Sexuality in Islam

by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

  There is the same suspicious attitude towards the evil thoughts that the sight of beardless (amrad) boys can arouse. It is unlawful to look at a male face that is not covered by a beard, even if the look is not accompanied by concupiscence and even if one is protected from all fitna. ‘The beardless boy is like a woman. He is even worse. It is even more criminal to look at him than to look at a strange woman.’10 Of course a pious man will certainly refrain from touching a youth’s hand or even touching him at all. His mistrust will be all the greater when the young men are particularly handsome, well dressed and coquettish. Rich men’s sons are especially dangerous from this point of view, so their teachers must take particular care – the very nature of their task places them, alas, in contact with young men in whose welfare they must take a close interest. A good teacher, therefore, should turn his back to his pupils.11

  Indeed the author gives us valuable information on the mores of the time. Homosexuality was widespread in the student communities and especially in the confraternities. In the sessions of mystical initiation, ‘the accolade was frequently given by the adults to the young initiates behind and in front. . . . Some felt immense pleasure and relaxation in this. This is what is called the relaxation of the poor. And they dare to claim that this was the love of God, whereas it is a sin that arouses God’s anger and punishment.’12

  In time the progress of austerity came to reduce sexuality to an activity that was to be mistrusted and controlled. We have entered the cycle of repressive sexuality. Muslim society was differentiated at two heterogenous levels: that of male austerity, the only one to be taken seriously, and that of dangerous feminine facility. And youth was repressed together with femininity.

  If misogyny constantly recurs as a leitmotif in Arab culture it is because it has a meaning. It is evidence for us of a break in the quranic harmony. Arab societies drew from Islam not the idea of the complementarity of the sexes, but, on the contrary, that of their hierarchy. Misogyny is really no more than a sociological conditioning. The debate about female emancipation thus takes on a striking significance. In any case, it cannot mask the fundamental position of the group that intends to maintain its own economic, patriarchal and male base. Misogyny is something other than an accident along the route of the structuration of Arabo-Muslim societies!

  The negation of woman cannot be total. The most misogynist man is forced to recognize the depth of what he is so determined to oppose. Indeed, within Arabo-Muslim society other compensatory attitudes emerge that are a recovery of sexuality in a sublimated form. Mysticism, for example, takes us from the renunciation of woman to her sublimation. Without wishing in the least to reduce it to that, we might say that mystical spirituality was nourished in Islam from the sublimated cult of woman.

  In an earlier work I had occasion to stress those things that, from a psycho-sociological point of view, separated Marabutism, which is concerned to fill the void left in Islam by the absence of an institutionalized Church with a series of mediations between the creature and the Creator, and Sufism, which is entirely orientated towards immediate fusion with God.13 I should add that although Marabutism does not necessarily involve a displacement of the object of sexuality, this is certainly not the case with Sufism. Marabutism is a social organization of the religious. And the confraternities constitute collective orders that draw upon the sacred for values that will assist them in realizing their cohesion and upon the social for forces that may be placed at the service of the religious community. Hence that military, committed, militant aspect of Marabutism. If Marabutism can be accused of anything it is that, in a sense, it exacerbates rather than stifles sexuality. It is notorious that Marabutist festivals, the ziyāra, both in the Maghreb and in the Middle East, turn very easily into licentiousness.14

  In concrete terms, we are speaking of a confraternity of men, or of women, who are bound together by the memory of a saint or eponymous ancestor and commune with one another in the course of collective mystical ceremonies. Promiscuity is the rule and it is but a step from ecstatic effusion to amorous effusion. Hence that licentiousness in the collective, seasonal practices and that scarcely disguised haemophilia at the name of God in the initiation ritual that so aroused the disapproval of the orthodox.15

  Sometimes sexuality is exacerbated in the Marabutic ritual, as in extreme cases where the practices include ancient survivals of cults of Cybele, Venus and Bacchus.16 Nevertheless Marabutism remains a technique of collective exaltation. Hence the importance of the ritual of the confraternity. For Sufism, on the other hand, this can in no sense be the case, since it is essentially a matter of isolating oneself before God. All the affectivity of the Sufi mystic is directed towards God and his Prophet. It involves a significant displacement upwards that implies a sublimation of sexuality.

  One remembers the famous hadith, ‘he who loves, observes chastity and dies of it, dies as a martyr’. Some versions add as a condition of martyrdom that the love be kept secret. These two conditions – chastity and secrecy (‘iffa and kitmān) – are essential if one is to grasp the very essence of the passage into mysticism. Hence the role of women in the development of mysticism.

  Take the Andalusian Mohieddin Ibn ‘Arabi. He provides a perfect example of this idealization of woman and sublimation of love: ‘I bind myself by the religion of love whatever direction its steeds take: love is my religion, love my faith.’17 We know that Ibn ‘Arabi married a pious woman who helped him to discover both profane love and mystical love. It was largely Mariam al-Bajiya who gave him a taste for meditation and contemplation. She certainly nourished his soul, thus enabling him, in experiences that were certainly very rare, to combine orgasm with ecstasy. An ardent soul in both senses of the word, she pointed him in a particular direction and persuaded him to learn Sufism from another pious woman, Nūna, the famous Fatma Bent Ibn El Mutanna of Cordoba. Mohieddin joined her as a servant and mūrīd for two years. Ibn ‘Arabi then met, on his pilgrimage to Mecca, another girl, ‘Nidhām’, with whom he fell in love and to whom he dedicated a series of poems: Turjamān al Ashwaq (The Interpreter of Desires), as well as his masterpiece The Revelations of Mecca.18 Ibn ‘Arabi remains an example of the man who has lived at its most intense the fundamental unity of poetry and religion, love and faith. From sensuality to spirituality there is a path to be crossed that is the very essence of Sufism and which carries within it the sublimation of sexuality. Profane love is the starting point and spiritual love embraces everything. Sexuality is a mystery of procreation that has meaning only in projection into God.

  Ibn ‘Arabi’s Diwān19 would itself require a thorough analysis, for it is from beginning to end a variation on the theme of mystical and profane love.

  In these thousands of verses, the poet conceives of God in terms of passion. As much in the style as in the images conjured up by the Diwān, the poet expends his love upon God. Union with God is the end to which the soul aspires. The amorous possession of God expresses a sublimation of Eros and the transubstantiation of the beloved object. And it is again the same form of supersession or transcending that dominates the work of perhaps the greatest of the Muslim mystical poets, Omar Ibn al-Faridh, a contemporary and eastern emulator of Ibn ‘Arabi and whom tradition has called ‘Sultān al ‘āshīqīn’, the lovers’ sultan. His Diwān has been the subject of a masterly commentary by Hassan al-Būrīnī and Abdelghani al-Nabulsi.20 And the late lamented Emile Dermenghem did much to make his name better known in the west with his magnificent French translation of the Khamriad (Eloge du vin).

  There one finds again the fundamental themes developed by Ibn ‘Arabi of the unity of existence, of regenerating union through the knowledge and love of God. But it is shot through with the essential themes of ‘Udhrite love, enslavement, fidelity, the oneness of love.

  After the magnificent researches of Louis Massignon, Al Hallaj holds few secrets for us. And the excellent Qasida, The Innovation of the Pilgrim on the Threshold of the Sacred Territory, in which Massignon saw the symbol
of union, is written in the same vein.

  Here I am, here I am! O my secret, O my confidence! Here I am, Here I am! O my purpose, O my meaning! I call thee, no, it is Thou who calleth me to Thee! How could I have said, ‘It is Thou’, if thou hadst not murmured, ‘It is I’? O essence of the essence of my existence, O purpose of my plan, O Thou, my elocution and my utterances and my stammerings. . . . My love for my Lord has eaten into me and consumes me. How could I complain to my Lord of my Lord?21

  This somewhat rapid summary makes no claim, of course, to exhaust Sufism, whose abundant literature would require an analysis that would go well beyond the bounds of this book. It is enough for my purposes here to bring out the sublimated character of Sufi passion.

  Sufism borrowed everything from Bedouin love: its ideology, its themes, its motifs, its stereotypes, its images. In fact it is a substitute for it and there is a basic equivalence between the rejection of the flesh and the spiritualization of sexuality. Indeed ‘Udhrite love led historically to nothing. It was the gratuitous, chivalric cult of the lady. And, quite naturally, Sufism brought it a finality that it lacked. It is as if the original dissociation of love could not lastingly ignore the carnal aspect of love without having to turn towards the starkest, most ardent faith, that inspired by the love of God. There is a passage from Eros to Agape, the meaning of which appears in each mystic, but, again, in the most admirable way in Ibn ‘Arabi and Ibn al-Faridh.

  I have purposely taken up here the terms used by the famous Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren.22 His thesis, which has aroused reservations in Catholic circles, finds a justification in the passage from original Islam to the mystical tendencies. Muhammad unified Eros qua genetic force and carnal attraction with Agape, qua love of God. Hence for him the profound unity of the love of women and prayer, the work of the flesh and alms. The Sufi mystics ‘Platonized’ the Islamic Agape, just as the ‘Udhrites ‘Platonized’ the Muslim Eros.

  The relationship with God, then, is Love. But although from the Sufi point of view it is direct and requires annihilation in him, it nevertheless necessitates the mediation of the prophet Muhammad. It is precisely around the personal relationship established with him that Marabutism and Sufism are at one. For Muhammad, the friend of God (H’abību Allah), is also the friend of men or quite simply the Friend. His being is at the centre of a network of convergent relations conveying both amorous and mystical forces: those that unite believers and both sexes to his Holy person. It required the blindness of an orientalist to maintain with René Basset23 that the greatest quality of Būsīrī’s poem La Burda is that it is devoid of any mystical spirit! As if that magnificent, perfectly made qasīda did not begin with a classical nasīb, and that precisely because for Muhammad love was described as ‘Udhrite.24 Praise of the Prophet is mixed with evocations of the most ardent love. And the Kairwanese were not wrong when they collectively recited the poem as they followed their dead to their last resting place. Is not the love of Muhammad the best mediation when wishing to confront the Face of the Lord?

  Despite the differences between levels and conceptions, carnal love and spiritual love prolong one another and imply one another. Hence that stress laid on the complementarity of the sexes, on their harmony and understanding. ‘When husband and wife look at one another, God looks at them both with compassion’ (Madhara rahmatin), as a famous hadith, already quoted, puts it. ‘When the husband takes his wife’s hand, their sins fall between their hands,’ declares the same hadith. One could not express more succinctly the notion of purification through love or the association of God with human love. From the human to the divine there is unity, continuity and ascendance. And it is called Love, of which the various forms (physical, ‘Udhrite, mystical) are merely stages of an irreducible totality.

  In paradise the vision of God, which is the ultimate in happiness and perfection, is attained only after a series of sexual pleasures. The rain of paradise is a universal sperm. Allah is described in the Quran as Wadūd, full of love, all-loving.25 It is God who promises ‘so remember Me and I will remember you’.26 It is he who promises reciprocity in love: ‘If you love God . . . God will love you’.27 Lastly the soul finds peace in its return to God: ‘O soul at peace, return unto thy Lord, well-pleased, well-pleasing. Enter thou among My servants. Enter thou My paradise.’28

  Love is reciprocal right up to and including the love that binds man to God. It is this reciprocity that constitutes the mystery and grandeur of the Islamic vision of love. Even in love for God there is an erotic element, which has been especially stressed by Sufi mysticism, just as in Christian mysticism Eros plays a crucial role. Hence the use of carnal images on which the imaginary reference confers an even stronger force than the most sensual earthly love. But unlike Christian mysticism we find, at least among the great mystics, no morbid delight in suffering, no sense of profound guilt, still less any attempt to achieve union with God through asceticism and renunciation.

  In private life, many Arab mystics were quite simply pleasure-seekers. In the Persian domain people even came to doubt the mysticism of Omar Khayyan and Jalal Addin al-Rumi. In the specifically Arab domain the ambiguity was scarcely less great. And with good reason! Ibn ‘Arabi himself certainly mixed carnal love with mystical love. This is because man’s rootedness, even in the case of Muhammad himself, passed through the assumption of sexuality and through physical love. It was through sexuality that the fundamental unity of flesh and spirit was formed. It is sexuality that, realizing personal unity in others, makes possible the quest for God. If the unity of self passes through the two poles of sexuality and the love of God it is because they are ultimately one and the same thing. Moreover in both cases there is reciprocity and reaction. Neither with the human partner, nor with God, does Islam accept one-way love. And reciprocity in one case implies reciprocity in the other.

  Contrary to appearances, mystical love cannot really be excluded from ‘Udhrite love. The latter is a renunciation of the flesh, a sublimation turned back upon itself. Mystical love, on the other hand, is a continuity from the carnal to the spiritual. For it, liberation in the flesh and liberation of the flesh are inseparable.

  So the paradox is only apparent and one should not be surprised if a ‘systematic’, ‘strict’ puritanism co-existed in the Arabo-Muslim societies with the art of carrying one’s sexual pleasures to their highest summit. Arab eroticism is so refined, so elaborate, so all-inclusive, that, in the eyes of many scholars, it has almost eclipsed all the other aspects of Muslim civilization. There is nothing surprising in this for, if my analysis is correct, we must admit that the value of eroticism comes very largely from the certainty that faith alone can confer.

  Arab sensuality has its roots in the most authentic or quranic traditions. I have stressed the importance of legitimated pleasure in the sexual act. The pleasure factor itself may sometimes have eliminated the others: coïtus interruptus was canonically accepted; a form of nikāḥ known as nikāḥ al-mut‘a was tolerated; the satisfaction of sensuality was warmly recommended by the Prophet.

  Coïtus interruptus was apparently widespread in the first Islamic community. The Prophet knew this and never regarded it as reprehensible.29 He even once added: ‘It certainly does not belong to you, if God has decided to create a soul that will live until the Last Judgment, to prevent its coming into the world.’ This hadith distinguishes explicitly between the creative acts of God and contraceptive practices. And do not these practices in a sense form part of God’s plan?

  ‘Aini relates that the Prophet was questioned one day by one of his companions concerning a concubine with whom he liked to sleep on condition that there was no risk of pregnancy. Muhammad then recommended him to practise the ‘restrictive embrace’, adding: ‘What God has decided for her will happen in any case.’30 In other words there is no incompatibility between coïtus reservatus and the mystery of creation. In short, the purpose of the sexual act is not confined to procreation alone.

  The Fatāwā Hindyya, like so m
any other treatises, provides valuable information. Coïtus reservatus is seen there as subject to the agreement of the wife of free condition or the master of the concubine when she is not the property of the man who is practising the coitus. With the fully owned concubine, coïtus reservatus is subject to no other condition.31 Abortion, too, may be canonically provoked, on condition that the differentiation of the forms of the foetus have not yet been achieved, which, according to Muslim theologians, occurs only after a hundred and twenty days. The ‘human forms’ are canonically differentiated with the appearance on the foetus of such body growth as hair and nails or clearly visible organs.32

  Indeed there is a certain laxity in the matter of coïtus reservatus. ‘In our unhappy times,’ our disabused authors add, ‘given the legitimate fears inspired by bad descendance, the husband must be authorized to practise coïtus reservatus even without seeking the opinion of his wife and even if certain opinions do not favour it.’33 In these circumstances abortion may be provoked ‘in any case’, that is, after the canonical limit of four months.

  These texts, apart from having the advantage of providing a very precise canonical reference, confirm the idea that in Islam procreation is not necessarily the purpose of the sexual act, which has a value in itself. The fiqh legitimizes both crude sexual desire and the rejection of the child, two of the principal axes of Arabo-Muslim erotology.

  The autonomy of desire assumed such importance that primitive Islam hesitated for a long time. At one moment it even legitimated a very curious type of nikāḥ, nikāḥ al-mut‘a, temporary marriage, whose purpose therefore was pleasure (mut‘a). It was, therefore, a temporary, but legal union. Travellers and soldiers could take advantage of it. Pilgrims, too, for whom the ritual of desacralization is a reinsertion in sexual life. The sacralization of ḥajj involved among other things, as we know, total sexual abstinence. The end of the ritual is marked by a return to civil life, by the raising of all taboos, the sacrifice of the hair and a return to sexual life. It certainly derives from a survival of the sacred prostitution that took place in Greco-Roman antiquity.34 At first Muhammad kept it. Then, at Khaybar, he forbade it. Then he authorized it again on the day of Awtas, then finally forbade it the day he returned to Mecca.35