Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  This is understandable. Orgasm is certainly a pleasure. But a shared one. And it is in the pleasure derived from another at the same time as oneself that this work of piety resides, a work analogous to fasting, prayer and chastity. Eros and Agape, then, are both involved in sexuality. The sexuality encountered in others is also a projection in God.

  Unconsummated marriage has no place, then, in Islam. Consummation constitutes an essential condition for the act of nikāḥ to have any validity where rights of succession are concerned. Unconsummated marriage is strictly prohibited in the case of a triple repudiation. Indeed a woman who has been rejected three times cannot return to her husband until a new marriage has been contracted, consummated and followed by divorce. A woman who calls on a pre-pubertal muḥallil,23 with whom the marriage was merely a formality, is not regarded as having carried out the correct procedure. She must first ‘taste the little honey’ of her new husband, who in turn must first ‘taste her little honey’.24

  Another recommendation is intended to integrate fantasy in the sexual relations between spouses and to revive extinct desire by provoked desire: ‘If one of you sees a woman who attracts him, let him run home quickly and make love with his wife. That will appease the ardour he feels in his heart.’25

  One could not find a better example of the extreme tolerance of Islam with regard to eroticism, which is seen as the fulfillment and extension of sexuality. The Islamic view of sexuality involves assumption, not negation, joyous acceptance, not morose renunciation. This total view of love is based on the mutual possession of the couple by one another. Love is the law of life, of the world, of man, and should be accepted as such. Sexuality fulfilled, love realized in joy are a way of thanking God for the benefits that he showers upon us. To satisfy desire in joy and thanks is, according to the texts that I have just cited, the best way to follow, the way in any case that God recommends to us and which Muhammad, through example and words, laid before us. A thousand and one Muslim forms of pleasure are already subjacent in the essential sacred texts of Islam.

  If that is possible it is because Muslim love is a love without sin, a love without guilt, in which pleasure and responsibility are coextensive. How, having reaching this stage in my analysis, can we fail to think of the Christian position, which seems to me to be the exact reverse? Compare the texts referred to above with the attitudes expressed in the New Testament. Take St Paul saying to the Corinthians: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman. But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.’26 Or take what he said to the Galatians:

  But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. . . . Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. . . . Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.27

  There is something irreducible in these attitudes: a profound hostility towards sexuality, which must be tightly controlled, mortified, if not quite simply denied and which at best is sublimated.

  Of course, over the past thirty years we have witnessed widespread questioning of this attitude within the Christian churches. Not only have Catholic and Protestant teachings been considerably relaxed on the subject, but research into Christianity and Judaism has revived interest in the question in a radical way.

  Otto Piper suggests revising biblical exegesis in a direction that, in fact, brings it considerably closer to the quranic attitudes described above. For him, the unity of the work of God is manifested throughout the whole of nature. The sexual life inherent in human life can only be good, on condition, of course that it is directed towards ends that are in themselves in harmony with the divine intentions.28

  Equally interesting is the renewal of biblical exegesis carried out by Seward Hiltner, for whom biblical sexuality is directed towards the realization of life in plenitude in conformity with the will of God.29

  Christian sexuality cannot be a purely ludic activity. On the contrary, it is serious, for it is a matter of commitment and responsibility and it is this, far more than a sense of sensual joy, that characterizes it. Every form of reticence or possessiveness should be prohibited. This is because sexuality is self-revelatory. Through this revelation man transcends himself by discovering his own sexuality. Through it man is given ecstasy and proves capable of communicating it. He also becomes aware of his unsuspected power and the depths of his being. From the outset Christian sexuality is an apprenticeship of life in others. There is no valid solitary practice for sexuality. It is a discovery of others, fusion in them. And Hiltner recalls the biblical meaning of the word to know. Sexuality is a life open to one’s neighbour. Lastly sexuality is a sacrament. Sexual union rests on a previous divine will, which is precisely that of the separation of the sexes. The sexual act, therefore, can be realized only in marriage, which is the joyful, unreserved acceptance of a precise type of human relationship and the recognition by society of that agreement between two persons, of which procreation is merely a consequence.

  Nevertheless Islam remains more radical: Eros must be circumscribed within the limits of human nature as it has been fashioned by God. There can be no question of drowning the sexual in the miracle of creation as if it were merely an epiphenomenon.

  But the concept of totality implies proposition, contradiction and ambiguity. And that is certainly why Islam conceives of sexuality in terms of tension. If it is true as Hiltner declares that Christian sexuality is serious, social and sacramental, Muslim sexuality, which is conceived in terms of the couple, is both serious and ludic, social and individual, sacramental and historical.

  That the sexual act should be serious cannot be doubted. Inherent in the human condition it is a way of assuming oneself by becoming aware of one’s own corporality. The Quran, as we have seen several times, lays it down that there is a true erotic understanding of the world and of self. The miracle of zaujiyya is often invoked as a marvellous symbol of divine glory. Through love, man becomes spellbound and at one with the cosmos and God himself. But this is not done in an abstract manner. And it is in the work of the flesh that this self-enrapture is realized. This erotic understanding of the world is not of an intellectual order. It is of the order of desire, for it is realized through the contact of one body with another, which is at once self-consciousness and projection outside self, self-centredness and otherness. Sexuality is ‘an intentionality which follows the general flow of existence and yields to its movements’.30 This observation by Merleau-Ponty seems to me to express an essential aspect of the Islamic view of sexuality.

  Through sexuality the whole human being is taken seriously. This is why so much attention is paid to sexuality. Sexuality is to be taken seriously because it bears witness to the seriousness of existence. The whole of life, according to Islamic teaching, bathes in an atmosphere of sexuality. Sometimes this is carried to the point of obsession. One should marry. One should have sexual intercourse. Parents must marry off their children and among the duties of filial piety is that of getting a widowed parent to remarry. To make love is an overriding duty, from which there is no excuse, even devotion to God. Devotion itself is expressed in terms of the lawful satisfaction of desire. So, in its very practice, sexuality transcends earthly existence: the afterlife is again a sexual existence. Paradise implies orgasm and perpetual erection.

  Though a serious matter, sexual activity is nevertheless ludic. Sexual games (mulā‘aba) are warmly recommended by the Prophet, hence that specific erotological dimension. Love is not to be performed in sadness
or gloom. It is not a painful duty. It is the most joyful gift of heaven. It is one of those ‘good things’ (tayyibāt) that God lavishes on existence. It is pleasure. Indeed it is the highest form of pleasure. It is the royal way to eudemony.

  So, while being orientated towards something other than itself, sexuality may place that other thing in parentheses and be revealed as gratuity, adventure, fantasy, exuberance, freedom. Of course the sexual act normally culminates in procreation and rests on a realistic view of life. But it is permitted to depart from reality. The work of the flesh then becomes a free activity performed in joy and abandon. As a result all the contraceptive practices, whether coitus interruptus or the use of ‘preservative clothing’, are tolerated.31

  As a fundamental structure of life, sexuality unfolds through existence, having no other faith than itself. Neither the useful, nor the effective, nor the ‘cunning of reason’ can alter in any way the fact that sexual pleasure is at once a condition and an end in itself. The game may be defined as a de-realizing operation. And it is the magic of love that de-realizes in realizing and realizes in de-realizing. Separated from its procreative function, as Islam accepts that it may be, sexuality is not deprived of its profound intentionality: its intrinsic content fills the void thus created and takes on an exemplary value. By becoming an entertainment sexuality changes direction and import. It departs from its procreative effectiveness only to be invested at once by an exemplary creative effectiveness, since it is an affirmation of spirituality and a witness to freedom. It is others qua partners, and no longer qua descendants, who then draw on the values of love.

  In other words, the practice of sexuality is a dialectic of the ludic and the serious. That is why it has to be played seriously and why that game has to be taken seriously. Hence the grandeur of the Islamic intuition; hence, too, its essential ambiguity.

  It was Merleau-Ponty who remarked: ‘The intensity of sexual pleasure would not be sufficient to explain the place occupied by sexuality in human life or, for example, the phenomenon of eroticism if sexual experience were not, as it were, an opportunity, vouchsafed to all and always available, of acquainting oneself with the human lot in its most general aspect of autonomy and dependence.’32

  It is as if the Islamic view were concerned to lose nothing of the richness of the sexual, to assume it, to live it intensely with all its tensions and conflicts.

  And it is again the same conclusion that appears in the dialectic of the social and the personal. It is a truism to declare that sexuality is a transcendence of the individual and that even in its deviations there is never, in the strict sense, a solitary practice of the sexual life. Auto-eroticism is certainly accompanied by fantasies that are an imaginary form of the presence of others. One function of sexuality resides in its ability to unite individuals to the community. The tanākaḥū, tanāsalū lays it down quite explicitly that sexual life is unifying and that the Islamic Umma rests, in its grandeur and its misfortunes, on the genetic life. The total, social unity of men is a resultant of sexual dynamism. And, conversely, the community of the Umma also imposes its own requirements, its own tendencies on the individual’s drives. Love, the universal principle of life, governs human development. Nevertheless love has a double ‘entry’, individualized and social. I noted above that God’s purpose in creating the ‘races and tribes’33 under the rule of diversity was certainly to make possible mutual knowledge (the li ta‘ārafū), in the biblical sense of the word. We have also seen that God created of each thing its double (zaujaha) so that it might cohabit with it (li yaskuna ilaiha).34 Indeed, for Islamic tradition, cosmic becoming, organic life, personal development, social stratification and historical processes are closely bound up with one another and taken together are indissociable from God’s purpose and from the wonders of his creation. Hence the polyvalence of sexuality, its ambiguity, its equivocity.

  To love is to have intentions towards the beloved! Libidinal relations are mutual and form the basis of being-with-others. Moreover sexuality forms the basis, beyond the autonomy of the person of the lover, for the community of the lover and the beloved. It is certainly the awareness of the other that is aimed at through one’s body, just as I sense that it is my awareness that is aimed at through my own awareness. Again let us quote Merleau-Ponty:

  If it [sexual desire] cannot accept the presence of a third party as witness, if it feels that too natural an attitude or over-casual remarks, on the part of the desired person, are signs of hostility, this is because it seeks to fascinate, and because the observing third party or the person desired, if he is too free in manner, escapes this fascination. What we try to possess, then, is not just a body, but a body brought to life by consciousness. As Alain says, one does not love a madwoman, except in so far as one has loved her before the onset of madness.35

  The sexual act is made up of the reciprocity of the couple. I become aware of my own body through the reactions of my partner’s body and my consciousness is freed in contact with the consciousness of the beloved. The genetic activity is the common act of the lover and the beloved or, to be more precise, there is no longer a lover and beloved, but a loving fusion of bodies and spirits. This is what Muhammad calls ‘tasting each other’s little honey’.

  It is in the light of these considerations that the theory of the Muslim view of nikāḥ assumes its full meaning – a conception that, beyond the lawful practice of sexual activity, grounds the sexual in the social. Nikāḥ bears within itself a sociological definition of the couple that is expressed through statuses, roles and their respective hierarchies. The rejection of sexual anarchy rests on this specific unity that unites the couple not in an abstract, metaphysical unity, but within a real, concretely situated society. Nikāḥ situates the individual within the Umma. Hence that contempt for the bachelor. Hence, too, that moral condemnation of the celibate, shirārukum ‘uzzābukum. Through nikāḥ the individual is integrated into the group and the group is integrated into the individual.

  One must not forget the whole personal, even personalist dimension of Muslim sexuality, for it is based on the notion of responsibility: sexuality is certainly a ‘deposit’ entrusted to man. Each individual is responsible. Each Muslim man and woman is responsible in the first instance for himself or herself and for his or her body. Hence the importance of the chapters of the fiqh that lay down the responsibility of each of the two partners. Whether it is a question of capacity, potency, duration of widowhood, divorce, the status of the hermaphrodite or erotic relations with the invisible, the continuity is remarkable.

  The equivocity of the sexual is again reflected at the level of the sacred and the historical. Sexuality is both sacramental and historical: to accept sexuality is an act of faith. Sexuality is in turn identified with prayer, alms, martyrdom, an act of piety, the renewed miracle of prophecy, a prefiguration of heavenly delights. . . . This is because it bears witness to a divine purpose. It expresses the will of God. To abandon oneself joyfully to it is truly to manifest one’s gratitude to God around the continuous, overflowing miracle of the renewal of life.

  So nikāḥ is a veritable sacrament. We have seen how consummated marriage transforms the creature who, ipso facto, falls under the rule of the taboo of iḥsān. We have seen how zinā, with all the gravity that accompanies it, is strictly and exclusively attached to the person of those who, men or women, having contracted a nikāḥ and having consummated it, violate the juridico-religious conditions for the practice of sexuality. Nikāḥ confers on the sexual act a psychological, social, affective and spiritual nobility so splendid that any departure from it is judged accordingly. Contrary to an all-too-widespread belief, Muslim marriage is quite as ‘sacred’ as a Christian marriage or a Jewish marriage. It is certainly not eternal or absolute. It is nevertheless an act of faith in oneself, in others, but first in God. And one may, paraphrasing Descartes, say that for a good Muslim ‘an atheist could not be in love’. Moreover the Muslim has been created only for love. As the expressive Tunisia
n song has it: ‘Our community was created for passionate love’ (‘naḥnu qauwmum lil gharāmi khuliqnā’).

  But the sexual life is not simply a reflection of God’s will. It belongs to the order of existence and as such it is incarnated in historical bodies. Moreover sexuality is particularized in currents, in concrete, precise ‘tendencies’. God’s gift is not abstract, but situated. It is not anonymous, but personal. Indeed sexuality is a primordial means of acceding to the world and to life, but it is not the only one. It is a ‘given’ that grounds a precise relationship to the world and to men, just as appetite and thirst may ground a relationship of another kind.

  To ground sexuality in freedom and in the autonomy of the person is necessarily to accept precariousness and relativity; in sexual matters, the will of God gives way to the will of man. Man’s will is made up of successive choices and approximations, and not irrevocable decisions. Moreover Islam, while disapproving of divorce, that is to say, the breaking of the sacred link of nikāḥ, has in the final analysis to accept it.

  Break and change are implied by the very nature of interpersonal relations based on love, a passion whose character is perfectly expressed in the idyll of the Prophet with Zaynab. The Prophet’s short but moving prayer, ‘My God who thus overturns hearts, strengthen mine’ (‘ya muqallīb al qulūbi thabbitlī qalbī’), signifies the force of love and of its hazards. In the last resort, there are no eternal marriages or absolute vows, and there are renewed choices and hopes, that is to say, a determination to be faithful to oneself and to the beloved. In addition to being a sacrament, sexuality is certainly a personal, historical commitment.

  Sexuality, it is said, is dramatic because we commit our whole personal life to it. But just why do we do this? Why is our body, for us, the mirror of our being, unless because it is a natural self, a current of given existence, with the result that we never know whether the forces which bear us on are its or ours – or with the result rather that they are never entirely either its or ours. There is no outstripping of sexuality any more than there is any sexuality enclosed within itself. No one is saved and no one is totally lost.36