Sexual Ethics in Islam (27 page)

the prophet muhammad ... muslim sensibilities 145

group. The writer then requests guidance as to how to answer questions from non-Muslims about the matter. The response from mufti M. Haq displays a great deal of angst over having to address the topic, noting that “I find it hard to discuss” and declaring that “I wished you had avoided this marriage or age question.”
34
It is improper, he makes clear, for a Muslim to enter- tain doubts about any aspect of the Prophet’s conduct. It seems that the mufti is picking up on the unarticulated anxieties of his questioner, who had actually only asked about strategies for responding to non-Muslims. However, there is no suggestion that this questioner had actually been asked about the issue by anyone; it seems likely that he felt discomfort at Aishah’s youth and was asking about how to discuss the matter with non- Muslims as a way of asking for explanation and justification of Muhammad’s conduct without suggesting that he himself harbored any doubts about its propriety. In another instance, a contributor to a Muslim discussion board makes explicit the connection between being asked about the marriage and feeling discomfort. He states that a question from his Christian friend “left me with a thorn in the heart of my faith.”
35

Clearly, whatever the context in which it is raised, Aishah’s age at marriage is a difficult topic for many Muslims. To a much lesser extent than in published works directed at Muslim audiences, some online authors do present specifically “Islamic” rationales for the marriage of Muhammad to Aishah, thus contributing to a view of the marriage as serving a larger divine purpose and rendering irrelevant any discussion of Muhammad’s motivations. The marriage was divinely ordained, they point out, with the angel Jibril having displayed an image of Aishah to the Prophet, declaring that she would be his wife. Further, the marriage cemented political allegiances and was therefore important to the Muslim community.
36
Most salient to the ques- tion of age, Aishah’s youth enabled her to live a long time after the death of the Prophet and serve as an authority on his actions. Thus, as Sabeel Ahmed writes,“The Prophet married Aishah for the benefit of Islam and Humanity.”
37
The notion of a divine purpose to the marriage is, of course, not likely to sway anyone who views the marriage as evidence for Muhammad’s base

146 sexual ethics and islam

instincts, or indeed anyone who does not believe in Muham- mad’s prophethood. The inclusion of this type of material in articles centered on Aishah’s age suggests that, rather than solely addressing non-Muslim criticism, the authors recognize the need to reassure and convince Muslims of the appropriateness of this marriage.

The need to assuage Muslim doubts vies with the desire to present an Islamic critique of Western and modern cultural ideals and social practices. The author of one article from the Jamaat-e-Islami website addresses the contemporary relevance of this marriage when asked about age differences in marriage and the Prophet’s marriage to Aishah specifically. He counsels that while child marriage might seem unacceptable today, and Muslims are under no compulsion to engage in it, one should be wary of criticizing it. Too strong a rejection of child marriage is tantamount to accepting a Western agenda of women’s liber- ation and even “UN sponsored shari’ah.”
38

The anxiety over capitulation to “Western” norms is ever-present in Muslim discourses, even when texts are written by, and aimed at, Muslims living – and in some cases, born – in the West. One article that strikes a particularly defiant tone in this regard is the widely cited “The Young Marriage of ‘Aishah” by AbdurRahman Robert Squires.
39
This article first appeared in 1999, three years before Vines’ remarks, and it aims both at non-Muslim critics and Muslims who seek to appease them. “In the face of [non-Muslim] criticism,” Squires argues, “Muslims have not always reacted well.”Squires solidly backs the hadith sources, claiming that the evidence for Aishah’s age in Bukhari and Muslim “is – Islamically speaking – overwhelm- ingly strong and Muslims who deny it do so only by sacrificing their intellectual honesty, pure faith or both.” Presumably, Squires would have harsh words for former ISNA president Siddiqi, who referred to these reports as “not confirmed.”

Yet “pure faith” seems insufficient for many Muslims, who must attempt to accept the Prophet’s action as blameless while reconciling it with their own discomfort. Reflecting the difficult nature of such an endeavor, a contributor to a discus- sion on ShiaChat wrote, in response to another’s suggestion to

the prophet muhammad ... muslim sensibilities 147

simply accept that Aishah was nine:“Like you said, there’s no point trying to cover up and make excuses for what the Prophet did, because that indicates that you are ashamed of Islam and do not agree with all of the rules, which makes you being a Muslim point- less.”
4
0
His statement refl unresolved, and uncomfortable, questions about the relevance of historical precedent to contem- porary circumstances, and the appropriateness of using contem- porary criteria to evaluate authoritative religious texts in general and prophetic
sunnah
in particular. The radical variations in tone and content among the online discussions of Aishah’s age at mar- riage suggest that many Muslims feel torn between the impossibil- ity of uncritical acceptance of their inherited tradition and the fear that any critical stance toward that tradition will be a capitulation to those Siddiqi calls “the enemies of Islam.”

Conclusion

As scholars of history will affirm, one cannot use the standards of the present to judge the past.
41
However, most Muslims are not historians and their interest in the Prophet’s life and conduct is not an academic exercise but an acutely felt religious one. It is a tricky proposition to accept that the Prophet is the model of conduct for all Muslims while simultaneously believing that it would be wrong of a Muslim man to follow his example in con- summating a marriage with a nine-year-old. This dissonance accounts for the substantial effort many have put into asserting or proving that Aishah had reached her teen years before her marriage was consummated. A few individuals have suggested that one can accept the Bukhari account of the marriage while considering Muhammad’s marriage to the young Aishah among those matters in which the regulations governing the Prophet’s actions differ from those governing that of other believing men.
42
However, though the accounts in works of
sira
and hadith treat Muhammad’s marriage to Aishah as something worthy of note, in part because of several divine signs of approval, they do not suggest that it was her youth that made the marriage exceptional or noteworthy.

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A more satisfactory means of grappling with the Prophet’s commencement of conjugal life with a girl young by any standard, whatever her precise age, would recognize that the circumstances under which this marriage took place were radic- ally different from those of the twenty-first century. Though in the vast majority of Muslim contexts today a nine-year-old girl would emphatically
not
be seen as an appropriate marriage partner, there was nothing shocking or socially inappropriate about such behavior in seventh-century Arabia.
43
Though most first-time brides were not nearly so young, there does not seem to have been controversy over the age difference, and some Companions of the Prophet seem to have engaged in marriages with a similar age gap.
44
Notions of childhood, as numerous historical studies have shown, vary dramatically from place to place, and imposing modern notions of adulthood as a criterion for entering into marriage validly may be inappropriate. Recog- nizing the vast difference between socio-historical settings can be freeing, initiating debates over the relevance of precedent, specifically
sunnah
, in radically changed contexts.

Just because one should not judge anachronistically, however, does not mean one should withhold all judgment. Just because a behavior is socially accepted does not make it good. As with slaveholding, thinking in terms of unjust social structures, rather than individual sin, can provide a helpful way of recon- sidering matters of sexual ethics.
45
But while this avoids the theo- logically problematic notion that the Prophet did anything objectionable, what does it say about the inherent goodness of marriage between males and females of substantially different ages and levels of experience? What of such marriages today? Is it possible to argue that in any setting – tribal Afghanistan or rural India or the Arabian desert – such marriages are always unfair to the girls involved? Can one argue that different sets of standards should apply to Muslims living in different societies, without falling into the trap of extreme moral relativism masquerading as multiculturalism? In order to address these questions, Muslim discussions of
sunnah
in general, and the Prophet’s marriages more particularly, need to move beyond defensiveness. Being consumed with combating negative

the prophet muhammad ... muslim sensibilities 149

portrayals of Islam and Muslims can lead thinkers to overlook or excuse injustices that do occur, failing in the basic duty to com- mand the right and forbid the wrong. But how does one know right and wrong, justice and injustice?

Philosophers and ethicists, both Muslim and non- Muslim, have been engaged for centuries in debates over what constitutes “good” and what is necessary for “justice.” For most premodern thinkers, slavery was morally neutral; it fell within the realm of justice – appropriate rights and obligations for those of varying statuses – provided basic parameters of good treatment were met. Likewise, equality or sameness of rights between husbands and wives in marriage was largely unthink- able. Marriage was not meant to be a setting for love between equals, but rather a particular kind of exchange by individuals fulfilling complementary roles; love was a bonus rather than a prerequisite.
46
With this set of expectations, power might come to a wife because of her youth and virginity (Aishah is reported to have boasted of the latter, which distinguished her from the Prophet’s other wives, all of whom had been previously married) rather than because of wisdom and wealth.
47

Those Muslims who strive for gender equality, con- sidering it an essential component of justice, must address the central issue: what is justice and on what basis does one know it? Is something good because God says so? Or does God say it is good because it is, inherently, so?
48
If what God says – and indeed, what the Prophet,“a beautiful example” (Q. 30:21), does

• is automatically good, then what happens when this clashes with one’s own view of what is just or good? Arriving at a work- ing resolution of this dilemma requires a consciousness of his- tory and an acceptance of the role of the individual conscience. If one wants to consider certain moral standards as absolutes – such as the injustice of slavery – one must accept that God some- times tolerates injustice. However, in a universe with human free will, allowing injustice is not the same as being the cause of it; God repeatedly rejects responsibility for injustice in Qur’anic passages declaring that God does not wrong or oppress people in any way, but rather people do wrong (
  zulm
  ) “to their own selves” (or “to their own souls”).
  49
  This assertion is freeing, in
  

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  that God does not demand that Muslims act contrary to the dictates of conscience. However, it also implies a much more sig- nificant responsibility for the individual human being to make ethical judgments and take moral actions. Qur’anic regulations, in this case, must be seen as only a starting point for the ethical development of the human being, as well as for the transform- ation of human society.
  

  9
  Toward an Islamic Ethics of Sex
  

  It is customary to title the final section of a book “Conclusion,” but I have not done so here. Far from having completed a jour- ney, in this volume I have only attempted a first step toward defining a problem. And the problem, as I currently see it, is this: meaningful consent and mutuality, both of which I believe to be crucial for a just ethics of sexual intimacy, are structurally impossible within the constraints of lawful sexuality as defined by the classical Muslim scholars, whose views – drawing from and building on Qur’an and
  sunnah
  – permeate all Muslim discourses. It is possible to rethink Islamic sexual ethics to accommodate these values and there are resources within Muslim texts, both revealed and interpretive, for doing so. Nonetheless, an egalitarian sexual ethics cannot be constructed through pastiche; a methodology of picking-and-choosing, combining isolated elements in expedient ways, will prove insufficient to resolve the core issue at stake. We need, instead, a serious con- sideration of what makes sex lawful in the sight of God. The obvious response of “marriage” does not really answer the ques- tion. What type of bond does God require between spouses? Is it payment of dower that transforms an illicit liaison into a respectable union? Is it a groom’s right of extrajudicial repudi- ation? A civil marriage license? The bride’s father’s consent? A public ceremony? Sincerity of commitment by the would-be spouses? All of these things? Something else entirely? Moreover, once it is decided what makes sex lawful, what makes it good? By “good” I do not primarily mean sex that is physically pleasur- able, although pleasure certainly matters, but rather sex that
  

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  embodies, among other virtues, kindness, fairness, compassion, and generosity.
  1
  These are all necessary if one is to live up to the ideal of marriage set forth in the Qur’anic declaration that God “created for you mates from among yourselves that you may find tranquility with them, and put love and mercy between you.”
  2
  

  Of course, despite this powerful and moving (and gender-neutral!) description of the divine purpose for marriage, the Qur’an also includes hierarchical and androcentric provi- sions for marriage and sex. The Prophet’s
  sunnah
  as recorded in hadith contains beautiful reminders to men to consider both female pleasure and women’s tender feelings, but the same sources have demeaning references to women as objects of, and subject to, male desire. The Muslim jurists who repeatedly exhorted men to treat their wives kindly, to consider women’s needs for sex and companionship, and not to abuse their powers of divorce, did so within a logical framework that considered a licit sexual union impossible unless a man’s exclusive control over a woman’s sexual and reproductive capacity was estab- lished through marriage or slavery, which they discussed using similar terminology. Given the competing models of appropri- ate sex and sexual relationships between and within these complex texts, how can Muslims draw on the sources in a coherent way to make ethico-legal decisions about our intimate lives?
  

  My way of framing the question presupposes that Muslims will undertake this process of reflection primarily as individuals, for ourselves and in dialogue with those close to us. That does not mean that religious authorities do not matter; there are thinkers whose ideas have wide currency in the West as well as in Muslim-majority societies, and for those of us lucky enough to have a respected and thoughtful
  imam
  or other spir- itual figure at our mosque or in our community, he – or perhaps, she – may be a trusted resource. Still, while there are some formal institutions of Muslim religious learning in the United States, the majority of those who speak about Islam (or
  for
  Islam) have no special credentials to do so. It is often said that there is no clergy in Islam. Although that is technically true, pre- vious generations in Muslim majority societies have allocated a special role to the ‘ulama. In the West, there is no such class of
  

  toward an islamic ethics of sex 153
  

  individuals to serve as an anchor or foil for Muslim public and private discussions of these complicated issues. Indeed, there has been little public discussion at all of what role religious lead- ers should play in Muslim life in the West, how they should be chosen and trained, and ultimately what type of authority they should wield. A limited conversation began in 2005, sparked by the controversies over female prayer leadership, but it has not yet developed into the kind of broader debate necessary for full exploration of the key questions surrounding Muslim religious authority and institutions in the United States. Still, even formal structures of religious authority will not remove the need for individual Muslims to be substantially better informed about vital issues.
  

  Reinterpretation is not only an individual project, for application in personal lives; it must also be a collective enter- prise of scholars thinking, talking, and writing jointly and in counter-point. Muslim feminists have become part of the Islamic intellectual tradition and, in doing so, have begun to push at its boundaries and reshape its contours.
  3
  As we engage more deeply with the intellectual heritage of centuries of Muslim thinkers, we must neither romanticize the tradition as it stands nor be blindly optimistic about prospects for transform- ation within it. Most importantly, as we expose reductive and misogynist understandings of the Qur’an and hadith, refusing to see medieval interpretations as coextensive with revelation, we must not arrogate to our own readings the same absolutist conviction we criticize in others. We must accept responsibility for making particular choices – and must acknowledge that they
  are
  interpretive choices, not merely straightforward reiterations of “what Islam says.”
  

  In this project of interpretation, we must also recognize that on matters of sexual ethics, the Qur’an itself poses chal- lenges for those committed to egalitarian social and intimate relationships. Progressive approaches to the Qur’anic text cannot be limited to selective presentation of egalitarian verses in isolation from their broader scriptural context. Such an approach is both fundamentally dishonest and ultimately futile; arguments about male/female equality built on the systematic
  

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  avoidance of inconvenient verses will flounder at the first confrontation with something that endorses the hierarchical and gender-differentiated regulations for males and females that so many reformers would like to wish away. This is where jurisprudential methods can offer much to Muslim feminists. Not because the rulings of the jurists are themselves egalitarian
  

• for the most part, they are not when it comes to matters of gender and sex – but because the ways in which jurists have related source texts to social contexts demonstrates that the law they constructed has “always already” been subjected to acts of interpretation. Their practice both authorizes by example human interpretive reasoning and provides a useful model for constructive dialogue between textual sources and social custom, something that has always mattered a great deal where sex and intimacy were concerned.