In the same fatwas that indicate some reasons Docrat might find valid, we also find the petitioner’s, who are all men, are enquiring about the consequent possibilities of achieving sexual satisfaction through masturbation or through their wives touching them.
The petitioner in fatwa J for example asks:
If wife does not want to have sex (because she feels pain in her private parts and also she is tired looking-after her small baby), then is it permissable for the husband to masturbate?
The answer in fatwa J, by a student of Mufti Desai, states:
In principle, it is not permissible for a man or woman to masturbate/self stimulate themselves. This is substantiated by clear juristic texts cited in various books.
However, if a husband desires his wife to masturbate him, it will be permissible despite it still being regarded as an undesirable act.
The fatwa concludes by citing texts used in the Deoband curriculum.
Notably, even in the face of an undesirable act, i.e. masturbation, the mufti prioritizes male satisfaction and female responsibility to fulfil it. In fact he uses a distinctive rhetorical persuasive method of citing Deoband sources in this regard. No mention is made in the answer about the wife’s agency in regard to masturbation, so that only her physical biological health constraints are regarded as valid reasons for refusal to engage in intercourse. Her feelings about whether she wants to “masturbate” her husband are not considered, neither does Docrat consider her post-partum status.
Once again the mufti prioritizes male sexual satisfaction.
extent that even in the face of women’s pietistic concerns and instances of weakened physical health, it is prioritized.
Husbands are familiar with the discourse of male sexual need, and tend to emphasize the link between a wife’s refusal and God’s disapproval so that the perceived threat to the wife’s God-believer relationship arising out of her refusal becomes a coercive tool to prompt her into having sex.
When dealing with male petitioners’ sexual needs, some jurists like Docrat resort to familiar hadith texts to buttress this discourse, allowing women limited and inadequate agency, in this instance by advocating for a conditional and restricted sexual communication, which in this case depends on the wife’s physical health concerns. Kodir argues that the nuanced interpretive approaches in the fiqh to the
‘cursing angels’ hadith demonstrates that even as jurists use primary sources to buttress dominant discourses, they endeavour to allow women space to refuse sex and to allow for their sexual fulfilment, albeit minimally.
The analysis also supported evidence in the literature that the internalized perspectives of male sexual need presented here in familiar hadith, is not acceptable by some women. This is evidenced too by the agentival role played by the wife in her refusal to engage in intercourse because “she was not in the mood”, and is sometimes offset by a discourse of fairness. Determined by life experiences and their internalization of a pragmatic legal Islamic voice and an ethical voice, women evoke the ethical voice by negotiating, resisting or rejecting the discourse of female responsibility to fulfil male sexual need and instead enact their capacity to refuse.
The analysis also exposed the fact that Mufti Desai himself subscribes to the legal logic governing marriage, in line too with the traditional hierarchical Deoband gender ideology. But in chapter seven we will see how Desai also disrupts this gender ideology. For now, I focus on the paradoxical and challenging sub-discourse of female sexual satisfaction where the tension between the legal logic governing a Muslim marriage and its ethical moral paradigm is starkly apparent.
CHAPTER SIX: FEMALE SEXUAL SATISFACTION AND MALE DUTY
6.1 “He Wants to Pay her Rights and Save her from any Sin”
Fatwa B
As in chapter five, the discourses on sexual rights are gendered. In this chapter I focus on the discourse of female sexual rights, which is often described as female sexual satisfaction and male duty. This discourse has strong intertextual links to the discourse of male sexual need, and is further linked to the other discourse of mutuality.
Reflecting the discourse of female sexual rights, in an analysis of a fatwa by a Saudi Mufti, Kecia Ali brings attention to the tensions,
… between moral exhortations surrounding wives sexual rights in marriage, and the legal logic governing sex as part of the structure of gender-differentiated marital claims beginning with dower and carried through to divorce (Ali 2006: 9).
These tensions are also evident amongst the fatwas that reflect the discourse of female sexual satisfaction in this study. To illustrate, fatwa #15085, referred to as fatwa B80, which was answered by Desai himself.
Question:
May Oral Sex be permissible if the husband is suffering from premature ejaculation and is unable to give orgasm to her wife through vaginal intercourse alone?
He wants to pay her rights and save her from any sin? In such conditions may he use oral sex in addition to vaginal intercourse for her orgasm.
Answer:
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful Assalaamu `alaykum waRahmatullahi Wabarakatoh
The husband should undergo treatment for premature ejaculation.
And Allah knows best
80 Askimam.org. 2011. Fatwa # 15085, 2007. Available from:
< http://www.askimam.org/public/question_detail/15085>. [Accessed 15 October 2015].
Wassalam
Mufti Ebrahim Desai
Darul Iftaa, Madrassah In'aamiyyah