Love, Sex and Allah

His book offers insights into a long repressed legacy.

Three ascetics are vying to perform virtuous deeds: One vows to pray every night, one to fast during the day, one not to get married. When the Prophet Mohammed learns this, he admonishes them: ‘Sometimes I pray, sometimes I sleep, and I marry women. This is my way of life. Whoever rejects it, does not belong to me.’ Premodern Muslim scholars, in the spirit of the prophet’s position, understood lust as a part of nature that needed to find its rightful expression. Cities in particular afforded opportunities for ‘relations of pleasure’. Colonialism gradually introduced Western ideals of marriage and prudishness into Muslim countries. What today might appear as ‘typically Islamic’ is a double legacy, partially of clan societies, partially the mirror image of Puritan morality. Ali Ghandour introduces his readers to the rich Muslim tradition on love and sex; his groundbreaking book gives food for thought that is much needed today.