes through the love discovered before the fall, experienced with a greater or lesser degree of happiness on earth before being fully realized in paradise. If there is a break between the earthly and the celestial, between the now and the future, it will be overcome through love, which is tension, call, search for a plenitude that will be realized and fully attained in the heavenly life.

  Islam, then, is an economy of pleasure. It is its over-conscious valorization. To integrate the sexual in the sacral is, I believe, ultimately the great lesson and the great merit of this Islamic vision of the afterlife. It is, I believe, in the final analysis, the import of what the Quran calls parable, mathal.

  In fact orthodox Muslim thought will find in the writing of the Imam Rāghib the most powerful expression and certainly the one that opens up to analysis the most fruitful and most beautiful ways. For beyond the object of desire what matters is the dynamism of the desire, the dynamism of the man who experiences the pleasure rather than the nature of the pleasure itself.

  For Rāghib the very definition of paradise is that faculty enjoyed by any individual to be able to satisfy his desire.44 Paradise is the total and absolute satisfaction of desire. Now this could not be achieved only through reference to the imaginary. If the Quran can enable us ‘to have all that our souls desire, all that we call out for’,45 it is because God has created us beings of desire, that is to say, capable of imagining in advance the very nature of expected pleasure. Desire implies imagination and volition; so paradise is first of all the reign of imagination. And Rāghib says: ‘The souk designates here the divine word that is the source of all power to create images in terms of volition and the way in which the power to perceive is informed in a stable, permanent way that is as durable as volition itself, and not episodic and involuntary.’46

  Paradise, then, is the reign of the imaginary. The object of desire may change of course. But the power of the imaginary will remain. And it is the accord between the real and the imaginary, whatever the object of this accord, that is the foundation of the belief in paradise.

  When desires change, gifts, pleasures, power, aptitudes also change. Divine goodness has granted through the mediation of prophetic revelation, to all creatures, the faculty of achieving what their faculty of understanding may conceive. We must trust, therefore, that those things that transcend the concei
vable are also conceived and admitted.47

  It is easy to understand how the images of paradise and of the life hereafter have been able to free the Islamic consciousness. Once again the sexual proves to be co-extensive with the sacral.

  CHAPTER 8

  The sexual and the sacral

  In Islam, then, sexuality enjoys a privileged status. Whether in the texts that regulate the exercise of sexuality in social life or in those that allow the dream its full oneiric density, the right to the pleasures of sex is stated forcefully. Islam is a lyrical view of life.

  Indeed from the outset the sensual dimension of sexuality was recognized. To the biological and ethical dimensions of love the Quran adds another that is essentially aesthetic. Love as a ludic activity is also part of God’s benefits. The Quran declares: ‘Decked out fair to men is the love of lusts.’1 We should note the word zuyyina: sexual pleasure is apprehended as a zīna, a pleasant setting, an ornament. The same word is used by the Quran to describe the stars that decorate the sky, horses and jewels. Zīna is not, of course, the essential thing in life and the same verse declares that ‘children, heaped-up heaps of gold and silver, horses of mark, cattle and tillage’ are all, like women, objects of our ‘lusts’ and, on the other hand, that these are merely ‘the enjoyment of the present life’ and that only with God, ‘with Him is the fairest resort’.2

  It is the Quran itself that defines woman as ‘one who is reared among ornaments and, in a quarrel, lacks clarity’.3 One could hardly bring out better the ‘ornamental’, ‘superfluous’ character of the woman who is ornament and ambiguous speech.

  Nevertheless, sexual pleasures are conceived by Islam as constitutive of the earthly conditions of life and, as such, they must be welcomed by Muslims. A hadith declares that ‘the world is a possession and the best possession is a virtuous woman’.4

  Profound, sincere love and the concupiscence that accompanies it are, therefore, a way of achieving cosmic harmony. ‘When a man looks at his wife, said the Prophet, and she looks at him, God looks upon them both with mercy. When the husband takes his wife’s hand and she takes his hand, their sins vanish between their fingers. When he cohabits with her, the angels surround them from the earth to the zenith. Pleasure and desire have the beauty of mountains. When the wife is with child, her reward is that of fasting, prayer, jihād.’5

  Indeed, systematically, tradition lays it down that ‘nikāḥ muraghghabun fīh’, that it is ‘highly recommended to marry’. It is a pleasure, but it is also a duty.6

  Hence that strict conception of the obligation of physical love between spouses. Indeed it is not permitted to one of the two partners to give himself or herself up, without the consent of the other, to surrogate religious practices that might obviate or postpone the working of the flesh.

  The delay legally laid down for the fulfillment of one’s marital duties, which is four months, cannot be extended for reasons of mystical chastity. An adage current among the kadis has it that devotion in no way exonerates the rights of the flesh, ‘Al zuhdu lā yamma ‘u min qadā al-murrād’.

  It is also forbidden to castrate oneself or to castrate anyone else. Any attack on the sexual faculties is as serious as an attack on life itself.7 The corpuses of hadiths traditionally include a whole chapter ‘Of the blameworthy character of castration and voluntary chastity’. Some of the Prophet’s companions, finding the retreats on military campaigns long and difficult to bear, asked the Prophet permission to castrate themselves or to drug themselves. Muhammad always refused.8

  Conversely women must not refuse their husbands. One hadith even lays it down that ‘the woman who refuses her body and sleeps elsewhere than in her husband’s bed is accursed by the angels until she returns to it’.9 According to another tradition the Prophet cursed the maswwifa and mughallisa woman. The first is the woman who, when invited by her husband to make love, always replies saufa (not just yet). The second is the woman who falsely claims to be having her period.10 One day a woman asked the Prophet what the rights of the husband consisted of: ‘A woman must never refuse him, even on a camel’s back.’11 According to another version, ‘a woman must never refuse her husband even on the topmost edge of a burning oven.’12

  For the same reason, divorce is not favoured by Islam, which, like the Prophet, sees it as ‘the lawful thing most hated of God’.13 A famous saying of the Prophet recommends: ‘Always marry, never divorce. God certainly does not love tasters.’14 Paradoxical as it may seem, ‘Don Juanism’ and Islam are not compatible.

  According to the same reasoning, getting others to marry is a work of piety. The ethics of marriage are far-reaching. One must help others to get married. Parents must do all they can to assist the marriage of those placed in their charge. The Quran says explicitly: ‘Marry the spouseless among you and your slaves and handmaidens that are righteous; if they are poor, God will enrich them of His bounty.’15 A pious son must watch over the chastity of a father who has been made a widower by helping him to marry again. This duty of the ta‘fīf is no less important than that of the kafāla (food pension).

  In short, the working of the flesh is a benefit of God, whose pleasure must be put at the disposal of all, from puberty to the ripest old age, which every Muslim, like Jacob, hopes to be green and vigorous. Polygamy, the rotation of wives, the permutation of men, the quasi-obligatory character of the sexual act, from which there is no escape, not even through devotional practices, all this gives a special character to the sexual ethics of Islam.

  It might be thought that this corresponds to a physiological need and is related to the demographic increase of mankind in general and of the Islamic community in particular. Certainly, when speaking to his community, the Prophet himself was fond of giving clear recommendations along these lines: ‘Couple and procreate. I shall derive glory from your number at the Day of Judgment’ (‘tanākahu, tanāsalū fa innī mubāḥin bikum yaum al qiyāmati’).16

  It may also be said that Muslim ethics defined in this way correspond to economic and military conditions. Women are a biological capital that must not be allowed to remain unproductive. But considerations of prestige also come into play. ‘The best of this community, declared Muhammad, are those who have the largest number of wives.’17

  However, one cannot deny the fundamental ‘hedonism’ of the Quran, of tradition and of the fiqh. Love in its most carnal form is seen as forming the essence of being. Hence the extraordinary value placed on love. Hence, too, the absolute, total condemnation of celibacy: ‘Those who live as celibates are the worst kind; those who die celibate are the lowest of the low.’18

  This is understandable since marriage is a recovery of otherness. The profound meaning of the institution of nikāḥ, an institution so strong in Islam, lies in the recognition of the harmony of the human couple as an essential ideal of life. The complementarity of the sexes is at once the law of the world, a sign of human perfection, the will of God and the renewed miracle of creation. Man alone is an impotent being; woman alone is also an impotent being. Only their meeting, in the canonical framework of nikāḥ, is creative, because based on the complementarity of the sexes. Only this meeting, provided for by the Providence of God, allows pregnancy and the awakening of life. What we have here is a divine prerogative that enables man to go beyond nature and to achieve a veritable sexual mission, which, Islam teaches, should be carried out in the joy, exaltation and intoxication of creation. This is how we should understand Muhammad’s words: ‘To marry is to perform half of one’s religion.’19 Love, then, is half of faith. The personality of man finds fulfillment only in the intimacy of the sexes. The unity based on nikāḥ is a creative mission, because it is based on a freedom assumed within the framework of life with others. This essential intuition makes nikāḥ a sacred mission. Sexual pleasure brings us close to God. Woman is not a mere possession of man, nor an evil in herself, still less an object of pleasure for man. And man, in turn, is not the woman’s possession, or even a lesser evil for her or a mere so
urce of pleasure. What counts is the relation of affection that unites them. So, in Islam, love is actually prayer.

  ‘It has been given to me to love three things in your base world: women, perfumes and prayer, but the apple of my eye is prayer.’20 This hadith, which is one of the Prophet’s most famous ones, has been the object of innumerable profound commentaries. That of Khafāgi is particularly illuminating. He rightly sees in it the affirmation and rootedness of God’s Messenger and, therefore, of the Divine Word. Perfumes, women and prayer are merely mediations that make this rootedness possible.

  Another, even more extraordinary text compares the working of the flesh with aims. Nawawi’s twenty-fifth hadith tells us:

  Certain poor companions among those who accompanied the Prophet on his hegira from Mecca to Medina sought him out and said to him: ‘What matters is money in the reward promised by God in the afterlife! The rich pray just as we pray. They fast just as we fast! But on top of that they are able with their excess of goods to give alms, while we have nothing with which to give alms!’

  And the Prophet replied to them: ‘You think that God has given you nothing to give in alms? But each glorification of God is alms! Each exaltation of God is alms! Each praise of God is alms! Each command to do good is alms! And in each working of the flesh there is alms!’21 The companions were astonished and asked: ‘How, Messenger of God, are we to satisfy our desire and be rewarded for it?’ ‘Doing it unlawfully certainly deserves punishment! Just as to do it lawfully deserves reward!’22