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A correspondent wrote:
The idea that sexual desire is of a baser nature, i.e, the animal nafs
[soul]. (Some muslims are astounded when they find other religions where
sexual desire is revered and indeed seen as a path to God rather than a satanic
distraction.)
I responded:
Oh, what a dreadful misconception of Islamic sexuality. This puritanical
attitude—"No sex, please, we’re Muslim"—completely ignores
the sacred sex of Islam which is hinted at in the Qur’ân &
Sunnah. Compared to the woman-hating attitude of Christian church fathers
(not the attitude of Jesus himself), which was the real puritanism in all
its nastiness, Islam came off as sexually libertine. The Christians right
up to the Victorian era used to attack Islam for sexual "license" just because
Islam says it’s all right for married couples to actually enjoy sex
with each other. Whereas the Christian puritanical ideal was to take all
the fun out of it, to lie back and think of England.
Now Europe, having thrown off its previous religious guidance, indulges in
debauchery, elects La Cicciolina to the Italian Parliament, and criticizes
Islam for being too puritanical. Who moved from one extreme to the other?
Islam has always stayed balanced in the middle. The Europeans, zigzagging
to both extremes, have a viewpoint that distorts the sanity and equilibrium
of Islam. As the Sufi theologian al-Ghazzâlî said, a sick person
drinks pure sweet water and thinks it tastes bitter. The problem is not with
the water.
Islam’s attitude toward sex is simple and easy to understand. As long
as you’re married, you are free to enjoy sex as much as you like with
your partner. You even get spiritual benefit from it (this is where the Sacred
Sex part comes in). If there are any Muslims who don’t "get it,"
that’s their failure to understand Islam, not the failure of Islam
itself.
We often hear of sacred sex in Hinduism. Westerners read Western adaptations
of Tantric texts and imagine it was an erotic funfest. Well, guess what.
The actual reality for people in India for the past couple centuries has
been an awfully drab, dreary period of sexual repression, the result of decaying
Hinduism. The rise of Hindu fundamentalism isn’t helping, in fact making
it worse. When Joseph Campbell toured India in the 1950s he was dismayed
at the sexual "infantilism," as he called it, imposed on adults. Men and
women were supposed to be ignorant of each other’s existence as sexual
beings. What a drastic decline for a people with such a sublime heritage
of sacred sex. Pakistanis are no better off.
So Islam and Hinduism are not that far apart. Both have sacred sex as part
of their heritage (Classical Hindu sacred sex was not an erotic free-for-all,
but was regulated as part of a healthy social order, just as in Islam). But
both in their decline have been subjected to unhealthy puritanism, reinforced
by Victorian attitudes of British colonialists that Indians and Pakistanis
still have not shaken off. It’s a cultural, spiritual decrepitude. When
the civilization has been under severe stress, the natural healthy human
life retreats and hides and shrivels up. The only hope I see for the Islamic
world to recover its original reverence for the sacredness of sex and the
Feminine is within Sufism which has nurtured the Yin side of Islam and kept
it in balance with the Yang side. I fear the rest of the ummah is menaced
with a dangerous, unhealthy imbalance of its Yang energy, manifesting in
terrorist massacres, fascist fundamentalist politics, and violence against
women. In sacred erotic life as in other spiritual areas, I believe Sufism
is the key to reconnect Muslims with the vital beating heart of their faith,
to heal and renew their existence, to bring alive again in our hearts the
spirit of the Prophet, peace be upon him, who loved women, and inspired the
great Sufi master Ibn al-‘Arabî to see the vision of God in Woman. |