5.5. Marriage and sexuality

" When the servant of God marries, he has already fulfilled half of (the responsibilities imposed upon him by) his faith." (Mishkat)

The purpose of marriage is that men and women will find peace and love in each other’s company and in mutual companionship :

"And one of His signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest in them, and He put between you love and compassion; (Quran 30:21)







In Islam, marriage is seen as a partnership, a commitment between equals. Shaykh Dr. Ad-Darsh, former Faqih of Al-Azhar, Cairo, and chairman of the UK Shari'ah Council, describes it as follows:

The Shaykh refers in this to the example set by the Prophet Muhammad, who, as already mentioned, himself assumed part of the household chores.









In marriage, both parties have their rights and duties. During his farewell address, Prophet Muhammad proclaimed:


"O people, your wives hold certain rights over you and you hold certain rights over them ".





Fourteen hundred years ago, this was revolutionary language.












Until that time, women in the clans were well nigh without rights.






















































Suddenly, men and women were treated by Muhammad as equals, with reciprocal rights and duties.

"It is narrated by Khansa bint Khidam Al-Ansariya that her father gave her in marriage and that she was opposed to this. She therefore went to the Apostle of Allah and he declared the marriage invalid."

This is one of the beautiful verses in the Quran. Let us be the last ones to state that the Quran is void of beautiful and inspiring verses.
This general verse about marriage is unfortunately being neutralized, and compromised, by a number of specific verses that are simply and plainly discriminatory or insulting to women and that reduce her to the status of an eternal under-aged minor dependent on the whims and caprices of the men surrounding her.

Linda has already given us clear evidence that, in Islam, marriage is NOT a commitment between equals by demonstrating that the husband is responsible for everything and the wife for nothing, yet the lady keeps stubbornly persisting in her contradictory ways.

This quote by Shaykh Dr. Ad-Darsh does not at all proclaim that marriage is a commitment between equals but vaguely states that all parties ought to derive pleasure from this intimate relationship. One must assume that he refers here to the pleasures of sexual intercourse.

From here on, it only gets better. According to the standard marriage contract, a woman does not need lift one finger to help out in her home. She is allowed to lounge lazily in bed all day long. Talk about equality between husband and wife!

Once again, we detect the presence of a serpent in the grass. The rule mentioned is, in fact, used by a father to prevent his daughter from marrying the man of her choice, under the pretext that he is of lower social status, unable to guarantee her the accustomed lifestyle, and cannot afford to let her have servants. Consequently, the daughter cannot, even via the Courts, force her father to consent to the marriage if he doesn’t want to.

Linda also keeps numb about the wife’s duties or the husband’s rights. Surely, a wife must be given some duties to perform!? Let’s glance through our Shariah Handbook that has been accredited by the folks at the same Al-Azhar University Cairo whence the quoted “Shaykh Dr. Ad-Darsh” originates. No doubt, this will make us a lot wiser... at the risk of our suffering some embarrassment at the same time.

On pp. 948 and 949 we get to read what the Shafi’i and the Hanafi Schools have to tell about the woman’s duties. The SHAFI’I School states that the woman is not obliged to serve her husband since, on her side, the marriage contract only means that she must pleasure him sexually (literally „that she lets him enjoy her sexually“) and consider that act to be her sole duty. It is mentioned as an extra that it is very nice of her if she also consents to do some of the household chores.

The HANAFI School holds that when a wife neglects her household chores, she commits a sin but she cannot be forced to do chores even via the Courts.

Important information may likewise be read on p. 525, e.g., under § m5.1 (d) it is stated that the wife is entitled to refuse sex to her husband until she has received her dowry. This links the husband’s right to have sex with his wife to the payment of her dowry. A quid pro quo! Plus a little more embarrassment for the reader.

The Hadith to which is referred deals with the occasion when Muhammad was mending his clothes. When we look back to the context of that time, we find that the household chores were rather few in number. People slept on a rug on the floor (under a blanket when it was cold), wore fairly simple clothing, and could not yet indulge in cordon bleu cuisine. Life was simple. Household chores consisted mainly of getting water and cooking food. Or putting a platter with dates on the carpet. Yet Linda makes it appear as if life then was as complex as it is today; more than a trifle misleading.

But this is a fact. The man provides for his wife’s maintenance and, in exchange, she makes her body available to him when he asks for it. In return, she receives a one-time compensation at the conclusion of the marriage.

Linda creates the impression, erroneously so, that in Islam men and women have equal rights. They each have their rights, but these are not equal but different.

The following 3 paragraphs are important to fathom Islamic logic:

(1) Since Islam is a religion for all time, it is not relevant that something 1400 years ago may have been revolutionary then.  Yet this is an argument that keeps repeating ad infinitum and until accepted. A universal religion needs to proffer guidelines in a timeless manner. Universality is forever! For instance, many pronouncements by Jesus, such as „do not look at the splinter in the eye of your neighbour but at the beam inside your own eye “ or „let him who is without sin cast the first stone “ are timeless dictums that will retain their value, even a thousand years from now. And they are not, as is symptomatic in Islam, ‘to be considered and relevant only within their own context‘.

(2) This proclamation is stating something and repeating it so often that in time people cannot possibly doubt it. Two examples to prove that this is not the case.

A. Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, was a wealthy widow business woman prior to the existence of Islam. She managed her own business affairs, and this in conservative Mecca. It was she who picked Muhammad as her husband, going against the spirit of a time that did not consider marriage between a 40-year old woman and a 25-year old man a conventional act.

B. When Muhammad fled to Medina, he landed in an environment that may best be illustrated by reference to the following Hadith of Bukhari, (3.43.648):

According to a Hadith collected by Abu Dawood, Muhammad found a solution also for this problem (that the Moslimas started to embrace bad habits). Let’s see the Hadith collected by Abu Dawood (11. 2141):

The above Hadith is one that cancels a number of earlier traditions stating that Muhammad forbade the beating of women. Mostly, the earlier Hadith texts are quoted but not the later ones, thus creating the erroneous impression that a husband must not beat his wife.

Briefly, there may very well have existed a divergence of opinions and actions amongst the various clans for what concerns the relationship between men and women. But the argument that women had no rights prior to Islam is in any event clearly contradicted by the foregoing evidence.

This contention therefore doesn’t hold water. Men and women are not treated as equals. They each have their rights but these are different from one another.

We reiterate once more: the man is charged with the maintenance and care of his wife and the family in exchange for free access to his wife’s body any and every time he wants it. In return for this favour, she receives a one-time compensation, which is her dowry (called mahr).

If it is a valid principle that a woman may herself pick her husband of choice, how is it then that she can “be married off against her will”? Thus without her own consent? The attentive reader of Linda’s version may come to realize that she presents the package with an excess of ribbons and bows.

The contention that a woman is free to choose her husband on her own is based on... rushing winds and running waters. Linda seems to believe that the legal situation in 21st-century Belgium is conform to Islamic Law. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. This again is a commonly used technique to whitewash the less attractive traits in Islam. It is not because (1) in Belgium a mature woman is free to choose her husband, (2) because Moslimas are domiciled in Belgium, (3) because in Belgium there reside Moslimas that have been free to choose their partner, that (4) Islam proclaims women to be free to select their husbands without any interference from their families.

There is obviously a difference between a woman being allowed to freely choose a prospective husband and being allowed to refuse such a prospect. In the actual world out there, the needed pressure is exerted on young girls aged 14-15 to give their consent in the end. Suffice it to make their lives miserable enough and they’ll give in. After all, is it not for their own good?

The lady referred to here by Linda is known to us and appears to have been married previously (in the relevant link, matron refers to a woman who is either a widow or a divorcee). A divorced woman or a widow is thus allowed to have a marriage contracted outside her will annulled.

A so-called virgin (as yet unmarried) can be married off by her father (but not by another male who is her guardian) without her consent.

As example we may quote Muhammad’s own marriage to Aisha when she was six years old, whereby Aisha was not consulted in anything. How would she at the age of six have been capable of making decisions about marriage?

Muslim has in his collection of Hadith devoted a chapter to this under the title: “Chapter 10: it is permitted to a father to marry off his daughter even if she has not yet reached adulthood.” As a point of information, adulthood (or maturity) in Islam means the time when a woman starts menstruating, hence 10 - 12 years of age. And, indeed, Islam does not have a minimum marriage age and girls may well be divorced even before they have experienced their first menstrual period. The Quran states the following in connection with the (interim) waiting time a woman has to observe before remarrying:

Whoever is under the impression that the marrying off of 10-year old little girls, as it is happening right now in Afghanistan or Yemen, is an anomaly practised by so-called “backward tribes” and without any association with Islam, well... think again. The mainstream interpretation of Islam does not impose any minimum age limit on marriage, either for girls or boys. And we again come full circle: it is not because in nearly all Islamic nations there does now exist a minimum marriage age that this is suddenly to be accepted as being conform to Islamic Law. Hardly! These countries deviate from the laws of Allah because, on this particular point, Allah’s laws are deemed inferior to the laws laid down by human agency. The leaders of these countries will surely have to account and atone for such trespasses in the hereafter.

End of Part 6