2. Celibacy & Monasticism Is Forbidden
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The Islamic point of view about the worldly good things is not negative, rather it says that we should appreciate them as the blessings of God. And Islam is, therefore, totally opposed to monasticism and celibacy.
'Uthman bin Maz'un was a close companion of the Prophet. One day his wife came to the Prophet and complained, "O the Messenger of God! 'Uthman fasts during the day and stands for prayers during the night". In other words, she meant to say that her husband was abstaining from sexual relations during the night as well as the day. The Prophet was so much angered with this that he did not even wait to put on his slippers. He came
In another incident, three women came to the Prophet and complained that their husbands were abstaining from meat, perfume and intimate relations with their wives. The Prophet quickly came to the mosque, went on the pulpit and said, "What has happened to some of my companions that they do not eat meat, they do not smell perfume and they do not go to their women?" Whereas I eat meat, smell perfume and go to my wives. Therefore whosoever dislikes my tradition, then he is not from me."2
Ibn Abi 'Umayr quotes that sikkin an-Nakha'i had devoted himself to prayers and abstinence from women and delicious food. Then he wrote a letter to Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq seeking clarification about his actions. The Imam wrote, "As for what you have said about abstaining from women, you surely know how many women the Prophet had! As for food, the Prophet used to eat meat and honey."3 The Imam is obviously condemning the holier-than-thou attitude of his companion.
Imam 'Ali narrates that some companions of the prophet had vowed to abstain from sexual relations with their wives, from eating during the day and from sleeping during the night. Umm Salamah, the Prophet's wife, informed him about this group. The Prophet went out to his companions and said, "Do you abstain from women whereas I go to the women?! I eat during the day and sleep during the night! Whosoever dislikes my tradition, then he is not from me." After this speech, Allah revealed the following verse:
Read this verse carefully and see the firstly, it counts sex, food and sleep among "the lawful and good things which Allah has permitted you;" and secondly, celibacy and abstinence is considered as "exceeding the law of God." After this verse was revealed, those companions came to the Prophet and said, "O Messenger of God! We have taken oath to abstain from those things." That is, how can we now break our oath of abstinence? Then Allah revealed the following verse, "Allah will not call you [to account] for vain oaths ..." (5:84) Again, note that an oath of celibacy or abstinence from the good and lawful things is considered by Islam as 'vain oaths!'1
The discouraging of celibacy is not confined to men, even women have been discouraged from remaining
Abdus Samad bin Bashir quotes that a woman came to Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq and said, "May God bless you; I am an ascetic woman."
The Imam: "What does asceticism mean to you?"
The woman: "It means that I will never marry."
The Imam: "Why?"
The woman: "By practicing asceticism, I want to acquire favour (of God)."
The Imam: "Go away! If asceticism was a means of acquiring favour (of God), then Fatimah would have been more entitled to it than you because none can gain more favour than her."2 A similar incident is also narrated in relation to Imam Riza.
The Prophet said: "The most low [in status] among your dead are the singles."3
Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq says that a person came to my father. My father asked him, "Do you have a wife?" He said, "No." My father said, "I would not have prefer to have the world with all its riches while I sleep at night without a wife."4In Islam, contrary to Christianity, marriage and sex are not antipathetic to the love for, and worship of, God. Instead of an obstacle, marriage is regarded as an asset in acquiring spiritual perfection.
The Prophet said, "One who marries has already guarded half of his religion, therefore he should fear Allah for the other half."1 A person who can fulfill his sexual urges lawfully is less distracted in partaking the spiritual journey.
Love for women and faith are inter-related. In one hadith, 'Umar bin Zayd quotes Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq that, "I do not think that a person's faith can increase positively unless his love for women has increased."2 The same Imam said, "Whenever a person's love for women increases, his faith increases in quality."3 He also said, "Whosoever's love for us increases, his love for women must also increase."4
Marriage even elevates the value of prayers. The Prophet said, "Two rak'ats (cycles) prayed by a married person is better than the night-vigil and the fast of a single person."5 Ibn Fuzzal quotes Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq saying that, "Two rak'ats prayed by a married person is better than seventy rak'ats prayed by a single person."6
The Prophet said, "If anyone likes to meet Allah in purity, then he should meet Him with a wife."7
A woman came to the Prophet's house and her strong perfume soon filled the house. When the Prophet inquired about the visitor, the woman said that she had tried everything to attract her husband but in vain; he does not leave his meditation to pay any attention to her. The Prophet told her to inform her husband about the reward of sexual intercourse which he described as follows: "When a man approaches his wife, he is guarded by two
These quotations from the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet and the Imams of Ahlu 'l-bayt show that the Islamic view on sex and marriage is in complete harmony with human nature. It can easily be concluded that in the Islamic sexual morality: (a) marriage and sex is highly recommended, and it is in no way associated with evil, guilt or sin; (b) monasticism and celibacy is unacceptable; (c) marriage is considered a helping factor in attaining spiritual perfection -it prevents the Muslims from getting into sins and also enhances the value of their acts of worship.
These teachings neutralize the need for a sexual revolution in a Muslim society. Since there is no sexual suppression, the question of a sexual revolution does not arise.There are many non-Muslim writers, especially of liberal and feminist ideology, who have attacked the Islamic view of woman's sexuality. Their criticism is mostly based on some misconceived ideas about the Islamic sexual morality. Basically there are two problems with these writers: either they study Islam based on some Western social theories and models, or they are ill-equipped
However, for our discussion I have selected the work of an Arab feminist writer, Fatima Mernissi. The reason for selecting to comment on her work is that she is an Arab writer who had easy excess to Islamic literature, and she has indeed used the hadith literature of the Sunnis, in particular, Ihyau 'Ulumi 'd-Din of Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a famous Sunni scholar of the eleventh century C.E. Moreover, Mernissi's book has been translated into various European and Asian languages and is becoming popular as an insider's report!Fatima Mernissi's book, Beyond the Veil subtitled as "Male-Female Dynamic in Modern Muslim Society," is a study of the male-female relationship in the present Moroccan society. It is important to bear in mind that the attitude of the Muslims of Morocco does not necessarily represent Islam. However, Mernissi has discussed the Islamic sexual morality in a chapter entitled as "The Muslim Concept of Active Female Sexuality." The main part of her discussion centers on the comparison between the views of Freud and Ghazali on female sexuality. Mernissi has summarized her conclusion as follows:
Then she goes on to describe the negative attitude of the Christian West and the positive attitude of Islam towards sexuality in general. She writes:
After describing the positive side of Islamic sexual morality. Mernissi attacks the concept of female sexuality in Islam as she has understood it from Ghazali's writings: According to Ghazali, the most precious gift God gave human is reason. Its best use is the search for knowledge ... But to be able to devote his energies to
The views of this ardent Arab feminist can be summarized as follows: (a) Women are considered sexually active in the Islamic view; (b) therefore, women are a danger to the social order. (c) There should be no emotional investment in women; that is, a man should have no love for his wife. (d) Why should there be no love between husband and wife? Mernissi would answer that love should be exclusively devoted to Allah.
Now let us deal with each of these premises and conclusions gradually and see whether or not they are based on any reliable Islamic sources.In my study of the Qur'an and authentic ahadith on this subject, I have not come across any statement which says that women are sexually more active than men. I can say with confidence that as far as Islam is concerned, there is no difference between the sexuality of men and women. There are certain ahadith which can be used by Mernissi to prove that women are sexually more active than men provided she decides to stick to one part of those ahadith and ignore the other part! It is obvious that such partial use of hadith is an unacceptable academic exercise. For example, in one such hadith, Asbagh bin Nubatah quotes Imam 'Ali as follows: "Almighty God has created the sexual desire in ten parts: then He gave nine parts to women and one to men." If the hadith had ended here, Mernissi would be right in her claim, but the hadith goes on: "And if the Almighty God had not given the women equal parts of shyness, then each man would have nine women related to him."1 In other words, Allah has given the women greater part of sexual desire but He has also neutralized it by giving equal parts of shyness to them. Seen as a whole, this and other similar hadith do not support the claim that in Islam women are sexually more active than men. As for the question that why did Allah give more sexual desire to women and then neutralize it with shyness, I shall insha-Allah deal with it in the chapter on sexual technique.
So how has Mernissi arrive at her conclusion? While contrasting the views of Freud and Ghazali on passive and active sexuality of women, Fatima Mernissi has studied the view of both writers on the process of human reproduction. First she quotes Freud as follows: "The male sex cell is actively mobile and searches out the female and the latter, the ovum, is immobile and waits passively ..."1 This proves to Mernissi that in Freud's view, woman is sexually passive. Then she contrasts this with Ghazali's view by quoting him as follows, "The child is not created from man's sperm alone, but from the union of a sperm from the male with a ovum from the female ... and in any case the ovum of the female is a determinant factor in the process of coagulation."2 This proves to Mernissi that in Ghazali's view, woman is sexually active.
I doubt whether Ghazali would agree with the conclusion which Mernissi draws from his last sentence. Moreover, even if Ghazali meant such a thing, then it cannot be substantiated by the original sources of Islam, the Qur'an and the sunnah. We have a clear hadith which refutes such a connotation to the process of reproduction. Once the Prophet was asked, "O Muhammad! Why is that in some cases the child resembles his paternal uncles and has no resemblance whatsoever to his maternal uncles, and in some cases the child resembles his maternal uncles and has no resemblance whatsoever to his paternal uncles?" The Prophet said, "Whosoever's water-drop [i.e., sperm or ovum] overwhelms that of his or her partner, the child
Then she quotes Ghazali's statement about the pattern of ejaculation of sexes as follows, "... The woman's ejaculation is a much slower process and during that process her sexual desire grows stronger and to withdraw from her before she reaches her pleasure is harmful to her."2 By this statement, Mernissi wants to prove that in Islam woman is considered sexually more active than man. When I read this statement for the first time, I said to myself that this can not be true at all times: sometimes the male ejaculates first and other times the female ejaculates first. And I was surprised that Ghazali would say such a thing. So I checked the Arabic statement of Ghazali and noticed that while translating the above quotation, Mernissi has conveniently left out the word "rubbama" which means "sometimes".3 So the correct statement of Ghazali is that "The woman's ejaculation sometimes is a much slower process ..." With this correction, Mernissi's argument loses its legs.
