Sexual dimensions of Islam and the Niqab

(Much of the contents of this article are sensitive and are not suitable for children)
Islam is usually considered superficially by Western minds as a puritanical faith set on  ascetic practices like fasting, the strict segregation of women, and an excessive regard to female modesty.
Indeed in some respects, Muslims are to be commended for their emphasis on family life, the sanctity of marriage, the modesty of female attire, the censorship of sexual impurity, and some judicial punishments for sexual offenses (Job. 31.11). Despite many serious and iniquitous abuses and a foul tendency to denigrate women (very evident in some Hadith literature), in some of these respects they represent a distorted reflection of scriptural requirements, ones which many foolish and forgetful Jews and Christians have neglected to their own eternal harm.


However this assessment neglects an important aspect of Islam. Like the fertility cults from which it draws some root, Islam contains a prominent and profoundly improper focus on the physical aspects of sexuality in its worship.

Our sexuality is a uniquely sacred Divine gift, mysteriously reflects the Divine image and essence (Gen. 5.1-2) and is one of the highest blessings given to mankind. It is sanctified and blessed within the covenant of matrimony and both defiled and accursed without it. The sacred scriptures abominate the error that sexual intercourse is in and of itself evil, in its lawful context (Prov. 5.19 inter alia). Sexual perversion is a direct result of Divine judgement for unbelief, and is not only an apt response, but bears mysterious parallel to creature worship (Romans. 1.24-28, esp v.27, 'a meet recompence').

Nevertheless, in spite its virtuous veneer and some real restraints and benefits, Islam emphasises sexuality in a manner that deeply derogates from its lawful place and function as the following short list demonstrates.

Minarets

• An abundance of phallic symbols in places of worship - some apparently neatly circumcised. (Just a very small sample below).
  

• The repetitive focus on fertility in calls to prayer ('Haya ‘Alel Falah')

•  In the chosen colour of Islam green, a symbol of fertility.

The Muslim prophet depicted (by Muslim artists) all in green, riding the female Buraq, top right (Miraj Nama, which is in the Bibliotheque Nationale)

• In its intense focus on the lunar cycle for its calendar and the ubiquity of lunar symbols (lunar-based faiths often denote a connexion with the female menstrual cycle). Unlike the Jewish or Chinese lunar calender, the Islamic year strictly follows the moon with no intercalary months and thus falls out of synchronisation with the seasons and the solar year. This idolatrous reverence is further evidenced by the superstitious regard paid by Muslims to times of solar or lunar eclipse, and the extraordinary panic the author witnessed in their ranks at such times in the Middle East in 1999. (The ceremonies which take place at the eclipse (Salat-al-Kusuf) require: 2 rak’at with up to three of four ruku’ each, and 4 recitations, at the time of though not necessarily for the whole duration of the eclipse, though Mohammed did pray and recite all the way through the solar eclipse on the day of his son's death, one suspects he was influenced by pagan Arab tradition before.)
                                                                                                                                                                                         Image taken from here.     

• The peculiar prohibition on women praying during menstruation - even domestic ritual prayers must cease - a position unique to Islam.

The preferred titles of Deity

• The opening words of every sura but one (the ninth) in the Qur'an are 'In the Name of the God, merciful, the compassionate',                 'بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيم'. Both these attributes (rahman and rahim) are cognates of the arabic for the womb denoting the tenderest and most sensitive feelings of sympathy (rahm, رحم). This is a common theme with Christianity and Judaism, according to Hitti, there are ancient stone inscriptions in Arabia antedating Islam which have been attributed the use of very similar expressions to Christian Arabs.
  

The Niqab

• One striking aspect of the heightened focus on sexuality in Islam is the veiled concealment of the female face by the Niqab or the Burqah. In Middle Eastern practice traditionally, the use of a face veil, has often been reserved for enhancing sexual attraction before marriage. A gentle primary example is found in the Torah's account of Rebecca (Gen. 24). When Abraham's servant first meets the young virgin, goes to her house, discusses her marriage with her family and then travels back with her there is no mention of a veil. On the contrary, she is described as 'very fair to look upon' (v. 16). When she travels to a foreign country, in a party of strange men, it is not until she is told that the man coming to meet her is her husband to be, that then and then only she takes and wears the veil. The attractiveness and allure of the face veil is well illustrated below:
  

Or this use of the Niqab (and Hijab) for enticing pictures in a 'matrimonial service' ad, which may be associated with trafficking.

• There is also a hint of the use of such a veil in some marriage ceremonies, in Laban's ensnaring his nephew Jacob in wedlock not to his beloved Rachel, but to Leah (Gen. 29.18-25). Even if Jacob had been inebriated it is difficult to see how he might not have discovered the true identity of his bride till the morning unless her face was covered.

• 'Taking the veil' in Tamar's case in Genesis 38 v.14 however had an altogether more sinister sense than today. She sought to beguile her father in law to provide directly that which he was duty bound to provide in the person of his third son, namely an heir. His sinful reluctance lead him to exclaim later that, 'She has been more righteous than I', when he discovered how she had conceived by deceit. 
  

• The indiscriminate, public use of a face veil was a characteristic not of modesty, but of the precise opposite. It was devotees to pagan cults, who usually served as prostitutes, who wore such clothing to heighten their attractiveness to clients. This is unmistakeable in Genesis 38.15-18. 'When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face'. He knew no other practice, and of course was familiar not only with Canaan and Syria, but also had some knowledge of Egypt and Mesopotamia from his father and grandfather. Tamar left her widow's clothes to take the veil, and forsook the veil to take them up again once her mission was complete - indicating how profoundly improper such clothing was for a godly widow, in the Middle East of the time.
  

• The word used for 'harlot' or prostitute here in v.20, but not v.15 which uses the more standard word for an adulteress, is the word 'Qadosha' - which is the feminine form of the word 'sanctified', or set apart, and indicates that the wearer was devoted to a temple for the most profane and ugly sin. In Hosea 4.6-17, for example, the same word (v.14) is used of the harlotry associated with pagan idolatry. The law places strict prohibitions on both sexes engaging in such practice, and the words translated for prostitution are both derived from the temple word 'Qadosh', Deuteronomy 23.17, in case of doubt the very next verse clarifies the meaning of the preceding terms and brands it an 'abomination'.
  

• Although many terms are used for veil in the Tenach/Old Testament, the word used in Genesis 24 and 34 explicitly for a face veil (tsa‘iyph) is found only in these two places (three times). It is derived from the verb 'to fold', distinguishing it from other veils and head coverings which did not need to be folded around the eyes. If only Muslims were better aware of the roots of their traditions and of the real heart intentions behind them, promiscuous use of the Niqab would not be seen as a paragon of virtue, but as an encouragement to vice.

• The Babylonian Talmud, compiled c 500 AD, alludes to the pre-Islamic practice of face veiling amongst the Arab women (65a Sabbath Tractate)
  

•  "The word, niqaab (sing.) (نقاب) and nuqub (pl.) in its Arabic root naqaba (نقب ) means to bore, to pierce, to make a hole. As a reforming Muslim writer explains 'the sexual nature of the root should be apparent. In Hebrew and Aramaic the same root meaning exists.' In Hebrew the word NeKeV (bqn), which means 'hole or perforation' and the word for 'female',  NiKVah (hbqn) comes from this root.

• There is contemporary evidence of an identical use of the Niqab in Cairo, in BBC correspondent Christian Fraser's report, 10/10/09, 'There are shops doing a roaring trade in garish fishnet stockings, clothes that belong to a budget production of the film Moulin Rouge, alongside those selling the all-enveloping outfits more commonly seen in this increasingly conservative society. It is, though, whispered in shadowy corners of this city that prostitutes are in fact customers at both types of shop.' It is at all not surprising that both forms of unclean hypersexualisation, Western and Middle Eastern, sit side by side. A German perfume manufacturer has also exploited the heightened sexual sensitisation involved in the use of the Niqab, as much as the wearing of other salacious clothing, in a lewd video unfit for display here. Some Muslim forum posters have rather slowly begun to wake up to its hypersexualising effects too.

• Recently the use of the Burka and Niqab has also taken hold in the Jewish Haredi communities in Beit Shemesh (original Hebrew report) and elsewhere, apparently following a Jewish female "rabbi's" lead. The vigorously anti-Zionistic Naturei Karta ultra Orthodox rabbis and other rabbis have banned it on the grounds of its untoward effects on sexual dynamics. As reported in JC, 'The Eda Charedit is very against it and sees in it a real danger that by exaggerating you are doing the opposite of what is intended - severe transgressions in sexual matters.'
  

It is a great tragedy that Islam has foolishly and cruelly mistaught its young women that what has long before been designed to enhance lust is somehow instead a remedy for it, and it is a significant root of hidden vice and abuse in Muslim societies.

Heightened level of sexual assault at Eid Al Fitr

See this wikipedia page for documentation of a perennial problem. Edward Lane also indicates debauchery was a regular occurrence around the festival in his day, 'Intrigues are said to be not uncommon with the females who spend the night in tents among the tombs'. (Modern Egyptians, vol.2. p.238, cited in Hughes, T.P., Dict. of Islam)

Islamic State has a highly developed theology of sacralised rape: 'He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God'; Rape "is 'Ibadah"  (عبادة). 'Having sex with her [a 12 yr old captive] pleases God'

The Ka'bah

But the most shocking aspect of Islam's focus on sexuality and the evidence for its rootedness in fertility rites has long been recognised to focus in the Ka'bah itself.

• The Ka'bah itself was addressed as a female Deity in pre-Islamic times, as this short section from Ibn Ishaq's biography shows,
  

'The the people were afraid to demolish the temple, and withdrew in awe from it. Al-Walid b. al-Mughira said, 'I will begin the demolition.' So he took a pick-axe, went up to it saying thewhile, 'O God, do not be afraid² (132), O God, we intend only what is best.' Then he demolished the part at the two corners.'

• In the bowing prostrate 5 times a day before the Ka'bah, as the central focus of prayer, the form of which bears remarkable similarity to the external form of the female genitalia, (NB: the link is to an explicit anatomical image taken from Wikipaedia).
  
  No wonder, so many women complain about sexual harassment in the holiest site of Islam.
  

• During the Hajj, the climax of the pilgrimage for many participants, after circumambulation (Tawaf), is to touch and kiss this same sacred object, in exact emulation of their prophet, and his pagan predecessors.

• In the lewdity of the older Egyptian rites of marriage, described by Lane^#, in which two rak'ahs or prayer cycles are performed by the bridegroom toward his naked bride's sexuality, whilst she is orientated in the direction of the Ka'bah, as though she herself was the representative of the object prayed to. This local interpretation of Islamic practice is especially significant, since Egyptian Muslims are usually just as scrupulous as others that persons, especially women, do not intervene their line of sight with the mithrab - the indicator of the direction of Mecca.