Sexual Ethics in Islam (35 page)

1. On this point, see Moosa, “The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam,” pp. 21–3.
   

2. These rules mostly relate to the greater number of his wives, restrictions on his ability to marry new ones, and his freedom from a strict schedule of turn-taking between them. See Ali, “A Beautiful Example,” pp. 274–5.
   

3. I have heard anecdotal evidence, however, that marriages of girls of that age has continued into the modern era; one Saudi woman reported her grandmother’s marriage at this age. Similarly, after the Iranian revolu- tion of 1979, the age of marriage for girls (with parental consent) was lowered to nine, though it has since been raised.
   

4. Various sources report, for example, that ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, the second caliph and father of the Prophet’s wife Hafsa, later married the Prophet’s granddaughter, born to ‘Ali and Fatima.
   

   192 sexual ethics and islam
   

5. Plaskow, “Decentering Sex.”
   

6. After this was written, I came across a strikingly similar sentiment expressed by Stephanie Coontz (
   Marriage, a History
   , p. 19). She writes: “I don’t believe that people of the past had more control over their hearts than we do today or that they were incapable of the deep love so many individuals now hope to achieve in marriage. But love in marriage was seen as a bonus, not a necessity.”
   

7. Not that either wealth or wisdom was trivial, either in the Prophet’s own marital history or Islamic history more broadly.
   

8. This is a radically oversimplified view of the medieval ‘Ashari/Mu‘tazili debate. Anderson provides a summary of the basic views of the Asharites and the Mutazilites in
   Islamic Law and the Modern World
   , pp. 9–10. This question is not just a Muslim one; C.S. Lewis sums up the Christian debate in strikingly similar terms, as “whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them.”
   The Problem of Pain
   , p. 99. These issues still have currency today, even if the debate remains largely unspoken. See Squires, “The Young Marriage of Aishah,” for the claim that “According to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, right and wrong are ordained by Almighty God. As such, morality does not change over time based on our whims, desires, or cultural sensitivities.”
   

49. Q. 3:117, 9:70, 11:101, 16:33, 29:40, and 30:9. Rahman,
Major Themes of the Qur’an
, p. 25, states that “all injustice [
zulm
] is basically reflexive.”

Notes to Chapter 9

1. Sheila Briggs’ remarks, Feminist Sexual Ethics Project colloquium II, Brandeis University, September 2004. See also Judith Plaskow, “Decen- tering Sex,” “Authority, Resistance, and Transformation,” and
The Coming of Lilith
.

2. Q. 30:21.

1. Working off Alasdair MacIntyre’s discussion of tradition, Edward Curtis proffers a helpful definition: “tradition is not an historical product so much as an historical process in which human beings, interacting with each other in discrete social contexts, invent, embrace, and inherit
   something
   that they care about and argue over, whether explicitly or not.” Curtis,
   Islam in Black America
   , p. 4.
   

2. Maghen,
   Virtues of the Flesh
   , p. 282.
   

3. See, e.g., Roded,
   Women in Islamic Biographical Collections
   , pp. 63–89.
   

4. Abou El Fadl,
   The Authoritative and the Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses
   , p. 13.
   

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