* Note: This paper was originally presented at the annual 1997 convention of the American Anthropology Association on a panel titled "Beyond Imagining Sexuality to its Articulation in Muslim Societies" -

For analytical purposes, Islamic sources may initially be classified into two principal categories, the belief system, or the doctrine and the faith, the aqidah, and the law, the shari’a. Shariah is subdivided into two further categories the one comprising the field of ‘ibadat (worship) and the other that of mu’amalat. ( interpersonal and societal transactions) All these categories draw on a single constitutive source, the Quran., and all equally rely on the Sunnah, the traditions of the Prophet, as their common source for explaining and extrapolating on the Quran. Apart from providing the only authoritative binding source for explaining the Quran, the importance of the sunnah in the lineage of Islamic sources derives from its mediation of the Quran in all its transcendence to the concrete and historical which constitutes the relative condition of the human condition. This constitutes the hierarchy and cluster that comes to mind when one refers to Islamic Sources, and understands their import in that they constitute the elements of a revealed system of knowledge and ethics. Mention of Islamic Sources however also entails a stance towards reason, and particularly to the dialectic between Revelation and Reason.

Here, too we note the influence of the Quran in lending some measure of coherence and consistency to the epistemological chart in Muslim societies. It commends, indeed, emphasizes value of the study of reality and urges its adherents to discover the laws of the universe, the scheme of relations and causalities embedded in nature, sunnan allah, as a means to taking the measure of both social reality / history as well as the cosmos. It takes such discoveries to be relevant and even crucial for understanding the Quran and plumbing its depths and assimilating its teachings. At the same time it considers itself the main guide to humans in all areas of their life, including the cognitive. More specifically, Reason is considered as a source/ tool for understanding and analysing, for explaining and for interpreting, , for deduction and inference, or induction, as well as construction and synthesis.

In short, from an Islamic normative perspective, not only is there room for reason, but the relationship to revelation is developed with the various rational functions that are expected to be performed and developed within the context and the confines of the aqida as cognitive faith.. In this sense, these reasoning faculties are intrinsically required as integral to the faith and have been integrated to it by way of institutionalizing them in the form of ijtihad. The Islamic normative perspective draws its flexibility and versatility attendant on a system which has originally and historically understood itself as universal and comprehensive addressed to and capable of responding to changing human needs as well as continuing to provide humans with a guidance in the challenges they encounter in their umrani (civilizing/ khilafa) vocation. Ijtihad as a categorical and conditional exertion of reasoned intellectual endeavor applies to all spheres of social reality; nor is it an arbitrary exercise, as it subsumes a diversity of approaches in its methodological and systematic pursuit of its ends: About 47 such approaches have been identified, affording human reason ample scope for developing its acumen as it is applied to a wide ranging spectrum of areas and activities pertaining to investigating and prescribing social reality.

As the doctrine and its effects and the law and its formulations are probed and investigated this activity occurs in an empirical context that constitutes the problematic field to which the normative instrumentalities are brought to bear. And as the field of rational inquiry approaches its empirical socio-cultural field, it is called upon to draw on its cumulative array of experience in the precepts and methods it evolved. [ We have in mind approaches, analytical precepts and conceptual resources such as are found in analogy, and istihsan, and masalih, the principle of the avoidance of hardship, taking the easier, the maqasid al shar’iah ( a kind of objective oriented reasoning), or the principle of repelling harm [dar’ al mafasid muqaddamun ala galb al manafe); These constitute the various tools of the trade, its nuts and bolts, which serve to provide the means for relating the juridical and the normative to the societal contexts where Islamic ethico- legal norms constitute a frame of deference…

In defining the sources for an Islamic normative perspective, it is not enough to identify these sources and ascertain their internal patterning and hierarchies, or their matrix, or to know something about their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, as well as their axiologies. It takes a historical and institutional perspective to provide some necessary correctives to a certain inertia that might limit the value of the normative perspective when studying empirical societies. Conversely, it takes the normative perspective to provide the necessary corrective to some of the sociological and anthropological studies which are circumscribed by certain systemic biases which cannot be gone into at this point. If it is realized that for every legal injunction or shari’ah ruling there is an impact in society and history, and that the customs and conventions of the diverse communities that constitute the Muslim ecumene, have frequently had their origins or beginnings in practices that were mostly regulated by islamic or other legal rulings, then this means that many of the prevailing practices in contemporary Muslim societies, together with prevailing customs and habits, have their roots in some shariah context or sources... regardless of how these practices may change and evolve over time in ways which may weaken the link between such links.

This brings to mind the chasm that may equally separate the actualities in some of these communities from their normative sources. Islamic normative precepts and prevailing practices and conventions... a certain tension which prevails.. In this context too we should keep in mind that human understanding and interpretation of the textual sources is effectively conditioned by the human understanding and interpretation, and the historical settings in which they take place, including the cumulative experience that is passed on from the legacy.. Consequently, for those who attempt to study Muslim societies through inquiring into the historical records of these societies, or their literary heritage, without regard for the sources that have constituted the Muslim mind and the hierarchy of these sources and diverse interconnections, risk failing tto an adequate appreciation of the nature of these societies... ie. They will miss much of significance and relevance... This is why it is important to study the usul of Islamic jurisprudence in order to learn about these sources, and their ratings or status and how they affect empirical reality and formulate its problems...

This is an observation that is called for at the outset of a presentation that takes the normative perspective for a point of departure in setting the background for some ethnographies from the field. Regardless of what the focus of the field studies might be, this serves as an opportune moment to caution against the missing dimensions which ore often overlooked by sociologists and anthropologists in studying Muslim societies . Focusing perhaps too narrowly on the details, and drawing one-sidedly on their field data they are eager to generalize about these societies without due regard to the normative sources and their effective influence in shaping the deep structures in their respective fields.

1. It does not strain our credulity nor does it tax the imagination to acknowledge that "everything is connected to everything else" and that somehow reality is constituted of a seamless web, a cosmos, out of which all life proceeds. Whether we come from a modern secular evolutionist paradigm, or from a traditional theistic worldview this intuitive inference seems to implicitly condition our reflexes whether in a positive or a negative sense. ( ie. Positively when our attitudes, actions, beliefs and values are consistent with that pervasive sensibility, and ‘negatively’ when we think, act and hold to opinions and beliefs that are inconsistent with it: in the one case we are before an integrated personality and life-style, in the other we encounter alienation and estrangement.). There is no doubt too that life is constituted round the polarities that animate it and that its tenor, quality, measure and direction are contingent on how these polarities are related. It takes more than a holistic perspective however to understand how these interconnections occur, how the dualities are related, and in short how the parts fit into the whole.
   
   The normative perspective in Islam provides historical communities with the framework for elucidating these connections and for their articulation at every level of the human life-cycle and through the diverse and overlapping spheres of consciousness and action in society. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way in which it sanctifies the mundane and renders the transcendent within the bounds of immanence. This immanence is referred to in an Islamic idiom as the ‘tanzeel’, literally, the descent of a revealed guidance transcribed in a preserved Scripture (the Quran) and inscribed in the created universe. Hence the common designation ayah (Sign) to signify the ‘particles’ and ‘waves’ transcribed both to the Word between the covers of the assembled Book and to those inscribed in the body of the universe. ‘Surah’ [= the wall encircling a building/ site] refers to the collection or unity of ayas in the Book, as though the bounds of the successive literal enclosures there paralleled the invisible ‘tabakat’[=layering] and their equivalences, structuring and providing the invisible boundaries and frontiers ordering the universe.
   
   The architectonic imagination is also a moral one: for every Form is embedded in a universe of Meaning, and the physical and the spiritual, while separate and distinct spheres, are integrally bound and bonded from an innerliness to the outermost extremities that converge on the shores of an infinity.

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His light is , as it were, that of a niche containing a lamp; the lamp is [enclosed] in glass, the glass [shining] like a radiant star: a lamp lit from a blessed tree – an olive-tree that is neither of the east nor of the west - the oil whereof [is so bright that it] would well-nigh give light of itself: even though fire has not touched it! Light upon Light! [24: 35]


Here, one of the most radiantly beautiful and transluscent parables brings into the range of the palpably, humanly imaginable That onto which ‘naught is alike’, the peerless and completely other. It does so through relating Light as one of the foremost attributes of the Almighty Creator, Sustainer, Provider, ultimate Sovereign and Legislator to the revealed guidance originally promised the first human couple and their progeny, as a token of divine compassion and care. This promise was made to them at their greatest hour of need for solace and comfort, which was assured them in the condition that they followed the Light that would guide them in their ascent through their earthly temporal abode. To those who chose to follow in the footsteps of the Messengers sent forth with the Light, theirs would be a luminous path, spared of the sorrow and heartache that would otherwise be the lot of a dark and conflict-ridden world. For like the darknesses in the womb out of which the seed of life bursts forth into the light, so too, do the darknesses in the sea changes of life, threaten to overwhelm it were it not for the beacon on the shore, the light from the beyond without which there can be no light. The recurrence of one of the most spiritual of passages in the Qur’an literally in the midst of one of the most down-to-earth and socially impregnated surahs, is not without significance. It points to more than the way in which the polarities amid which life is suspended are poised and serve to animate and give meaning to a whole. To note, not only does a large part of this surah al nur (which takes its name from the verse of Light ) deal with the mutual relations of the sexes and with certain ethical rules to be observed in this relationship, but it opens on one of the most solemn, resolute and seemingly uncompromising rulings in the event of flaunting the limits of this relationship and transgressing the bounds of sexuality. How could this pivotal convergence between sexuality and spirituality be explained? What is it that brings these two manifestly unrelated poles of experience and imaginaires, conceptual antipodes to all imaginable worlds, together in the same transcripted and inscripted enclosure?

The key to this enigmatic juxtapositioning can be found in a critical zone of liminality defined round a sequence of polarities spanning the ontologies and axiologies of a reality that subsumes all being. The Seen and the Unseen, the here-and-now and the hereafter, life and death, darkness and the light, all converge on a point where ‘in the beginning is the end’. This zone is identified through a web of relations nested one within the other, not unlike the niche in the wall, the glass in the lamp... They begin in the hearth, that inner sanctum of the public sphere, not unlike the heart in the body, the foetus in the womb, the sheathed in its sheath in the warmth of a paired embrace. Conversely, this bounty spins itself outwards into an ecology of temperance, compassion, and equity which are the mainstay of the virtuous order and the foundation of human civility. The reference to the abodes of a worship pure, immediately following on the verse of the Light, I believe, lends plausibility to this reading of the text. 

It suggests that the space of intimacy in which the primal human bond is sanified, rendered whole, and sanctified, is modeled in its orientation and intent on these spiritual shrines, and serves in turn to anchor an expanding web of relations beyond its immediate precincts setting the moral tone for an entire community. [The city or, the public square, in the Islamic tradition is primarily a function of the community and its values rather than of a particular territoriality and its formal jurisdictions. The place of the mosque at the heart of the community is emblematic: it lies within the precincts of its outer walls, not outside them, at the hub of the market place and adjacent to their private living quarters, within walking distance – and within earshot of the minaret’s call] The life of the community as much as its ethos, like the intimate habitat that grows out of its primal male-female bonding, is interwoven with, nested in, and affected by what transpires in that vital zone of liminality, at the nexus of that interplay between the forces of life and death, darkness and the light, the seen and the unseen, the immanent and the transcendent.

Sexuality may well be part of the inner sanctum, that forbidden space, - the ‘mahram’ - the intimacy of which is abundantly secured in the Quranic code of ethics. It is not immune to public censure in its consequences however, to the extent that they impinge on the community and affect the vocational purpose to which all human life is geared. This fine distinction between the intimate and the overt is critical to understanding the underlying rationale for transgressing the bounds of licit human sexuality. It explains why there should be an emphasis on the public character of the offense, and of its retribution in kind, the deference to a private sphere and its allocation to its own scales of equity , why so severe the approbium and denunciation of the tabloid mentality in the public sphere, and last but not least, at the individual level, why the urging on an inner court of conscience to exert its own self vigilance and , where there was a case of momentary distraction off the path, a weakness of resolve followed by a genuine repentance, not unlike that experienced by the first paradigmatic couple to trust for its ultimate appeal in the all-forgiving compassion and clemency of its Maker and ultimate Refuge and Return. 

The rest is a matter of socio-moral ecology... a kind of ‘clean air’ Act with its various provisions, designed to reinforce good intents on the part of moral selves and have them, through sustained mutual support and realistic measures uphold the moral fabric of the community, as much as that of its nuclear units and individual members. (like facilitating marriage in the community and promoting healthy attitudes to sexuality within marriage, and providing opportunities for sexual education on the premise that there is no shame in sex and that learning about matters pertaining to one’s body in its natural rhythms and cycles, its effusions and profusions, conscious and involuntary, was all part of a legitimate Islamic discourse as long as it instructed the Muslim or Muslimah in the requirements of their faith.

 

2. From the outset, this connection between sexuality and spirituality is clear in the Quranic account. It is a connection through LIFE. God is the source of life at its origin and font through the ‘ruh’. (Spirit, Atman). In the creation of Adam, or more in line with the Qur’anic idiom, in the creation of the primal couple out of the first living entity, the nafs wahida, or the self-same entity, the miracle of life was mediated through the ruh, or in sufi parlance, through the divine Breath, the ‘nafas al rahman.’. The only other time the use of ruh occurs in the creation context is in the account of the virgin birth of Jesus, Son of Mary.
   
   Both situations, the creation of Adam and the birth of Jesus, were unique situations, involving a divine intervention to create life in the absence of its natural and formal seeding prerequisites, the initiating human pair in the one, the male in the other. The virgin conception of Jesus in his mother’s womb is referred to in the Qur’an as a Sign, like the creation of Adam. It was not in the NORMal sequel of things, not a natural effect that attended its precipitating cause.
   
   To this latter end, as all the ayahs on creation attest, the conception and multiplication of the human species, the tawalud and takathur attendant on the processes of human procreation, was relegated to the sexual instinct. This instinct was instilled in the first pair, practically in substitution of the divine fiat in the initiating Breath. Hence the paradigmatic significance of the story of the Garden, the First Temptation, the expulsion and the subsequent Repentance and Forgiveness, a story which will not be engaged here, though obviously pivotal in an Islamic discourse on sexuality and spirituality – and touched on briefly here in this vein.
   
   Thence the sexual union between man and wife in intercourse, the merger of the two selves momentarily into one as it is physically embodied in the sexual embrace, serves both as though it were the re-enactment of the originary unitary soul, comes to be the equivalent of the breath of the Spirit.
   
   Since it is through sexual intercourse that procreation would henceforth ensue, sexuality comes to partake of the sanctity of its source... and Life from an Islamic perspective is not just a random play, an absurdity, or a game of dice, whatever philosophers and poets may say. In an Islamic perspective, like all theistic perspecitves, life is sacred. And as God’s creation or gift, is not to be trifled with or destroyed without legitimate cause... ( See ayah; also the hadith which says that man is God’s creation/ edifice, so woe unto him who destructs this edifice) – thence the sanctity of life: its conception and its ending as matters that are God’s exclusive preserve. Any trespass on its fringes is sacrilege.. an act of transgression against God... not simply an infringement on life against itself, an aggression of man against man, or of the human against itself [ witness the category of zulm al nafs in the catalogue of inequities or injustice in the Islamic scale of values] --
   
   This is why in the Quran life and death are connected to creation (al khalq) and both are connected to testing and tribulation – as for example, in the ayah, ‘... He it is who has created death and life to test you in your deeds... ‘ and death is mentioned first to affirm it as a process that takes place within creation.. a natural process – and the terminus to its temporal worldly phase. [sura tabaraka/ al mulk];
   
3. In view therefore of its inordinate role in the scheme of human creation and the measure of its consequences for the human well being, it could hardly have been a matter of indifference in an economy of divine guidance premised on Compassion. The moral and ethico-legal injunctions of Islam have thus hedged and surrounded sexuality with a matrix and grid of rulings, principles, ethics and adab (a code of manners/ conduct) so that it can be elevated to the status of the most prized of human crafts, the culture of life itself. Hence the amazing holistic weave of the shariah, comprehensively and extensively regulating this vital dimension of life in its primal encounter, attending to its earliest phases in the initial meeting of the prospective couple, and following through an intimate life-course in its different and complex stages, even beyond death as with its rulings on inheritance and wills, etc..
   
   In the framework of a grid of comprehensive rulings, Islam set the basic ends or purposes which each of the pair, male and female, should take into consideration, as they join to form this vital relationship and institute the groundwork for a special life encounter...
   

• First. The spiritual peace, the inner tranquillity that is to be assured for each of them. Such that each would find in the other the spiritual companion in the long journey of making it through life and the rigors of the umrani project. Each would be to the other that twin mate that would give the companionship, and support needed in setting up the familial home, the first cornerstone and premise in setting up life... [sura al rum: 35: ‘And of his Signs He has created for you from among yourselves twin mates that you may find peace with them, and He has engendered among you love and compassion, that you may be thankful.... ]
• Second. The other dimension in this sexual encounter is that of kinship... constituting a web of relations for that small nuclear cell, with other cells so that the more differentiated groupings of life can be formed.. from the tribal segmentations, and diverse ethnic stocks, through settled neighborhoods, the village, towns, etc.. to the foundations for federations, nations, and empires... In other words we are before the sunna of complexity, of a sequence of graduated and increasingly differentiated and integrated civilizational entities essentially evolved from those primal groupings..
• The third objective... to ensure that this encounter between the pair will lead to the life industry.. and to the continuity of the species and its preservation, through its procreation in healthy settings secured by physical and psychological conditions, considering that life started out this way initially any way.. ["He it is who created you of a single soul and of it created its mate, and of the twain multiplied forth the many...men and women" surah al nisa]
  

3. The culture of life, human life to be precise, is a distinct and distinguished culture. It is the primal industry in the manufacture of civility, in as much as it is the condition and the stuff in the absence of which no civility is conceivable. In this way as in others, the culture of human life radically differs from that of any other species... Animals are instinctually drawn to their pairs in their mating season in response to nature’s and instinctively fulfill the purpose of this call in ensuring the preservation of the species. Survival is but one end to which human unions are consummated. The offspring of animals do not need their parents save for short periods.. nursing...is short... afterwhich the cub is left to its own device... and some species may only need the mother for a short period.. and then it findsits way... This is different in the human case.. where its product needs a prolonged period.. that might extend to maturity and even beyond.. and that may even need a longer care culture for the sick and invalids, etc... Thence, the duration or preservation of the species in the human case requires a special relationship between men and women, unlike the case in the other realms of the creation of life.
   
4. Thus we should not be surprised to find the Prophet giving special attention to this aspect... not for any lurid reasons imputed by those who have misinterpreted the tradition, or misconstrued its purposes and intent through projecting upon it their own repressed sensualities. But, because the Prophet needed to put across these meanings, teachings, and values, and make of his life in this sphere an open model for all to see .. and through which to come to grips with how simple humanity and the small things of daily life converges with prophethood and holiness - which is after all of the essence of the Islamic paradigm. His wives, the mothers of the believers, that honorific designation preserving their status and memory in the heart of the Muslim community, would be the principal school through which everything that took place in his home would be communicated to the community... without shame, to afford the example and model in this important area of the culture. 
   
   They used to narrate and relate hundreds of seeming trivia.. small details, that the Prophet was trying to communicate and teach... things like how the couple should come together or approach each other, even how to kiss, foreplay, and be considerate of each others feelings, with even more on the etiquette of the intercourse itself – sanctioning it as a source of legitimate pleasure and enjoyment, without forgetting the presence of God... It begins with the basmalla, a remembrance of God and an invocation to ward off the devil from their midst and from whatever (seed) God may bring forth of this union... At the height of a moment of sensuality, (condoned as legitimate enjoyment and not as lusting), the couple are reminded of the sanctity of the zone they are approaching, and of the possibility of a fruit to this merger such that the act of intercourse between the spouses in Islam becomes an occasion for renewing a pact and keeping the faith in protecting and caring, nurturing and providing for a prospective newborn that would in its turn be the torchbearer, furthering the ‘umrani vocation of life and prosperity in this world, like its parents before it.
   
5. The provisions and previsions exacted in the Islamic normative code, were not of a nature to keep marriage from its basic simplicity nor to transform it into some daunting undertaking which called for a fund of resolve and resources to make it thinkable. (In other words, in traditional Muslim societies you didn’t have to be crazy or wealthy to marry).. Rather, contrary to some modern Muslim societies and existing practices, marriage then as in the normative Islamic code was premised on an ease and facility and called for a context conducive to such premise. In fact, in societies where Islam prevailed, contracting marriage came to be much easier than indulging in fleeting extra-marital relations. All it required by way of rites and formalities was for the parties concerned to approach this union as mature consenting adults with an awareness of its responsibilities, each pronouncing his or her intent and acceptance of the other as a partner for life, doing so in the presence of no more than two witnesses, with members from both families attending. [Remember! For a Muslim,  marriage is not simply a union between two individuals, but signals an extension of the kinship network in society, an opportunity to renew and affirm bonds that strengthen the sediments of solidarity in the larger community].
   
   This is all that is required Islamically to make a valid legal contract and to keep it as a token of the seriousness of the commitment and testimony to the limits or boundaries of a social union instituted and sanctioned by God. Neither party can violate or infringe that pact without observing certain conditions and acknowledged procedures ... The idea is that Muslim marriage though contracted in the thick of the social world is not to be trifled with , and that unions that are sexually consummated retain their moral and spiritual strings, safeguarding thereby against arbitrary unions.
   
6. In this context, we find that Islam took a variety of precautionary measures to enable (empower?) women and men to institute themselves in this vital life-procuring domain and to do so in an environment free of the vagaries and pressures of the social condition, including those resulting from their own self-inflicted conundrums. It provided the safeguards for what might very well be expressed as the opportunity to make responsible considered decisions without being rushed into things. The idea is to secure this area of sexuality and sexual morality as a vital domain against experimental hazards so as to safeguard a zone of heightened vulnerability where the paths of human sexuality and human spirituality cross, either to their mutual detriment or to their reciprocal edification. Experimental hazards can take on any of a range of failed experiments , or trial and error scenarios, heedless of all consequences, that eventually leave only their unfathomable imprints and scars on the psychic and moral registry of a biosocial and eco-cultural wasteland.
   
   Quite simply, Islam is a system where permissibility is the rule, on the doctrinal and moral grounds that all creation is good - (no inherent evil, but evil is in the way we come to act, use or abuse a right of usufruct, including our bodies and minds!), and that what is not explicitly forbidden is morally fair and open ground for enjoying, within the bounds - and bounties of the sharia. - [ The sharia is described in the Quran as a mercy, rahma, not a blight. On this topic see more below]. Nor is there any puritanical streak that extolls suffering , renunciation, or self-denial as a virtue in and of itself. It preaches moderation and paves the way for its realization in the individual and the community.
   
   Sexuality fits in this general picture, with a difference. The sexual is taken as that vital domain, that sacred or ‘forbidden zone’ that needs to be more explicitly defined and circumscribed. It is strictly off bounds outside its licit precincts formalized and institutionalized in a legitimate union... In this prevision, sex is no longer simply an individual desire, or a bodily need, to be escalated and stimulated by an external environment to constitute an undue pressure on both men and women.. such as to prompt them into illicit unions, at whatever level it might be transfused into a pressing need that might be like that of brute animals... impossible to resist, a behavioral reflex to a conditioned sensuality that feeds on its own embers. Once it has been derailed from its spiritual moorings, it is turned in against itself, to turn from its originary force of life field, and touchstone of the sacred, to a surreptitiously destructive and self-destructing force, turning the seedbed of life into the haunting graveyard of the afflicted community with death, disease, decay lurking at its every corner - (Commonly camouflaged in the glitter and tinsel associated with the Red Light Districts throughout the nerve centers of the global metropole.. See a recent documentary on the Sex Trade ) –
   
   To make a relevant mental note in this regard, the strictures against various sculpting and modeling activities, and wariness of the trappings of any porn industry can perhaps best be broached in this context. It is not a matter of a doctrinal religious stance against the plastic arts, - as if there could be a bias against beauty .. as often so misleadingly presumed - but, apart from sparing the public Muslim square qualming about the boundaries between aesthetics and pornography, or deciding on the lines between art and vulgarity, these normative strictures are more of a way of safeguarding the temper of moderation and promoting temperance in society, checking the appetites through curbing artificial stimulii, [not the natural ones] - to allow for a relaxed and civilized sociality conducive to the free and responsible choice of the parties concerned when it comes to consummating their mutual attractions and deliberating on the status of their union..
   
   This also accounts for the strictures in Islam and before it in Judaism and Christianity against fornication and adultery. In the Old Testament, it was stoning... regardless of any mitigating circumstances. In the New Testament the law was not abrogated and its provisions on adultery were specifically upheld. In proclaiming his deference to the Law however, Christ’s condition was to have a witness who was himself free of the scourge .. a blameless individual in a society steeped in sin! For Islam, the sanction was to whip the proven or self-confessed offender in public a hundred lashes in order to impress the enormity of the offense on the community and to serve as a deterrent, apart from humiliating the individual perpetrator, adultress or adulterer alike. The baseness entailed in debasing sex and dragging it to the neder levels of a subhuman world evoked its retribution in kind.
   
7. Conversely, to make the point that the blemish was not in the sexual field but in its perversion, the Prophet emphasized the sanctity of the relationship between husband and wife, including its most intimate and its ostensibly more trivial aspects. Practically every aspect of this union was ennobled and consecrated as an integral part of worship on the grounds that if a fulfilling and fulfilled life lived in the way prescribed for it by the Creator was a dimension of worship, then whatever served to reinforce and consolidate this union was also a token of human godliness. Recall that for Muslims, men and women alike, to be married is to have fulfilled one half of your religious obligations.
   
   The examples from the Prophet’s family life as well as the traditions attributed to him which are meant to reinforce this bond in all its forms and expressions abound. They essentially serve to demonstrate the lengths to which being fully human and striving to godliness can converge in a value system that is integrated at the core. On the emotional side, for example, where love and affection are the sources for bonding family ties, no matter how small an act of loving kindness, one is assured that it will be duly requitted by Allah... "Even the morsel that you place in the mouth of your spouse" will not go unrewarded. Faith requitted does not stop at a gest of fond frivolity between the couple. The purely sexual act, the mere physical copulation, is promised its own reward. This startling disclosure was met by a mixture of surprised disbelief and joyful relief. For even in sensual, gruff and tough 7^th century tribal Araby where sentiments were not overtly delicate there must have lurked some vague misgivings about the unseemliness of the ‘baser instincts’ together with the thought that the affinities between lust and sexual gratification might be difficult to reconcile with one’s nobler aspirations of seeking God’s pleasure.
   
   [After all much of the ascetic,/sufi legacy is mired in this doubt and has opted for renouncing the pleasures of the body if only to assuage its doubts; while as much of the legist or ‘patriarchal’ legacy is shot through with denouncing an affliction for which the blame is laid on her.]
   
   ‘O, ya rasulallah, could it possibly be that we indulge our carnal pleasures and satisfy our bodily cravings and then come through it all with a bountiful godly reward in the wings?!’ ‘Why, Certainly,’ was the Prophet’s response. ‘Do you not see how things could be otherwise? What if that pleasure was sought and the passions quenched in sources other than their licit abode?’ In other words, choice and responsibility exercised on all levels were the hallmark of human agency and morality was the arbiter of the passions and the seal of piety... Once again, the explicit signals coming from the exemplary model in the Muslim normative field come to reinforce the spirit of the qur’anic injunctions in perfect consonance...attesting to the holiness of nature and the naturalness of the holy in an ethical system that is ultimately predicated on the unitary value system of the tawhidi episteme To re-examine the wealth of prophetic traditions on sexuality and related moralities with a view to their articulation in the idiom of modern day concerns would require volumes.
   
8. The deontology of Islamic jurisrprudence , the shari’ah ethico-legal code, was developed against this perspective. Since Islamic law is one of the most misunderstood areas in contemporary thought and lends itself to significant abuse where it might exist in practice, a brief digression is in order. Shari’ah is an Arabic word that signifies a byway or a bypass that leads to a water source and the Qur’an, in consistence with valid knowledges ancient and the modern, affirms water as the prerequisite for all forms of life. [ayah] In this literal sense then, the shari’ah is the path to life, or more specifically, a life-conforming and life-affirming code of prescriptions pointing out the pathway in a rugged climb. Conceptually, this ethico-legal system is a purposeful or goal-oriented system structured round a core of precepts and principles assuring it efficacy, flexibility, durability and universality. Far from fostering the cynicism of the ‘discipline and punish’ variety conventionally identified with the Law or at the other extreme, far from promoting a libertarianism of the kind of ‘live and let live’, the shari’ah ethos may perhaps best be expressed in the motto ‘channel and thrive’: channel the energies and drives in human nature and turn on the life potential in the community to enable it to prosper and thrive. [cf. The concept of al-falah].
   
   It is this life-affirming ethos together with an innate identification with a divine order of justice, truth, and compassion that accounts for the overwhelming appeal the shari’ah exerts on the imagination, the minds and hearts, of the common folk in Muslim societies, both men and women. [contra Mernissi, Ahmed; viz. Zuhur, Goele, Badran?]
   
    Contrary to prevailing notions, the shari’ah does not legislate morality. Rather it moralizes (=renders moral) the public space by rooting it in a transcendent value system which it inscribes in the conscience of individual men and women and of which is constituted a modal or residual piety within the reach of all. In the qur’anic idiom this residual category is identified with a habit of the heart articulated as God-Consciousness [taqwa]. The shari’ah cultivates this basic spirituality at one level while prescribing the bounds for assuring men and women a horizon of practical possibilities for living out this spirituality socially in positive life-affirming terms. In this sense, the shari’ah as the life affirming path in the community is not to be confused with the laws and the institutions of a particular society, for it transcends the laws and practices of the community at the same time as it constitutes their arbiter, source, measure, and directionality. But for all its uniqueness, the shari’ah is not immune from the vagaries in its human habitat. Apart from the perils and follies attendant on a human penchant for reductionisms of all kinds, the shariah is perennially threatened from two unsuspecting forces in any society, including modern Muslim societies, namely formalism and utopianism.

Nowhere is this understanding (and potential misunderstanding) of the shari’ah more evident than in the area pertaining to gender relations, particularly to sexuality. The fact that shari’ah spans the range of relevant norms and prescriptions while anchoring its provisions and appeal in the grounds of taqwa highlights the subtle and pervasive links between sexuality and spirituality. Taken from this perspective, the maqasid of shariah was instituted: These maqasid are five majors: the preservation of the nafs, of the aql, of honor... and securing honor here proceeds against the measures and provisions of Islam, to secure society from dissipation in the area of sexuality in any of its forms.. including the deterrent sanctions mentioned above, along with the precautionary provisions to foreclose the possibility.. and the protection of the reputation of individuals and families in society.. on the understanding that part of the human dignity and identity is its belonging to a family in which it takes pride and for whom he or she as a member is a source of pride... For one of the most psychologically detrimental sources for the persons esteem, is not knowing where he comes from and from whence. A broken reed, or a cosmic orphan,.. and it would subvert his allegiance to society.. Just as the home is threatened, the moment distrust creeps into the relationship of the couple.. it is sufficient to destroy the bonds of trust, affection, and compassion that are the foundation of all civility, beginning with that of the institution of the family that is the cornerstone of the umrani edifice.

 

 

 

 

... In studying contemporary Muslim societies it is important to do so with an adequate understanding of the nature and implications of the normative perspective in mind. The constitutive dynamics that have historically conditioned the self image and evolution of these societies point to the continued relevance of the Quran and the sunna, as well as the legacy of Islamic jurisprudence that was developed out of them. Just as these sources were foundational in the past in providing societies of diverse cultural and ethnic background with a core affinity that united them across their local diversities, they continue to be as important today. This, despite surface ruptures that have attended the colonial experience – an experience to which most Muslim societies were exposed in variable degrees, and which essentially served to distance these societies from one another as well as from their own Islamic traditions... Nor have the new forces of change that continue to impinge on Muslim societies in terms of modernization and various social and political upheavals and new ideologies resulted in reducing the relevance of the Islamic normative sources at the ground level... despite all appearances to the contrary, and every attempt by uprooted and westernized elites to marginalize these sources .

In fact, as events in the past two decades have shown, change itself has been a catalyst in renewing the relevance of Islamic normative sources in these societies.. Clearly, this is not the place to develop this theme. But we mention it here for its methodological implications for an anthropological or sociological inquiry into social and cultural aspects especially when studying gender related issues which touch on root identity constructs and practice. In the absence of the normative perspective, it is all too easy to get carried away with the essentially fragmentary data from the field and come up with misleading generalizations .

In the absence of a frame of reference against which to understand and evaluate the data, misconceived analogies and misconstrued interpretations become the order of the day... to the detriment of both the subject of inquiry and the scholarship in the field... If anthropology is to be a meaningful and productive activity devoted to a task to which it is temperamentally suited, namely to understanding, interpreting and mediating, or translating between cultures, it will need to be practiced as a relevant science, not as a cult. One of the requirements to meet this condition in the immediate context at hand, is to be mindful of the normative perspective and to be capable of operationalizing it at different levels in a field analysis... This would require a more interdisciplinary approach in the scholarship a greater cooperation among ethnographers and Islamists for example.. with a special emphasis on identifying scholars with an adequate experience and scholarly / professional training in Islamic studies, who could work with empathy with anthropologists, without succumbing to the ‘orientalistic temptation’ - long the bane of anthropology. .

With an access to an Islamic normative perspective from its credited sources, not only will anthropology simply be making space in its midst for the ‘other’ to speak for themselves in their own voice, already a need to which the field has been increasingly and responsively acclimitizing over the past decade... [For some productive initiatives, notably in the field of gender studies, see eg. ‘ Arab Women in the Field’ and ... Muslim Women’s Choices, El Solh and Mabro. Berg. Pub. 1995] . What is more critical though and which is still meeting with resistance, is to open the field structurally as well as conceptually to contributions from beyond it. The point is not simply to admit other voices as long as they speak our language, or abide our rules: the idea is not simply to be given a forum to articulate a view, nor is it even to be heard, but the point is to communicate and to have a reasonable chance of being listened to and understood.

For this to happen it would be necessary to allow for rethinking the basic rules, or codes, for interpretation and articulation and to do so on the assumption that there was something to be learned and adopted from other codes and modes. Doing so in the case of Muslim societies in particular may meet with some embedded resistance from within anthropology... not due to any peculiarly dogmatic stance – far from it; but because anthropology belongs to a peculiarly resilient and resistant breed of modern disciplines, the social sciences, which are ostensibly fortified in their secular biases. To the extent that anthropology is entrenched in such biases, any effort to integrate perspectives coming from a normative Islamic perspective in its approach to Muslim societies could meet with subtle systemic resistance that call for more than the good will or openness of its practitioners.. This however does not constitute an argument for abandoning the effort to push against the frontiers of dominant practices. 

By multiplying opportunities for free, open, and candid exchanges and collaboration between ethnographers and Islamists, as well as among professionals and vocationists, it may be possible to learn from each other and to explore and identify, or construct the means and methods to operationalize Islamic concepts/ conceptual modes; at the same time the Islamist scholar can practically ascertain and appreciate the value of ethnographic analytical skills and tools. With this a momentum could develop and gain sufficient momentum to overcome the systemic inertia or the inherent conservatism in the field to the benefit of more dynamic thought processes and approaches which are simultaneously more relevant and creative. I have in mind some work which is coming with enhanced frequency from the profession in the past few years and which carries potentially significant implications for a reorientation within the discipline [( cf. Series in which Barbara Metcalf’s edited volume appeared (1995?) Muslim Space; also, Eickelman and Piscatori ? (1996) ]

With the emphasis on the Islamic normative perspective, I would like to round off on a cautionary note. In maintaining the continued relevance, indeed the growing importance of an Islamic normative perspective in engaging present Muslim ethnographies, I am not suggesting that it is a static or unchanging perspective. Normative perspectives are not simply given... an erroneous conclusion conducive to a meaningless reification... While the sources and hierarchies of Islamic sources remain and indeed need to be understood on their intrinsic merit as well as acknowledged a certain autonomy of spheres round a generic interactive field, our focus should be on the ongoing attempts to meaningfully relate to these sources. It is important in this context also to realize that the very malleability of these sources, the relative ease with which they might lend themselve to periodic reconstruction, is as integral to their intrinsic character as to the changing social and historical situations in which they are recalled and interpellated...

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