Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  Recognition by Islam of kinship through suckling and the role that it is made to play in defining the family constellation within which any form of sexual relation is severely prohibited confirms us in our view of nikāḥ as an instigator of taboos and as a specific form of relation with the sacred through the sexual. Kinship through suckling is a kinship of pleasure6 and, assuming the same significance of blood, lactic fluid ultimately plays the same role as seminal fluid. So much so that the mother’s pleasure appears as exclusive in the human relations of sexual pleasure. The analogy between the blood, milk and sperm takes us at once into the magico-religious spheres of life and gives a good idea of the sacralizing character of nikāḥ.

  What seems at first sight curious is the fact that Islam, which takes such a broad, magical view of incest, radically rejects the very notion of adoption. Whereas it has maintained the mythical, physical character of the notion of kinship, it seems to be concerned exclusively with consanguinity. The Quran recognizes only two types of children, the legitimate and bastards (laqīṭ). No one may recognize an illegitimate child7 and he does not even have recourse to adoption: ‘alwaladu lil firāsh wal lil‘āhir al ḥajar,’ said the Prophet.8 ‘The child is he who is designated by the marriage bed, and may the adulterer be stoned!’

  This is because adoption creates conflicts between the kinship of blood and the kinship of milk. Now, in Muslim law, where a conflict of values is concerned, it is always the least important value that gives in. In this instance, blood has the primacy over milk and milk eliminates adoption.

  The sacralizing virtue of nikāḥ and the prohibitions that it brings with it, also allow one to grasp the disapproval of the two magical practices of ḍhihār and īlā. Ḍhihār consists in the speaking of magical phrases that identify the wife with the subject’s mother. As the Quran puts it: ‘Those of you who say, regarding their wives, “Be as my mother’s back,” they are not truly their mothers; their mothers are only those who gave them birth, and they are surely saying a dishonourable saying, and a falsehood.’9

  It is significant that the curse is not declared purely and simply null and void. Its effect is recognized and admitted. It can only be annulled by the kaffāra,10 that is to say, by a pious act of substitution whose mystical significance cannot be in doubt. In any case, we should remember the possible equivocation, within the most legal marriage, of the wife’s sex and the mother’s back. The fear of incest even by metaphor gives another key to nikāḥ.

  An īlā is an oath by which the husband makes his wife unlawful for a given period. The Quran accepts the validity of such an oath, but limits its duration to four months, at the end of which the husband who does not return to the marriage bed, is ipso facto separated definitively from his wife.

  This is another aspect of nikāḥ, the obligation to satisfy one’s spouse. Nikāḥ and unconsummated marriage are mutually exclusive. Abstinence of a hundred and twenty days is a maximum not to be exceeded in any circumstances.

  Sexual intercourse is one of the pillars of nikāḥ. What is now understood is that the parallel between the sacral and the sexual is beyond question. This becomes clear when analysing the profound meaning of the ritual practices of repudiation and muḥallil. We know that this is acquired simply by saying certain phrases even if they are not deliberately, intended. In the Maghreb the most common phrase is the famous bil ḥarām (by the taboo). The phrase is sufficiently magical to be effective in itself. The very saying of the word dissolves the nikāḥ. A husband who has spoken the words a little too hastily will have to marry his own wife again.

  However, one must not repudiate the same partner more than three times. A third repudiation is always final and the spouses may no longer cohabit together, unless the wife has been married, then repudiated by a third party. This operation is called taḥlīl: a declaration of sexual lawfulness. Of course this marriage involving taḥlīl must be a true marriage, not one of convenience. It must be consummated and Muhammad even lays it down that ‘each of the two partners must have tasted of the little honey of the other’.11

  So it can be said that, although the purpose of nikāḥ is to make sexual relations lawful, these relations also have the effect of justifying nikāḥ and even in certain extreme cases of making it possible.

  But in any case, by virtue of the various prohibitions that accompany it, nikāḥ is as much a magical, operation. It implies a veritable sacralization of man, who has become conscious of his body and of his soul and of the mystical links that unite him, beyond the human community, with nature and with God. Nikāḥ, therefore, is the legal form of the sexual relation.

  CHAPTER 3

  The eternal and Islamic feminine

  Male supremacy is fundamental in Islam. Nevertheless the Quran does not ignore the eternal feminine. After all the man/woman difference is no more than a single poor, small degree (daraja)! A feminist breath sometimes blows through the most sacred texts. It is even said that ‘some women in the first Islamic community, such as the ancient warrior Nusaybah, were ardent feminists. She asked Muhammad why, in the Quran, God always addressed himself to men and never to women. The legend has it that God recognized the validity of her question, for thereafter Revelation referred to “believers” in both genders.’1

  Are these apocryphal rationalizations? Almost certainly. Nevertheless the folk image of women enslaved by Islam requires some qualification. The Quran, like the Sunna, presents women in terms of ‘stereotypes’ that are charged with meaning. Certainly Islam has no woman-prophet. But all the men-prophets bask in a female world that is richly evoked in the sacred texts. Eve,2 of course, the mother of all of us; but also the disturbing Bilqis,3 queen of Sheba and Solomon’s conquest; Mary4 daughter of Imran, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, to whom two Suras are almost exclusively devoted; Lot’s wicked wife5 and his abusive daughters;6 Noah’s wife, who is strangely condemned;7 Zachariah’s noble lady, who wins our respect;8 Asia,9 so virtuous, though the pharaoh’s wife; the beautiful Zuleikha,10 titular wife of Putiphar, but the illustrious temptress of Joseph. . . . These and other ladies, who enjoy the privilege of being mentioned in the Quran, constitute the Muslim sample of an eternal feminine that has never ceased to haunt men’s minds. Moreover, the account of the Prophet’s private life, which took place so frequently in a feminine environment, is studded with innumerable highly coloured descriptions. The fifteen women with whom he had sexual intercourse, the nine others who tempted him, his four daughters, his own mother Amina and nurse Halima – these legendary figures give rise to much chronicle and legend and form a veritable Islamic ‘review’ of woman.

  Some particularly stand out. Khadija,11 the first lady of Islam, a noblewoman and businesswoman, protective, maternal and loving. But there is also Aysha, the artless redhead; the beautiful Zaynab, with her incomparable finery; Hafsa, daughter of the faithful companion Omar; Um Salāma, the inconsolable widow of a martyred cousin; Safya, the beautiful Jewess; the charming Maymūna, sister-in-law of the all-powerful uncle ’Abbas; the lonely Khawla, who sought and found refuge in the prophet’s harem; Rayḥāna, the beautiful captive, who hesitated for so long about being converted to Islam and who finally preferred the status of non-Muslim concubine to that of a Muslim wife and mother of believers. . . . An innumerable sacred harem!

  Despite the extreme variety of the feminine myths and of the poetic fascination they exert, two types of woman have assumed symbolic value in Islam: Aysha, the ‘virtuous’ coquette, and Zuleikha, Joseph’s enigmatic temptress: Aysha, so much a woman but always without reproach, and Zuleikha, driven mad by desire!

  The Quran gives us a very powerful description of the temptation of Joseph12 that differs on certain essential points from the biblical version. The version in the Bible is purely and simply an account of the temptation, which, when finally unsuccessful, is transformed into petty vengeance.

  Now Joseph was handsome and good-looking. And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph and said
, ‘Lie with me.’ But he refused and said to his master’s wife, ‘. . . my master . . . has put everything that he has in my hand; . . . nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife; how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?’ And although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie with her or to be with her. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and got out of the house. And when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and had fled out of the house, she called to the men of her household and said to them: ‘See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to insult us; he came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice; and when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment with me, and fled and got out of the house.’ Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, and she told him the same story. . . . When his master heard the words which his wife spoke to him . . . his anger was kindled. And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison.13

  The grandeur of the biblical text derives from its unvarnished style, from its straightforward narration of the main points. Joseph resists temptation. He emerges victorious. He prefers to be unjustly accused rather than commit adultery with Putiphar’s wife. The temptation fails abysmally: Joseph rejects it immediately, categorically, definitively. The word ‘temptation’ is somewhat inappropriate. The dishonest proposition, repeated insistently, is not even examined by Joseph. Putiphar’s wife, obsessed with her desire, is hardly subtle in her approach: ‘Lie with me’!

  The quranic vulgate, on the other hand, unfurls a veritable ‘film’ of temptation. With penetrating psychological analysis, it gives us the real secrets of the love-prophecy dialectic.

  And when he was fully grown, We gave him

  judgement and knowledge. Even so We recompense

  the good-doers.

  Now the woman in whose house he was

  solicited him, and closed the doors on them.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘take me!’ ‘God be my refuge,’

  he said. ‘Surely my lord has given me

  a goodly lodging. Surely the evildoers

  do not prosper.’

  For she desired him; and he would have taken her,

  but that he saw the proof of his Lord.

  So was it, that We might turn away from him

  evil and abomination; he was one of

  Our devoted servants.

  They raced to the door; and she tore his shirt

  from behind. They encountered her master

  by the door. She said, ‘What is the recompense

  of him who purposes evil against thy folk,

  but that he should be imprisoned, or

  a painful chastisement?’

  Said he, ‘It was she that solicited me’;

  and a witness of her folk bore witness,

  ‘If his shirt has been torn from before

  then she has spoken truly, and he is

  one of the liars;

  but if it be that his shirt has been torn

  from behind, then she has lied, and he is

  one of the truthful.’

  When he saw his shirt was torn from behind

  he said, ‘This is of your women’s guile; surely

  your guile is great.

  Joseph, turn away from this, and thou, woman,

  ask forgiveness of thy crime; surely thou art

  one of the sinners.’

  Certain women that were in the city said,

  ‘The Governor’s wife has been soliciting her

  page; he smote her heart with love, we see her

  in manifest error.’

  When she heard their sly whispers, she sent

  to them, and made ready for them a repast,

  then she gave to each one of them a knife.

  ‘Come forth, attend to them,’ she said.

  And when they saw him, they so admired him

  that they cut their hands, saying ‘God save us!

  This is no mortal; he is no other

  but a noble angel.’

  ‘So now you see,’ she said, ‘This is he you

  blamed me for. Yes, I solicited him, but

  he abstained. Yet if he will not do what I

  command him, he shall be imprisoned, and be

  one of the humbled.’

  He said, ‘My Lord, prison is dearer to me

  than that they call me to; yet if Thou

  turnest not from me their guile, then I

  shall yearn towards them, and so become

  one of the ignorant.’

  So his Lord answered him, and He turned

  away from him their guile, surely He is

  the All-hearing, the All-knowing.14

  Zuleikha is a sensual wife, who is irresistibly attracted to her adopted son. This son, however, is a prophet. Nothing could be more natural than that women should love a prophet. But can a prophet fall in love with women who already have husbands? To ask the question is not only to examine the exact nature of the prophet, but also to understand the complex mutual interpenetration of sacral and sexual. A veritable arabesque of motifs and themes sets up a passionate dynamic within the quranic Sura. He who sets out in the way of the unlawful cannot find an honourable outcome. Not so much because Joseph is an adopted son, as because it is quite simply a matter of zinā.

  Joseph is only an adopted son. As such, and taking into account the values of kinship in Islam, there is no question of incest. The quranic drama is quite unlike Racine’s Phèdre. The human drama is rather one of adultery, of zinā. At no point, then, are we plunged into the tragic.

  Zuleikha’s behaviour is not entirely inexcusable. The commentators of the Quran have been happy to find her some excuses. To begin with Putiphar, the ‘azīz, the ‘all-powerful’, was, by a cruel twist of faith, sexually impotent and incapable of having children.15 He is a highly complaisant husband and the neglected Zuleikha seeks some natural compensation from Joseph. Now Joseph is handsome, young, strong, wise, learned. He has everything to attract a woman seeking his favours. She wants, therefore, to seduce him.

  On the one hand, then, is a husband, an officer, the pharaoh’s great steward, an ‘azīz, but also an ‘ajiz, an impotent powerful man. On the other hand is the handsome youth, full of promise and vigour, who has been instructed by Allah in person in the interpretation of riddles, wisdom and absolute knowledge. Between the two a woman whom the Quran refrains from making antipathetic. And were it not for a divine miracle, passion might well have triumphed over the prophet who, departing from the biblical model, begins to give in to the idea of adultery! ‘For she desired him; and he would have taken her’16 (Wa la qad hammat bihī wa la qad hamma bihā), the Quran explicitly states. Some commentators, including the imam Ali, have seen here the beginning of a fall. He even wrote: ‘ṭama‘a fīha’.17 Indeed, burning with desire, Joseph lost his head and began to undo the belt of his trousers. Ibn ‘Abbas interprets the hamma bihā thus: ‘He undid his trousers, adopting the posture of traitors.’ Another tradition declares that Joseph had already taken up position between Zuleikha’s thighs and was beginning to remove her garments.18

  Of course Razi and the orthodox exegetes do not believe a word of this ‘pseudo-tradition’, which however does not stop them reporting it, not without a certain honest complaisance; a priori it is impossible that a prophet should forget himself to such an extent and initiate the process of adultery. Nevertheless the miracle takes place and an image of Jacob, Joseph’s father, appears. From then on the temptation comes up against a brick wall. Concupiscence is extirpated! Razi prefers to admit that it was the angel Gabriel who, taking Joseph in hand, rid his heart of all trace of unhealthy desire.19 But it is worth noting that it is the image of the father that blocks the upsurge of desire. Should we call this the Joseph complex?
Certainly it is no accident that the miracle takes place through the image of Jacob or that of Gabriel! The end of the temptation and Joseph’s ‘awakening’ is the reality principle defeating the pleasure principle!

  So the help of Allah, translated into the image of the father, allows the sacred to triumph: Joseph remains pure. But that purity must be paid for. Joseph takes hold of himself. He wants to flee. He is caught. In the event his garment is torn from behind. The reversal of roles changes the temptation into an attack on purity that is saved just in time. We cannot but admire the displacement of meaning, from the body to the garment; that is to say, from the inside to the outside and, correlatively, from the front to the back. We must admire, too, the verbal poetry: qudda min duburin. Such, indeed, is the price that Joseph must pay to keep his virginal virtue intact.

  How can one not be struck by the abundance of sexual symbols? The symbolism of the door could not be clearer. There is a closed door towards which one runs, but behind which there is a husband, an ‘azīz, lying in wait. Everything turns around doors, that is to say, the prohibition, the secret, the taboo of the ḥurumāt. Joseph refused to cross his master’s matrimonial door. Zuleikha, however, wanted to reveal to him the innumerable secrets that lay behind her door. But, in the end, entry remained closed and when she opened she found a great officer lying jealously in wait behind it, who surprised the young man in a state of undress and whom only the image of Jacob his father stopped at the threshold of the great door of prohibited sin!

  It is an ironic inversion, too! A man undressed by a woman and, what is more, from behind! It is an admirable dialectic of passion: the snatched garment ought in principle to excite still further the woman’s desire. It suddenly changes into a weapon in her hands, proof that will bring punishment down upon the far-too-insensitive Joseph. But this was to ignore the divine miracle, for God does not abandon his servant. Innocence will be vindicated. The police investigation was not invented yesterday and the clues suggesting guilt are also part of the divine mystery.