It is customary to title the final section of a book “Conclusion,” but I have not done so here. Far from having completed a journey, in this volume I have only attempted a first step toward defining a problem. And the problem, as I currently see it, is this: meaningful consent and mutuality, both of which I believe to be crucial for a just ethics of sexual intimacy, are structurally impossible within the constraints of lawful sexuality as defined by the classical Muslim scholars, whose views – drawing from and building on Qur’an and sunnah – permeate all Muslim discourses. It is possible to rethink Islamic sexual ethics to accommodate these values and there are resources within Muslim texts, both revealed and interpretive, for doing so. Nonetheless, an egalitarian sexual ethics cannot be constructed through pastiche; a methodology of picking-and-choosing, combining isolated elements in expedient ways, will prove insufficient to resolve the core issue at stake. We need, instead, a serious consideration of what makes sex lawful in the sight of God. The obvious response of “marriage” does not really answer the question. What type of bond does God require between spouses? Is it payment of dower that transforms an illicit liaison into a respectable union? Is it a groom’s right of extrajudicial repudiation? A civil marriage license? The bride’s father’s consent? A public ceremony? Sincerity of commitment by the would-be spouses? All of these things? Something else entirely? Moreover, once it is decided what makes sex lawful, what makes it good? By “good” I do not primarily mean sex that is physically pleasurable, although pleasure certainly matters, but rather sex that embodies, among other virtues, kindness, fairness, compassion, and generosity.1 These are all necessary if one is to live up to the ideal of marriage set forth in the Qur’anic declaration that God “created for you mates from among yourselves that you may find tranquility with them, and put love and mercy between you.”2
Of course, despite this powerful and moving (and gender-neutral!) description of the divine purpose for marriage, the Qur’an also includes hierarchical and androcentric provisions for marriage and sex. The Prophet’s sunnah as recorded in hadith contains beautiful reminders to men to consider both female pleasure and women’s tender feelings, but the same sources have demeaning references to women as objects of, and subject to, male desire. The Muslim jurists who repeatedly exhorted men to treat their wives kindly, to consider women’s needs for sex and companionship, and not to abuse their powers of divorce, did so within a logical framework that considered a licit sexual union impossible unless a man’s exclusive control over a woman’s sexual and reproductive capacity was established through marriage or slavery, which they discussed using similar terminology. Given the competing models of appropriate sex and sexual relationships between and within these complex texts, how can Muslims draw on the sources in a coherent way to make ethico-legal decisions about our intimate lives?
My way of framing the question presupposes that Muslims will undertake this process of reflection primarily as individuals, for ourselves and in dialogue with those close to us. That does not mean that religious authorities do not matter; there are thinkers whose ideas have wide currency in the West as well as in Muslim-majority societies, and for those of us lucky enough to have a respected and thoughtful imam or other spiritual figure at our mosque or in our community, he – or perhaps, she – may be a trusted resource. Still, while there are some formal institutions of Muslim religious learning in the United States, the majority of those who speak about Islam (or for Islam) have no special credentials to do so. It is often said that there is no clergy in Islam. Although that is technically true, previous generations in Muslim majority societies have allocated a special role to the ‘ulama. In the West, there is no such class of individuals to serve as an anchor or foil for Muslim public and private discussions of these complicated issues. Indeed, there has been little public discussion at all of what role religious leaders should play in Muslim life in the West, how they should be chosen and trained, and ultimately what type of authority they should wield. A limited conversation began in 2005, sparked by the controversies over female prayer leadership, but it has not yet developed into the kind of broader debate necessary for full exploration of the key questions surrounding Muslim religious authority and institutions in the United States. Still, even formal structures of religious authority will not remove the need for individual Muslims to be substantially better informed about vital issues.
Reinterpretation is not only an individual project, for application in personal lives; it must also be a collective enterprise of scholars thinking, talking, and writing jointly and in counter-point. Muslim feminists have become part of the Islamic intellectual tradition and, in doing so, have begun to push at its boundaries and reshape its contours.3 As we engage more deeply with the intellectual heritage of centuries of Muslim thinkers, we must neither romanticize the tradition as it stands nor be blindly optimistic about prospects for transformation within it. Most importantly, as we expose reductive and misogynist understandings of the Qur’an and hadith, refusing to see medieval interpretations as coextensive with revelation, we must not arrogate to our own readings the same absolutist conviction we criticize in others. We must accept responsibility for making particular choices – and must acknowledge that they are interpretive choices, not merely straightforward reiterations of “what Islam says.”
In this project of interpretation, we must also recognize that on matters of sexual ethics, the Qur’an itself poses challenges for those committed to egalitarian social and intimate relationships. Progressive approaches to the Qur’anic text cannot be limited to selective presentation of egalitarian verses in isolation from their broader scriptural context. Such an approach is both fundamentally dishonest and ultimately futile; arguments about male/female equality built on the systematic avoidance of inconvenient verses will flounder at the first confrontation with something that endorses the hierarchical and gender-differentiated regulations for males and females that so many reformers would like to wish away. This is where jurisprudential methods can offer much to Muslim feminists. Not because the rulings of the jurists are themselves egalitarian – for the most part, they are not when it comes to matters of gender and sex – but because the ways in which jurists have related source texts to social contexts demonstrates that the law they constructed has “always already” been subjected to acts of interpretation. Their practice both authorizes by example human interpretive reasoning and provides a useful model for constructive dialogue between textual sources and social custom, something that has always mattered a great deal where sex and intimacy were concerned.
There are, and always have been, strong elements within Muslim norms that value sex, both as a strong human need and also as a foretaste of the delights of paradise. Sex is powerful and needs regulation, no less so for its link with the sacred. As Ze’ev Maghen points out, “Both sexuality and spirituality are largely exercises in unruliness; the shari‘a delimits each of them and thereby makes them possible.”4 How, though, can a feminist think about sexual intimacy within the constraints of God’s revelation to humanity without becoming limited by patriarchal notions that deny women’s lived experience and potential as fully human, fully moral, and fully sexual beings? It is easy to find revelatory support for women as fully human and fully moral; it is more challenging, but not impossible, to see women as fully sexual in a way that recognizes their status as moral agents. One must seek out and privilege these elements in the tradition, and justify one’s choices. Appealing to timeless principles rather than historical specifics is a crucial interpretive strategy. But one must be prepared to define and defend the principles chosen and promoted in this way. For instance, the necessity of equality as a component of justice must be defended, not merely asserted. Discussions among feminist, reformist, liberal, and progressive Muslims must continue increasing in philosophical and ethical complexity. Simplistic invocations of justice and equity are insufficient without consideration of the wide range of ways in which those terms have been and continue to be understood throughout Muslim history. This will mean, in part, working through the conceptual legacy of past generations of thinkers who have grappled with these questions. Although there is something to be said for a “fresh” approach to the Qur’an, there is a wealth of insightful material that directly engages critical issues for those who seek egalitarian social relations today. And there is a lot to be said for not having to reinvent the wheel.
It is important to realize, though, that if only those who are trained as religious scholars (whatever that comes to mean) are deemed capable of engaging in discussions over how Muslims should behave in their intimate lives and how Muslim families should be regulated, women will be largely excluded from ranks of those wielding religious knowledge. Although there are no restrictions on female participation in scholarly endeavors in theory – and a number of exceptional women, past and present, have been recognized as religious authorities5 – there are significant practical obstacles to female education in madrasa-settings. Likewise, there are social considerations restricting the ascription of religious authority to women. If mastery of the classical tradition is required in order to be considered credible, women are likely to be marginalized, if not entirely excluded, from interpretive reforms. And it matters deeply that women, whose concerns and perspectives differ from men’s, be among those engaging in renewed ethical thought on topics including marriage and sex.
As to the question of religious authority and influence, it is important to note that many Muslim thinkers and authors who are perceived as authorities, and who write and speak from a position of authenticity, are not themselves fully grounded in the classical tradition; they have a selective and often incoherent relationship to law and scriptural interpretation. (As Abou El Fadl points out, “the connections between the classical epistemological and hermeneutic heritage and Muslims living in the United States have been thoroughly severed.”6) Yet because their views are congruent with conventional wisdom about what is “Islamic” – or because their maleness and ethnic background give them an air of authority – their pronouncements are not questioned. There are some scholars with a thorough grounding in the tradition who also engage with modernity in a complicated and thoughtful way but they are, sadly, relatively few compared to the broader group of those who speak in platitudes and, on issues associated with sex and sexuality in particular, make sweeping generalizations about women, gender, and Islam that do not allow for nuance, dispute, or transformation.
Part of this book’s aim has been to highlight striking inconsistencies in the way that several controversial topics are approached in the work of specific authors and, more importantly, certain conventional discourses. By pointing out these inconsistencies and contradictions, it is possible to challenge and possibly dismantle certain dominant discourses. If someone insists that a wife must be continuously sexually available to her husband because Bukhari includes the Prophet’s reported words to that effect, one can ask whether the questioner also accepts the authenticity of Bukhari’s report that the Prophet consummated his marriage with Aishah when she was nine. If someone insists that polygamy is valid for all times and in all places because the Qur’an authorizes it, one can inquire whether the same holds true for slavery. Such juxtapositions do not replace systematic and nuanced exploration of the topics at hand; they serve, rather, to shock one’s discussion partner into considering a familiar topic without the comfortable veneer of apologetic conventional wisdom. One should not stop with rough analogies on complex issues, but rather use those analogies to (re)open dormant questions about the timelessness of specific points in the Qur’an and hadith.
The freedom to treat Qur’an and hadith not as repositories of regulations to be applied literally in all times and places but as sources of guidance for Muslims in transforming their societies in the direction of fairness and justice is important. Individuals must be willing to take responsibility for acts of interpretation, rather than insisting that they are simply doing what “Islam” requires. In fact, it is a precondition for keeping Islam relevant that Muslims’ understandings shift over time and place. Islam is meant to be lived in history, and human beings have, for better or worse, taken on the role of earthly vicegerents. That role cannot be fulfilled by merely carrying out orders, but must involve the exercise of initiative, judgment, and conscience. This matters not only at the level of social reform, however; the conservative view that the family is the bedrock of society deserves real attention. The values that are taught and especially lived in intimate contexts should be guided by deep ethical reflection on the overarching divine purpose for human life on earth: to command what is right, to forbid what is wrong, to do good deeds, and to be ever-conscious of God.