Voices of Islam (143 page)

Motzki, Harald. ‘‘Marriage and Divorce,’’ in
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an,
Vol. 4, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 276–281. Leiden/Boston, New York/ Massachusetts: E.J. Brill, 2004.

Stewart, Devin. ‘‘Sex and Sexuality,’’ in
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an,
Vol. 5, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 580–585. Leiden-Boston: E.J. Brill, 2004.

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‌

T
HE
S
PIRITUAL
S
IGNIFICANCE OF
M
ARRIAGE IN
I
SLAM

•

Jane Fatima Casewit

INTRODUCTION: AN EGYPTIAN SCENARIO

Like many Egyptian couples, Wafa and Ali married relatively late in life. This is because the acute housing shortage in Cairo and rampant inflation renders material life very difficult for most Cairenes. Despite these setbacks, Wafa and Ali married, placed their trust in God for their future, and lived contentedly for many years in a very small flat in a poor, crowded neighborhood. As the years passed, it became clear that Wafa would not be able to bear children. Although, as pious Muslims, they submitted to this situation as God’s will, both Wafa and Ali felt emptiness in their lives without children and the joys they bring.

After much prayer and consultation, they both agreed that Ali should take a second wife, so that there would eventually be children in the family. No longer a young man, Ali sought the advice of his relatives and neighbors. One neighbor had a daughter, Aziza, about 17 years old, who was beautiful but deaf from birth. Realizing that it would not be easy to fi d a husband for a deaf girl, and that it is not easy to fi d a wife for a man getting on in years, Wafa and Ali decided that Ali should marry Aziza. If she con- sented to this arrangement, it would suit all concerned, as well as being a charitable act.

The marriage took place and Wafa continued her job as an assistant in a local nursery school. Aziza initially took over most of the household tasks. After retiring from her job at the nursery school, Wafa became a sort of ‘‘older sister’’ to Aziza, looking after her and helping her to communicate with the outside world. The family anxiously looks forward to the arrival of Aziza’s baby, especially Wafa, who always wanted a child of her own. As Wafa grows older and her health declines, Aziza will undoubtedly look after Wafa, showing the same trust and care as Wafa did for Aziza.

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Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society

Should the above scenario be seen as a norm or as an exception? How can such polygynous marriages (marriages in which a man can have more than one wife) ‘‘work’’ for everyone concerned? Why would most Western cou- ples and many modern Muslims be unable to accept such an arrangement? In attempting to approach these questions, this chapter outlines the spiritual significance of the institution of marriage in Islam. It examines its underlying, deeper signifi by addressing the Muslim concept of marriage through the lenses of symbolism and metaphysics, as well the positive effect of stable marriages on society as a whole. The broader, general responsibilities and rights of both wife and husband are highlighted according to the rules of Islamic jurisprudence. The virtues necessary for sustaining a long-term rela- tionship and the possibilities of extending the marital bonds to three persons are also examined. This chapter is not an analysis of current social ills in the Muslim world, nor do I intend to apologize for abuses committed in Muslim societies. Instead, I hope to present the fundamental spiritual principles upon which Islamic marriage is based.

In all civilizations, marriage celebrates and regulates the intricate relation- ship between husband and wife and the resulting procreation of children. The uniting of male and female in a conjugal bond is one of the most sacred and important institutions in all world cultures. The institution of marriage is granted the utmost importance in all religious traditions and societies, although the emphasis on its various aspects differs from one civilization to another. Both male and female reflect qualities of the Divine, and the most profound signifi e of the union of a man and a woman is that marriage mirrors the union of the human soul with the Divine spirit. This union of the soul with God is the highest human aspiration.

Yet, despite the deep spiritual implications of marriage, never before has this institution come under such a grave threat as it is undergoing today. People around the world are suffering the devastating effects of broken families on children and on society. In the Muslim world, in the wake of the dissolution of the extended family under the pressures of modernity, divorce and domestic violence within the nuclear family are on a sharp rise. Although the social tensions characterized by broken homes, juvenile delinquency, single motherhood, and homosexuality have not yet penetrated Islamic societies as pervasively as they have in the West, the recent necessity for revised family codes in many Muslim countries to prevent injustices toward women and children is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong.

THE DIVINE PRINCIPLE OF DUALITY

The divine archetype of marriage is present in all of creation. As with all divine revelations, Islam places marriage beyond the human realm because it is created and willed by God. The divine concept of archetypal pairs is

The Spiritual Significance of Marriage in Islam
79

explicit in the Qur’an. It is parallel to the doctrine of
Yin
and
Yang
in the Chinese tradition,
Purusha
and
Prakriti
in Hinduism, and the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary in Christianity. Reference to the divine concept of dual- ity can also be found in the Hebrew Bible: ‘‘All things are double, one against another, and He hath made nothing defective. He hath established the good things of every one. And who shall be fi with beholding His glory?’’ (
Ecclesiasticus,
62:25–26).

In Islam, the Creator is one. However, His creation begins with multiplic- ity and multiplicity necessarily originates with two, a duality. Like the Bible, the Qur’an frequently refers to the existence of pairs (
zawjayn
) in creation: ‘‘And of everything [God] created a pair’’ (Qur’an 51:49). Although the Qur’an continually reiterates the miracle of the pairs as a basis for creation, the essential message of Islam, considered as the final revelation in this cycle of humanity, reaffi the Oneness of God. The Qur’an, believed by Muslims to be the direct word of God, is itself a miraculous refl

of Divine Unity (
tawhid
). The sacred text of the Qur’an is woven into a miraculous tapestry that threads together the Divine message but continually draws us back to the central doctrine of unity.

One of the most important threads of this Divine text refers repeatedly to the totality of the universe as it appears to us from the human vantage point. From the human perspective, the universe consists of the Earth and the Heavens. The phrase ‘‘the Heavens and the Earth’’ (
al-samawat wa al-ard
) occurs over 200 times in the Qur’an. This cosmic pair was the first ‘‘pair’’ in creation, and the Qur’an alludes to the Divine archetype of duality through reference to this primordial pair. The Heavens and the Earth refer to the whole of the universe and beyond. The phrase that often follows this in the Qur’an is
wa ma baynahuma,
which means ‘‘and that which is between them’’—in other words, all of the rest of creation. The Qur’an’s description of God’s creation of the Heavens and the Earth recalls the creative act that brings duality into existence from unity and establishes the ‘‘pairs’’ as the fundamental components of existence. Moreover, the Qur’an also teaches us that the Heavens and the Earth existed together in an undifferentiated state before creation: ‘‘Do those who disbelieve know that the Heavens and the Earth were of one piece; then We parted them, and We made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?’’ (Qur’an 21:30).

The first great pair of Heaven and Earth is miraculously repeated at every level of creation: in animals and plants, the sun and the moon, gold and silver, and lightness and darkness. It is even affi in the conceptual categories that we use: in affirmation and negation, motion and rest, cause and effect, and origin and return. The story of the Prophet Noah, which is recounted in the Qur’an much as it is in the Bible, is not only an account of the great fl od that covered the earth but also a symbol of Divine duality: ‘‘Embark therein, of each kind two, male and female’’ (Qur’an 11:40).

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Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society

As a corollary of the spiritual principle of duality, the Islamic concepts of the ‘‘Pen’’ and the ‘‘Tablet’’ also act as symbols of the twin poles of manifestation and creation or Divine Intellect and All-Possibility. Although the Qur’an mentions both Pen and Tablet in several verses, the Hadith literature provides more information about how these verses are to be understood. According to Hadith accounts, the Pen ‘‘wrote’’ the destinies of all humankind onto the Tablet at the dawn of creation. The word for ‘‘Pen’’ in Arabic (
qalam
) is mas- culine in gender. The word for ‘‘Tablet,’’ (
lawh
), however, may be either mas- culine or feminine. In a famous verse, the Qur’an states that as the uncreated Word of God, the Qur’an is on a ‘‘Guarded Tablet’’ (
fi awhin mahfuzin
) (Qur’an 85:22). In this cosmic, archetypal sense, the Tablet is a masculine concept. However,
lawha,
the actual tablet that children write on in Qur’anic schools, is a feminine word. Thus, if the concepts of Pen and Tablet are under- stood to represent manifestation and creation, they can also be seen to symbolize both the divine concept of pairs and the pair of male and female. As symbols, the concepts of Pen and Tablet also correlate with the concepts of Intellect and Soul, which are similarly masculine and feminine. Intellect (
‘aql
) in Arabic is masculine, whereas Soul (
nafs
) is feminine. Both examples, Pen and Tablet and Intellect and Soul, illustrate how, in the religious language of Islam, divine duality pervades space, time, and language alike.

Divine duality exists on the human level as well. The Qur’an explains that God created human beings from one soul, a reflection of how the duality of male and female proceeds from the unity and oneness of God. The separation of the macrocosm into Heaven and Earth and the creation of the Pen and the Tablet have their equivalence in the creation of two souls from a single soul. These two souls, derived from the primordial single soul, became the fi human pair, Adam and Eve: ‘‘Fear your Lord, Who created you from a single soul; from her/it, He created her/its mate, and sent forth from the two of them many men and women’’ (Qur’an 4:1).
1
Femininity and masculinity thus pervade the created universe and correspond to the primordial duality at the origin of creation. The ‘‘pairs’’ (
zawjayn
) at every level of creation are part of the divine plan. Divine duality also exists within every human being; that is, at the level of the microcosm, which metaphysically mirrors the macrocosm.