Sex and Islam
One reads quite frequently in the press that Muslim women who committed adultery are stoned to death etc. etc. I always thought that such instances in some backward countries were more a tribal than a religious tradition.
The following two reports, one referring to Sunni, the other to Shiite customs, are of interest in this context.
1) Sunni Islam. According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, 26.2.07, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gumaa, the highest religious authority in Egypt, issued a fatwa on one of the most important TV shows, according to which a woman who had lost her hymen before marriage, can be restored to virginity surgically. However, the woman should keep quiet about it to her future husband: “ If God had wished that we know everything about each other, he would have made as all clairvoyants”. And if a woman commits adultery, but regrets her deed and asks God for forgiveness, she shall keep quiet it about it to her husband, in order to preserve peace in the family. This led to a heated controversy in the conservative Egyptian society, but the Mufti’s position was supported by Mohammed Schama, Professor for Islamic sciences at the Azhar University (the most important Sunni University): “These rules are not new, it is all written in the books”; and the Mufti had supported his fatwa with sayings of the Prophet. The Mufti stressed that “bawdy” (unzüchtige) girls had a right to a second chance.
2) Shiite Islam. According to a BBC News report (2.6.07, extracts):
“Iran’s Interior Minister, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (a cleric), has started promoting temporary marriage as a solution to the country’s social problems. Shia Islam allows a man and woman to marry for a fixed period of time, ranging from an hour to a century. A man can also have any number of temporary marriages - or sigheh, as they are known.
However, Iranian society still looks down on temporary marriage as a cover for prostitution. He said there needed to be a cultural change to allow this.
Iran first started promoting temporary marriage as an alternative to living in sin 15 years ago. The then President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said it was a way for men and women to satisfy their sexual needs.
He even said there was no need for a cleric: the couple could read out an oath in private in order to marry. These days, some girls who want to travel with their boyfriends and be allowed to stay in the same hotel room or avoid arrest by the moral police might have a temporary marriage.”
June 4th, 2007 at 10:39 am
A friend sent me this link a few years ago, which is another interesting example of how our preconceptions about sex and Islam are sometimes wrong.
Sorry I couldn’t think of any intelligent comments to make on Non-equilibrium ecology. The figure did look kind of familiar, though- I’m sure I’ve seen it in ‘Chaos’ by James Gleick.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Chris: Yes, the figure is a standard figure (slightly modified) showing a bifurcation diagram with various equilibrium levels and, at high reproductive rates, chaos.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I always thought that enforcement of monogamy (an extreme example being the stoning) amongst religious groups (including Islam) would be only apparent in countries/regions where there was a considerable adaptive advantage. Countries I am talking about would have religions and sub-religions freely competing for followers, and have a high differential death rate between individuals who (God-fearing) are strictly monogamous, and those who aren’t. This is the case mainly in sub-saharan Africa, and tribal areas world-wide.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Well, I don’t know whether this is so or not. But if it is, perhaps it also explains why the custom of female circumcision is widespread in Sub-Saharan and other African countries (not only in Muslim ones, and widely used for thousands of years, long before Mohammed). It is (almost?) entirely absent in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, etc. Often it is women in the family who insist on circumcision, because only for circumcised girls can husbands be found. The reason is probably that sex is very painful for circumcised women and faithfulness to their husbands is therefore guaranteed. According to a detailed article in Der Spiegel (4.12.06), Muslim scholars in Egypt have taken the lead in making this barbaric custom a crime. Two Germans, Rüdiger Nehberg and Annette Weber, organized a conference in Cairo with the aim to have the custom declared a crime, not compatible with Islamic ethics. The conference was attended by scientists from the Near East, Africa and Germany, as well as by Islamic scholars. As the result, the Grand Mufti of Egypt signed a declaration stating that the custom is a crime and cannot be reconciled with teachings of Islam.
June 4th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Well, I don’t know whether this is so or not.
Perhaps it is a suitable evolutionary/game theory research topic. Chris knows about some basic research based on freely available statistics (used to rebutt some basic assumptions of Dawkins that belief in God has no adaptive significance) that seem to bear this assertion out.
June 30th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
BBC News 30.6.07 (Extracts)
Egypt has announced that it is imposing a complete ban on female circumcision, also known as genital mutilation.
The announcement follows a public outcry after a young girl died during the operation.
A ban was introduced nearly 10 years ago but the practice continued to be allowed in exceptional circumstances.
The doctor who carried out the operation has been arrested.
Egypt’s first lady, Susanne Mubarak, has spoken out strongly against female circumcision, saying that it is a flagrant example of continued physical and psychological violence against children which must stop.
The country’s top religious authorities also expressed unequivocal support for the ban.
The Grand Mufti and the head of the Coptic Church said female circumcision had no basis either in the Koran or in the Bible.
Recent studies have shown that some 90% of Egyptian women have been circumcised.
The practice is common among Muslim as well as Christian families in Egypt and other African countries, but is rare in the Arab world.
It is believed to be part of an ancient Egyptian rite of passage and is more common in rural areas.
Conservative families believe that circumcision is a way of protecting the girls’ chastity.
March 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
[...] Für einige weitere Informationen über Sex und Islam siehe http://blog.une.edu.au/klausrohde/2007/06/03/sex-and-islam/ [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 7:39 am
saudi arabian culture
Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts..