Link with Sex and Chastity
In their month-long retreat during the fast of Ramadhan Muslims are specifically permitted, as we noted earlier, to
engage in sexual relations with their wives during the night which follows the
day of fasting. This union of husband and wife during the nights of Ramadhan injects a spiritual content into sexual relations and then
elevates that spiritualized sex to a status worthy of participation in a
spiritual retreat.
What Islam achieves here is nothing less than revolutionary, for the satisfaction of the sexual needs of man have almost universally been held to be incompatible with his highest spiritual strivings. The religious mind through the ages has maintained an aloofness from sex-life which it has either held in contempt or reluctantly tolerated. Islam makes a break with the immediate past and works for the integration of man’s sex life into the period of his most intense and sustained spiritual mobilization. In doing so it spiritualized the sex bond and established a philosophy of sex which is the sine qua non for the emancipation of woman in this modern age.
What Islam achieves here is nothing less than revolutionary, for the satisfaction of the sexual needs of man have almost universally been held to be incompatible with his highest spiritual strivings. The religious mind through the ages has maintained an aloofness from sex-life which it has either held in contempt or reluctantly tolerated. Islam makes a break with the immediate past and works for the integration of man’s sex life into the period of his most intense and sustained spiritual mobilization. In doing so it spiritualized the sex bond and established a philosophy of sex which is the sine qua non for the emancipation of woman in this modern age.
So long as sex is considered to be
incompatible with man’s spiritual strivings, woman’s status in society will
always be problematic. Such a philosophy of sex, which excludes sexual life
from the world of the sacred, and which recognizes no reality for woman beyond
her material reality, eventually causes man to approach woman for the
satisfaction of lust and base carnal passion. When so ever this occurs the mind
creates an image of woman as a toy, a plaything, and an object to be used and
abused; and herein lies the explanation for the continued exploitation of woman
in the modern world. The feminist movement in the Western world seems to have completely
overlooked this aspect of the problem.
As soon as sex is spiritualized, as it
is in the fast of Ramadhan, man approaches woman with light rather than lust. And in the flame of spiritual
illumination sex attains a status which is truly sacred, a gift from Allah Most
High through which a man and woman attain peace, tranquility, intense pleasure
and contentment and most important of all, a union and unity which facilitates
the approach to The One. It is in this context that we can properly examine the
statement of the Prophet
“Three (things) have been made dear
to me (by Allah) in this world of yours – women, and fragrance (of perfume);
and prayer has been the cooling of my eyes.”
(Ahmad and al-Nasa’i)
Shaikh Muhiyuddin Ibn ‘Arabi, in his
famous work Fusus
Al-Hikam, comments on this
saying of the Prophet (sallalahu ta‘alah ‘alaihi wa Sallam) in some detail:
“Then Allah drew forth from him
(namely man) a being in his (i.e., man’s) own image, called woman, and because
she appears in his own image, man feels a deep longing for her, as something
yearns for itself … Thus women were made beloved to him”*.
[* Ibn Arabi., The Bezels of Wisdom translated by R.W.J. Austin (London:
SPCK, 1980) p. 274 ]
Ibn ‘Arabi also directs our attention
to woman as medium in which, and through which, man can contemplate Allah Most High:
“When a man loves a woman, he seeks
union with her, that is to say the most complete union possible in love. And
there is in the elemental sphere no greater union than that between the sexes.
It is precisely because such desire pervades all his parts that man is
commanded to perform the major ablution (i.e., to take a bath after sexual
intercourse). Thus the purification is total, just as his annihilation in her
was total at the moment of consummation. Allah is jealous of His servant that
he should find pleasure in any but Him, so He Purifies him by the ablution, so
that he might once again behold Him in the one in whom he was annihilated,
since it is none other than He whom he sees in her.”
Indeed woman is the most perfect such
medium, according to Ibn ‘Arabi:
“Contemplation of the Reality
without formal support is not possible, since Allah in His Essence, is far
beyond all need of the Cosmos. Since, therefore, some form of support is
necessary, the best and most perfect kind is the contemplation of Allah (Most
High) in women.”
It is important that we should note
that the Prophet (sallalahu ta‘alah ‘alaihi wa Sallam) said: “Three
things have been made dear to me…” He did not say: “Three things did I love.” The implication is
that it was the Divine will which ordained that women be loved more than all
else in the world. The reason, as Ibn Arab explains, is that of all the Ayah or signs of Allah Most High which exist
in the world, woman is the closest Ayah of
Allah to man. She is the closest “window” to heaven! Hence man should approach
woman with the respect which is due to the sacred. And, through woman, he
should seek to approach his Lord.
This is not to say that the celibate is
incapable of spiritual progress. It is rather a view to the effect that in
negating sex in order to pursue spiritual growth, man is, in fact, disregarding
an in-built mechanism in his own nature which so balances the physical and the
spiritual as to allow the one to contribute to the growth of the other.
Finally we may note that the
spiritualization of sex, which is initiated in fasting, makes a significant
impact on sexual morality since it establishes the firmest possible foundations
for chastity. It is in the context of the permission to approach wives during
the nights of Ramadhan that the Qur’an finds it appropriate
to observe that:
“They (your wives) are apparel for
you, and so are you for them.”
(Qur’an, al-Baqarah, 2:187)
Thus when a husband goes to a woman
other than his wife or wives for his sexual satisfaction, he deprives his wife
of her clothing and thus subjects her to a certain kind of nakedness with all
its attendant vulnerability and embarrassment. Chastity is an imperative for
stable and happy family life. And this is the foundation of the stable family
unit without which an enduring civilization cannot be established.
To Be Continued ....
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