6.3 Discussion
6.3.1 Discussion of the Petition
Wassalam
Mufti Ebrahim Desai
Darul Iftaa, Madrassah In'aamiyyah
sexuality with a potent and divinely protected male right to sexuality and a socially dangerous and potentially sinful female sexuality (Ali 2006, Sabbah 1986). Ideas on the potent male sexual need were captured in chapter five in the discourse on male sexual need and female responsibility. Here I focus on the latter discourse.
Sabbah’s (1986: 34-43) ‘omnisexual woman’ reflects the interplay between what she calls the erotic and orthodox discourses, is a threat to society, and is kept in check through onerous societal controls, which undermine her potentially dangerous sexual appetite. Unlike potent male sexuality which has multiple opportunities for expression81 within the context of marriage, the ‘omnisexual woman’ only has sexual access to her one husband. For Sabbah, the limited options a wife has for fulfilling her sexual needs are what render her sexuality socially dangerous and potentially sinful.
This also exacerbates a husband’s responsibility to fulfil, to manage, and thus to control her sexuality.
The petition above supports this idea, and the effect is to produce, firstly, a narrative where female sexuality is important and has to be satisfied. Secondly, the sexuality of a wife is her husband’s responsibility to satisfy and control, lest she be prompted toward sin. Thirdly, the husband’s duty is to also “rescue” her from unfulfilled sexual need to avoid sin. Through the discourse of sin, the wife’s God-believer relationship is not dependent only on her individual choices, but also dependent on her husband’s efficacy in ensuring her sexual satisfaction.
The petitioner links the wife’s rights, to the notion that unsatisfied female sexuality is potentially sinful. He makes himself responsible for saving her from sin by satisfying her needs. In this regard the husband in the petition intends to “save her”, his wife, from creating chaos in society through her potential for illicit sexual actions. Couched in these terms, the petitioner appeals to an ethical and “moral exhortation” of female sexual rights which in Ali’s view is contrary to the classical “legal logic governing sex” (2006: 9) in a Muslim marriage. The legal logic prioritises male sexual needs and female sexual availability (12). Ali argues that, “whatever the ethical importance of a husband satisfying his wife and thus enabling her to keep chaste”(13) and prevent her
81 Sabbah contends that for men, extra-marital sex is managed through the legal lawful provisions of polygyny and unilateral repudiation of wives. By contrast, the only lawful way to manage female sexuality is through sexual satisfaction by her one lawful husband (1986: 34-43).
from inflicting “social havoc”, in fiqh texts, “sex is, by and large, a male right and a female duty”. In other words, sex is not regarded as a female right, even though satisfying a wife is a husband’s duty. The reciprocal right to this male duty is not the right of the wife to sex but the right of the society to be protected from the wife’s unfulfilled sexual need. This is illustrated by classical scholar Al-Imam Al-Ghazali (d 505 H/1111 AD) in the book on the etiquette of marriage from his work the Iḥyā; “it is true that intimate relations should be more or less frequent in accordance to her need to remain chaste, for to satisfy her is his duty” (Ghazali and Farah 2012: 127).
Evidence that Muslim women too, have internalized this classical fiqh view is noted in an excerpt from fatwa # 30959, hereon referred to as fatwa M82. A female petitioner tells the Chicago jurist Sohail ibn Arif that her husband’s lack of attention may lead her to sin:
…my husband doesn't keep marital relations with me I have spoken to him nicely argued with him even asked for divorce as from his part he doesn't show any intimacy only basic hugs and kisses now n then which just aren't enough….
I don't want to fall into haram out with my marriage I have told him this...
Hoel and Shaikh point out that “gender-biased religious traditions… are powerful in shaping women’s gendered subjectivity” (2013: 87). Similarly, the woman in this fatwa has accepted that it is her husband’s duty to satisfy her. She uses it in an agentival way though, as a coercive measure to argue for her husband to provide her with ‘intimacy’. In the answer the jurist also relies on the discourse of sin to argue for her right to sexual satisfaction, but he focuses on both female and male sin.
In the answer, ibn Arif in fatwa M, tells the female petitioner:
…Preserving one's chastity is one of the noble objectives of nikāh. Since the need to preserve one's chastity is common to both husband and wife, the right to intimacy also belongs to both husband and wife. As a result, it is necessary for your husband
82 See Appendix 2. Refer to # 30959, 2014. Available from:
<http://www.askimam.org/public/question_detail/30959>. [Accessed 15 October 2015].
to fulfil your needs to prevent you from falling into harām. Failure to do so without an acceptable reason would make him in a sinner in the sight of Allah.
Ibn Arif initially equalizes both the husband’s and wife’s sexual rights by linking them to the preservation of mutual chastity. He then insists that the wife’s “needs”
must be fulfilled by the husband to prevent her from sinning. He begins with a discourse of mutuality, and then undermines this discourse by reverting to a view of a husband’s duty to save the wife from a potentially sinful position due to a dangerous unfulfilled sexuality.
In her analysis of the Saudi fatwa mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Ali points out that “concepts of reciprocity and mutuality permeate even conservative Muslim discourses”, even as contemporary Muslim discourse within Western contexts continues to incorporate “strongly gendered understandings of male female sexuality”
(Ali 2006: 9). Similarly, Ibn Arif in fatwa M advocates for mutuality in marital sexual relations, while simultaneously grounding his answer within the conservative view of a dangerous female sexuality. His answer, in essence, subscribes to both the rights discourse as well as the duty discourse of fiqh texts, further aligning with observations by feminist scholars that discourses of sexual rights are fraught with internal tensions of a simultaneously positive female sexuality and a sinful dangerous one.
Ibn Arif shows the complexity of the dynamic between male duty and female sexual need by making the husband’s sin contingent on the wife’s sin. The result is a paradoxical shift in power to the wife. He affords the wife some level of control over her husband’s God-believer relationship, through her sin. He links the discourse of female sexual satisfaction and male duty to a man’s relationship with God. The husband’s relationship with God is determined by his actions in how he manages and controls his wife’s sexual satisfaction. The jurist doesn’t say if the husband becomes a sinner only by virtue of failing to satisfy his wife, thus rendering her sexuality dangerous. Neither does he show whether any sinful actions as a result of her unsatisfied sexuality will incur sin upon him. Either way, the wife’s sexual satisfaction is made to mediate the husband’s relationship with God.
This differs substantially from the narrative in chapter five on male sexual need, where the wife’s relationship was dependent on her responsibility to make herself sexually available and her obedience to her husband who was portrayed as the intermediary between wife and God in such a way that his anger and subsequent disapproval of her made her sinful. There the husband’s relationship with God is not influenced by his wife, and is rather dependent on his personal relationship with God and through his individual actions. By contrast, in this narrative, the husband still maintains his personal God- believer relationship, but this time it is determined by his capacity to fulfil his wife’s sexual needs and his capacity to keep her satisfied.
There are three main slippages to the dominant discourse on male sexual need, noted in the above fatwa. First, a shift in power occurs when mutual sexual rights are prioritized, female sexual rights are recognized, and when both receive the same priority as male sexual needs. Second, by acquiescing to and then relying on the normative gendered view of a negative and dangerous female sexuality which is a man’s responsibility to control, the wife has at her disposal a coercive measure to argue for intimacy with her husband. Third, the jurist, ibn Arif, renders the wife powerful in her ability to control her husband’s God-believer relationship by making him a sinner should her sexual needs go unfulfilled.