uz Between Medieval and Contemporary Islamic Law;” Shaikh, “Exegetical Violence: Nushuz in Qur’anic Gender Ideology;” and Ali, “Women, Gender, Ta‘a (Obedience), and Nushuz (Disobedience).”1. Wolfe and Beliefnet, eds., Taking Back Islam.
2. On the genesis of these images, see Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman.
3. Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, p. 79.
4. One Indian author writing in the 1970s sums up a dominant view: “While we are by no means opposed to the granting of all legitimate freedom to women, we cannot afford to import the characteristic evils of Western civilization in respect of sexual liberty.” Niazi, Modern Challenges to Muslim Families, pp. 60–61.
5. Doi, Woman in Shari’ah, p. 185.
6. See also Wani, Maintenance Rights of Muslim Women, p. 9.
7. Al-Shafi‘i, Al-Umm, K. al-Sadaq, “Al-shart fi’l-nikah,” vol. 5, p. 108.
8. Sheila Briggs’ remarks, Feminist Sexual Ethics Project colloquium III, Brandeis University, September 2005.
9. Yalom and Carstensen, “Introduction,” in idem., eds., Inside the American Couple, p. 10. See also Yalom, A History of the Wife.
10. A number of female slaves mentioned in biblical stories bore children sired by their masters, who included Abraham and Jacob. On the sexual use of male slaves in the ancient world, see chapter 5.
11. Michael Sells’ insistence that work on religion and violence must be first, comparative, and second, both critical and self-critical, applies equally to work on issues of religion and sexuality. Michael Sells, lecture at Brandeis University, April 21, 2005.
12. Yalom, “Biblical Models: From Adam and Eve to the Bride of Christ,” p. 15. Even if Yalom is generalizing here – there are some denominations that ceased using wifely promises of obedience long before the time she designates – the point is well taken. See also the 1945 New Jersey verdict quoted by Shanely, Just Marriage, p. 8.
13. Haideh Moghissi, however, argues that “only individuals who have somehow escaped the sexual repression which dominates the lives of women and men in Islamic societies can deny its overriding role in defining women’s experience. Poverty and hunger hang over women’s heads throughout the region. But ... sexuality and sexual repression are where women suffer most.” Moghissi, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism, p. 95.
14. Plaskow, “Decentering Sex,” p. 30.
15. Ruxton, Maliki Law, p. v.
16. Historian Huda Lutfi, referring to a fourteenth-century Cairene document makes a more broadly applicable point: “prescriptive religious literature should not necessarily be taken as a reflection of reality.” Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women,” p. 102. See also Sonbol, “Introduction,” in idem, ed., Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History.
17. Tucker, Gender and Islamic History.
18. Ahmed, A Border Passage, p. 128. Ahmed does recognize the value of this tradition, at least in comparison to “fundamentalist Islam, textual Islam’s more narrow and more poorly informed modern descendant.” See also Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, p. 239, where she writes of the dominance of the “technical, legalistic, establishment version of Islam, a version that largely bypasses the ethical elements in the Islamic message.”
19. Kevin Reinhart (at the Mapping Muslim Ethics colloquium, Duke University, April 2005) pointed out the paradox in my project: I am attempting to contest the jurists’ interpretive authority in part by focusing on them.
20. Khaled Abou El Fadl describes the selective approach to Qur’an and sunnah reflected in “the endless stream of dogma that one encounters in Muslim conferences, lectures, and publications,” in The Authoritative and the Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses, p. 17. A focus on Qur’an and “authentic” hadith to the exclusion of jurisprudential doctrines characterizes even some self-identified progressive authors, such as Syed, The Position of Women in Islam. Syed (p. ix) describes his approach: “I start with the relevant verses of the Quran followed by the appropriate, authentic Hadith and have supplemented where necessary with relevant remarks and comments of Islamic authorities and scholars;” additionally, he provides his “own comments in areas where there is no compelling authority to follow and yet where an urgent answer is needed.”
21. Rahman, Islamic Methodology in History, is the best developed defense of this approach.
22. Jonathan Brockopp notes that there is “a substantial literature under each of these categories,” but “we would look in vain here for practical application of Islamic ideals to matters of daily life.” See “Taking Life and Saving Life,” in idem, ed., Islamic Ethics of Life, p. 10. On ethical thought broadly, see Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics.
23. Brockopp, “Taking Life and Saving Life,” p. 10. He also notes that “sharia is far too large a category to be reduced to ethics,” as it also encompasses ritual matters that are outside the purview of ethical thought (p. 11).
24. Faruki, “Legal Implications for Today of al-Ahkam al-Khamsa.” Faruki mentions, but does not discuss in detail, historical developments of this scheme over several centuries.
25. See Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, p. 160. The phenomenal success of scholar and media figure Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, is indicative of the desire for simple answers; a children’s title by Mohammad Mazhar Hussaini likewise proclaims its relevance as My Little Book of Halal and Haram.
26. Wael Hallaq argues “that the shari‘a is no longer a tenable reality” and those who advocate its reapplication are “in an irredeemable state of denial.” Hallaq, “Can the Shari‘a be Restored?,” p. 22.
27. Murad, “Boys will be Boys: Gender Identity Issues.”
28. Zahra Ayubi points out, however, that some immigrants base their view of Islamic legal requirements (e.g., with regard to woman-initiated divorce) on modern statutory provisions of their country of origin rather than any legal school. Ayubi, “American Muslim Women Negotiating Divorce,” p. 48.
29. Taji-Farouki and Nafi, “Introduction,” in idem, eds., Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, p. 10.
30. “[O]ne of the most significant features of contemporary Muslim thought is the attachment to and even veneration of ‘Islam’ in controversial debate. Thus we find that [authors] accurately represent Muslim thought when they say that ‘Islam requires,’ or ‘Islam accepts,’ or some other similar locution.” Reinhart, “The Past in the Future of Islamic Ethics,” p. 216.
31. Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, pp. 144–5, 62–3.
32. Al-Yawm al-Sa‘udi, “‘Al-tahjiz’ wa ijbar al-mar’a ‘ala al-zawaj min akbar anwa‘ al-zulm.” Antoun, “The Islamic Court,” p. 464, discusses a case where a contemporary Jordanian judge concluded that al-Shafi‘i was wrong in allowing fathers to compel marriages for their children. For references to female consent in works aimed at a general audience, in addition to the sources cited in Ali, “A Beautiful Example,” pp. 283–4, see, e.g., Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, p. 39: “Islam considered the opinion of the daughter in the marriage as an essential condition for the validity of the marriage itself.” Describing “classical Islamic law” (or Shari‘a) specifically, Khadduri, “Marriage in Islamic Law,” p. 213, declares: “Although an offer to marry is actually made through a woman’s father, the woman’s consent is considered imperative if the contract is to be binding.” Fadel, “Reinterpreting the Guardian’s Role,” provides a substantive re-evaluation of Maliki doctrine, and discusses its relevance to Muslim marriage in the United States.
33. Sahih Muslim, trans. Siddiqi. The quote is from vol. 1–2, p. 702; hadith discussing sex with female slaves are found in vol. 1–2, pp. 734–5 and 743–4. See also Hidayatullah, “Islamic Conceptions of Sexuality,” p. 263, where she declares that “According to the Qur’an, the proper vehicle for enjoying the union between sexual partners is marriage. In fact, it is the only acceptable framework for sexual relations between two human beings.” She refers briefly to the Prophet’s practice of concubinage on p. 290, n. 14. On slavery generally, and slave concubinage specifically, see chapter 3.
34. I owe the use of the term “dissonance” in this context to Farid Esack, personal conversation, April 2005.
35. Mohja Kahf, personal communication, March 2004.
36. Full disclosure: I was one of three scholars contributing a brief essay.
37. Kugle, “Enough with the Prudes: Bring On ‘Sex and the Umma’.”
38. Bailey, Sexual Ethics: A Christian View, p. 8.
1. Al-Ghazali (Kitab Adab al-Nikah from Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din), trans. Holland, The Proper Conduct of Marriage, p. 75.
2. Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar, vol. 4, p. 379. The text points out divergent views among earlier Hanafi authorities about the precise contours of a husband’s sexual obligations to his wife (and even his concubines), but even those who hold that a husband may not abandon intercourse with his wife entirely acknowledge that any failure in this regard is not actionable before a judge once he has “exhausted her right” by consummation.
3. Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, p. 193.
4. For one first-person account of such a marriage, see Sharif-Clark, “Marrying a Believer.”
5. This phrase, from Q. 4:34, is usually taken by exegetes to refer to both dower and spousal support, nafaqa. See below.
6. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, pp. 42–6, and sources cited there.
7. Khadduri, “Marriage in Islamic Law,” p. 213.
8. Mashhour, “Islamic Law and Gender Equality,” pp. 564–5.
9. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, p. 45; Ahmed is making a general point here, not specifically discussing sadaq.
10. Women’s clear legal claim to dower might be vitiated in practice, with the payment either withheld by the husband or his family after marriage, divorce, or widowhood, or received and kept by the bride’s family. Judges have routinely and consistently enforced female dower claims when these are brought to court. For one anecdote, see Antoun, “The Islamic Court,” pp. 456–7; see also Tucker, In the House of the Law, pp. 53–5. On the shifting patterns of dower in Palestinian women’s experiences, see Moors, Women, Property, and Islam. Additionally, although the legally required transfer is unidirectional, a number of Muslim societies have had informal exchanges that, in practice, transferred resources from the bride’s family to the groom through trousseaus or other exchanges. See Tucker, In the House of the Law, pp. 55–7; Zomeño, Dote y matrimonio en al-Andalus y el norte de Africa; and Rapoport, Marriage, Money, and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society, pp. 12–30, who discusses the function of the trousseau as a type of “gender-specific pre-mortem inheritance” (p. 30).
11. Wynn, “Marriage Contracts and Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia,” and Hoodfar, “Circumventing Legal Limitation.” See also Mir-Hosseini, Marriage on Trial, for discussion of how dower and support obligations are used as bargaining chips in divorce negotiations in Iran and Morocco.
12. Qaisi, “A Student Note.”
13. See Al-Shafi‘i, Kitab Ikhtilaf Malik wa’l-Shafi‘i, in Al-Umm, vol. 7, p. 376; and, for similar language, Al-Shafi‘i, Al-Umm, K. al-Sadaq, “Fi’l sadaq bi aynihi yatlafu qabla dafa‘ahu,” vol. 5, p. 92; K. al-Nafaqat, “Ikhtilaf al-rajul wa’l-mar’a fi’l-khul‘,” vol. 5, p. 300; K. al-Sadaq, “Sadaq al-shay’ bi aynihi fa yujadu mu‘ayban,” vol. 5, p. 111; and Al-Muzani, Mukhtasar al-Muzani, K. al-Nikah, “Sadaq ma yazidu bi budnihi wa yanqasu,” in Al-Umm, vol. 9, p. 194.
14. See, among other verses, Q. 4:4, 20, 24–5, and 34.
15. Q. 4:24.
16. In which case, as discussed further in chapter 2, she is using a delegated power of divorce.
17. Ali, “Progressive Muslims and Islamic Jurisprudence,” pp. 169, 178–9; Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, p. 72, for one example of where this rhetoric breaks down.
18. See Moghissi, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism, pp. 21–2; Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” pp. 192–3.
19. Schmidtke, “Homoeroticism and Homosexuality in Islam,” p. 261 (although she generalizes regarding “the Judaeo-Christian tradition”). On attempts to draw a similar distinction between Judaism and Christianity, see Boyarin, A Radical Jew.
20. “La rahbaniyya fi’l-Islam.” Although this hadith is famous, it is apparently non-canonical. See Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh, p. 5, n. 11.
21. For one contemporary example, see Abdul-Ra’uf, Marriage in Islam, pp. 49–53. Abdul-Ra’uf quotes some of the Qur’anic passages and hadith reports used by al-Ghazali, below.
22. Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, p. 49 notes this rationale for wives’ sexual rights: “The husband is required and obliged by Islamic law to fulfill the sexual rights of his spouse, to ensure the satisfaction of the spouse so as to refrain one’s spouse from getting involved in shameful acts, may Allah forbid.”
23. Al-Ghazali died in 1111 CE. For a recent discussion of al-Ghazali, see Moosa, Al-Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination. Moosa writes (p. 12) that “the Muslim tradition is saturated with Ghazali’s traces.” Al-Ghazali’s discussion of sex in the Ihya’ is one of the main sources for scholars today discussing sexuality in the classical tradition. See, for instance, Hidayatullah, “Islamic Conceptions of Sexuality,” pp. 264–9, 273. Fourteenth-century jurist Ibn al-Hajj expressed similar sentiments; see Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women,” pp. 107–8.
24. Of course, within marriage the husband’s duties are the wife’s rights, and vice-versa, but the choice to address the husband as the relevant actor is noteworthy.
25. Al-Ghazali, trans. Holland, The Proper Conduct of Marriage, p. 74. The verse is Q. 2:223 trans. ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali. For discussion of other provisions of this verse, see chapter 7.
26. Al-Ghazali, trans. Holland, The Proper Conduct of Marriage, p. 75.
27. Shaikh, “Family Planning, Contraception, and Abortion in Islam,” p. 115.
28. Shaikh, “Family Planning, Contraception, and Abortion in Islam,” p. 114; see also al-Hibri, “An Introduction,” pp. 57–8.
29. Shaikh does not refer to the Shafi‘i view that the wife’s consent is not required. See Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, p. 31; Bowen, “Muslim Juridical Opinions,” pp. 325, 327–8. Also see Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 526.
30. These points have been treated in works from Fatna Sabbah’s Woman in the Muslim Unconscious to Geraldine Brooks’ journalistic Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. Sabbah’s text is problematic in numerous respects for conflating source texts with their interpretation. However, it was groundbreaking and still offers some important insights into the Islamic tradition. Fatima Mernissi’s work addresses the same issues; see especially the articles collected in Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory. Malti-Douglas’ Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word traces these themes through a variety of medieval Arabo-Muslim literary texts.
31. See, e.g., Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, p. 27 and Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women,” esp. pp. 117–8.
32. Ibn Jibreen is one of the muftis associated with the Saudi fatwa organization studied by Abou El Fadl in his Speaking in God’s Name.
33. Ibn Baz, et al., Fatawa Islamiyah, vol. 5, p. 391.
34. In another passage in the Ihya’ overlooked by those who quote him in support of women’s sexual rights, al-Ghazali praises the practice of female circumcision; see Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” p. 32.
35. The parenthetical “at least” seems to be the translator’s addition.
36. Sahih Muslim, K. Al-Nikah, “It is not permissible for a woman to abandon the bed of her husband,” trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, p. 732. A variant ending is also mentioned with “until she comes back” instead of “until morning.”
37. Sahih Muslim, K. Al-Nikah, “It is not permissible for a woman to abandon the bed of her husband,” trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, p. 732.
38. Sahih Bukhari, K. Al-Nikah, “If a woman spends the night deserting her husband’s bed,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 93.
39. See Ali, “Money, Sex, and Power,” esp. chapter 2.
40. Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan, vol. 1, p. 270 (1588, #688).
41. Wani, Maintenance Rights of Muslim Women, p. 24.
42. See Ali, “Money, Sex, and Power,” chapter 2. Consent to sex within marriage is one area where comparative examples can be especially useful in sorting through the range of Muslim views. On medieval Catholic canon law, see Brundage, “Implied Consent to Intercourse.” Marital rape is a fairly recent legal offense; a woman’s husband “could force sexual intercourse upon her without being guilty of rape” in England until a 1991 court decision. See Doggett, Marriage, Wife Beating, and the Law in Victorian England, p. 46.
43. Sahih Bukhari, K. al-Nikah, “Your wife has a right over you,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 97; see a similar anecdote in Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, pp. 49–50.
44. See Ali, “Money, Sex, and Power,” chapter 2.
45. Ibn Taymiyya is often quoted as espousing a more categorical right to divorce for a woman whose husband does not have sex with her. See Al-Sadlaan, Marital Discord (al-Nushooz), p. 33; and al-Hibri, “An Introduction,” p. 70, n. 70.
46. The term muhsanat is used in at least two different senses in the Qur’an. In some places, such as Q. 4:24, it means married females; in Q. 5:5 it clearly refers to unmarried women. Views differ as to whether, in this context, it means women who are chaste or those who are free. This ambiguity gave rise to juristic disagreement over whether a free Muslim man could marry an enslaved kitabiyya (i.e., woman from ahl al-kitab). The general Hanafi view was that such a marriage was permitted, but other Sunni jurists held that while concubinage with an enslaved kitabiyya was acceptable, and marriage with a free kitabiyya likewise, a free Muslim man could only marry an enslaved woman if she was Muslim. None of this discussion considers the linkage between virtue and freedom, or rather the presumption that a female slave could or would not be chaste. I borrow the translation of muhsanat as “virtuous” from Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, pp. 161, 179. My discussion of intermarriage touches on classical topics also covered by Friedmann’s thoughtful and thorough chapter, “Interfaith Marriage,” pp. 160–93, and I have cited his text as a resource for those interested in pursuing further the specific topics discussed here.
47. They disagreed, however, as to whether that dissolution took place immediately and irrevocably or was suspended until the end of the wife’s post-marital waiting period; in the latter view, if the husband converted before the waiting period expired, the marriage would continue in force.
48. Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, p. 161.
49. For a brief discussion of “marriage equality,” see Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought, pp. 30–34; also see Siddiqui, “Law and the Desire for Social Control,” and Zomeño, “Kafa’a in the Maliki School.”
50. Hamilton, The Hedaya, or Guide, vol. 1, p. 110. Hamilton’s often quirky rendering (“more like a summary of al-Marghinani’s views, as they appeared in the Persian translation, expressed in Hamilton’s language” than a translation, according to Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee [Ibn Rushd, The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, xlvi]) is the only accessible English version to date; I have retained his language here. A new translation of the Hidaya by Nyazee is forthcoming from Amal Press (Bristol, England), with the first volume slated for publication in 2006.
51. Rather, he provides an extended discussion of the (im)permissibility of men’s marrying kitabiyyat and/or “idolatresses,” mushrikat, either free or enslaved. The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, 2:51–3. This is not simply because he is concerned with the lawfulness of men’s actions alone; the immediately preceding section discusses, if only briefly, the case of women marrying male slaves. (It is permissible, provided that the women’s guardians agree and that the slaves in question do not belong to the women themselves. The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, 2:49, 51. However, a number of legal thinkers consider marriage between free females and enslaved males so blameworthy as to be practically forbidden.)
52. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 529.
53. See Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, pp. 172–3, esp. n. 72, and my discussion below.
54. Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan, vol. 1, p. 115 (1216 #316); see also Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, p. 180. Friedmann, pp. 185–6, identifies Ibn Hazm and Abu Thawr as holding that marriage to Zoroastrians was permissible. In other contexts where Hindus or Buddhists were the relevant minority, some Muslim scholars seem to have held that they were to be considered recipients of revelation (ahl al-kitab), suggesting a strong practical role for proximity in what some consider purely theological questions.
55. Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan, vol. 1, p. 115 (1216 #316).
56. Here, I am only treating the case of conversion by “people of the Book.” In the case of other (pagan, polytheist, etc.) converts to Islam, or of apostasy from Islam, no marriage can stand, whether it is the husband or the wife who is the Muslim partner. Again, however, very early Muslim practice allows for ambiguity on this topic; there is some dispute, for instance, over whether the marriage of one of the Prophet’s daughters to Abu al-‘As was preserved despite his refusal to convert until her waiting period had long expired or whether a new marriage followed his conversion. Accounts taking both views are found in Sunan al-Tirmidhi, K. al-Nikah, “Ma ja’a fi’l-zawjayn al-mushrikayn yuslimu ihdahuma,” vol. 3, pp. 447–8.
57. Alalwani, “Fiqh of Minorities (1 of 3).” I would like to thank Junaid Qadri (personal communication, November 2004) for bringing this article to my attention.
58. See Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, p. 172. Friedmann does not highlight the distinction between already being married and getting married when noting the eventual demise of the “current of opinion willing to countenance the preservation of a Muslim woman’s marriage to an unbeliever.” Notably, some of these unbelievers were non-kitabis.
59. European Council for Fatwa, Resolution 3/8, “A woman embraces Islam and her husband does not,” from the Final Statement of the 8th Ordinary Session.
60. He thus passes the first test that Abou El Fadl sets in his discussion of authoritarianism in Islamic thought. Syed, discussing this issue (The Position of Women in Islam, pp. 44–7), also acknowledges the jurists’ prohibition and that “practice from the earliest time is against such unions” but uses a legal maxim regarding permissibility to declare (p. 47) that “it is an acceptable proposition that Islamic law permits marriage between Muslim men and Muslim women with women and men, respectively, belonging to the ahlil kitab.” Syed contends that the Qur’an and the hadith “are silent on the question of Muslim women marrying kitabis.”
61. See, for example, the fatwa from Islam Q&A (www.islam-qa.com) “Ruling on a Muslim man marrying a non-Muslim woman and vice versa” (Question #21380). No individual mufti is listed as the author of the response in question, but renowned classical exegetes are quoted as prohibiting all marriages between Muslim women and any non-Muslim, whether mushrik or kitabi.
62. On the applicability of Qur’anic commands to men and women, see chapter 7.
1. Sunan Abi Dawud, K. al-Talaq, “Bab fi karahiyyat al-talaq,” vol. 1, p. 503. Also there: “To God, Exalted and Majestic, the most repugnant (abghad) of what is lawful is divorce.
2. Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan, vol. 2, p. 167 (2263 #1363).
3. For a survey of twentieth-century reforms in divorce laws, see An-Na’im, ed., Islamic Family Law in a Changing World. For a mid-twentieth-century discussion of Indian application of Muslim divorce law, see Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, pp. 123–62.
4. Q. 4:35, 128.
5. Barring her involvement in “clear lewdness,” on which see Q. 4:19; Q. 2:229 discusses the permissibility of compensation if both parties fear they will not be able to adhere to appropriate limits. Ibn Rushd, The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, vol. 2, pp. 79–84 discusses the debates over when and whether (and how much) compensation was permitted.
6. There are two exceptions: widows wait for four months and ten days, regardless of whether the marriage was consummated, and pregnant women’s waiting periods end when they give birth. There has been dispute, however, about the case of the pregnant widow; most have settled on the view that her ‘idda ends when she gives birth and she need not observe the rest of the mourning period. Additionally, there is a different length of waiting periods for slave and free women.
7. The jurists understand this intervening marriage to be necessary from Qur’an (2:230); they rule that this marriage to a different husband must be consummated based on a reported statement from the Prophet that it was not lawful for a woman to return to a husband who had divorced her three times “until she has tasted the sweetness [of intercourse]” with her other husband. See, among other sources, Sahih Bukhari, Book of Divorce, “If he divorces her triply and she marries another husband after the waiting period,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 182; and Tirmidhi, K. al-Nikah, “On the one for whom [she is] made lawful and the one who makes [her] lawful,” vol. 3, pp. 427–9.
8. See, for a brief summary of differences on this point, Coulson, A History of Islamic Law, pp. 111–13.
9. A few early authorities including Sa‘id ibn al-Musayyab held that a man could take his wife back during her waiting period from khul‘, even without her consent, if he returned to her the compensation she had paid him.
10. Ironically, even some members of the ‘ulama turned to this type of argument in their efforts to defeat proposed Egyptian legislation for stipulations in marriage contracts. Ron Shaham summarizes the arguments of the Shaykh al-Azhar: “The Qur’an defined the required relationship between the spouses as being based on love and compassion, whereas the proposed stipulations in the marriage contract reduced this relationship to a property transaction based on bargaining.” Shaham, “State, Feminists and Islamists,” p. 477.
11. Ayubi, “American Muslim Women Negotiating Divorce,” pp. 128–33.
12. Zahra Ayubi’s thesis in progress, however, indicates that in some cases Muslim immigrants refer to the laws of their nations of origin as their source for authoritative Islamic law.
13. Fatawa-I-Kazee Khan, vol. 2, p. 167 (2263 #1363). See also Haskafi, The Durr-ul-Mukhtar, pp. 230–1.
14. The husband’s ability to refute a woman’s claims that he has divorced her by taking an oath seems to have been widely practiced. One case in the Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shayba (vol. 5, pp. 251–2) unwittingly attests to this practice when discussing a matter of inheritance in the case of “the man whose wife claimed that he had divorced her and she brought him up to the Sultan, and he had him swear that he had not divorced her, then he returned her to him.” When he dies, the fact that she inherited from him implies the continued validity of the marriage.
15. Tucker, In the House of the Law, p. 65; Tucker’s translation.
16. As a practical matter, premodern Hanafi judges found ways around women’s access to divorce while preserving inflexibility of doctrine.
17. For the concept of “traditionist-jurisprudent,” see Melchert, “Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law.”
18. Spectorsky, Chapters on Marriage and Divorce, pp. 248–9.
19. Jennings, “Divorce in the Ottoman Sharia,” p. 165 notes that cases of “claims and counterclaims” are common.
20. See country profiles in An-Na’im, Islamic Family Law in a Changing World, for specifics.
21. This can cause problems where a suspended or conditional oath of divorce working to secure the wife’s option to leave the marriage if the husband does (or fails to do) a particular deed relies on the resulting divorce to be final. Given the interconnected and intricately interwoven nature of legal doctrines, tinkering with one portion of the system is likely to have significant unintended consequences elsewhere.
22. As Amira Sonbol argues, it is not always the case that codified national laws are always better than “traditional” jurisprudential doctrines. See “Introduction,” in Sonbol, (ed.), Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History.
23. Esposito with DeLong-Bas, Women in Muslim Family Law, p. 60; see also Mashhour, “Islamic Law and Gender Equality,” pp. 582–4.
24. Esposito with DeLong-Bas, Women in Muslim Family Law, p. 80.
25. Some have argued that the availability of khul‘ induces women who have legitimate grounds for judicial divorce without relinquishing of dower to give up their dower in exchange for ease of obtaining marital dissolution.
26. See Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, pp. 101–3 for a summary of representative views on women’s initiation of divorce. Al-Sheha insists that “The most natural and logical way to this peace [mentioned in Q. 4:128] is to let the man have control of the divorce process, not the woman.”
27. Eid, “Marriage, Divorce and Child Custody as Experienced by American Muslims,” proposes such a system. The Canadian Council of Muslim Women has been arguing against a similar proposal at the provincial level.
28. An-Na’im, “Shari’a and Islamic Family Law,” p. 3; see also p. 16.
29. An-Na’im, “Shari’a and Islamic Family Law,” p. 8.
30. The use of U.S. law has been an essential element of the strategy proposed by Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights (www.karamah.org) for Muslim women to safeguard their rights.
1. Haskafi, The Durr-ul-Mukhtar, p. 24. I have altered B.M. Dayal’s translation of this passage in several respects.
2. Modern apologetics, as will be seen below, frequently claim instead that she was a wife. A war captive, Rayhana, is likely to have been Muhammad’s concubine, though some sources suggest that he manumitted and then married her, as he had done with Safiyya, another war prisoner he purchased from her captor. See Ibn Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad; and Hidayatullah, Mariyah the Copt.
3. Q. 2:221, 24:32.
4. Terms for male slaves included ‘abd (also “worshipper”) and both ghulam and fatah, which could refer to either male slaves or male youths.
5. Mattson, “A Believing Slave is Better Than an Unbeliever,” p. 134.
6. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, pp. 67, 79–101.
7. See Q. 4:3. Al-Umm, K. al-Nafaqat, “Ma ja’a fi ‘adad ma yahillu min al-hara’ir wa’l-imma’ wa ma tahillu bihi al-furuj,” 5:215.
8. While there were frequently distinctions made between types of slaves based on race, slavery as a whole was not racialized in Muslim contexts in the way that it was in the U.S. See Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East.
9. Peirce, The Imperial Harem. Their situation was unusual, however, and some have suggested that scholarship should not treat them alongside other slaves, or perhaps even as slaves at all. See Toledano, “Representing the Slave’s Body in Ottoman Society,” p. 57. Davis suggests likewise that “regardless of law or theory, a slave’s actual status could historically vary along a broad spectrum of rights, powers, and protections.”In the Image of God, p. 125.
10. For one discussion, see Diederich, “Indonesians in Saudi Arabia,” pp. 133–6.
11. A number of reports over the past decade from organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented these abuses.
12. There is significant dispute among human rights activists today as to what constitutes an acceptable use of the term “slavery.” Miers (“Contemporary Forms of Slavery,” p. 239) notes that, for some servants, “in practice their condition is very like that of chattel slaves” although “it is very different in theory.” Toledano (in “Representing the Slave’s Body”) argues for understanding slavery as a “continuum” and Davis makes a similar point: “[T]he condition of slavery itself has not always been the most abject form of servitude, and it is not necessarily so today. Some contract labor, though technically free, is more oppressive than many types of conventional bondage.” In the Image of God, p. 123.
13. U.S. Department of State, “Slavery, Abduction and Forced Servitude in Sudan;” and iAbolish, “Spotlight on Sudan.”
14. Nazer and Lewis, Slave: My True Story. On the past and contemporary practice of slavery in the Sudan, see Collins, “Slavery in the Sudan in History.” For discussion of the historical practice of enslavement of Muslims by Muslims in Africa, with attention to racial and ethnic patterns, see Mack, “Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland,” esp. pp. 89–90; also Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, pp. 57–9.
15. Algar, Wahabbism: A Critical Essay, p. 57.
16. On this topic, see the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project website and the links collected there: www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse.
17. Sikainga, “Slavery and Muslim Jurisprudence in Morocco,” esp. pp. 64–6 and p. 70. Lovejoy downplays the significance of European abolitionist pressure, arguing that Europe “reluctantly pursued the fight whenever compromise proved impossible.” He argues, instead, that abolition resulted from the incompatibility of Africa’s absorption into the modern industrial economy with “a slave-based social formation.”Transformations in Slavery, p. 253. Likewise, Collins notes that in the Sudan, British colonial officials were largely content to focus their attention on the slave trade, and overlook the widespread practice of slavery. “Slavery in the Sudan in History,” p. 80.
18. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, pp. 80–81.
19. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, p. 127.
20. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, pp. 122–9 remarks on the Muslim view of Muslim slavery as humane and, in particular, distinct from chattel slavery as practiced in the American South. On the attention to Muslim sensibilities in Western scholarship on Muslim slavery, see Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, p. vi (also Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, pp. 138–9 on this remark by Lewis; and Davis, In the Image of God, pp. 137–50 for a review of Lewis’ work as a whole). See also Miller, “Muslim Slavery and Slaving: A Bibliography.”
21. Ali, “Money, Sex, and Power,” chapters 1, 4, and 5.
22. See, in addition to other verses cited below, Q. 2:178; 16:75; and 30:28.
23. Q. 4:92.
24. Q. 4:92; 58:3.
25. Q. 24:33.
26. Q. 2:221; 4:25; 24:32.
27. Q. 24:33.
28. E.g., Q. 23:5–6; 70:29–30.
29. See Mattson, “A Believing Slave is Better Than an Unbeliever,” pp. 131–41 for discussion of these issues and the suggestion that the Qur’anic verses may make a distinction between permissible sex with war captives and sex with female slaves obtained in another fashion. On the general acceptability of sexual access to captured women in the ancient Mediterranean world, see Azam, “Sexual Violence in Islamic Law.”
30. Nor can a woman (who cannot have sexual access to her male slave as a “concubine”) marry her own male slave.
31. On marriage to female slaves, see Ali, “Money, Sex, and Power,” especially chapters 2 and 5.
32. In addition to Mattson, “A Believing Slave is Better than an Unbeliever,” see Brockopp, Early Maliki Law, pp. 192–205 on the early development of regulations surrounding the umm walad.
33. Bayman, The Secret of Islam, p. 173. Emphasis in original. Note that he makes a point about the exemplariness of the Prophet, then segues into the numerical limit of four, but does not address the Prophet’s exemption from that limit.
34. Algosaibi, Revolution in the Sunnah, p. 10.
35. The use of the term concubine here, in the English translation of Algosaibi’s commentary, makes it seem as though the use of the “prisoners” for sexual purposes was a forgone conclusion. Khan translates the phrase that appears in Algosaibi’s English essay as “captured some concubines” as “received captives from among the Arab captives.” There is a similar report in Bukhari’s K. al-Nikah, “Al-‘Azl,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 103. Sahih Muslim contains similar reports in its K. al-Nikah, “Al-‘Azl,” trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 732–3. Sachedina, “Islam, Procreation and the Law”, p. 108, cites this story, as quoted in Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, in a series of hadith, also without any comment on its implications for any matter beyond contraception.
36. Algosaibi, Revolution in the Sunnah, pp. 37–8.
37. Algosaibi, Revolution in the Sunnah, pp. 40–41.
38. See one report in Sahih Muslim, K. al-Nikah, “Al-‘Azl,” (trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 732–3) and another in the Muwatta’ of Malik ibn Anas (K. al-Talaq), which makes reference to the ransom the captors hoped to receive.
39. Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, p. 177 (writing on a different matter). This did not always go unrecognized by earlier jurists.
40. The exception the jurists sometimes made for those too young to menstruate implies, of course, the permissibility of having sex with them.
41. See, for example, p. 529, from the section on marriage, which contains several untranslated passages.
42. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, ix.
43. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 459.
44. Ibn Baz, “Concerning Polygyny,” in Ibn Baz et al., Islamic Fatawa Regarding Women, p. 178. He is responding to a questioner who partially quotes Q. 4:3, mentioning orphans but avoiding the portion of the verse discussing “what your right hands possess.” On the interconnections between polygamy and slavery, see Hasan, “Polygamy, Slavery, and Qur’anic Sexual Ethics.”
45. Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an, p. 48; see also Mashhour, “Islamic Law and Gender Equality,” pp. 568–9.
46. See, for instance, Khadduri, “Marriage in Islamic Law;” al-Hibri, “Islam, Law and Custom,” p. 26; and Mashhour, “Islamic Law and Gender Equality,” p. 569. The latter argues that “what is definitely clear in the Quran is that all its texts encourage the release of slaves.” Wadud expressed a similar view in Qur’an and Woman, p. 101, but makes a different and, I think, more persuasive argument in her later essay “Alternative Qur’anic Interpretation and the Status of Muslim Women,” pp. 14–15.
47. Syed, The Position of Women in Islam, pp. 33–6; Syed states (p. 36) that “those jurists of Islamic law who laid down the rule that a master may have sexual relationship [sic] with his female slave without marriage are totally mistaken.”
48. Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite, esp. p. 139; Khadduri, “Marriage in Islamic Law,” p. 217, makes the same point a decade earlier, regarding polygamy specifically. He argues that “Because he was a religious reformer who was principally interested in preaching a belief in one God – a revolutionary belief principle in pagan society – the Prophet Muhammad did not go so far as to seek a complete change in the social system. The Prophet felt that advocating radical change might adversely affect the spread of his religious teachings; therefore, he sought to effect gradual change in the law.” See also Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, p. 9.
49. If God is all-powerful, why did God not create a better, more just world? If this is not the best world, then God is an oppressor (muzlim) – needless to say, a problematic view. If it is the best world, however, then it cannot be unjust (if God is just). For a more thorough exploration of these issues as they were engaged by Muslim theologians and jurists, see Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought and Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice, pp. 39–77.
50. This view, linked to Hasan al-Basri (Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice, pp. 41, 108) both reflects a repeated Qur’anic sentiment (see chapter 7) and exists in tension with views about God’s omnipotence, again raising the question of why God allows zulm to exist in the first place, and whether doing so makes God unjust.
51. Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice, p. 106.
1. Nomani, Standing Alone in Mecca, p. 295.
2. See, e.g., Q. 23:5–6. The Qur’an describes zina as “lewdness (fahisha) and an evil way,” and prohibits believers from even approaching it (Q. 17:32); in Q. 33:35, parallel praises are given of Muslim men and women who embody a range of virtuous behaviors including chastity.
3. The lowest age seems to be that of nine for girls (and fourteen for boys) in post-revolutionary Iran. On nine as the age of majority for females, see chapter 8.
4. Archard, Sexual Consent, p. 1.
5. A variety of historical and anthropological studies demonstrate that “the norms were not always followed.” However, as one ethnographer notes for Morocco, “deviation from norms was more limited in the past;” further, “there has recently been some change in the norms themselves” regarding conduct. David, “Changing Gender Relations in a Moroccan Town,” p. 210. For a succinct assessment of the contemporary Moroccan situation, see Dialmy, “Moroccan Youth, Sex and Islam.”
6. Nikah, the term used by the jurists for the marriage contract, literally refers to sexual intercourse, so closely is marriage linked to sex. The treatment of this term in a passage from Haskafi’s Durr-ul-Mukhtar (pp. 2–3) reflects this ambiguity: according to the Hanafi view cited, in some instances the Qur’an refers to marriage when it uses nikah; in others, it refers to any sexual intercourse.
7. From a punishment perspective the “who” is generally more important than the “what” – a disapproved act such as anal intercourse or sex with a menstruant who is a lawful partner is much less serious than an approved act with a forbidden partner.
8. Sahih Muslim, K. al-Nikah, “He who sees a woman, and his heart is affected, should come to his wife, and should have intercourse with her,” trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 704–5. One account includes, in his subsequent advice to his Companions, the Prophet’s declaration that “The woman advances and retires in the shape of a devil.”
9. Translated as “The first look is yours but the second is to your loss,” in Mutahari, “The Islamic Modest Dress,” where it is cited to al-Hurr al-Amili, Wasa’il al-Shi‘ah (no further publication data provided). See also “Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) said, ‘… do not let a second look follow the first. The first look is allowed to you but not the second.’ [Ahmad, Abu Dawood, at-Tirmidhi]” Quoted in Islam for Today’s article “The Girlfriend-Boyfriend Relationship.”
10. For discussion of Greek and Roman attitudes toward male/male sex, see chapter 5.
11. Yalom, A History of the Wife, p. 22, continues: “Although heterosexual marriage was the only legally recognized form of couplehood in ancient Greece, husbands were by no means restricted to sexual relations with their wives. They could find supplemental sex beyond the marriage bed with concubines, male and female slaves, male and female prostitutes, and male and female lovers.” (See Dover, “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behavior,” p. 22, for a slightly broader definition of moikheia, including seduction of other free women under a male relation’s guardianship.) Yalom notes that “Wives, on the other hand, were segregated from men other than their husbands, and severely punished if caught with a lover.” (p. 23) Yalom does not specifically address the possibility of married women taking female lovers or making sexual use of their female slaves. See Skinner, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Cultures, pp. 139–40, on an Athenian adultery case.
12. Treggiari, Roman Marriage, pp. 312–3. Notably, Treggiari attributes the later European double-standard in sexual matters to the influence of Islam, not Rome. Yalom (A History of the Wife, pp. 31 ff.) also addresses the issue of adulterous wives in Rome. Skinner (Sexuality in Greek and Roman Cultures, pp. 206–7) uses the term adultery to describe non-marital sex by or with a married woman without interrogating the presuppositions of her definition.
13. Yalom summarizes: “[T]he ancient Hebrew law proscribing adultery applied exclusively to women, requiring them to limit their sexual activity to only one man. There was no such requirement for married men, who were allowed to have sex with unattached women. ... Men committed adultery if they had sex with another man’s wife.” Yalom, “Biblical Models,” p. 23. See also Davies, The Dissenting Reader, p. 3.
14. Q. 24:2, used in this chapter’s epigraph, for the number of lashes; see Q. 4:25 for enslaved women who commit “lewdness.”
15. See discussion of the word ihsan as it relates to the permissibility of marrying enslaved women from ahl al-kitab in chapter 1, n. 46. Note again here the ambiguity in the term muhsan as it relates to the hadd penalty: it refers to both freedom and marital status.
16. See Deuteronomy 22:21–7. Stoning is mentioned numerous times elsewhere in the Hebrew bible for a variety of non-sexual offenses (e.g., Leviticus 20:2 and 20:27).
17. Q. 24:4.
18. In one tradition reported on the authority of Abu Huraira, the Prophet discourages the man from persisting with his confession of zina by turning his head repeatedly, until the man confessed four times, equaling the testimony of four witnesses. Abu Huraira is the prime reporter of several traditions denigrating toward women discussed in chapter 1. Sahih Bukhari (K. al-Nikah, “A divorce given in a state of anger, under compulsion, drunkenness, or insanity,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, pp. 147–8) reports the event on the authority of another witness as well. A similar account appears in Sahih Muslim.
19. Tirmidhi, as quoted and translated by Rizvi in “Adultery and Fornication in Islamic Jurisprudence,” pp. 271–2.
20. The theoretical writings of the jurists were not always followed in practice; courts were more willing to entertain claims regarding zina and individuals concerned with family honor occasionally acted extrajudicially when confronted with suspicious behavior. According to Leslie Peirce, in her study of the Ottoman court of Aintab, “The law of the jurists did not seriously envision active prosecution of illicit sex; rather, it was concerned with maintaining social harmony in the face of what was tacitly acknowledged as the inevitability of zina.” See Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, for interesting discussions about how charges of sexual misconduct might play out in practice. The quote is from p. 354. She goes on to note, though, that though it might not be expected, based on the doctrines of the jurists, “Deliberation about zina in court was possible because in practice judges were able to relax the stringent rules of witness set out in juridical treatises and manuals, admitting circumstantial and hearsay evidence.” (p. 355)
21. Q. 24:6–9.
22. Additionally, whether consummation has validly occurred is important in determining when a woman who needs to consummate another marriage before she can remarry a man who repudiated her three times, has “tasted the sweetness of intercourse.” Occasionally, other issues arise such as whether a woman who has illicit intercourse is counted a virgin or thayyib (non-virgin, previously married) for the sake of determining her consent to a subsequent marriage.
23. This approach is not limited to premodern texts. Kamal, Everyday Fiqh, vol. 1, pp. 79–80, discusses the necessity of ablution after sex with males of any age and minor girls. The only concession to concerns about lawfulness comes in a footnote: “One should bear in mind that Islam forbids the males to insert the organ into any part of anybody except in the genital part of the wife.” (p. 79)
24. Sahih Bukhari, K. al-Fara’id, “The child belongs to the owner of the bed,” trans. Khan, vol. 8, pp. 489–90; Sahih Muslim, K. al-Nikah, “The child belongs to the bed and one must avoid suspicion” (my modification of Siddiqi’s translation), trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 744–5. See also Rubin, “‘Al-walad li-l-firash’;” and Van Gelder, Close Relationships, p. 91, who cites this story as it appears in al-Razi.
25. Legal fictions also have limits; the story appears in Ibn Hanbal’s responsa (see Spectorsky, ed. and trans.) Chapters on Marriage and Divorce, p. 102 in a context where it serves as an argument for individuals to act in accordance with the actual, not “legal,” status of things. There, it refers to whether a father can marry the daughter born of an illicit union with a woman. While some – al-Shafi‘i is known to hold this view – hold that there is no legal relationship between the man and his biological daughter that would prohibit such a union, Ibn Hanbal briefly alludes to the case of Sawda discussed above. See Van Gelder’s summary of this debate in Close Relationships, pp. 90 ff.
26. The opposition to the test from some contemporary Egyptian jurists stems from precisely this distinction. On the relationship between “pater” and “genitor” in pre-Islamic Arab custom, see Van Gelder, Close Relationships, pp. 19–20. He makes the point that in “traditional Islam” “biological parenthood” took on a greater importance than “dominance and possession” which were key components of paternity. However, the continuing importance of the dictum that “the child belongs to the bed” suggests that he may be overstating the relevance of biology.
27. Of course, there is still the social issue of imputations surrounding honor.
28. Moosa, “The Child Belongs to the Bed,” on illegitimacy in South Africa, p. 174.
29. Nomani, Standing Alone in Mecca, p. 295. This “Bill of Rights” was republished (pp. 155–6) along with an essay by Nomani, “Being the Leader I Want to See,” in Abdul-Ghafur, Living Islam Out Loud. For the mosque Bill of Rights, see Standing Alone in Mecca, p. 293 and “Being the Leader I Want to See,” pp. 153–4.
30. See chapter 6 for discussion of another example where a self-identified religious authority makes a declaration that ignores the dominant stance of all Sunni madhahib even as it echoes majority Muslim sentiment.
31. Coulson makes the point that the Islamic “law concerning sexual behavior is based upon an entirely different, almost diametrically opposite, approach” to that adopted by “most Western legal systems” which do not concern themselves “with sexual relations between consenting adults in private.” (“Regulation of Sexual Behavior under Traditional Islamic Law,” p. 64) Leaving aside the question of whether Coulson’s characterization of “most Western legal systems” is accurate, he is certainly correct with regard to the theory: consensual relationships are a matter of divine regulation, though if they do not come to anyone’s attention, they are not a matter for government intervention.
32. AmericanMuslim, in “Comments: The Fatima Incident,” comments page to Mohja Kahf, “Sex and the Umma: The Fatima Incident,” at http://www.muslimwakeup.com/sex/archives/2004/11/the_fatima_inci_1.php#more, last accessed 04.19.06.
33. On these categories and their use, see Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, p. 97.
34. Of course begging the question of how they were expected to apply across the board even in previous centuries.
35. Peirce, Morality Tales, p. 353.
36. Michael Cook addresses this problem, along with a number of related issues, in Forbidding Wrong in Islam.
37. And in any case, “legal coercion is a flawed instrument for securing moral persuasion.” Sanneh, “Shari’ah Sanctions and State Enforcement,” p. 161. Unlike Ramadan, who acknowledges discrimination in the application of hadd punishments, Sanneh ignores women’s vulnerability and the disparities in punishment. These are highlighted by Sidahmed, “Problems in Contemporary Applications of Islamic Criminal Sanctions.”
1. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 986. This translation is mine, based on Keller’s presentation of the Arabic text, and differs in several aspects from Keller’s English rendering. For Keller’s biographical sketch of Ibn Hajar, see p. 1054.
2. On the genre, see Rowson, “The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists.”
3. Al-Dhahabi, Al-Kaba’ir; for biographical information on al-Dhahabi, see al-Kaba’ir, pp. 9–14 and Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 1045. Discussion of enormities occurs in mainstream modern circles as well.
4. Al-Dhahabi, pp. 60–70.
5. Al-Dhahabi, pp. 105–6. On qadhf, and the Qur’anic connection to zina, see chapter 4.
6. Al-Dhahabi, pp. 155–6.
7. Al-Dhahabi, pp. 157–9. A muhallil is a man who agrees to marry a woman then divorce her after consummation in order to make it possible for her to remarry a husband who has divorced her absolutely.
8. Al-Dhahabi, Al-Kaba’ir, pp. 201–9. On nushuz more generally, see chapter 7 and works cited there.
9. Keller’s note, Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 990. See Keller, p. 1033, for a biographical sketch of Abu Talib Makki.
10. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 991. My translation.
11. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 991. My translation. Keller translates as “Two are of the genitals: (12) adultery; (13) and sodomy.”
12. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 966.
13. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 986; my translation here differs from that in the epigraph by leaving zina and liwat untranslated.
14. Ibn Hajar specifically condemns a man having sex with his wife’s corpse, making clear that it is the act of intercourse with a dead body that constitutes an enormity. If the text referred to any woman’s corpse, one might mistakenly attribute the prohibition of intercourse to the lack of the legal tie between the parties required for any touching, let alone sex, to be licit. Of course the deceased wife is no longer really a person, and so the marriage does not actually exist after her death, but most jurists grant a man the dispensation to see and touch his dead wife’s body in order to wash her corpse. If intercourse with the wife’s corpse is forbidden, though touching her for purposes of final ablution is permitted, intercourse with another woman’s corpse is even more strongly forbidden, given that an unrelated man may not touch a woman even to perform the pre-burial washing.
15. I use “same-sex” as a neutrally descriptive term, sidestepping important controversies over the appropriateness of terms such as lesbian, gay, homosexual, and queer that are largely beyond the scope of this essay. Recently, some have advocated use of the Arabic phrase al-mithliyya al-jinsiyya (“homosexuality” in its literal sense of sexual sameness), while others have suggested that shudhudh jinsi (sexual queerness) is a useful phrase. In any case, I will use the term “sex” to denote the categories male and female, while recognizing that there is a debate over whether the use of sex to denote biology and gender to denote socially and culturally determined aspects of behavior takes account of the constructed nature of seemingly natural “sex.” On this, see the discussion of hermaphrodites and sex-change operations, below.
16. See, e.g., Dunne, “Power and Sexuality in the Middle East.” On the attribution of “deviant” behavior to the Other, and particularly the attribution of deviant sexual practices to Muslims by Westerners, see Uebel, “Re-Orienting Desire.” “The vice of sodomy,” according to Crusader literature of the time, was “not only tolerated in Muslim society, but actively encouraged and openly practiced.” (p. 241) Although Uebel does not ask this question, it occurs to me to wonder in what ways the current scholarship positing a “homosexual-friendly” Islamic past draws on, and contributes to, the same type of generalizations.
17. Duran, “Homosexuality and Islam,” p. 183. Even more recently, none of the twenty-one chapters in Thumma and Gray’s Gay Religion discusses Muslims, and the only mention of Islam is in passing in a footnote (p. 6, n. 1). The founding of several organizations in the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century (al-Fatiha, the Yoesuf Foundation, Queer Jihad) by Muslims living in the West both signaled and furthered a shift in the discussion. The emergence of the Internet as a vital educational and organizational resource has contributed to the increased social and intellectual presence of gay and lesbian (and, to a far lesser extent, bisexual and transgendered) Muslim individuals and groups. Most likely, if research on a similar volume were to begin today, at least one organization would be mentioned.
18. Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” p. 198. Of course, as Kugle goes on to argue, homosexuality is an anachronistic term.
19. Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” pp. 197–8.
20. Malti-Douglas, “Tribadism/Lesbianism,” p. 124. This begs the question of who gets to be a “man” – how maleness and masculinity were constructed is a crucial issue. See also Rowson, “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment.”
21. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800.
22. The term sihaq is sometimes considered to be derogatory, as liwat clearly is. Neutral descriptive terminology adopted by some contemporary Arab activists includes masculine and feminine variants of “homo-sexual.” Helem, “Fihrist al-‘ibarat al-‘arabiyya.” Thanks to Ariel Berman for sharing the magazine reference with me.
23. On mundane consequences of even illicit sex, see chapter 4. However, marital prohibitions could be engendered, in some views, by sexual touching falling far short of intercourse; in such a case, the same rules could apply to same-sex contact between women, making their omission notable.
24. And this, of course, returns us to the question of how to define what is “Islamic” – discussed in chapter 6.
25. My modification of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation. On this matter, see Malti-Douglas, “Tribadism/Lesbianism,” p. 123.
26. One may also infer that the verse addresses two men if one accepts that it addresses an exclusively male audience; Q. 4:16’s “from among you” could theoretically be inclusive of women, but it stands in contrast to Q. 4:15’s “from among your women.”
27. Duran, “Homosexuality in Islam,” p. 181.
28. Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” p. 219. See also Hidayatullah, “Islamic Conceptions of Sexuality,” pp. 277–9.
29. Jamal, “The Story of Lot.”
30. Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” p. 204.
31. See, for example, the website of a South African organization called “The Inner Circle.” http://www.theinnercircle-za.org/index_files/page0002.htm, last accessed 06.27.05.
32. Biblical comparisons might be fruitful, both with reference to the story of Lot and also the parallel story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges, chapters 19–21. I was made aware of this latter parallel through Azam, “Sexual Violence in Islamic Law.”
33. Kugle, “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics,” p. 215. See also p. 224.
34. Q. 26:165–6.
35. Halperin, How to do the History of Homosexuality, p. 41; italics in original.
36. What Martha Nussbaum and Juha Sivola argue for the Greeks holds just as true for medieval Muslims: “Seeing that it was possible for the Greeks to think differently of things that many moderns have regarded as natural or even necessary helps us to remove the false sense of inevitability of our own judgments and practices.” Nussbaum and Sivola, “Introduction,” in idem, eds., The Sleep of Reason, p. 10.
37. See, e.g., Dover, Greek Homosexuality. As David Halperin has argued, with respect to the ancient Greeks, “The physical act of sex itself presupposed and demanded ... the assumption by the respective sexual partners of different and asymmetrical sexual roles (the roles of penetrator and penetrated), and those roles in turn were associated with social distinctions of power and gender – differences between dominance and submission as well as between masculinity and femininity.” Halperin, How to do the History of Homosexuality, p. 147. See also Brooten, Love Between Women, p. 2, for the remark that “Roman-period writers presented as normative those sexual relations that represent a human social hierarchy. They saw every sexual pairing as including one active and one passive partner, regardless of gender, although culturally they correlated gender with these categories.” Quoted in Halperin, p. 56. See also Walters, “Invading the Roman Body,” esp. p. 31; Dover, “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behavior;” and, on Muslim discussions of male desire to be penetrated, Rowson, “Gender Irregularity,” p. 53; and Rosenthal, on ubnah, “passive male homosexuality,” (p. 45) in “Ar-Razi on the Hidden Illness.”
38. Published as “The Pleasures of Girls and Boys Compared,” in Colville, trans., Sobriety and Mirth, pp. 202–30. This essay also appears as “Boasting Match over Maids and Youths,” in Nine Essays of al-Jahiz, trans. Hutchins, pp. 140–66. See also, in the same volume, “The Superiority of the Belly over the Back,” pp. 167–73. Hutchins’ translation should be used with caution; see A.F.L. Beeston’s detailed review in the Journal of Arabic Literature, pp. 200–9. On the genre, see also Rosenthal, “Male and Female: Described and Compared.”
39. See Rowson, “Gender Irregularity,” p. 60 and, for comparison, Dover, “Classical Greek Attitudes to Sexual Behavior,” p. 25. The difference between the two settings is not the naturalness of men’s attraction to younger males but the illicitness of this desire in a Muslim context.
40. Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 512. See also Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh, p. 261 on ablution after touching boys.
41. Boudhiba, Sexuality in Islam, p. 200.
42. Murray, “Woman-Woman Love in Islamic Societies,” p. 102.
43. Debra Mubashshir Majeed, who describes herself as a “recovering homophobe,” writes insightfully on certain parallels between same-sex marriage and polygamy in “The Battle Has Been Joined.” Like others who write on this topic, Majeed drafts her categories in such a way as to assume the question of gay marriage does not apply to Muslims.
44. Muslim Canadian Congress press release, “Human Rights for Minorities not up for Bargain: Muslim Canadian Congress endorses Same-Sex Marriage legislation.”
45. See, for a brief personal account, Saed, “On the Edge of Belonging.”
46. Muslim Women’s League, “An Islamic Perspective on Sexuality.”
47. As Kugle puts it, “[C]ontemporary Muslim moralists are not insulated from modernity, even as they depict gay and lesbian Muslims as corrupted by modernity.” Kugle, Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics, pp. 197–8.
48. Murad, “Fall of the Family.”
49. Rather, a desire that arises in relation to an unlawful source should be channeled in a lawful direction, as reflected in the Prophet’s counsel that a man who is aroused by a woman he sees should go home and have sex with his wife.
50. Rainbow Crescent, “Consider the Following: Logic and Reason.” Capitalization in original.
51. Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin, use the phrase “born that way” to describe the essentialist position on sexual orientation and identity. I choose “just created that way” to emphasize the external, divine intentionality of the creation of a human being with a particular set of desires.
52. “One effect of (mis)understanding the history of sexuality as a history of the discourses of sexuality has been to preserve the notion of sexuality as a timeless and ahistorical dimension of human experience, while preserving a notion of discourse as a neutral medium of representation. A second effect has been to draw a deceptively simple and very old-fashioned division between representations, conceived as socially specific and historically variable products of human culture, and realities (sexual desire, in this case, or human nature), conceived as something static and unchanging. Foucault, I argue, was up to something much more novel, a radically holistic approach that was designed to avoid such hoary metaphysical binarisms. His aim was to foreground the historicity of desire itself and of human beings as subjects of desire.” Halperin, How to do the History of Homosexuality, p. 9.
53. Weeks, Invented Moralities, pp. 98–9. See, for a brief survey of modern American views as to whether same-sex or same-gender desire is innate or chosen, the essays by Jeannine Gramick and Robert Gordis, along with associated materials, under the heading “Are Homosexual and Bisexual Relations Natural and Normal?”
54. Jeffrey Weeks, “The Rights and Wrongs of Sexuality,” p. 21.
55. Hidayatullah, “Islamic Conceptions of Sexuality,” p. 279 points out that “the notion that Islam tolerates homosexual tendencies but not behaviors points to an inconsistency in Islamic allowances for the satiation of ‘natural’ sexual desire.”
56. On the “macrocosmic” dimensions of sex, gender, and marriage, see Murata, The Tao of Islam, pp. 143–202.
57. Of course, I do not mean to imply that promiscuity is in any way characteristic of same-sex sexual activity; I am merely making the point for contrast.
58. Abdul-Ra’uf, The Islamic View of Women and the Family, p. 35. Quoted in Smith, “Women in Islam,” p. 532, n. 14. Abdul-Ra’uf elaborates on the “inherently indisputable evil and filth of homosexuality for its own sake” in his Marriage in Islam: A Manual, pp. 71–2.
59. Notably, even sources that discuss non-consensual crimes such as rape seem to be virtually silent about “incest in the normal English sense, whereas the ‘milk-incest’ peculiar to Islam is a recurrent preoccupation.” Van Gelder, Close Relationships, p. 83.
60. That is, women who are too closely related to be potential marriage partners.
61. Haskafi, The Durr-ul-Mukhtar, trans. Dayal, pp. 1–2. In the style of many commentaries, the words of the commented-upon text are incorporated into the commentary. Dayal keeps them distinct through the use of bold-faced type, but I have not retained that feature here, considering it an unnecessary distraction.
62. Music, Queer Visions of Islam, p. 4. While I agree with Music on this point, I am not convinced of the prospects for success of his “search for queer-affirmative Qur’anic messages that have been hidden by centuries of biased interpretations.” (p. 5) Rather, I think this topic is analogous in an important way to that of male privilege and patriarchy in the Qur’an. One cannot simply blame everything on bad interpretation. See chapter 7. On hermaphrodites, see Sanders, “Gendering the Ungendered Body;” and Cilardo, “Historical Development of the Legal Doctrine.”
63. On this point, see Najmabadi, “Truth of Sex.” The article’s summary reads: “While trans-sexuality in Iran is made legitimate, homosexuality is insistently reiterated as abnormal.”
64. Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State, pp. 319–34; Harrison, “Iran’s Sex Change Operations.” See Najmabadi, “Truth of Sex,” for a cogent critique of this celebratory discourse. See also Music, Queer Visions, p. 10.
65. Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam, p. 334. Dupret summarizes this case, presents further developments, and considers its implications in “Sexual Morality at the Egyptian Bar.”
66. Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam, p. 321.
67. Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam, p. 326.
68. In a marriage between two males, would each spouse retain the right to marry three additional husbands? Imagine the chaos that would result if Husband A and Husband B each independently married Husband C. Presumably, in a lesbian marriage, both women would have to remain monogamous – but if pregnancy is not a possibility, and there would be no need for determinations as to paternity, then what would be the rationale for female monogamy? I raise these questions not to be flippant or absurd, but because thoroughly working through their implications can give insights not only about same-sex intimacy but also about expectations in male/female marriage.
69. Kugle wonders eloquently about this at the same time he assumes that it goes without saying that consent is vital for good (in the sense of ethical, divinely approved) intimate relationships.
70. Schmitt, “Liwat im fiqh.”
71. BBC News, “Saudi sets sights on 60th bride.”
1. McLoughlin, “Swedish Imam says Islam forbids female circumcision.”
2. This translation is mine, from the Arabic text included in Keller, Reliance of the Traveller, p. 59. I will discuss Keller’s translation, which differs in substantial respects, below.
3. I agree with Mahmood that “any social and political transformation is always a function of local, contingent, and emplaced struggles whose blueprint cannot be worked out or predicted in advance. And when such an agenda of reform is imposed from above or outside, it is typically a violent imposition whose results are likely to be far worse than anything it seeks to displace.” Mahmood, Politics of Piety, p. 36. Mahmood is not writing about FGC here, but her remarks apply.
4. Historian Jonathan Berkey has suggested that rather than focus on the seemingly endless “polemical debate as to whether female excision is or is not ‘Islamic’,” one can analyze the ways in which various actors understand the practice “within the broader Islamic framework.” Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” pp. 20–21. The polemical debate is relevant, though, to the questions about religious authority and authoritarianism that I raise in this chapter.
5. Kassamali, “When Modernity Confronts Traditional Practices,” p. 40. For her explanation as to why she prefers “female genital cutting” to other terms, see n. 1, p. 58.
6. Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire, pp. 53–4, has criticized Muslims who “turn their wrath on the commentators criticizing the practices [of clitoridectomy and honor killings], and not on the crimes themselves. The Progressive Muslims volume edited by Omid Safi reflects a determination not to be silenced by the thought of giving ammunition to what Muzammil Siddiqi refers to as “the enemies of Islam” (see chapter 8, n. 24). See also miriam cooke’s concept of “multiple critique,” in Women Claim Islam.
7. Kassamali, “When Modernity Confronts Traditional Practices,” p. 42.
8. However, among African Christians, Protestants seem to be more opposed to the practice than Catholics, Orthodox, or Copts. Salecl, “Cut in the Body,” p. 35, n. 2, notes that “The Catholic Church never officially distanced itself from clitoridectomy; the missionaries, in Africa, for example, did not condemn this practice. Only the Anglican Church, in the 1920s, denounced this ritual and advised its missionaries to prevent it.” See also Gollaher, Circumcision, p. 196–7.
9. See Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” pp. 21–2, for a discussion of pre-Islamic Egyptian practices.
10. According to Toubia, “The transmission route of FGM helps to clarify it as a nonreligious practice. When Islam entered Asian countries from Arabia to Iran, it did not carry FGM with it, but when it was imported to Asia through Nile Valley cultures, FGM was part of it. This was the case with the Daudi Bohra of India, whose religious beliefs are derived from an Egyptian-based sect of Islam.” (Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation, p. 32.) Toubia does not discuss Southeast Asian Muslim practices.
11. See, for instance, Little, “Female Genital Mutilation: Medical and Cultural Considerations,” pp. 30–34.
12. U.S. Department of State, “Indonesia: Report on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Genital Cutting (FGC).” The medicalization of the procedure – promoted in some African nations as an ameliorative measure – seems to be leading in Southeast Asia to actual “cutting” of some type, as sharp implements such as scissors are used. Moore and Rompies, “In the Cut.”
13. “Claiming Our Bodies and Ou[r] Rights: Exploring Female Circumcision as an Act of Violence,” quoted in Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation, p. 30.
14. Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation, p. 31. More recent Western scholarship tends to repeat this dismissal of any relationship between Islam and FGC. For example, one recent introductory text declares “Female circumcision is neither an Islamic practice nor is it widespread among Muslims. Rather, it appears to be an African tradition that remains in practice in countries like the Sudan and Egypt, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike.” Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam, p. 102.
15. Berkey discusses the Shi‘a on p. 26. For one example of a matter-of-fact reference to female circumcision in another context, see Ruxton, Maliki Law, p. 155.
16. Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” p. 25.
17. On al-Ghazali, see Roald, Women in Islam, p. 241, and chapter 11, “Female Circumcision,” pp. 237–53 more broadly; see also her brief discussion in the conclusion, p. 299.
18. Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation, p. 43.
19. Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, pp. 144–5; 62–3.
20. Even Shaikh Muhammad al-Tantawi of Al-Azhar, who has opposed female circumcision, makes this point. The Qur’an itself does not say anything about circumcision, of males or females. However, it is universally acknowledged that male circumcision is an Islamic custom – virtually all Muslim males are circumcised – and it is attributed to the covenant between God and Abraham. According to Gollaher, “when a retired Libyan judge, Mustafa Kamal al-Mahdawi, published a book that questioned the legitimacy of the ritual [of male circumcision], he came under furious attacks from the clergy and the press.” A swift response from a prominent Saudi cleric accused him of apostasy for rejecting the consensus view that circumcision of males was obligatory. Circumcision, pp. 51–2. See also Abu-Sahlieh, “Jehovah, His Cousin Allah, and Sexual Mutilations,” p. 47. Gollaher bases his discussion of this case on Abu-Sahlieh’s “To Mutilate in the Name of Jehovah or Allah.” See also Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 65.
21. Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” p. 30: “[T]he few medieval sources which discuss female excision in any detail routinely direct their primary attention to the question of sexuality, and in particular women’s sexuality and its control.”
22. Kassamali, “When Modernity Confronts Traditional Practices,” claims that Qur’an 4:1 grants Muslim women “the right to sexual satisfaction within the context of a marriage” as well as the right “to initiate sexual intercourse.” (This famous verse recounting the creation of humanity does not actually mention sex at all, except in its reference to the creation of “many men and women” from the original pair.)
23. Muslim Women’s League, “An Islamic Perspective on Sexuality.” See also Abusharaf, “Virtuous Cuts,” on women’s sexual responsiveness after excision and/or infibulation.
24. El-Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve, p. 42, quoted Abu-Sahlieh, “Jehovah, His Cousin Allah, and Sexual Mutilations,” p. 46.
25. Abu-Sahlieh (“To Mutilate in the Name of Jehovah or Allah”) has argued that “Juridical logic cannot acknowledge the distinction between male and female circumcision, both being the mutilation of healthy organs and consequently damaging the physical integrity of the child, whatever the religious motivations lying underneath.”
26. Abu-Sahlieh, “Jehovah, His Cousin Allah, and Sexual Mutilations,” p. 54.
27. In his discussion of “female genital mutilation” and male circumcision under United States law, James McBride suggests that differential treatment “may be required for equal protection of men and women,” posing one potential strategy for avoiding the problems with attempts to treat the practices in the same way. McBride, “ ‘To Make Martyrs of Their Children’,” p. 235.
28. Trans. by Ahmad Hasan, as quoted in Ahmad, “Female Genital Mutilation.” See Sunan Abi Dawud, K. al-Adab, “Ma ja’a fi’l-khitan,” vol. 2, p. 657.
29. Roald, Women in Islam, p. 247.
30. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, p. 129. Circumcising women appears alongside the eating of locusts as matters where tribes could differ.
31. Gollaher, Circumcision, p. 192; Abu-Sahlieh (“Jehovah, His Cousin Allah, and Sexual Mutilations,” p. 48) extends the same criticism to hadith regarding male circumcision.
32. Ahmad, “Female Genital Mutilation.”
33. Badawi, “The Issue of Female Circumcision,” appendix to Gender Equity in Islam. In his footnote to this hadith, Badawi cites “Al-Tabarani, quoted in Al-Albani, Muhammad N., Silsilat Al-Ahadeeth Al-Sahihah, A1 Maktab Al-Islami, Beirut, Lebanon, 1983, vol. 2, Hadeeth no. 722, pp. 353–8 especially pp. 356–7” and also refers to Keller’s translation of Reliance of the Traveller.
34. Lane’s entry for “bazr” (Arabic-English Lexicon, Book 1, Part 1, p. 222 provides some material suggesting the term might have been understood to refer to the prepuce, but the preponderance of his material suggests it means clitoris. See also Faruqi, Faruqi’s Law Dictionary, p. 76 (where he also gives two Arabic equivalents for “glans clitoris”: taraf and tarth); and Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” p. 28. Roald, Women in Islam, p. 243 briefly discusses Keller’s translation.
35. See Berkey, “Circumcision Circumscribed,” p. 28.
36. Kassamali, “When Modernity Confronts Traditional Practices,” p. 51.
37. Abusharaf, “Virtuous Cuts.” See also her forthcoming edited volume Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives.
38. Kassamali, “When Modernity Confronts Traditional Practices,” p. 54, suggests that FGC should “be presented as a violation of the right to good health,” with particular emphasis on the consequences of infertility.
39. Abu-Sahlieh, “Jehovah, His Cousin Allah, and Sexual Mutilations,” summarizes these debates on pp. 49–50.
40. Ahmad, “Female Genital Mutilation.”
1. This translation is by ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali. See also Q. 5:6.
2. Q. 2:187; my modification of ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation. The word I have translated here as “your wives” is “nisa’ikum.” Nisa’ is the Arabic word for women, but it is also used to mean wives. The Qur’an also uses the term azwaj, a masculine/inclusive plural of the word zawj (see Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, pp. 20–3), to mean both spouses in a general sense and also wives specifically (e.g., 33:28, with regard to the Prophet’s wives); see also Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, pp. 183–4.
3. See, e.g., Syed, The Position of Women in Islam, p. 57: “Thus, 2:187 tells us God has given the husband and the wife a complimentary [sic] role to each other neither one dominating the other.”
4. Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, 11. I first encountered this insight regarding the explicit audience for the text in Esack’s essay “Islam and Gender Justice: Beyond Simplistic Apologia,” especially pp. 195–6. Barlas makes reference to this phenomenon on a few occasions, though to very different effect.
5. Daniel Boyarin makes this distinction between androcentrism and misogyny (or gynephobia) with regard to rabbinic discourses in Boyarin, Carnal Israel, p. 94.
6. However, there do seem to be some places in the Qur’anic text where, despite the use of terms such as nas, the people addressed are male. See, e.g., Q. 3:14 which refers to “people”’s desire for women, progeny, and material wealth. The Qur’an condemns this commodity-lust, but not the implicit commodification of women. On this verse, see Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, pp. 53–4.
7. The most important verse discussing creation is Q. 4:1, occurring at the beginning of the Surah entitled “Women.” Rethinking androcentric accounts of creation has been one vital element of Muslim women’s scholarship. Even a work on modern Jordan contains a discussion of these points; see Sonbol, Women of Jordan, pp. 207–8 in her chapter on “Honor Crimes.” Al-Sheha, Woman in the Shade of Islam, p.10 is instructive as to how far the imperatives of modern discourse have affected conservative authors; while it asserts firmly that “Islam made both the male and the female equal in terms of humanity,” it translates 4:1 with parenthetical identification of “Adam” as the first creation, and “Eve” as secondary: “O mankind! Be dutiful to your Lord, Who created you from a single person (Adam), and from him (Adam) He created his wife (Eve), and from them both He created many men and women ...” For broader consideration of creation and the expulsion from the garden, see Calderini, “Woman, ‘Sin’ and ‘Lust’.”
8. The rules for plurals referring to non-humans and inanimate objects differ.
9. The same problem exists with regard to dual forms as well. The use of a masculine/inclusive dual form in Q. 4:16, describing illicit sexual activity, has given rise to disagreement among commentators as to whether the verse refers to two men or a man and a woman. See chapter 5.
10. Q. 4:124.
11. In agreement with the noun man, “whoever,” which is grammatically masculine.
12. For example, see Badawi, The Status of Woman in Islam, pp.12–13.
13. ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation; see also Ahmed Ali’s explanatory note to his translation, p. 50. Barlas demonstrates that not all discussions of witnessing in the Qur’an privilege male testimony over female testimony. “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 190.
14. This verse proposes an equal division for parents of a decedent who has also left offspring, indicating that in some cases the gender of the heir is not the deciding criterion.
15. My understanding here differs from that of Barlas, who sees difference but not inequality in these regulations. “Believing Women” in Islam, pp. 197–200, and passim.
16. On which, in Muslim contexts more generally, see Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought. She puts the matter succinctly in her Introduction: “[W]hile the Qur’an frequently points out the meaninglessness of differences of rank in terms of the afterlife, it certainly does not attempt to abolish them in the present world. On the contrary, it might be observed that the Qur’an endorses several forms of worldly inequality. ... Its central point thus appears to be that such inequalities have no bearing on an individual’s moral worth and ultimate fate in the next world.” (p. 4) Marlow points out that the strong egalitarian trend was limited to “the equality of free Muslim males.” (p. 34)
17. Q. 49:13.
18. E.g., Q. 16:71, 75. See Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 5.
19. Stowasser, “Women and Citizenship in the Qur’an,” p. 33.
20. Stowasser, “Women’s Issues in Modern Islamic Thought,” pp. 15–16, discusses this shift, which she sets in the middle of the twentieth century. Abugideiri, “On Gender and the Family,” p. 242 demonstrates that “the notion of marital complementarity, as conceptualized by twentieth-century Muslim thinkers has, ironically, reified the notion of hierarchical gender difference, and thus gender inequity. Complementarity, as interpreted by this discourse, provides the Islamic pretext to duly restrict female legal rights within the family and expect the wife-mother to sacrifice those rights in the name of family cohesion.”
21. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 199.
22. For an entirely different approach, focused on taqwa, autonomy, and pedagogy, see Barazangi, Women’s Identity and the Qur’an.
23. E.g., Q. 33:73.
24. These are the translations of, respectively, Ahmed Ali, Shakir, ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Arberry, Pickthall, Dawud, and Asad.
25. Men’s duties were also emphasized by jurists, who focused on the pragmatic, enforceable components of interpersonal relationships.
26. Q. 4:34, Al-rijal qawwamun ‘ala al-nisa’ bi ma faddala Allahu ba‘duhum ‘ala ba‘din wa bi ma anfaqu min amwalihim. Fa’l-salihat qanitat, hafizat li’l-ghayb bi ma hafiza Allaha. Wa allati tukhafuna nushuzahunna, fa ‘izuhunna wa’hjuruhunna fi’l-madaji‘ wa’dribuhunna, fa in ata‘nakum, fa la tabghu ‘alayhinna sabilan. Inna Allah kana ‘Aliyyan, Kabir.
27. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, pp. 185–6.
28. For discussion of the range of meanings of “bi ma,” see al-Faruqi, “Women’s Self-Identity in the Qur’an and Islamic Law,” pp. 82–7; al-Hibri, “Islam, Law and Custom,” pp. 28–33; and Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, p. 70.
29. For the reference to Mary, see Q. 66:12; for Abraham, see Q. 16:120. For further uses of these terms, see Q. 2:116, 238; 3:17, 43; 30:26; 33:31; 39:9; and 66:5.
30. Ali, “Women, Gender, Ta‘a (Obedience) and Nushuz (Disobedience).”
31. The identification of “clear lewdness” with nushuz is supported by some versions of the Prophet’s “Farewell Sermon” in which he outlined the measures mentioned in 4:34 as consequences for “clear lewdness” by women. His words on that occasion are also the source for the specification that any striking must be “ghair mubarrih,” or “non-violent.”
32. Abugideiri, “On Gender and the Family,” p. 293 refers to Q. 4:34 as “the Qur’anic verse treating spousal lewdness,” implicitly insisting on a particular definition of women’s nushuz.
33. Mernissi, “Femininity as Subversion,” p. 109.
34. Mernissi, “Morocco: The Merchant’s Daughter,” in Women’s Rebellion, p. 13.
35. See Rispler-Chaim, “Nuuz Between Medieval and Contemporary Islamic Law;” Shaikh, “Exegetical Violence: Nushuz in Qur’anic Gender Ideology;” and Ali, “Women, Gender, Ta‘a (Obedience), and Nushuz (Disobedience).”
36. Thomas Cleary’s translation and a recent Saudi-financed version based on the translation by ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
37. Ahmed Ali, Al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation.
38. On Qutb’s approach to nushuz, see Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, pp. 74–5.
39. Raines and Maguire, eds., Esack, “Islam and Gender Justice: Beyond Simplistic Apologia” and Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice.”
40. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 111. Ellipsis in original. Syed, The Position of Women in Islam, p. 56, calls this “complete equality” but clearly states that the “degree” portion of the verse relating to divorce is exempt from this characterization.
41. Lahunna mithl alladhi ‘alayhinna.
42. Wa li’l-rijal ‘alayhinna daraja.
43. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 111.
44. Esposito with DeLong-Bas, Women in Muslim Family Law, p. 134; see also Niazi, Modern Challenges, p. 11.
45. Nasr, “Manhood in the Qur’an and Sunnah.”
46. Wadud makes this point (Qur’an and Woman, p. 68), while situating her discussion of Q. 2:228 within a larger discussion of “degrees” elsewhere in the Qur’an (ibid., pp. 66–9). See also Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, pp. 192–7; Syed, The Position of Women in Islam, p. 56. Syed does stress “equality” however, which he views as being reinforced by 2:187, the garment verse.
47. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 6.
48. My modification of ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation.
49. My modification of ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation. Note that the “they” is in the masculine/inclusive plural, so it could mean if the husbands want to reconcile, or if both the husbands and wives want to reconcile. However, the former interpretation is more likely since the husbands are the ones said to have “more right.”
50. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 112.
51. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 112.
52. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 118. He elaborates: “The normative pronouncements of the Qur’an are eternal and while rethinking issues in Islamic Shari’ah, particularly pertaining to women’s rights, the normative pronouncements will have precedence over the contextual. But during the early centuries contextual often had precedence over normative and it was quite ‘normal’ then. And hence these formulations became widely acceptable in that society. These laws were thought to be normative then and hence struck deep roots in society as well as in the hearts and minds of the people. They came to acquire the status of immutability with the passage of time.”
53. Engineer, “Islam, Women, and Gender Justice,” p. 121.
54. Esack “Islam and Gender Justice,” p. 190, quoting Q. 2:228 (mistakenly cited as 2:118): “And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable.” He also quotes Q. 9:71: “Believers, men and women, are protectors, one of another: they enjoin what is just and forbid what is evil.”
55. Esack, “Islam and Gender Justice,” p. 188.
56. Esack, “Islam and Gender Justice,” p. 195.
57. Q. 4:34 begins with references to both men and women in the third person (“Men are qawwamuna ‘ala women”), but switches to second-person address to men when discussing female nushuz.
58. For example, if “they both fear that they will not observe God’s limits.” Q. 2:229
59. Barlas, Believing Women in Islam, p. 198, specifically with regard to Q. 4:34; Wadud, Qur’an and Woman, pp. 80–82.
60. My translation, drawing on Cleary.
61. Aisha Geissinger addresses the issue of how the Qur’an treats gender in this verse and others that discuss fasting in an as-yet unpublished paper, “Gendering the Communal Body: Fasting in the Qur’an and the Hadith.”
62. One can thus understand Qur’anic injunction to perform ablution “if you have touched women;” see this chapter’s epigraph as well as Q. 5:6. The addressees (“you”) are in the masculine/inclusive plural, but consensus holds that ablution is not merited by women touching women, as it would be if the command applied to both men and women. Rather, it is men touching women that generates the obligation of ablution, making men the addressees. There is disagreement as to what type of touching generates the requirement of ablution (whether mere skin contact is meant or specifically sexual touching) as well as whether the same requirements apply to women who touch men. See discussion in Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh, pp. 247–50. Maghen (p. 250) quotes Ibn Hazm’s statement in the Muhalla that the Qur’anic provision “is binding for men if they touch women and for women if they touch men.” (My translation, from the Arabic text presented by Maghen.)
63. My translation, drawing on Cleary and ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
64. The importance of this metaphor appears in a hadith where, with regard to the permissibility of performing coitus interruptus, someone says: “She is your field, if you wish, water it; if you wish, leave it thirsty.”
65. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, pp. 160–64. The summary by Kassis, A Concordance of the Qur’an, p. 548, shows a number of instances in which harth refers specifically to agricultural use (in addition to the verbal form in Q. 56:63, see 2:71, 205; 3:14; 3:117; 6:136, 138; 21:78; 68:22) and one verse, 42:20, where the term appears three times referring to the harth of this world or that of the hereafter.
66. The connotations of fertility also implicit in this reference to a woman as a tilth have also been used to argue that harth implies productivity, and so it is vaginal intercourse that is meant, not anal intercourse. See, e.g., Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Fatawa al-Kubra, K. al-Nikah, “Fi rajul yankihu zawjatahu fi dubriha,” vol. 2, pp. 74–5.
67. Sachedina, “Islam, Procreation and the Law,” p. 109.
68. In Sahih Muslim, the source of the conflict is reported as a Jewish objection to intercourse from behind. K. al-Nikah, “Permissibility of having sexual intercourse with one’s wife from the front or from behind avoiding the anus,” trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 731–2.
69. For an interesting parallel discussion of sexual positions in rabbinic law, see Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 110–11, 116–20.
70. The one relevant verse possibly suggesting that a woman could reject male sexual control is in the command not to force female slaves into prostitution against their wills; see chapter 3.
71. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 5.
72. Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam, p. 205.
73. Halperin, How To Do the History of Homosexuality, p. 153.
74. For a useful reflection on related questions, see Plaskow, “The Right Question is Theological.”
1. Sahih Bukhari, Book of Marriage, “A man marrying off his minor children,” no. 64 and nearly identical content with a different chain of transmitters under the next item, “The marrying of a daughter by her father to the ruler,” no. 65 (trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 50). See also “Who consummated a marriage with his wife when she was a girl of nine years,” no. 88 reported on the authority of ‘Urwa by his son Hisham. All three versions mention that “she remained with him for nine years” – that is, until his death.
2. See, for example, Sachs, “Baptist Pastor Attacks Islam;” Cooperman, “Anti-Muslim Remarks Stir Tempest;” and Jones, “Baptist pastor’s words shock Muslim leaders.”
3. This point is made by Rev. Jerry Falwell in his comment on the matter, “Muhammad, a ‘demon-possessed pedophile’?” The sources cited by Vines can be found in Caner and Caner, Unveiling Islam, pp. 41, 56, 59–60, 135, 141, n. 4. The statement provoked additional comment in the Baptist press. Sources are more fully explored in Starnes, “Southern Baptist leaders affirm Vines in the wake of national attacks,” and Wing-field, “What are the facts behind Vines’ words?”
4. Sahih Muslim, K. al-Nikah, “It is permissible for the father to give the hand of his daughter in marriage even when she is not fully grown up” (trans. Siddiqi, vol. 1–2, pp. 715–16; the translator’s extended apologetic in the notes to these hadith is noteworthy on its own). Al-Nasa’i’s Sunan includes one cluster of reports positing ages at marriage of six, seven, and nine; each of the three specifies that consummation occurred at age nine. Another adjacent report puts marriage at nine, but does not mention consummation. (K. al-Nikah, “Inkah al-rajul ibnatahu al-saghira,” vol. 6, pp. 82–3.) Two other reports in al-Nasa’i, found in a section entitled “Consummation with a girl of nine,” both provide an age of six at marriage and nine at consummation. (K. al-Nikah, “Al-bina’a bi ibnat tis‘a,” vol. 6, p. 131.) Ibn Hanbal provides a report in which Aishah was six or seven at marriage, nine at consummation, and eighteen at Muhammad’s death. (Chapters on Marriage and Divorce, p. 97.) On al-Shafi‘i’s and Ibn Hanbal’s treatment of this marriage, see Ali, “A Beautiful Example,” pp. 280–82. Her age was not the only noteworthy information about Aishah’s marriage; other reports in various hadith texts point out that her marriage and consummation took place during the month of Shawwal, previously considered inauspicious for such events.
5. First Coast News, June 13, 2002, http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/2002-06-13/islam_vines.asp, last accessed 11/26/04.
6. Cooperman, “Anti-Muslim Remarks Stir Tempest.” This is apparently a possible feature of Arabic. However, it has not been a common interpretation. Furthermore, while the reports in Bukhari’s Book of Marriage include only the additional information that she was with him for nine years (until his death, as all accounts are clear that she was his wife until that time); other accounts, including one in Sahih Muslim and one in Al-Nasa’i’s Sunan state specifically that she was eighteen when Muhammad died; it is not possible to suggest that this meant twenty-eight. (This point was made eloquently by Christopher Melchert in an email to the Islam section of the American Academy of Religion after this was first drafted.) Notably, a press release from CAIR does not include any specific information about Aishah’s age. See Islam-Infonet, “Baptists Call Prophet Muhammad Demon-Possessed Pedophile.” Other less direct attempts to rebut the claim are quoted by Jones: “Syad Ahsani of Arlington, Southwest regional chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, said Muhammad was betrothed to the child, which was a common practice; however, such marriages weren’t consummated until children reached adolescence. [Hodan] Hassan [a spokes-woman for the Washington-based Council for American-Islamic Relations,] said it is not known when Muhammad’s marriage was consummated.” Jones, “Baptist pastor’s words shock Muslim leaders.” For the Council on American-Islamic Relations, see CAIR, “President Bush asked to repudiate anti-Muslim remarks.”
7. On these accusations, see Reeves, Muhammad in Europe, pp. 215–16, 236–40.
8. Malik, Islam and Modernity, p. 69.
9. For one example of an anti-Islam site making claims about Aishah’s age at marriage, see Ex-Muslim.com, “Evidence that Aisha was 9 when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated.”
10. On age of sexual consent, see Archard, Sexual Consent, pp. 116–29. Archard’s discussion is helpful in what it says, and illuminating in what it does not. As is to be expected from a work concerned with sexual consent in the modern Western world, he does not discuss children and sex in the context of marriage, except to note (p. 117) that in contemporary Europe “all jurisdictions set the age at which persons can marry some years higher” than the age of sexual “majority” – i.e., permissible sexual activity. See pp. 126–8 for a brief discussion of intergenerational sexual activity.
11. See Stowasser, Women in the Qur’an, Tradition, and Interpretations.
12. Aziz, “Age of Aisha (ra) at time of marriage,” from the website of Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore Inc. U.S.A.
13. Submission.org, “Prophet Muhammed’s Marriage to Aisha.” Note that there is no explicit mention of Muhammad’s marriage to Aishah in the Qur’an.
14. He is identified as its vice-president in various online materials, but its website (http://www.irfiweb.org/) is not available as of 11.25.05.
15. Shanavas, “Ayesha’s Age: The Myth of a Proverbial Wedding Exposed.” Shanavas frames his comments as an “answer to [his] Christian friend.” He argues that “Based on the evidences presented above, the marriage of fifty-two-year-old Prophet (pbuh) with Ayesha (ra) at nine year of age is only a proverbial myth. On the contrary, Ayesha (ra) was an intellectually and physically mature Bikr (virgin = adult unmarried woman with no sexual experience) when she married Prophet (pbuh).”
16. On one scholarly attempt to assess this corpus of material, see Schoeler, “Foundations for a New Biography of Muhammad.”
17. Nadvi, Women Companions of the Holy Prophet and Their Sacred Lives, p. 34.
18. Nadvi, Women Companions of the Holy Prophet and Their Sacred Lives, p. 35.
19. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, p. 31.
20. Thompson, The Wives of the Prophet Muhammad, p. 15. Thompson includes parenthetical Arabic honorifics after the mentions of the Prophet and Aishah which are not reproduced here.
21. Syed explicitly declares, without citing any sources, what Thompson only implies: “The Prophet’s (pbuh) own marriage to Ayesha when she was nine years old was performed in Mecca long before the Islamic laws of marriage were revealed at Medina by the Qur’anic verses. However as the consummation of the said marriage of Ayesha and the Prophet (pbuh) was postponed for five years (some say seven years) to allow Ayesha to attain majority, in reality the marriage of Ayesha took place when she was either 14 or 16 years old.”The Position of Women in Islam, p. 40.
22. Moin, Umm al-Mu’minin ‘A’ishah Siddiqah, pp. 4–5.
23. Moin, Umm al-Mu’minin ‘A’ishah Siddiqah, p. 8.
24. Identified in the article as “Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, former President of the Islamic Society of North America and Director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, Garden Grove, California.” He continues: “Her maturity, knowledge, intelligence, and contributions during the life of the Prophet and afterwards all indicate that she was either an exceptional nine-year-old or must have been older than that. Whatever the case may be about her age, one thing is certain: she was a most compatible spouse of Prophet Muhammad. None of the contemporaries of the Prophet, his friends or foes, are reported to be surprised by this marriage or made objections to it.” Siddiqi, “Would a 50-year-old ‘Prophet of God’ Have Sex with a 9-year-old Girl?”
25. Likewise, in one of three question-and-answer exchanges about Aishah’s age posted at the Jamaat-e-Islami site, the respondent gives, without any textual citation, his own personal opinion that “consummation [occurred] at the age of 9 to 11.”
26. Even a Jamaat-e-Islami response to a question as to whether Aishah was seven at her marriage is answered in the following way: “There are different reports and traditions regarding Umm-ul-Mo’mineen Aisha’s age when she was betrothed. What every one agrees to is that while the promise/nikah happened in Makkah, she was delivered to the house of the Prophet (s.a.w.) (meaning her ‘Rukhsati’) about four years later in Medina. Thus even according to the age you have quoted, she was about 11 years old when she entered the Prophet’s haram in Madina. Some believe that she was above 13; some others reports say much older (17, 19). The generally quoted age is 9 years.” Haq, “Marriage of Ayesha (RA) with Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.)” In reponse to an earlier query, the same author makes clear that while “Some scholars do insist that she was older ... most agree she was either 6 or 7 when betrothed.” He gives his “personal opinion” that “consummation [took place] at the age of 9 to 11.”
27. Muhaddith.org, “Answers to Attacks Against Islam: Morality of marrying Aishah at an early age,” emphasis in original.
28. See, for example, Osama Abdullah’s “My response to the ‘Child Molester’ lie against our beloved Prophet, Muhammad peace be upon him,” from answering-christianity.com, which contains sections from Talmud and references to biblical prophets. Similar materials are included under the heading “The Bible on marriage of young girls with much older men,” in the Aziz, “Age of Aisha (ra) at time of marriage.”
29. For a thorough discussion of the rabbinic issue at stake, see Meacham, “Marriage of Minor Girls in Jewish Law.”
30. There are references to nine as the age of presumptive majority in some texts such as Ibn Hanbal’s, but I have not come across any explicit reference to Aishah’s menarche as trigger for consummation. Bukhari’s chapter heading prefacing one of his reports on Aishah’s marriage includes a discussion of the ‘idda (post-marital waiting period) for prepubescent girls, which presumes consummation of a marriage before menarche. K. al-Nikah, “A man marrying off his minor children,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 49; possibly also “A woman looking at Ethopians and the like if it does not lead to bad consequences,” trans. Khan, vol. 7, p. 119. In one fifteenth-century Cairo court case, the Prophet’s marriage to Aishah was used as evidence for the permissibility of marrying off minor girls. Petry, “Conjugal Rights versus Class Prerogatives,” p. 233.
31. See, e.g., Tucker, In the House of the Law, pp. 155–6; and Motzki, “Child Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Palestine.”
32. See the entry on “Ayesha” in The American Muslim, “Answers to Questions Non Muslims Ask,” an alphabetical list from “Abrahamic Faiths” to “Women’s Issues.” Interestingly, the compilers of this list make much the same distinction between articles aimed at dialogue and those aimed at polemic.
33. Islam Online.net, “Addressing Misconceptions about Prophet’s Marriage to ‘Aisha.”
34. Haq, “Marriage of Ayesha (RA) with Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.).”
35. Shanavas, “Ayesha’s Age: The Myth of a Proverbial Wedding Exposed.”
36. Haq writes, “So in this marriage with A’isha there was a desire to cement the bonds of friendship with Abu Bakr as well as the desire for propagating the teachings of Islam, particularly delicate matters relating to women folk.” “Marriage of Ayesha (RA) with Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h).” See also Sabeel Ahmed, “Why Did Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Married [sic] Young Aisha Siddiqa (r.a.)?,” the first of which is “To reinforce the friendly relations already existing with Abu Bakr (his closest companion).” Interestingly, the notion that the marriage was a calculated strategic move is one point raised by polemicists as well; here, though, it has been given a different valuation and serves to deflect accusations of lechery.
37. Ahmed, “Why Did Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Married [sic] Young Aisha Siddiqa (r.a.)?” The article identifies Ahmed as a student of famous polemicist Ahmed Deedat, and notes – without any apparent sense of irony – that “His main interest is in comparative religion.”
38. Haq, “Marriage of Ayesha (RA) with Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.).” The passage deserves to be quoted at length: “The issue of child marriage has come via West and is part of a whole ‘package’ that intends to dismantle Islam as a social code and state philosophy. Try to look at the components in that whole context. Let me give you a few tips: ‘child marriage’, ‘gender equality’, ‘women empowerment’, ‘sex education’, ‘reproductive control’, ‘contraception’, ‘sustainable growth’, — are among the few terms used in the gender context. Can you please tell me that you know enough about this ‘UN sposored shari’ah’, that is being thrust as alternative to the Shari’ah of Islam? If you are not well aware, then kindly be careful about pushing too hard even some seemingly ‘reasonable’ issues like child marriage. The real intention (seems) not to stop this practice today (which is more a Hindu issue) but lead to the erroneous conclusion that Islam permitted a ‘wrong’ thing.”
39. Squires, “The Young Marriage of ‘Aishah.”
40. http://www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42999&pid=538017&st=0&#entry538017, last accessed 11/04/04. For an extended discussion with a number of Sunni perspectives, see also http://www.ummah.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=7838, last accessed 11/04/04, which takes off from Understanding-Islam.com’s article “What was Ayesha’s (ra) Age at the Time of Her Marriage to the Prophet (pbuh)?”
41. On this point, see Moosa, “The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” pp. 21–3.
42. These rules mostly relate to the greater number of his wives, restrictions on his ability to marry new ones, and his freedom from a strict schedule of turn-taking between them. See Ali, “A Beautiful Example,” pp. 274–5.
43. I have heard anecdotal evidence, however, that marriages of girls of that age has continued into the modern era; one Saudi woman reported her grandmother’s marriage at this age. Similarly, after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the age of marriage for girls (with parental consent) was lowered to nine, though it has since been raised.
44. Various sources report, for example, that ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, the second caliph and father of the Prophet’s wife Hafsa, later married the Prophet’s granddaughter, born to ‘Ali and Fatima.
45. Plaskow, “Decentering Sex.”
46. After this was written, I came across a strikingly similar sentiment expressed by Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, a History, p. 19). She writes: “I don’t believe that people of the past had more control over their hearts than we do today or that they were incapable of the deep love so many individuals now hope to achieve in marriage. But love in marriage was seen as a bonus, not a necessity.”
47. Not that either wealth or wisdom was trivial, either in the Prophet’s own marital history or Islamic history more broadly.
48. This is a radically oversimplified view of the medieval ‘Ashari/Mu‘tazili debate. Anderson provides a summary of the basic views of the Asharites and the Mutazilites in Islamic Law and the Modern World, pp. 9–10. This question is not just a Muslim one; C.S. Lewis sums up the Christian debate in strikingly similar terms, as “whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them.” The Problem of Pain, p. 99. These issues still have currency today, even if the debate remains largely unspoken. See Squires, “The Young Marriage of Aishah,” for the claim that “According to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, right and wrong are ordained by Almighty God. As such, morality does not change over time based on our whims, desires, or cultural sensitivities.”
49. Q. 3:117, 9:70, 11:101, 16:33, 29:40, and 30:9. Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an, p. 25, states that “all injustice [zulm] is basically reflexive.”
1. Sheila Briggs’ remarks, Feminist Sexual Ethics Project colloquium II, Brandeis University, September 2004. See also Judith Plaskow, “Decentering Sex,” “Authority, Resistance, and Transformation,” and The Coming of Lilith.
2. Q. 30:21.
3. Working off Alasdair MacIntyre’s discussion of tradition, Edward Curtis proffers a helpful definition: “tradition is not an historical product so much as an historical process in which human beings, interacting with each other in discrete social contexts, invent, embrace, and inherit something that they care about and argue over, whether explicitly or not.” Curtis, Islam in Black America, p. 4.
4. Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh, p. 282.
5. See, e.g., Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections, pp. 63–89.
6. Abou El Fadl, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses, p. 13.