The Pleasure of Her Sex, Part 3

Part 3

Jurists and Prophetic Medicine

B.F. Musallam, in his book Sex and Society in Islam, explores medieval Muslim women’s right to sexual pleasure in the context of birth control, in specific, coitus interruptus: “The Muslim jurists generally based their permission of contraception on the free woman’s consent because she had a right (1) to children, and (2) to complete sexual fulfillment…” (28), and they “never denied, rejected, or overruled her right to sexual fulfillment” (31). And, unlike, Christian rules regarding intercourse, legitimate sex within marriage “was not bound by procreative purpose” (33), and even masturbation was permitted (to avoid illegitimate intercourse) (33). There are other examples of a woman’s right to pleasure found in Prophetic Medicine (hadith, or the sayings of the Prophet specifically related to the care of the body and medicinal remedies), medical and magical texts, etiquette manuals and “art of love” treatises, and, of course, literary texts.

       Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a twelfth-century jurist, writes in his “Book of Marriage” (from the Revival of the Religious Sciences) when and how a man and woman should have intercourse, and comments upon the importance of female pleasure: “Once the husband has attained his fulfillment, let him tarry until his wife also attains hers. Her orgasm (inzal) may be delayed, thus exciting her desire; to withdraw quickly is harmful to the woman…Congruence in attaining a climax is more gratifying to her because the man is not preoccupied with his own pleasure, but rather hers…” (as quoted in Roded, 162).

       There is also evidence of views on a woman’s right pleasure in a body of works known as the the Medicine of the Prophet, also known as Prophetic Medicine, which in some ways can be seen as a hinge between Muslim practices and medical philosophy and practice. Prophetic Medicine is a collection of hadith, or sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammed to address sickness and hygienic practices. There are approximately 25 books in this genre, dating mostly from the 10^th-18^th centuries, the earliest known is from the 9^th century. Prophetic Medicine aimed to collect and explicate Muslim traditions of medicine and medical topics, but were not collected by physicians, so they differ from Islamic Medicine in many respects. That said, these texts were produced in the context of Greek and Arabic medical philosophy and practice, and were meant as an alternative to “Greco-Arabic art of healing for which Muslim religious scholars had certain reservation…” (Bummel 332-333).  One could argue that these texts combined the medical philosophy of the time with the religious, modifying it to be in concert with Islam. 

       Penelope Johnston writes in her translation to al-Jawziyya Medicine of the Prophet that “it is a compilation and systemization of an aspect of the Prophet in the domain of diet, health and illness complementing the legal, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of the legacy he left to he Islamic community through his sunna or wonts and traditions” (xvii) (al-Jawziyya himself was a practicing physician as well as a theologian). In his text, al-Jawziyya addresses all manner of health and healing, treatments and preventatives, philosophy and practical applications of herbs (Part I addresses Medicine, Part II, Simple Drugs and Foods). In Chapter 36 he offers “The Prophet’s guidance on sexual intercourse (jima).” In the course of this guidance we learn a bit about the purpose of sexual intercourse (jima) and marriage (bah), “through which health is preserved, pleasure and the soul’s gladness are complete, and the aims, for which it was instituted are attained” (181). Of the three matters for which sexual intercourse was originally created, he notes that the first is the preservation of progeny, the second is the “expulsion of fluid (ma) which if restricted would harm the entire body,” and the third is “fulfillment of desire, attainment of pleasure and the enjoyment of God’s bounty” (181). Sexual pleasure is intimately (so to speak) linked with the “soul’s gladness.” In fact, of the three, only pleasure “is the benefit which will remain in Paradise; for there is no procreation there, nor any bodily retention to be evacuate by the descent of fluid” (181); this is one other way in which the purpose of sexual intercourse (pleasure!) is separate from procreative necessity. Further, B.F. Musallam, in discussing Islam’s “sexual morality,” notes that among other things “Maritial intercourse needed no justification by procreative purpose, and was also based on the right to sexual fulfilment” (11)—both men’s and women’s. And, as we’ve seen in al-Ghazali’s writing, certain attention was paid to guaranteeing that fulfillment.