Last
updated 13/12/2011
Sexual
dimensions of Islam and the Niqab
(Much of the contents of
this article
are sensitive and are not suitable for children)
Islam is usually considered superficially by Western minds as
a
puritanical faith set on ascetic practices like fasting, the
strict segregation of women, and an excessive regard to female
modesty.
Indeed in some respects, muslims are to be commended for their emphasis
on family life, the sanctity of marriage, the modesty of female attire,
the censorship of sexual impurity, and some judicial punishments for
sexual offenses (Job. 31.11). Despite many
serious and
iniquitous abuses and a foul tendency to denigrate
women (very evident
in some Hadith
literature), in some of these respects they
represent
a
distorted reflection of scriptural requirements, ones which many
foolish and
forgetful Jews and Christians have neglected to their own eternal harm.
والحياء شعبة من
الإيمان - modesty is a branch of faith (Bukhari, 1.2.8).
However this assessment neglects an important aspect of Islam. Like the
fertility cults from which it draws some root, Islam contains a
prominent and profoundly improper
focus on the physical aspects of sexuality in its worship.
Our sexuality is a uniquely sacred Divine gift, mysteriously reflects
the Divine
image and essence (Gen.
5.1-2) and is one of the highest blessings
given to mankind. It is sanctified and blessed within the covenant of
matrimony and both defiled and accursed without it.
The sacred
scriptures abominate the
error that sexual intercourse is in and of itself evil, in its lawful
context (Prov. 5.19
inter alia). Sexual perversion is a direct result
of
Divine judgement for unbelief, and is not only an apt response, but
bears mysterious parallel to creature worship (Romans.
1.24-28,
esp
v.27,
'a meet recompence').
Nevertheless, in spite its virtuous veneer and some real restraints and
benefits,
Islam emphasises sexuality in a manner that deeply derogates from its
lawful place and function as the following short list demonstrates.
Minarets
- An abundance of phallic symbols in places of worship
- some
apparently neatly circumcised. (Just a very small sample below).
The
latter image from here
- Can you imagine any other group using a symbol like
this without embarassment?
- The virtual invisibility of women in most mosques at
times of
congregational prayer.
- The repetitive focus on
fertility in calls to prayer ('Haya ‘Alel
Falah')
- In the chosen colour of Islam green, a symbol of
fertility.
The
Muslim
prophet depicted all in green, riding the female Buraq, top right
(Miraj
Nama,
which is in the Bibliotheque Nationale)
- In its intense focus on the lunar
cycle for its calendar and the ubiquity of lunar symbols (lunar-based
faiths
often denote a connexion with the female menstrual cycle). Unlike
the
Jewish or Chinese lunar calender, the Islamic year strictly follows
the
moon with no intercalary months and thus falls out of
synchronisation
with the seasons and the solar year. This idolatrous reverence is
further evidenced by the superstitious
regard paid by Muslims to times of solar or lunar eclipse,
and the extraordinary panic the author witnessed in their ranks at
such
times in the Middle East in 1999. (The ceremonies which take place
at
the eclipse (Salat-al-Kusuf) require: 2 rak’at with up to three of
four
ruku’ each, and 4 recitations, at the time of though not necessarily
for the whole duration of the eclipse, though Mohammed did pray and
recite all the way through the solar eclipse on the day of his son's
death, one suspects he was influenced by pagan Arab tradition
before.)
Image taken from here.
- The peculiar prohibition on women praying during
menstruation
- even domestic ritual
prayers must cease - a
position unique to Islam.
The
preferred titles of Deity
- The opening words of every sura
but one (the ninth) in the Qur'an are 'In the Name of the God,
merciful, the
compassionate',
'بِسْمِ اللّهِ
الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيم'. Both these
attributes (rahman and rahim) are cognates of the arabic for the
womb
denoting the tenderest and most sensitive feelings of sympathy
(rahm, رحم).
This is a
common theme with Christianity and Judaism, according to Hitti,
there
are ancient stone inscriptions in Arabia antedating Islam which have
been attributed the use of very similar expressions to Christian
Arabs.
The
Niqab
- One striking aspect of the heightened focus on
sexuality
in Islam is the veiled concealment of
the
female face by the Niqab or the Burqah. In Middle Eastern practice
traditionally, the use of a face veil, has often been reserved for
enhancing sexual attraction before marriage. A gentle
primary example is found in the Torah's account of Rebecca (Gen.
24). When
Abraham's servant first meets the young virgin, goes to her house,
discusses her marriage with her family and then travels back with
her
there is no mention of a
veil. On the contrary, she is described as 'very fair to look upon'
(v.
16). When she travels to a foreign country, in a party of
strange
men,
it is not until she is
told
that the man coming to meet her is her
husband to be, that then and
then only she takes and
wears
the veil. The attractiveness and allure of the face veil is well
illustrated below:
- There is also a hint of the use of such a veil in some
marriage ceremonies,
in Laban's ensnaring his nephew Jacob in wedlock not to his beloved
Rachel, but to
Leah (Gen. 29.18-25).
Even
if Jacob had been inebriated it is difficult
to see how he might not have discovered the true identity of his
bride
till the morning unless her face was covered.
- 'Taking the veil' in Tamar's case in Genesis
38 v.14
however had an
altogether more sinister sense than today. She sought to beguile her
father in law to provide directly that which he was duty bound to
provide in
the person of his third son, namely an heir. His sinful reluctance
lead
him to exclaim later that, 'She has been more righteous than I',
when
he discovered how she had conceived by deceit.
- The indiscriminate, public use of a face veil was a
characteristic not of modesty, but of
the precise opposite. It was devotees to pagan
cults, who usually served as prostitutes, who wore such clothing to
heighten their attractiveness to clients. This is unmistakeable in Genesis
38.15-18. 'When Judah saw her, he
thought
her to be an harlot; because she
had covered her face'. He knew no other practice, and of course was
familiar not only with Canaan and Syria, but also had some knowledge
of
Egypt and Mesopotamia from his father and grandfather. Tamar left
her
widow's clothes to take the veil, and forsook
the veil to take them up again once her mission was complete -
indicating how profoundly improper such clothing was for a godly
widow, in the Middle East of the time.
- The word used for 'harlot' or prostitute here in v.20,
but not v.15 which uses the more standard word for an adulteress, is
the word 'Qadosha' - which is the feminine form of the word
'sanctified', or set apart, and indicates that the wearer was
devoted
to a temple for the most profane and ugly sin. In Hosea
4.6-17, for
example, the same word (v.14) is used of the
harlotry associated with
pagan
idolatry. The law places strict prohibitions on both sexes
engaging in such practice, and the words translated for prostitution
are both derived from the temple word 'Qadosh', Deuteronomy
23.17,
in case of doubt the very next verse clarifies the meaning of the
preceding terms and brands it an 'abomination'.
- Although many terms are used for veil in the Tenach/Old
Testament, the word used in Genesis 24 and 34 explicitly
for a face veil (tsa‘iyph) is found only in
these two places (three times). It is derived
from the verb 'to fold', distinguishing it from other veils and head
coverings
which did not need to be folded around the eyes. If only Muslims
were
better aware of the roots of their traditions and of the real heart
intentions behind them, promiscuous use of the Niqab would not be
seen
as a paragon of
virtue, but as an encouragement to vice.
- "The word, niqaab (sing.) (نقاب)
and nuqub (pl.) in its
Arabic root naqaba (نقب ) means to bore, to pierce, to make a hole.
As
a reforming Muslim
writer
explains 'the sexual nature of the root should be apparent. In
Hebrew
and Aramaic the same root meaning exists.' In Hebrew the word NeKeV
(bqn),
which
means 'hole or perforation' and the word for 'female', NiKVah
(hbqn)
comes
from this root.
- There is contemporary evidence of an identical use of
the Niqab in Cairo, in BBC
correspondent
Christian Fraser's report, 10/10/09, 'There
are shops doing a roaring trade in garish fishnet stockings,
clothes that belong to a budget production of the film Moulin Rouge,
alongside those selling the all-enveloping outfits more commonly
seen
in this increasingly conservative society. It is, though, whispered
in
shadowy corners of this city that prostitutes are in fact customers
at
both types of shop.' It is at all not
surprising
that
both
forms of unclean hypersexualisation, Western and Middle Eastern, sit
side
by side. A German perfume manufacturer has also exploited the
heightened sexual sensitisation involved in the use of the Niqab, as
much as the wearing of other salacious clothing, in a lewd video
unfit
for display here. Some Muslim forum
posters have rather slowly begun to wake up to its
hypersexualising
effects too.
- Recently the use of the Burka and Niqab has also taken
hold in the Jewish Haredi communities in Beit
Shemesh (original
Hebrew
report) and elsewhere, apparently following a Jewish female
"rabbi's" lead. The vigorously anti-Zionistic Naturei
Karta ultra
Orthodox rabbis and other rabbis have banned it on the grounds of
its
untoward effects on sexual dynamics. As reported in JC,
'The Eda Charedit is
very against it and sees in it a real danger that by exaggerating
you
are doing the opposite of what is intended - severe transgressions
in
sexual matters.'
It is a great tragedy that Islam has foolishly and cruelly
mistaught its young women that what has long before been designed to
enhance lust is
somehow instead a remedy for it, and it is a significant root of hidden
vice and abuse in Muslim societies.
The
Ka'bah
But the most shocking aspect of Islam's focus on
sexuality and the evidence for its rootedness in fertility rites has
long been recognised to focus in the
Ka'bah
itself.
- The Ka'bah itself was addressed as a female Deity in
pre-Islamic times, as this short section from Ibn Ishaq's biography
shows,
'The
the
people were afraid to demolish the temple, and withdrew in awe from
it. Al-Walid b. al-Mughira said, 'I will begin the demolition.' So
he
took a pick-axe, went up to it saying thewhile, 'O God, do not be
afraid2 (132), O God, we intend only what is best.' The
he
demolished
the part at the two corners.'
2 The
feminine form indicates that the Ka'ba itself is addressed.
Ibn
Ishaq's
Sirat ar-Rasul, Pt .1.124., translated by Alfred Guillaume, published
OUP Pakistan.
- In the lewdity of the older
Egyptian
rites of marriage, described by Lane#, in
which two rak'ahs or prayer cycles are performed by the bridegroom
toward his naked bride's sexuality, whilst she is orientated in the
direction of the Ka'bah, as though she herself was the
representative
of
the object prayed to. This local interpretation of Islamic practice
is
especially significant, since Egyptian Muslims are usually just as
scrupulous
as others that
persons, especially women, do not intervene their line of sight with
the
mithrab - the indicator of the direction of Mecca.
#Here cited by T.P.Hughes. Dict. of Islam.
There is some evidence Mohammed also followed the
same procedure with Ayesha - 'Narrated 'Aisha: Do you make us (women)
equal to dogs and donkeys? While I used to lie in my bed, the Prophet
would come and pray facing the middle of the bed. I used to consider
it not good to stand in front of him in his prayers. So I used to slip
away slowly and quietly from the foot of the bed till I got out of my
guilt.' Why else would he direct his prayers toward the middle of her
bed? Bukhari
.1: 486 (cf. Sahih Bukhari 1.490, Sahih
Bukhari 1.493, Sahih Bukhari 1.498)
Nor is it surprising that under the Hums, again during pre-Hijra
times,
perhaps after the year of the Elephant, many worshippers, both male
and
female, were compelled to circumambulate the rock naked - revealing
its
potent, longstanding association with fertility rites. (Ibid.
1.128).
Joint worship of the Ka'bah by both polytheists and muslims is
confirmed by Bokhari (Book
23,
1021 et al), probably on another highly singular occasion
when an early version of Sura An-Najm
was recited.
Perhaps it hearkens back to Ishmael's prolonged
submission to his
divorced
Egyptian mother, Hagar. A resonance which the orphaned prophet must
also have known in
his own life.
This focus on the fertility cult is all the more extraordinary and
paradoxical given the
Greek philosophical anti-anthropomorphism
inherent in Islam's doctrine
of the sterile nature of God.
It is blasphemously removed from the true character of the sacred
Name,
who forged man male and female to express the Divine image (Gen
5.1-2).
Islam doubly
fulfills the ancient apostolic description,
'Turning the grace
of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our
Lord Jesus Christ.'
Jude 4.
