Sexuality under Islam

A review of Beyond the Veil l\^ale-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society by Fatima MernissI, published in 1975 by Shenkman Publishing Co. Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.

 

 

 

 

The book gives a valuable insight into the situation of women in Muslim societies in the light of the influence of modernisation. Many of the findings and insights drawn by the book are relevant to understanding the situation of women in the traditional societies and cultures of Asia and Africa, where women are still segregated to some extent.

In fact the origin of sexual segregation in most non Islamic societies could be traced to the influence of Islamic culture.

In this book the author aims to understand the sexual dynamics of the Muslim world. Taking Morocco as an example she says, "I try to explore the male-female relation as an entity within the Muslim system, a basic element of its structure. It appears to me that the Muslim system is not so much opposed to women as to the heterosexual unit. What is feared is the growth of the involvement between a man and a woman into an all-encompassing love, satisfying the sexual, emotional and intellectual need of both partners. Such an involvement constitutes a direct threat to the man's allegiance to Allah, which should be the unconditional investment of all the man's energies, thoughts and feelings in his God."

Fatima Mernissi sets out to prove here that there is a "fundamental" contradiction between Islam as interpreted inofficial policy and equality of the sexes. "Sexual equality violates Islam's premise, actualized in its laws, that the heterosexual love is dangerous to Allah's order. Muslim marriage is based on male dominance." ... "woman should be under the authority of fathers, brothers or husbands. Since she is considered by Allah to be a destructive element, she is to be spatially confined and excluded from matters other than those of the family." But this did not mean that Islam saw women as being inherently inferior to men. On the contrary, it assumes the potential equality between the sexes.

According to the author, men and women were and still are socialized to perceive each other as enemies. Modernization and the resulting desegregation of social life which is gradually occuring today makes peoples realise, that besides sex, they can also give each other friendship and love. Muslim ideology tries to separate the sexes and empowers men with institutionalized means to oppress women. But she says "while fifty years ago there was coherence between Muslim ideology and Muslim reality as embodied in the family system, now there is a wide discrepancy between that ideology and the reality which it pretends to explain." This book examines this discrepancy
and describes the sui-generis character of male-female dynamics in Morocco. "The seventh century concept of sexuality, as embodied in the modern family laws, conflicts dramatically with the sexual equality and desegregation fostered by modernization."

In the first part of this book the author examines, with the help of early Muslim sources, the Muslim ideology of the sexes as revealed by the institution of the family.

In the second part of the book she analyses through the data she collected, and other sources of information on the present situation, the modernizing trend as embodied in "women's gradual acquisition of the right to be educated and compete for jobs, in what was traditionally 'male space'. She deals quite extensively on male-female Interaction both within and outside the family.

The following is a resume of Part I of the book entitled 'The Traditional Muslim View of Women and Their Place in The Social Order.'

The Muslim concept of the individual is akin to the Freudian concept of the libido. "It views the raw instincts as energy.

The energy of instincts is pure...". "The question of good and bad arises only when the social destiny of men is considered. The individual cannot survive except within a social order. Any social order has a set of laws." These decide what use of the instincts is good or bad. It is the use made of the instincts, not the instincts themselves which is beneficial or harmful to the social order." Therefore in Muslim society, an individual must use his instincts according to the demands of the religious law. "For example, aggression and sexual desire, if harnessed in the right direction, serve the purposes of the Muslim order and, if suppressed or used wrongly, can destroy that very
order."

But used according to God's will, the sexual desire serves the interests of both man and God in both worlds, and enhances life on earth and in heaven. "Part of God's design on earth is to insure the perpetuity of the human race, and sexual desires serve this purpose:"

"Serving God's design on earth, sexual desire also serves his design in heaven:" According to Kacem Amin, the pleasure of sexual satisfaction was a foretaste of what was to come in Paradise, and was a powerful motivation to incite men to attain the perfect delight which unlike earthly ones, was eternal. This hope helps men to persevere in pious activities in order to be admitted to heaven.

"Because of the dual nature of the sexual desire and because of its tactical importance in God's strategy, its regulation had to be divine as well. In accordance with God's interests, the regulation of the sexual instinct was one of the key devices in Mohammad's implementation on earth of a new social order in then pagan Arabia."

Female Sexuality - Active or Passive?

The author writes that the Muslim concept (as opposed to the western concept) of sexuality of women, is implicitly that of female sexuality being active. Women according to Kacem Amin, are better able to control their sexual impulses than men and so sexual segregation is actually a device to protect men from 'fitna' - i.e. disorder or chaos, which is, according to traditional muslim belief, what women represent, in terms of the power of their sexual attraction.

"Muslim society is characterized by a contradiction between what can be called "an explicit theory" and "an implicit theory" of female sexuality and therefore a double theory of the sexes' dynamics. The explicit theory is the prevailing contemporary belief according to which men are aggressive in their interaction with women, and women are passive. The implicit theory is epitomized in Imam Ghazali's classical work. He sees civilization as struggling to contain the women's destructive, all-absorbing power. Women must be controlled to prevent men from being distracted from their social and religious duties. Society can only survive by creating the institutions which foster male dominance through sexual segregation.

According to the author, "the two theories have one component in common, the woman's qaid power ("the power to deceive and defeat men, not by force, but by cunning and intrigue"). ... The whole Muslim organization of social interactions and spatial configurations can be understood in terms of the woman's qaid power."

Unlike Western Christianity it is not sexuality which is attacked and debased. Islam attacks the woman as the embodiment of destruction and disorder. She is fitna, the polarization of the uncontrollable, a living representative of the dangers of sexuality and its rampant disruptive potential. Sexuality on the other hand is seen to have three positive and vital functions. As already mentioned it allows for the perpetuation of the race, and is a foretaste of the delights of paradise, it also has a third important function, sexual satisfaction as necessary to intellectual effort. "Thn Muslim theory views civilization as the outcome of satisfied sexual energy. Work is not the result
of sexual frustration; it is the result of a contented sexuality of a harmoniously-lived sexuality" (al-Ghazali, Revivification, p. 32).

According to Ghazali Knowledge (science) is the best form of prayer for a Muslim believer. But to attain this, a man has to reduce the tensions within and outside his body. "The woman is a dangerous distraction which must be used for the specific purpose of providing the Muslim nation with offspring and quenching the tensions of the sexual instinct. But thn woman should not, in any way, be an object of emotional investment or the focus of attention, which should all be devoted to Allah alone in the form of Knowledge-seeking, meditation and prayer."

The Muslim order thus consider humanity to be constituted by males only, and women were considered as a threatening outside element. All this is embodied in sexual segregation and its corollaries: arranged marriage, the important role of the mother in the son's life, the fragility of the marital bond (as revealed by the institutions of repudiation and polygamy). "The whole Muslim social structure can be seen as an attack on, and a defense against, the disruptive power of female sexuality."

THE REGULATION OF FEMALE SEXUALITY IN THE MUSLIM SOCIAL ORDER

"But what is peculiar about Muslim sexuality as a civilized sexuality is this fundamental discrepancy: if promiscuity and laxity are signs of a barbarism, then the only sexuality civilized by Islam is the woman's sexuality; the man's sexuality is promiscous (by virtue of polygamy) and lax (by virtue of repudiation."

Polygamy

The only mention of polygamy in the whole Quran is in the following famous verse of Surah I — 'Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two, three, or four, and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only)...' Imam Ghazali justifies polygamy as a means through which men with strong sexual desires, for whom one woman is not enough to guarantee his chastity (abstention from zina — desiring and fornicating with other men's women). "Men and women are considered to have similar instinctual drives, yet men are entitled to as many as four partners in order to satisfy those drives,..."

The author feels that polygamy also has a psychological impact on the self-esteem of men and women. It enhances men's perception of themselves as primarily sexual beings and emphasizes the sexual nature of the conjugal unit. Moreover, polygamy is a way for the man to humiliate the woman as a sexual being; it expresses her inability to satisfy him. Women are considered just simple agents to satisfy the sexual needs of men. Polygamy entitles men to do so without taking into consideration
the woman's needs.

Repudiation

" . . . the Muslim phenomenon of verbal repudiation whose characteristic is the unconditional right of the male to break the marriage bond without any justification , and without having his decisions reviewed by acourt or a judge ." " Like polygamy, repudiation (divorce) has an instinctual basis, but while polygamy deals with the intensity of the male's sexual drive, repudiation deals with its instability . It prevents the male from losing his sexual appetite through boredom. It
aims at insuring a supply of new sexual objects to protect the man against the temptation of Zina:"

Idda: The Muslim Guarantee of Paternity

The author says that Islam insured physical paternity by instituting the Idda period which obliges a widowed or a divorced woman t o wait several menstrual cycles before getting married again. Widows are required to wait four months and ten days and a divorcee four months.

" The revolutionary new social structure of Islam was based on male dominance. Polygamy, repudiation, the prohibition of Zina and the guarantees of physical paternity were all designed to foster the transition from a family based on female self-determination to a family based on male control. The Prophet saw the establishment of the male-dominated Muslim family as crucial to the establishment of Islam. He bitterly fought existing sexual practices where marital unions for both men and women were numerous and lax ."

 

 

 

 

ANOMIC EFFECTS OF MODERNIZATION ON MALE - FEMALE DYNAMICS

In this section Fatima Mernissi makes a comparison of the model of the traditional Muslim concept of female sexuality based on Imam Ghazali's ideas of Muslim marriage with that of present day Moroccan reality as revealed by the data she collected in the summer of 1971.

She found that for the traditional women sexual segregation had been very strict all their lives. For the modern women sexual segregation had been strict only during puberty when they were made aware of the importance of their behavior to the family honour. The modern women did not feel that sexual segregation was an important factor in their lives now. For the traditional women the mother-in-law was the most important person in their lives, and f o r the modern woman, their husband. These major differences suggest a link between the Institution of sexual segregation and the important role in the family traditionally accorded t o the husband's mother.

The author believes that Islam's concepts of female sexuality and the woman's contribution to society still determine the primary features of the Muslim family. On the other hand Modernization encourages desegregation, independent choice of marriage partner and the mobility of the nuclear family. The study shows that this open clash of ideologies leads to confusion and anxiety.

" Relations between the sexes seem to be going through a period of anomie, of deep confusion and absence of norms. The traditional norms governing relations between the sexes are violated every day by a growing majority of people without incurring legal or social sanctions. One such traditional norm is
sexual segregation, . . . " The author feels t h a t the anomie stems f r om the gap between the ideology and the reality, i.e. that more and more women are using traditionally male spaces, are going without the veil, and are deciding their own lives. Desegregation intensifies the sexual component of heterosexual interactions
while the society fails to provide any acceptable models for sexual interactions. Doubts and anxieties result.

In rural areas — a survey revealed that each village controls its youth to such and extent that young men have no access to women and engage in 'deviant' sexual practices, by the society 's own standards. This state of deprivation brings the rural Moroccan male to perceive the woman solely in terms of sexual need; the young men resent the fact that older men who have more money monopolize and marry most of the young girls. (In the most traditional rural society, there are no unmarried adolescent girls.)

Sexual Problems in Urban Areas:

The data reveals that sexual segregation in the city is not as absolute as in rural areas: young men actually do have access to women, often older women and/or married women. The letters analysed reveal that young men in towns seek contact with girls of the same age, want to marry them, etc. and conflict centers around the parent's customary right to arrange marriage and the young people's rejection of this right and insistence upon their right to love-marriage.

The author asks, " why is Moroccan society, in the f o rm of parental authority , reacting so negatively to the young people's desire for marriages based on love? She says, " it appears to me that the breakdown of sexual segregation allows the emergence of what the Muslim order condemns as a deadly enemy of civilization — love between men and women in general, and between husband and wife in particular."

The Deseclusion of Women: On the Street

Traditionally women were only allowed to trespass on the male space (ie. everywhere outside the home) on very restricted occasions and bound by specific rituals, such as wearing the veil. Respectable women were not seen on the street, and only necessity could justify the woman's presence outside the home, only whores or insane women were considered to wander freely in the streets. A certain survey revealed that even today when a rural youth visits the town, he assumes that any woman walking down the street is sexually available.

"Women in male spaces are considered both provocative and offensive. Since schooling and jobs both require women to be able to move freely through the streets, modernization necessarily exposes many women to public harassment." 'The male's response to the woman's presence is, according to the prevailing ideology, a logical response to an exhibitionist assault. It consists in pursuing the woman for hours, pinching her if the occasion is propitious, eventually assaulting her verbally, all in the hope of convincing her to carry out her exhibitionist propositioning to its implied end (exhibitionist — because in traditional Morocco a woman is considered to be nude, if she appears in public unveiled).

In the Office

The author adds, not only are women trespassing on the male space ie. "the universe of the Umma", when they go to work, but they are also competing with men for the few available jobs. The anxiety created by women working, taking on a traditionally male role, is intensified by the scarcity of jobs and the high unemployment rate.

We see that Moroccan women have gained many rights which were denied to them before, such as the right to education, the right to vote and be elected, and the right to use non-domestic spaces. But an important characteristic of this nascent "liberation " Is that it is not the outcome of a careful plan of controlled development as in China. The partial, fragmented acquisition of rights by women in Arabo-Muslim countries is a random, non-planned, non-systematic phenomenon, due mainly to the disintegration of the traditional system under pressures from within and without. 'The Muslim women's liberation is likely therefore to follow a sui-generis pattern."

The author sees the State as the main threat to the traditional male supremacy. When speaking of future trends Fatima Mernissi says, "The reduced power of the head of the family is in the short run productive of tensions in the family where a resentful male is likely to compensate by oppressing his wife and child. But, in the long run, it is likely to generate increasingly male-female rapprochement in the face of the common and increasingly similar preoccupations of their daily reality. It can lead, as it already has in the case of young couples, to an increased collaboration between husband and wife and a strengthening of the conjugal unit in the face of the system's short-comings.

The author concludes by saying that the Muslim image of women as a source of power is likely to make Muslim women set higher and broader goals than just equality with men. The most recent studies she says, on the aspirations of both men and women seem to come to the same conclusion: women's goals are already being phrased in terms of a global rejection of established sexual patterns, frustrating for males and degrading for females. This implies a revolutionary reorganization of the entire society starting from its economic structure and ending with its grammar.

 

 

 

 

"Comme je I'ecris dans Ie troisieme volume du Journal, j'avais rimpression que la boTte de Pandore contenait les mysteres de la sensualite feminine, si diffrente de celle de I'homme, et pour laquelle Ie langage masculin etait inadequat.

"Les femmes, pensais-je, ^taient plus aptes a meler la sexualite a I''motion, a I'amour; elles pr'fraient unseul homme a la promiscuite. Cela me parut assez evident lorsque j''crivais mes romans et mon Journal, etdevint encore plus clair a I'occasion de mes contacts avec les 'tudiants. Mais, malgre la difference fondamentaleentre I'attitude de la femme et celle de I'homme sur ces questions, nous ne possedions pas encore de langage pour I'exprimer.

"Si la version non expurg"e de mon Journal est publiee un jour, ce point de vue feminin sera exprime encore plus clairement. Cela montrera que les femmes
(et moi-meme, dans Ie Journal) n'ont jamais separe I'acte sexuel du sentiment, et de I'amour de I'homme tout entier."

ANAIS NIN

Los Angeles, septembre 1976

Venus Erotica, Post Scriptum