Sunday, December 12, 2010

A Press Release to Minivan News

Saturday, 11th December 2010 

The International Human Rights Day was marked with a silent sit-together by a young group of Maldivians at the Artificial Beach stage starting at 5 PM on Friday, 10th December 2010. 

Displaying a stark contrast to the loud truck and motorcycle cavalcade of religious conservatives who were protesting against Israeli doctors around the same time by announcing anti-Semitic messages through loud speakers, the youth that participated in the sit-down took a decidedly fresh approach towards protest.

The group of 30 young men and women sat down at the artificial beach stage in protest against religious extremism. The silent sit-together, conspicuous by the absence of any banners, megaphones, or sloganeering, aimed to send the message that youth are against religious extremism and supported Human Rights, Tolerance and Dignity for all humans, while also simultaneously laying emphasis on the peaceful nature of their protest. 

The participating youth stated that their aim is to start a popular, nationwide grassroots movement against religious extremism.

The hour-long sit down was followed by a Human Rights solidarity walk along Majeedhee Magu. The walk was met with no resistance, and passed off peacefully.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

CCHDC estimates 18-39 HIV patients in Maldives


MALE, December 1 (HNS) – Centre for Community Health and Disease Control (CCHDC) has put the estimated number of HIV patients in the Maldives to 18-39.
A CCHDC press release said only three out of the 14 HIV patients discovered in the Maldives are alive.
The press release said a survey conducted in 2008 shows that actions that promote AIDS such as unsafe sex and needle sharing are increasing rapidly in the Maldives.
A 2009 report shows that over 33 million AIDS patients live in the world and some of the Asian countries Maldivians often visit are within the high-risk zones.
“Therefore, one of the main reasons of marking AIDS day is to create awareness about the status of the disease, the methods by which it spreads, and identifying viable methods with which to fight it,” the press release read.
This year’s AIDS Day slogan is “Universal Access and Human Rights.”
Despite the natural immunity against HIV found in a minority of people, no feasible cure has yet been found for the fatal disease. Awareness programs with the help of media are being carried out in the Maldives to mark the day.
Via Haveeru

World AIDS Day celebrated in the Maldives

Press Release via UNDP Maldives
01-Dec-2010
Speech by the UNDP Resident Representative on World AIDS Day 1st December 2010, SHE Building.

Executive Committee Members, Executive Management team and Staff of Society for Health Education
Government officials
Distinguished Invitees
Colleagues from the UN system
Assalaam Alaikum and good morning.

It gives me great pleasure to open the Voluntary Counselling Testing Centre for the expatriate community in the Maldives.

For the first time in the country, this venture is opening the avenue for the expatriate community to access a service of this kind and I would like to congratulate the Society for Health Education and the National AIDS Programme for jointly working towards this initiative.

The opening of this Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre, goes hand in hand with the theme of this year’s World AIDS Day, 'Universal Access and Human Rights', which reminds us of the critical importance of both in effective responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

World AIDS Day is about paying respect. Respect to the 1.8 million people who have died of AIDS. Respect to the 33.3 million people living with HIV. Respect to the more than 5 million who lack access to lifesaving treatment. Respect for those who suffer stigma and discrimination because they live with HIV.

But it is also a day to celebrate, because around the world, we see evidence that people are living positively with HIV. As treatment improves and battles against stigma and discrimination are won, people living with HIV are able to regain their roles as active, productive members of their community, as healthy parents and children, and as champions for the AIDS movement.

The Maldives has a low prevalence of HIV. This does not mean the country is without risk. There are several vulnerability factors related to HIV such as migration, including internal migration, coupled with an active young population. HIV prevention interventions are needed for these populations along with current target groups.

The Voluntary Counselling Testing Centre, therefore comes at an opportune time. This is about the rights of a group of people. The protection of human rights is fundamental to combating the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. By promoting individual human rights, new infections can be prevented and people living with HIV can live free from discrimination.

Global leaders have pledged to work towards universal access to HIV and AIDS and treatment, prevention and care and recognize these as fundamental human rights. Valuable progress has been made in increasing access to HIV and AIDS services, yet greater commitment is needed around the world if the goal of universal access is to be achieved.

Millions of people continue to be infected with HIV every year. In low- and middle-income countries, less than half of those in need of antiretroviral therapy are receiving it, and too many do not have access to adequate care services.

As UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said in her message on World AIDS Day, “timely access to HIV-related treatment demonstrably extends lives.”

Today we are witnessing a good first step in this process in the Maldives. On behalf of the UN, I would like to thank the Government of Maldives and the National AIDS Programme, for granting us the opportunity to work with you towards addressing and reducing the risk of HIV and AIDS in the Maldives.

HIV and Substance Abuse is one of the key areas that the UN will continue to support in the next 5 years. As we move forward with an effective response to HIV programming in the country, and look for innovative ways to support people to advocate for and access the services they need, I cannot stress enough on the important role of the partners, including civil society, in this process.

In conclusion, let what we do today be a foundation to write the history of AIDS in the country. From today, we should reject all excuses for failure and bond together in a wedge of tolerance, to achieve our goal and reaffirm our commitment to services which are universally accessible and based on a human rights approach.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Response to the UN’s Decision to Remove Sexual Orientation from the Resolution on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions

Association of British Muslims calls on the UN General Assembly to reverse its vote on the exclusion of sexual orientation from the Resolution on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions

On 16th November 2010, the United Nations’ General Assembly’s Third Committee voted to amend a previous resolution of the General Assembly that had outlawed extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

This resolution is reviewed every two years, and in 2008 it had been amended to mention specifically those killings that take place because of the sexual orientation of the victims. The 16th November vote removed that special mention.

The Association of British Muslims views this decision with considerable concern. It is the duty of the UN’s Human Rights Committee to uphold the rule of law, so it should vigorously oppose any extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions by whatever party and for whatever reasons.

It should also act to preserve the human rights of all vulnerable communities.

Removing this clause at this time will send quite the wrong signal to those regimes that indulge in these barbaric practices, implying as it does that United Nations is no longer concerned at the maltreatment of people because of their sexual orientation or considers it to be a lesser matter.

Referring to the Nazis, Paster Martin Niemoller once wrote, ‘First they came…’. Have we not learned anything since the tragedies of World War 2? Niemoller started out by saying, ‘First they came for the communist’s, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist’ Then, the socialists, trade unionists, Jews and other groups until finally he writes, ‘Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me’.

The Committee vote is to be ratified in December. The Association of British Muslims calls on member states of the General Assembly not to endorse the decision of its Third Committee, and to reinstate the deleted clause.”





Shaykh David Rosser Owen, Amir/President of AOBM
Dan Littauer, Human Rights and Press Relations Coordinator of AOBM
Mohammed Abbasi, Strategy Director of AOBM
Paul S. Armstrong, Director for Interfaith and Interpolitical Dialogue of AOBM
Adeel Rahman, Education Coordinator of AOBM

Contact: press@aobm.org

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Report on The Maldives Islands: 9 Session of the Universal Periodic Review – November 2010


This report is submitted by: The Maldives Women Coalition - MWC 1 and The Sexual
Rights Initiative 2 . This report deals with sexual rights in Maldives and makes references
specifically to the situation of young men and women and cultural norms/beliefs about
gender/sexuality that lead to human rights violations, including discrimination, domestic and
sexual violence, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT).

A. Background


1. The Maldives islands have been populated as early as historical records are available.
Estimates based on archaeology and linguistics concludes that the islands were populated
around 2,500 years ago if not earlier. Islam was introduced to the Maldives in the 12th
century, and in 1155 the whole nation was converted after the decree of the king who took the
title of sultan. Old temples were demolished and mosques built on their foundations. Islamic
law and moral codes were imposed upon the population much later, mainly in this century.

B. The Legal Framework

2. The Maldivian legal system is based on shari’ab law 3 . Personal law which includes family
and inheritance laws are exclusively governed by shari’ab law. Other laws such as criminal
law, contracts, company law etc, are governed by laws enacted by parliament based on
sharia’ab law. The Legislative sources are based on the Constitution of the Republic of
Maldives, Laws enacted by Parliament, Statutory instruments (Rules and Regulations of the
various government authorities) 4

3. The administration of Justice is the responsibility of the various courts under the ministry
of justice and the High Court of Maldives. There is a court in each island which hears
criminal, juvenile, family as well as civil cases. Criminal cases are heard in the criminal court,
while civil cases are heard in the civil court. The High Court of Maldives has the authority to
hear any of the cases heard in the lower courts if it considers it to be in the interests of justices
that the case be heard 5

Main Issues

C. Cultural norms/beliefs about gender/sexuality

4 Maldivian state imposes restrictions to Human Rights in the name of Islam. Human rights
and fundamental freedoms are considered as a western norm and its universality denounced.

5. Divorce is available to men and women, but husbands may divorce more easily if the
decision is not mutual. Women suffer greater losses in divorce than men do, because of their
financial dependence on their husbands. Women often stay in the homes of their ex-husbands
until they remarry. Divorced women and their children are particularly economically
vulnerable and divorced women have limited choices to improve their situation apart from
remarrying. The effect on women and children of being forced to continue residence with an
estranged husband or father has not been closely addressed.

6. A Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a non-Muslim man whereas Muslim men are
allowed to marry non-Muslim women 6 . With the object of protecting morality and preventing
sexual anarchy, women are expected to cover their whole bodies bar, their faces and their
hands up to their wrists. Women can have no contact with men to whom they are not related
without the presence of a male relative.

7. Maldives women had the freedom to dress according to indigenous norms and give their
children Divehi language names. They also had the freedom to be governed by female rulers.
One by one, these indigenous freedoms were violated by the mullahs. It looks increasingly
likely that very soon every Maldive women would be obliged into the Islamic head-dress
called hijab by decree. 7

8. Girls and boys are separated from the very beginning in schools. In the base of the laws of
Maldives, women are the source of corruption in the community and the cause of the
deviation of men 8 . By these crimes they are controlled and punished from the early childhood
and during all their life 9

9. Girls are under enormous pressure in school as well as in society. This deprives them of
free movement, from playing freely, and from happily participating in social activities. The
schools authorities spy on girls to see if they wear make up, to hear if they talk about boys or
if they carry pictures of stars. Pupils are even intimidated into spying on their parents and to
report to the school authorities about their parents’ life style and whether their female
relatives offend against Islamic rules at home. This has produced a system of inquisition in
schools. The environment is full of repression and control, the control of children’s minds and
behaviour. Friendship between girls and boys is forbidden, considered a sin and punishable.
Girls are under strict scrutiny. Their talking, walking, laughing, dressing and movements are
controlled and carefully monitored. Teachers and principals punish girls physically and
psychologically if the veil is not worn properly even at play.

D. Female discrimination

10. Culture dictates a certain level of separation of men and women in the
workplace. Usually, women are found in lower-paying positions, such as clerical work,
agriculture, and service jobs in the tourist sector. Maldives has experienced rapid economic growth and modernization over the past decade, but many women benefit less from this
growth, because some traditional beliefs conflict with women’s free participation in the
economic market.10

11. In connection with sex roles and stereotyping, the traditional cultural values associate
women mainly with domestic work and childcare, and there are limited opportunities for
women to work outside the home. 11

12. Regarding the role of women in political and public life, women have the right to vote in
all elections and are eligible for candidature to elected bodies and all public positions except
that of head of State. Although women are entitles to stand as candidates for the National
Assembly, the percentage of women candidates is small. Only three out of the 50 members of
the National Assembly are female. In the absence of constitutional barriers to women’s
participation in decision-making positions, the main constraint of women’s access to these
positions is the deeply rooted gender subordination.

E. Domestic and sexual violence

13. The women of Maldives face violence in various forms within their homes, in public
space, in the workplace, and within the community in general. Generally is observed that
these kinds of problems are not denounced and tend to kept in secret because women believe
that these issues should remain in the family. It may be difficult for them to talk to someone
because their husband may be very controlling. Maldivian government tries to hide these
issues believing that it is a family problem that should be dealt within the private sphere.

14. A married woman must have sex whenever the husband wishes 12 . A man can easily
divorce a woman by pronouncing that he is divorcing her three times. Polygamy with up to
four wives is permitted, and temporary marriage is allowed whereby a man can have access to
an unlimited number of women. Men are also permitted concubines and female slaves. No
specific definition of rape exists and the law does not extend to recognize marital rape.

15. As traditional practices, a man is ordered to beat his wife if she doesn't obey him. The
marriage with young girls who have not reached puberty is common practice.

16. The Maldive Law is totally opposed to freedom of dressing – for women. This is an
obvious and enormous barrier to the personal development of girls and women; going against
their autonomy, freedom of expression and exercise of their sexuality. Under Islamic law,
women have no choice about their looking and are imprisoned behind veils under the
justification that otherwise men cannot trust that they will control their sexual impulses. On
the pretext of protecting their honor, women are kept locked up, isolated and unable to enjoy a
full life and to develop their potential 13 .


17. Children grow learning that the main duty of women is to take care of the home and
children. Women are pictured only as mothers and housekeepers. The transmission of
stereotypical gender roles is an essential element of school education. In this way, oppression
of women by men and male domination are perpetuated and naturalized in our culture. In
school, children are taught that the traditional male–female gender roles, women’s
segregation, and sexual apartheid are a desirable state for women in society. They also learn
that women are inferior to and equal to only half of a man, that women belong to men, that
men have the right to punish their wives if they do not obey them, that women constitute a
potential source of corruption in society so the hijab must be imposed on them. They are
taught that the veil is the legitimate physical border of a woman’s existence in society to
protect men and the community from any possible moral and social danger and the
devastation they may cause.

18. Child sexual abuse is allowed by Islamic Law 14 . A Muslim man can have sex with a baby
girl without consequences. This also means that non-Muslim pedophiles can convert to Islam
and their illegal behaviors get legal.

F. LGBT Rights

19. Consensual acts between adults of the same sex is illegal in the Maldives under the
Sharia 15 . Punishment for adults is 19-39 lashes and one to three years banishment or jail time.
A serious issue of concern is that consensual acts between adults receive almost the same
punishment as acts between an adult and a minor. 16 The penalty for an adult engaging in
same-sex relations with someone younger than 16 is 19-39 lashes and three to six years
banishment or jail time. Sexual acts between men and between women are not regulated by
the Penal Code, but are prohibited by Islamic Sharia law, applicable to Maldives along with
civil law, with penalties decided by Islamic courts. The punishment for women is house arrest
for nine months to one year. There have been reports of women being sentenced to a
whipping as well for lesbian acts.

G. Recommendations

The government of Maldives should:

20. Take the necessary steps –including legislation- to stop child sexual abuse and other forms
of sexual violence and create an independent judiciary body to deal with independent and
impartial investigations on these issues, and dispose punishment to perpetrators and redress to
victims.

21. Ensure that all children, particularly girls, enjoy fully the right to such measures of
protection as are required by their status as minors, following the international standards.

22. Inform victims of sexual violence and their families about their rights and judicial
proceedings, offer counseling to women and child victims through trained staff, and avoid re-
traumatizing or stigmatizing victims during the judicial process.

23. Take appropriate action to stop female discrimination, on the basis of gender, sex and
marital status, introduce provisions by amending the Nationality Law which discriminate on
the basis of gender, religion, sex or status and violate the right to equality of spouses.

24. Prohibit any law, custom, or tradition that undermines women's dignity, welfare, interest,
and autonomy; the definition of equality should be incorporated into the draft law on
women’s rights 17 as well as in the Constitution to ensure compliance with international
human rights standards, including gender-neutral statutes related to adultery and premarital
sex.

25. Guarantee women's right to equal treatment with men, including equal rights to inherit,
has access to, and control property.

26.Continue to address, through radio, press and other media, support for women's and girls'
rights to equality in all aspects of their public and private lives, including freedom from cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment.

27. Investigate and prosecute persons who threaten to harm female family members to
dishonoring the family; and implement recruiting and training programmes for female police
officers to investigate crimes of domestic violence, commissioning experts in this area in
order to modify police attitudes and teach relevant skills.

28. Create adequate and accessible shelters for victims of domestic violence, especially for
women who have been victims of "honor" crimes or who are at risk of such violence,
including their children.

-end-

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Sexual orientation removed from UN resolution condemning unjustified executions

The amendment narrowly passed 79-70 reversing the 2008 declaration that included an explicit reference to killings committed because of the victims' sexual orientation. IGLHRC reports.
The IGLHRC issued a statement on Nov 17, 2010:

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and ARC International are deeply disappointed with yesterday’s vote in the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly to remove a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. The resolution urges States to protect the right to life of all people, including by calling on states to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. For the past 10 years, the resolution has included sexual orientation in the list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based.

The removed reference was originally contained in a non-exhaustive list in the resolution highlighting the many groups of people that are particularly targeted by killings - including persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, persons acting as human rights defenders (such as lawyers, journalists or demonstrators) as well as street children and members of indigenous communities. Mentioning sexual orientation as a basis on which people are targeted for killing highlights a situation in which particular vigilance is required in order for all people to be afforded equal protection.

The amendment removing the reference to sexual orientation was sponsored by Benin on behalf of the African Group in the UN General Assembly and was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

"This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development,” said Cary Alan Johnson, Executive Director of IGLHRC. “It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people - a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality."

This decision in the General Assembly flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that people are routinely killed around the world because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and renders these killings invisible or unimportant. The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions has highlighted documented cases of extrajudicial killings on the grounds of sexual orientation including individuals facing the death penalty for consensual same-sex conduct; individuals tortured to death by State actors because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; paramilitary groups killing individuals because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation as part of “social cleansing” campaigns; individuals murdered by police officers with impunity because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation; and States failing to investigate hate crimes and killings of persons because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

"It is a matter of great shame that the responsible Committee of the United Nations General Assembly failed in its responsibility to explicitly condemn well-documented killings based on sexual orientation," said John Fisher, Co-Director of ARC international. "The credibility of the United Nations requires protection of all persons from violations of their fundamental human rights, including on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. We thank those States which supported the inclusion of sexual orientation in the text, and will redouble our collective efforts to ensure that Member States of the United Nations maintain the standards they have sworn to uphold."

The amendment runs counter to other positive developments in UN and regional human rights systems where there is increased recognition of the need for protection from discrimination regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. At a September 2010 panel held in conjunction with a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon unequivocally recognized "the particular vulnerability of individuals who face criminal sanctions, including imprisonment and in some cases the death penalty, on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

Sixty-eight countries have also signed a joint statement in the UN General Assembly on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity which calls for an end to "human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity … in particular the use of the death penalty on this ground [and] extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions."

IGLHRC and ARC International urge all States, regardless of their vote on this amendment, to sign the UNGA joint statement affirming support of the human rights of all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity and to continue in efforts to decriminalize same-sex conduct and to end other discrimination, including violence, on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The votes to amend the resolution were as follows:

In favor of the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (79):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Opposed to the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (70):

Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Micronesia (FS), Monaco, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela

Abstain (17):

Antigua-Barbuda, Barbados, Belarus, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Fiji, Mauritius, Mongolia, Papau New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Absent (26):

Albania, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chad, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Marshall Island, Mauritania, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Sao Tome Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Togo, Tonga, Turkey, Turkmenistan

The mission of The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is advancing human rights for everyone, everywhere to end discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. A non-profit, non-governmental organization, IGLHRC is based in New York, with offices in Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Visit http://www.iglhrc.org for more information.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Man sentenced for indecently exposing himself to a minor

By Ahmed Nazeer | November 2nd, 2010 | via Minivan News


The Criminal Court yesterday sentenced a man to three years in prison after the court found him guilty of the indecent exposure of his body to a minor in Villingili.

The court identified the offender as Mohamed Saeed, 39.

The Criminal court said the brother of the male victim received information of the incident and reported to police that Saeed was attempting to have sex with the boy inside a guest house named ‘Beach View’ in Villingili.

“When police went to the guest house after receiving the information from the victim’s brother, police attended the scene and saw Saeed standing naked near the bed,’’ said the Criminal Court. “The boy was lying on the bed when the police arrived.’’

The Criminal Court said the victim told the court that Saeed went into the toilet and came out naked.

Saeed told the court that he worked in a cargo ship and came to Male’ for his vacation.

The Court sentenced him according to the ‘Act on special actions against sexual abuse to minors’ section 22[a] and 22[b].

Friday, October 29, 2010

Salaf to take youth on ‘Hijra’ to distance them from sin

By Ahmed Nazeer | October 28th, 2010 | via Minivan News

Religious NGO Jamiyyathulsalaf is offering youth the opportunity of a two day ‘Hijra’ to distance themselves from sin and form closer relations with religion.

‘Hijra’, a religious camping retreat on the island of Thinadhoo in Vaavu Atoll from November 18-20 where, for the price of Rf300 (US$32), participants can ‘move away from sin’.

Salaf said priority will be given to those who are at ‘beginner’s level’ in their religious education and, or, are experiencing doubts about their belief.

Successful applicants will be instructed in religious teachings by scholar Skeikh Adam Shameem Ibrahim and will also be encouraged to form close friendships and foster a spirit of brotherhood.

‘’As the camp will be held for two days, having fun and playing different games will also be a part of it”. The fun and games will be organised according to religious teachings, Salaf said.

Participants will also have the opportunity to take part in some serious religious education through lessons and sermons.

“Moving away from sin”, is the slogan of the camp. Hijra refers to the migration of Prophet Mohamed from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE to escape persecution and found the first Islamic state.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Training Program for Government Focal Points on Human Rights Mainstreaming

Human Right Commission of the Maldives has today commenced a training program to mainstream human rights in all government activities, for the human rights focal points appointed to the Ministries. Topics to be covered in this two day program include information on Human Rights (especially Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), Mainstreaming Human Rights, and Democracy and Human Rights. The program will be facilitated by HRCM member Dr. Aly Shameem, former HRCM president Ahmed Mujtaba, and former Attorney General Dr. Mohamed Munawwar.

The Chief Guest of the inaugural ceremony was the Vice President of Maldives, Dr.Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik. Speaking at the ceremony Dr.Waheed noted that one of the first steps necessary for the inclusion of human rights in all government activities is, knowing what human rights are and wholly accepting those rights. He also said that the function of a government and the very first obligation of all ministries and institutions of the government is to fulfill and guarantee the rights of the people.

In her speech President of HRCM, Maryam Azra highlighted the responsibilities of a government in fulfilling human rights. She expressed her hope for a wide range of discussions throughout the program about the principles to be followed in carrying out these responsibilities and that participants will learn the benefits of integrating principles and ideologies which respect human rights in sectors of the government.

The Human Rights focal points were appointed to the government institutions by the President upon HRCM’s request in August 2009. The intent was to have specialized persons for overseeing and ensuring that activities and policies of government institutions are in line with human rights standards. The focal points appointed by the government are all high level members of the Ministries, including Deputy Ministers and Permanent Secretaries.

An awareness workshop for the focal points, aimed at creating awareness on the Human Rights Commission Act, including the mandate and responsibilities of HRCM was conducted in March 2010. Collaborative methods for mainstreaming human rights in the day to day work of the relevant ministries were also discussed in that workshop.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Music Video of the Day:

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

NGO launches "TIP" campaign to promote politeness and thankfulness

October 11, 2010 | via Haveeru Online

A local NGO Sunday inaugurated “TIP” campaign aimed at propagating politeness and thankfulness among Maldivians.

In a ceremony held at MNBC One studio Sunday evening, one of the founders, renowned businessman Mohamed Kaleem launched the campaign.

Kaleem said “TIP,” short for “Thank-I-Please” campaign aims to promote saying “thank you” in return of good deeds and “please” while asking for a favour. Everyone has the right to use polite words, he added.

Though the characteristics are not new among Maldivians, Kaleem hoped that the campaign would make the custom widespread among Maldivians and make “TIP” a household name in the Maldives.

Mohamed Mistho, who joined Kaleem to found NGO One Plus which began the campaign, said the one-year campaign focused on public places like schools, hospitals, banks and supermarkets would use specific slogans every month.

The campaign will be carried out in two groups; TIP Connectors aimed at the public and TIP Champions at companies and organisations, Mistho added.

“The TIP Connectors will be carried out in groups of five. Everyone will monitor the use of TIP among five friends and five friends of those friends. In the same way, TIP Champions will monitor the use of TIP in the company,” he said.

A person from each island is needed to run the campaign in the islands, Kaleem added.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

AIDS Awareness Month Suggestive Ad Series of the Day!

Ad 1
 

 Ad 2

Friday, October 8, 2010

Dhiriulhumakee Mee (Security Guard Jaanoo) Webisode

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Maldives introduces landmark UN Resolution on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

By Yap Swee Seng | October 7th, 2010 | via Minivan News

The Maldives played a key role in recent weeks for the fruition of this new resolution which was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council without a vote last Thursday. The resolution, which was jointly introduced by the United States, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Maldives, reaffirms that “the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association are essential components of democracy … to, inter alia, express their political opinions, engage in literary and artistic pursuits and other cultural, economic and social activities, engage in religious observances or other beliefs, form and join trade unions and cooperatives, and elect leaders to represent their interests and hold them accountable.”

“Only a few years ago, these rights (to freedom of assembly and association) were strictly curtailed and there were no legal channels to hold leaders accountable. The current leadership of His Excellency President Mohamed Nasheed began as an opposition movement where he was regularly arrested while trying to assert his rights”, said Ambassador Iruthisham Adam, Permanent Representative of the Maldivian Mission in Geneva, when she introduced the draft resolution at the UN Human Rights Council last week, which decided to create the first-ever Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association.

The efforts at the UN level by the Maldives, which has made progressive strides in the transition from an essentially autocratic state after the fall of former President Maumoon Abul Gayoom’s 30-year term, have been widely welcomed amongst human rights groups.

In view of this landmark development contributed by the Maldives, the country should continue to lead in this initiative by ensuring that the provisions for the rights to assemble in peaceful demonstrations are consistently represented in the Maldivian legislation, to address the incidents of the violations of freedom of assembly and association in practice by law enforcement authorities.

The domestic regulation known as the “regulation concerning assembly” requires three organisers of public assemblies to submit a written form to the police 14 days prior to gathering. This appears to be in contradiction to Article 32 of the Maldivian Constitution which enshrines the right to freedom of assembly “without prior permission from the State”.

This irregularity has at times been used by authorities who selectively apply the provisions of the regulation for the purpose of ending peaceful demonstrations.

Ahmed Irfan, Executive Director of the Maldivian Democracy Network (MDN), stressed that “the Maldives in addition to all other co-sponsors of the resolution must act swiftly to ensure that domestic laws and regulations regarding freedom of assembly and association fully respect and adhere to those rights.”

The newly established mandate of the Special Rapporteur includes, among others, studying trends, developments and challenges in relation to the exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association and making recommendations.

The Special Rapporteur will also report on violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, as well as discrimination, threats or use of violence, harassment, persecution, intimidation or reprisals directed at persons exercising these rights. This mandate is one of the most relevant for Asian countries, particularly for human rights defenders, trade unionists and migrants in the region. Time and again, civil society organizations throughout Asia have faced brutality, suppression and severe restrictions when exercising their rights to assemble and associate.

The UN resolution has the potential to usher in new opportunities of significant importance, particularly if the provisions outlined in the resolution are implemented at the national level and close cooperation is sought by the State with the Special Rapporteur.

It is clear that the international community has benefited from contributions of the Maldives at the UN Human Rights Council, also exemplified by the groundbreaking resolution on “Human Rights and Climate Change” which was tabled by the Maldives in March 2008.

At the sub-regional level, human rights groups have been encouraged by the proposal of President Nasheed during the SAARC Summit in April 2010 to establish a South Asian human rights mechanism. It remains to be seen how the innovative and dedicated approach of the Maldives in its international capacities will resonate in the country for a full implementation of its human rights obligations, which is currently being compromised due to the political deadlock in the People’s Majlis.

As the Maldives will stand before the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in coming November, it would be prudent to view this as a national opportunity to raise awareness and publicity of human rights challenges and obligations with the view to overcome the deadlock so that the promotion and protection of human rights can be fully realised in the Maldives.

Yap Swee Seng is Executive Director of the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA).

MPs Clash Over Signing Convention on International Criminal Court

By Ahmed Naish | October 6th, 2010 | via Minivan News


MPs clashed over signing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at a rancorous debate during yesterday’s sitting of parliament.

While MPs of the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) used the debate time to condemn the “unlawful and authoritarian” practices of the previous government, opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party-People’s Alliance (DRP-PA) MPs accused the current administration of disregarding rule of law and negating parliamentary oversight.

Following an hour-long debate, a motion to send the matter to the national security committee for further consideration, proposed by DRP MP Dr Abdulla Mausoom, was carried with 61 votes in favour and four against.

The issue was sent for parliamentary approval by President Mohamed Nasheed in accordance with article 93(a) of the constitution, which states that, “Treaties entered into by the executive in the name of the state with foreign states and international organisations shall be approved by the People’s Majlis and shall come into force only in accordance with the decision of the People’s Majlis.”

“Torturers”

MDP Parliamentary Group Leader “Reeko” Moosa Manik said the purpose of the international criminal court was to “arrest torturers like Maumoon [Abdul Gayoom], people like Ilyas Ibrahim [brother-in-law of the former president] who stole state property and funds, and Attorney Generals like Hassan Saeed who tried to hide it.”

Moosa compared legislation voted through last year to afford privileges and protection to former presidents to laws enacted in Serbia to protect war criminals.

The former president and his brother-in-law, along with former National Security Services senior officer “Isthafa” Ibrahim Manik, he continued, numbered among “the worst torturers in the country’s history.”

Moosa accused former Attorney General Hassan Saeed, leader of the minority opposition Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP), of unlawfully arresting and jailing peaceful protesters on August 12 and 13, 2004.

Further, he speculated that the current administration was “incapable of touching [the issue of the former government]” because people involved in the purported crimes were in the new government as well.

He added that “suckling babes” in parliament who “jump up to defend [senior officials of the former government]” would not be able to understand the “feelings of torture victims”.

Moreover, he argued, numerous custodial deaths and brutal torture in prisons exacerbated the national crises of drug abuse and corruption, adding that the new government would go the same way if “action is not taken now.”

Following Moosa’s tirade, DRP MP Dr Abdulla Mausoom accused the MDP government of formulating policies only to “benefit certain people”, which he argued could be “considered a crime in international courts.”

DRP MP for Mid-Henveiru Ali Azim insisted that parliament needed time to carefully study the documents sent over by the president’s office, containing legal advice from the Attorney General, before reaching a decision.


Islamic principles

Minority opposition People’s Alliance (PA) MP Abdul Azeez Jamal Abubakur meanwhile noted that the absence of the United States and most Islamic countries from the list of signatories “raises some questions”.

Referring to article 7.1(h), which deals with persecution of minorities, Independent MP Ibrahim Muttalib argued that parliament should consider whether some articles of the convention were in conflict with Islamic principles.

“This article talks about discrimination,” he cautioned. “Today, international parties consider as discrimination the fact that people of other religions don’t live among us; the fact that we don’t have gay marriage. This is something we have to think about.”

Muttalib added that he was “certain” that secularists and followers of other religions in the Maldives would “come out openly after this convention is signed and start working for their rights.

“Those amongst us today who want gay marriage, once this convention is ratified, will begin work on getting married,” he continued. “We are certain that there are people among us who are scared of our religious scholars and rebuke them. They will make use of this court and begin work against the scholars.”

Vili-Maafanu MP Ahmed Nihan agreed that Maldivian citizens would “surely” take the government to the ICC “saying the government did not allow us to have gay marriage.”

Controversial religious scholar Dr Afrashim Ali, DRP MP for Ungoofaru, meanwhile warned that such conventions could be used “to shatter Islamic principles” and defame individuals “outside the bounds of law”.

Afrashim insisted that the convention should not be signed if it could lead to “the construction of temples here under the name of religious freedom.”

Moreover, Afrashim reprimanded MDP MPs for leveling serious accusations at the former president, pointing out that he had never been convicted of wrongdoing in a court of law.

DRP Deputy Leader Ali Waheed attacked the government for refusing to enact legislation passed by parliament, such as the amendments to the Public Finance Act, which was passed for a second time after the president vetoed the bill.

Independent MP Ahmed Amir suggested that consultations should take place with stakeholders in the judiciary before parliament makes a decision.

Vilifushi MP Riyaz Rasheed of DQP questioned the President’s motive for proposing the matter to parliament.

Referring to the People’s Court protests carried out by the MDP, Riyaz insisted that parliament should pass a law before signing the convention to specify the circumstances under which a Maldivian could be tried at an international court.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

PA Strongly Condemns the Idea of Co-Education


By Ahmed Nazeer | October 6th, 2010 | via Minivan News


The minority opposition party People’s Alliance (PA), led by the former president’s brother, MP Abdulla Yameen, has strongly condemned the idea of introducing co-education.
A statement issued by the PA claimed that the government was attempting to “douse the light of Islam” in the country, and called on the government to “immediately terminate this action.”

“Majeediyya was a male school and Ameeniyya was a female school since the beginning, it is a big trait to the proud history of the two schools to introduce co-education,” the statement said.

PA said that co-education was implemented for island schools because there was no other way due to a lack of facilities, and that females and males were not mixed because people decided that way.
“in Arabiyya school two genders are mixed only when it becomes a basic need, however, we note that although students were mixed, girls and boys sit in different halves [of the classroom],” PA said.
PA referred to research conducted at Cambridge University claiming that single-sex education had better educational outcomes.

“The current government, as soon as they came in to administration, have cunningly attempted to douse the light of Dhivehi and Islam,” PA alleged. “It has given a deaf ear to the petition presented to the government with the signature of hundreds of concerned authorities.”

Minister of Education Dr Musthafa Luthfy yesterday told Minivan News that co-education has been a part of the Maldivian education system for a long time.

“When we studied at ‘Edhuruge’ [traditional places of learning, where classes were held at a teacher's house] there were girls and boys mixed,” said Dr Musthafa. “There are currently only four schools in the Maldives that are not co-educational.”

Dr Musthafa said his idea was to develop an integrated educational system that comprised of science, commerce, arts and aesthetics.

“If anyone is in doubt, they can ask parents and school managements whether students have moved further away from religion or closer to it after I assumed office,” he said.

Sexuality - An Islamic Historical Perspective With Special Reference to South Asia

Asim Roy
University of Tasmania
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Volume 13 Issue 2 1990

via Maldives Culture



Painting from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), depicting Adam and Eve. From Maragh in Mongol Iran 1294-99
Painting from Manafi al-Hayawan (The Useful Animals), depicting Adam and Eve.
From Maragh in Mongol Iran 1294-99

Sexuality, or attitudes to and relationships between sexes, is a fascination as old and vital as life itself. As the most basic level of human relationship, it forms a primary concern not only of religion, philosophy, morality, and law but of art, literature, mythology, and science as well. The underpinnings of a society are often revealed by an examination of its standards and criteria for what is accepted and rejected, approbed and deprecated in social behaviour. To probe the sexual mores of a society and its individuals in the light of these questions is to provide a basic and rather effective means of defining and understanding the same.

The study of sexuality in the context of Islam and Muslims by modern scholars has, however, been a desideratum. Not until the sixties of this century was any serious academic undertaking in this area to be found. Even so, this interest at its early stage was not embodied in the English language. Both the major works to appear since are in French. The first substantial undertaking in English appeared in 1979, incorporating the results of the Sixth Delia Vida Biennial Conference on sex and society in medieval Islam, held in May 1977 under the auspices of the G.E. von Gruenbaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, University of California.

B.F. Musallam's very recent study in birth control in pre-modern Islam also offers some perspectives on eros in Islam. And if, in the context of Classical Islam, the study of sexuality seems to have aroused interest rather recent and quantitatively meagre, one is only looking at a clean slate in the matter of academic interest in the erotic and sexuality in South Asian Islam. We shall, however, return to this issue a little later.

This tardy response to Islamic sexuality is ironical in that there is a growing realization of a more positive sexual attitude in Islam than in traditional Christianity. The 'sexual revolution' of recent times in the West has brought about a wide dispersion and a heightened awareness of sexuality among people, urging many to try to live their own sexual lives, sacred or profane, normal or deviant.

The 'seminal' importance of sexuality in human affairs has forced its recognition on the West. Until then, a pervasive negative sexual attitude had been attributed to traditional Christianity. R.W. Southern, a distinguished medievalist, contrasts what he calls the 'sex-negative' attitudes in Christianity with 'sex-positive' religion and society of Islam. Franz Rosenthal, while pointing out that modern Western scholarship 'takes a generally favourable view of the Muslim system as reflected in the theoretical, ideal guidelines of religion and law', does not totally concur with Southern's positive-negative polarity, but concedes:

'Islam always took care to admit that sexuality existed as a problematic element in the relationship of individuals and society and never hesitated to leave room for the discussion of approval or disapproval. Traditional Christianity was inclined to pretend that sexuality's legitimate right of existence was limited, and further discussion was to be avoided as much as possible'

This may create an impression that Islam has achieved an ideal fusion etween sex and religion. Such a view would, however, be a gross oversimplification. Islam, like other belief-systems, reveals a significant hiatus between the ideal and the actual. This gap, in Islam, is to be understood in more than one sense.

The first discrepancy concerns two aspects of the ideal itself. Islam offers a striking contrast between the sensual pleasures of Paradise and the more restrictive moral code of life on earth. While some Muslims and non-Muslims had undoubtedly seen it as reinforcing the argument for sexuality in Islam, the dichotomy itself had strengthened in many believers a realization of the disruptive potential of sexuality on earth. Moreover, Muslim society had had its share of the champions of celibacy and asceticism, who regarded religion and sex incompatible.

Finally, in Islam as in traditional Christianity, the ideals of sexual morality find their contrasts in real life. Subsequently, the laws in most Western countries were gradually adapted to leave most sexual matters out of their ambit. Subject to the triple principles of free consent, adulthood and privacy, modern Western laws remain content to regard sexuality a matter of individual conscience and private morality. Shari'a, or the Islamic Law, is based on a principle very opposite to the modern Western, and makes no distinction between law and morality. No sexual relationship among Muslims is permissible unless it is legal as well. Otherwise it constitutes a criminal offence.

I

As in all other respects in Islam, attitudes to sex and sexual morality are moulded by the Qur'an and the sunna, or the examples of the Prophet as recorded in the hadith on the basis of the testimonies of his companions. Major aspects of sexual behaviour and the most important elements in the Muslim sexual ethic are in the Qur'an, elaborated by hadith, or the tradition of the Prophet, and akhbar, or later tradition of the companions of the Prophet. The keynote of this cumulative tradition, bearing on sexuality, is: 'legal sex or no sex at all'.

Islam clearly recognizes, as noted above, the existence and importance of sexuality as a major human concern. Of the 'six' categories of 'pleasures' on earth such as food, drink, clothing, scent, sound, and sex, some medieval Muslim writers chose 'sexual enjoyment as the greatest of human pleasures'. Abstinence from sex was vaguely associated with the cause of insanity. Jalal al-Din Rumi, the mystic poet, alludes to it. The Prophet himself had a rather positive sexual attitude. In an oft-quoted hadith, the Prophet expressed his liking for women, along with perfume and prayer. According to another, he regarded every copulation 'a meritorious act comparable with alms giving'. He was reportedly the first in Islam to use an aphrodisiac. In response to his complaint to Jibrafl (Gabriel) about his 'weakness of potency' the angel recommended him a special food which 'would give him the power of forty men'. 'It is this example and confession of the Prophet', says Burgel, 'that made erotic pleasure if not an integral part, in any case a not unseemly aspect of a pious man's life'. Muslim medical and other literary sources contain references to numerous aphrodisiacs. And magic picked up where medicine stopped. Magical recipes to arouse or kill concupiscence, love etc. were also quite popular. In reference to concupiscence (shahwa') which, he thought, dominated the Arab nature, al-Ghazzali, the great medieval scholar-mystic, remarked:

'If one wife does not suffice, marry up to four times. Even if there is no content in heart, change is advisable. Ali married again seven days after Fatima's death. His son Hasan married 200 wives, four at a time. The Prophet would say to him, 'you resemble my nature and my character!'

Having conceded that the primary objective of coition was progeniture, al-Ghazzali was willing to recognize 'a value of its own' in terms of 'its unrivalled but always all too brief delight, arousing man's longing for the lasting one in the world to come'.

II

This positive affirmation of sexuality in Islam is, however, rigidly confined to the bound of Islamic law (shari'a) and morality. Shari'a clearly differentiates between nikah, or legal sex, and zina, or illicit sex. The legal intercourse for a woman is with her husband only, while for a man it is extended beyond his wife or wives to concubines and slave girls.

The Qur'an and hadith strongly enjoin marriage on the believers. Men are even urged to find spouses for the slaves. The example of the Prophet, in whom the believers are told by Allah that they 'have a noble pattern' (Sura 33:21), had finally set the tone for marital sex in Islam. In his early life, Muhammad was engaged in a relationship of happy monogamous matrimonial love with Khadija and had four daughters out of this wedlock. Later in his life he was involved in polygamous relationships. But he strongly favoured marriage.

Despite the dominant position of marriage, the issue of marriage vs celibacy remained long alive in the history of Islam. The question of asceticism and celibacy has been mentioned above. Some later sufis, or mystics, frankly underlined the importance of marriage for prosecuting religious activities untrammelled by sex, as Junaid frankly admitted: 'I need sex the way I need food'.

In a rather rare hadith bearing on the Prophet's sexual life, we are told that his desire was once aroused by a woman, and he resorted forthwith to his wife Zainab and 'satisfied himself in her'. The Prophet is also said to have remarked: 'when a woman approaches, she comes like a shaitan go to your wife, she has the same thing as the other.' The Prophet's uxoriousness had been a strong argument against celibacy.

Despite this, there is some good evidence to suggest a strong movement in favour of celibacy in the early days of Islam, and again later. Some mystics were deeply concerned about their family responsibilities interfering with their spiritual pursuits. As in many other vital areas, al-Ghazzali's reasoned and balanced analysis of the relative advantages and disadvantages of marriage and celibacy contributed largely to the resolution of the question. He summarized the advantages of marriage in the following terms: procreation, sexual gratification, housekeeping, enlargement of the kinship circle, and finally, the struggle of the soul in upholding justice and responsibility in respect of the wife or wives and children.

Against these Ghazzali arrayed the disadvantages, of which three were most important, namely possibilities for illegal livelihood, inability to discharge duties to the family, and distraction from Allah. It was for individuals, according to Ghazzali, to weigh up the situation for themselves, and 'there is no question but that he should marry' provided one is capable of fulfilling all his obligations, familial and spiritual. The practical considerations of sexual gratification were so strong', observes James C. Bellamy, 'that the fears that sex and the responsibilities of family life might endanger one's hope of salvation could deter only a very few men from following the course approved by the religious and social norms of Muslim society.'

The Islamic laws regarding sexual behaviour are strongly designed to preserve the institution of marriage and marital sex, subject to the recognition of concubinage in Islam. Islamic Criminal Law recognizes two different categories of offences, hadd, or defined offences with fixed punishments, and ta'zir, lesser offences where the determination of punishment is a matter for the discretion of the authorities. Extramarital sexual intercourse by persons, married or unmarried, constitutes the hadd offence of zina, and punishable by 100 lashes, if unmarried, and by stoning to death, if married. The offence of zina is so grave that accusation without proof is itself a hadd offence and liable to the most serious charge of defamation with a punishment of 80 lashes.

Zina requires a very strict and rigid system of proof, almost rendering an actual conviction and punishment impossible. Doubts have been raised about the rationale of this rigidity, and suggestion has been made that the law was not really designed to bring offenders to justice, in order that undesirable publicity to a violation of this central maxim of Islamic sexual morality could be avoided and that while the law was broken, it was not to be seen as broken. Noel Coulson rejects this line of reasoning as 'facile and cynical'. He points out that for haddoffence, Islamic Law is against inflicting any punishment should there be a shadow of doubt as to the guilt of the accused. For zina, the rule is obviously carried to the fullest extent. This is because Islam brought about a radical change by elevating the marital status and enhancing the position of women as wives and mothers. The pre-Islamic notion of women as child bearing chattels was replaced by a bilateral and contractual relationship in which the husband claimed exclusive right to sexual union with his wife against the dower, the wife's right to maintenance and inheritance. The Islamic provisions for zina were clearly aimed at upholding this newly elevated marital status which was the corner stone of the Islamic Family Law.

III

Islamic attitudes to sex are marked by as much directness as pudency and prudery. The opinions on the nature of pudency and prudery in early Islam, however, vary. Franz Rosenthal and James Bellamy both find prudery as a very consistent theme of Muslim behaviour ever since the time of the Prophet. The Qur'an urges 'sexual modesty' (Sura 33: 35; 24: 30ff.) for both men and women; and the hadith andakhbar generally refrain from referring to sex in personal contexts, and their language is chaste and uniformly serious. Pudency was not quite enjoined by the law and could not have been enforced. But the hadith and akhbar were rather important in fostering a strong sense of pudency and prudery. Some hadith clearly urged it. According to a hadith 'the Prophet was more modest than a virgin in her private quarters; if he found something to be distasteful, we could see it in his face.'

Lack of modesty was often compared to disbelief. Bellamy points out:

'there is good evidence that it has increased with the passage of time. It is much more difficult today to publish an obscene book in the Muslim world than in the West, and... Muslims sometimes show embarrassment at the frankness of the works produced by their ancestors in the Middle Ages.'

It is perhaps this gradual stiffening of attitude of pudency that prompted Burgel to adopt an apparently dissimilar position from Rosenthal and Bellamy. Burgel believes that the Prophet's companions and the early Muslim notables were 'far from prudish in their expression about erotics.' His view is based on the authority of al-Jahiz, the brilliant ninth-century Muslim writer, who ridiculed the false modesty, affectation and hypocrisy of his contemporaries opposed to outspokenness in literature. Jahiz cited an anecdote from a reputed hadith, which evidenced outspokenness in sexual matters in a gathering graced by the presence of the Prophet, his favourite wife Aisha and her father Abu Bakr. But the description of the incident clearly suggests that 'voices were raised against this kind of candor from the very beginning'. Besides, that Jahiz and Ibn Qutayba his contemporary, who also used explicitness language for sexual subjects, had felt compelled to apologise for their outspokenness and caution others against excesses of literary explicitness clearly underlines the persistence and dominance of this sense of prudery and pudency in Islam.

By the middle of the eleventh century in the classical period, the sense of prudery in sexual attitudes had strengthened so much that a merchant banker of Tunisia out of a sense of propriety, chose not to mention his wife in his many letters where his children and all others were mentioned. Another young schoolmaster wrote to his mother about his prospective bride, and, out of the same sense of decency, described her beauty in Hebrew and not in Arabic as was the case with the rest of the letter. Even physicians were reluctant to speak about some topics. Many seemed apologetic about discussing 'subjects which they were not sure were to be considered medical problems or moral problems to be left to society to handle.'

The growing strength of pudent and prudish attitudes was perhaps ultimately drawn from a situation of steady formulation and integration of the mores of Islamic sexual morality and ethic through a mass of didactic literature in the forms of hadith, akhbar, andrisala or kitab. The initiative and dedication of a people to be called Ahl al-hadith, who organized highly popular reading sessions of this didactic literature, gave Islam its religiosity and moral flavour. To this was added the contributions of the sufi mystics who also drew upon such prosaic material to transform them into a fine instruction in living sexual morality and ethic for Muslims.

IV

Of the various problems associated with the study of sexuality in Islam, as under any other religious and moral systems, one has to contend with the most formidable one of ascertaining the nature and extent of the gulf between the norm and practice, the ideal and actual, the scriptural and the living realities. The study of a sensitive and delicate subject like sexuality cannot, by its very nature, but be limited by its rather meagre and non-empirical data.

To bridge the gulf between the normative and the real existential worlds of his study has always been a despair of a historian bound almost entirely by the nature of his written sources. No where else is the task more daunting than a study of the sexual attitudes and behaviour of a multitudinous community bound by a religion and divided by ethnic and cultural diversities. The theoretical or normative perspective is relatively easily derived from a perusal of the scriptural, philosophical, moral and ethical works. For an appreciation of the reality of the situation at an existential level one cannot but turn almost exclusively to the creative or fictional literature. To what extent does literature, however, reflect societal reality and morality is a crucial question which we shall have to explore later.

Besides the basic scriptural works like the Qur'an, hadith and akhbar and their ancillary legal and juristic sequels, philosophical treatises on love like Risala fil-'ishq by Ibn Sina, or marriage like al-Ghazzali's 'Book of Marriage' in 'Revival of the Religious Sciences', and handbooks on courtly love and wedlock like Tauq al-Hamama ('Necklace of the Dove') by Ibn Hazm (d.456 A.H./1046 A.D.) and etiquette (adab) like Ibn Arabi's al-Futuhat al-Makkiya, offer a broad normative perspective on sexuality in Islam.

In addition there are some practical guidebooks of coition (bah) with occasional anecdotes. The most well-known among them is the Perfumed Garden by Shaikh Nafzawi (flourished in early 15th century), which gained the reputation of being the Indian Kamasutra in Arabic. Outside the domain of these writings, there is a wide range of essentially or partly secular literature shedding direct or indirect light on Islamic sexuality. Among literature of this genre, prose romances and poems are most rewarding.

In prose there are epics, tales,and anecdotes. Apparently, distinction can be made between fictitious love stories such as the Persian romantic epics, The Thousand and One Nights and the Book of the Peacock (Tuti Nama), and love adventures forming part of the biographies of poets like the 'Book of Songs' of Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani (d.356 A.H./967 A.D.). But the basis for this distinction is often rather weak. A fictitious work, as Burgel points out, may be used as a vehicle for distinct personal views on love and love morals, and the biographical materials about a celebrity, on the other hand, are not necessarily factual.

Finally, quite opposite from elegant and chaste love stories there is the mujun literature dealing with obscene erotic anecdotes and poems.

The reality and morality of the popular and entertaining literature in relation to religion and law on one hand and empirical life on the other raise significant questions. There were, as noted above, various genres of this literature in both verse and prose. The very purpose and rationale of this literature were to offer a temporary respite from the tensions of real life, and not a great deal of value was to be attached to it as a source of moral instruction.

Attempts in this literature often to focus on the unusual caused distortion of the reality, and the urges of a writer for originality also encouraged artificial attempts to break away from conventionalism and traditionalism. In fictitious love stories, as in The Thousand and One Nights, men and women appeared 'very little restricted in their opportunities of meeting each other and making love', although gross 'sexual misbehaviour is always presented as the doings of despicable characters, or as practised by lecherous fools leading to the deserved punishment.'

Poetry raises even greater doubts, when Muslim literary critics recognized 'the best poetry' as 'the most deceptive one', and that 'quite a few poets say things openly in their poems which are the opposite of what they leave unexpressed.' Further ambiguity was created by the sufi mystics' metaphorical use of erotic language and symbols. All in all, most love poetry,as Rosenthal points out, was at variance with moral norms commonly accepted in Islam, and offered 'some glances at a reality very different from the official ideal', providing a confirmation that 'the desire for erotical expression beyond that approved by society was always alive.' He argues further that , imaginative literature like religion, law and philosophy developed its own standard view of what the ideal society should be like, and that standard ideal was capable of existing side by side with official Islam, for which it was 'much less of a transgression to neglect a religious obligation than come out openly against its theoretical necessity.'

This explains why rarely the apparent discrepancy, in literature, between law and the reality was openly questioned, for it was 'perfectly possible to abide by rules and at the same time believe in oneself that reality could never be in complete harmony with them and fictional longing had their own kind of legitimacy.' Besides, the Muslim literary critics debated the issue of poetic truth in terms of the Aristotelian concept of form and matter, and gave the verdict in favour of artistic excellence rather than truth and morality. 'Form, the most powerful element in Islamic culture, won the battle over morality.'

V

Irrespective of the nature of reality in literature the dichotomy between the official ideal of sexual behaviour and morality and the reality emerging from the literature is often rather sharp and pronounced. Despite supreme importance being attached to marriage in Islamic law and religion, as discussed above, Muslim literature reveals a contrary disposition of differentiating between marriage and sexual pleasure (tamattu). The chapters on marriage and sexual life in the Qabus Nama, a Persian tract, illustrate this point very well:

'If you take a wife... do not choose her for her beauty. For if you want beauty you may take a sweetheart... a wife is taken as a housewife, not for carnal pleasure. As for this latter, a slave girl may be bought from the bazaar without too much trouble and expenditure. But the wife must be perfect.'

The idea of pleasure in extra-marital sex is more forcefully brought out in the anecdote about the poet Farazdaq. The poet, already married, exercised some undue pressure on a woman to make her yield to his sexual demand. The woman apprised the poet's wife of it, and the two women together worked out a situation in which the poet copulated with his wife in a dark room mistaking her for the other woman. When the truth was discovered, he exclaimed, 'So, it was you! Praise be to God! How sweet you are when forbidden, and how disgusting when allowed!'

Similarly, the monogamous ethos in love relationship is consistently projected in the literature. The idea of true love is based on the monogamous relationship. All the great figures of love in literature are couples, and it is significant that most great couples symbolising true love are of pre-Islamic origin such as Wis and Ramin, Khusru and Shirin, Yusuf and Zulaikha, and Solomon and Bilqis, the queen of Sheba. Some famous Islamic couples like Laila and Majnun, and Jamil and Buthaina are of early Islamic origin and belong to the rather stylized tradition of 'Udhrite family of lovers.

There are stories about polygamous relationships broken eventually by jealousy, as in the story of Qamar al-Zaman in The Thousand and One Nights. The great poet Nizami spoke of his three successive wives, especially of the first. He writes:

'To marry one wife is enough for a man, the husband of many is the husband of none.'

A whole range of erotic and sexual relationships and practices not in conformity with the official ideal are found in literature. These range from heterosexuality through homosexuality to autoeroticism, transvestism and bestiality, in addition to other sexual matters pertaining to any one of these broad categories.

Among heterosexual relationships illicit sex in the form of flirtation, fornication and adultery, 'Udhrite love, and prostitution may be included. Reports and anecdotes about poets and writers like Umar ibn abi Rabia, Imru'l-Qais and Farazdaq, and their poems refer to illicit love affairs and adventures necessitating masquerades in order to escape the observer (raqib). In the love tales the most common circumstance for a young wife's involvement in an affair is the prolonged absence of her husband on a commercial voyage or pilgrimage. This is the frame of the Tuti Nama story as well as the background of many other stories included in it, and also of The Thousand and One Nights. Countless are the tales of how unloved husbands were duped by a cunning wife and her lover.

'Udhrite love is a striking phenomenon of early Arab poetry and love life. The origins and nature of this concept of love are not easy to determine. It is, in essence, an asexual love, absolute love, love as idea, where fate or adverse social circumstances impose a tragic barrier against physical or matrimonial union, but the love remains undying till the end. Jamil and Buthaina, Majnun and Laila, Qais and Lubna, 'Urwa and 'Afra' are classical examples of Arab 'Udhrite love. In a variant of the 'Udhrite love theme, the story ends in union rather than in tragic separation. Elements of 'Udhrite love permeated love poetry of non-'Udhrite poets, and had also channelled into the Persian love poem, or ghazal and became an integral part of it.

Islam legalizes concubinage and sexual intercourse with slave girls or girls bought 'from the bazaar'. But there are references to sexual relationships outside this legal category which are rather akin to prostitution. Al-Jahiz discusses a special sexual relationship (marbutin) of men with a type of singing girl, qaina (pl. qiyan), and seeks to justify it in terms of the Prophetic sanction for 'the lesser offences' (al-lamam). The dancing girls usually belonged to a rich owner, with access given to them for his chosen clients. Burgel considers such a house a 'maison de passe' if not simply 'an upper class brothel'. There is of course specific reference to the presence of brothels in Muslim lands.
Both religious-legal and literary sources mention homosexual relationships for both men and women. Lesbianism occurs in the story of King 'Umar bin al-Nu'man, figuring in the 390th night of The Thousand and One Nights. The Prophetic tradition condemns lesbianism along with sodomy. In the eye of Islamic law, the two cardinal sexual sins are zina, or fornication and adultery, and sodomy. The Qur'an mentions repeatedly the story of the people of Lot, and forbids sodomy in unequivocal terms. The Prophet curses the sodomites in several hadith. The vice of sodomy is so disgusting that of all the animals only pigs and asses engage in it, says one source.

The Muslim juristic opinion would seem to have had less concern about homosexual relations between adult males than they had for relations between a man and a boy, because 'boys were a greater temptation'. According to one source:

'I have less fear for a pious young man from a ravening beast than from a beardless boy who sits with him.'

Pederasty, also known as the cult of ephebes, or attractive male youths, became rather widely familiar in Muslim literature, especially Persian, since the period of the Abbasids. The princely author of Qabus Nama not only allowed but recommended his son not to restrict himself to either of the sexes, alluding to relationships with slave boys (ghulam). The poet Abu Nuwas disliked females because of their 'impurity', and preferred 'boys'. Goitein does not find any significant role for this practice or even homosexuality in pre-Islamic Arabia, and accounts for its origin as an 'outcome of the superimposition of a caste of warlike conquerors over a vast defenceless population.' Pointing his fingers at 'the Arab, Turk or Mongol conquerors', he writes:

'After the endless supply of girls of all races, colours, shapes and personalities had been tasted, the oversatisfied and refined appetites had to be satisfied elsewhere. The cult of... attractive male youths, originally was a privilege of the men in power... the example of the ruling classes filtered down, and became a state of life for the entire community.'

The early sources of Islamic law almost unanimously insist on the death penalty for sodomites, who will suffer dreadful tortures and humiliation in the next world. They will be resurrected in the form of a pig or a monkey. They will, along with six other groups of sinners, be the first to be thrown into hell.

Besides heterosexual and homosexual deviations the sources refer to sexual abnormalities not covered under these two broad categories, such as bestiality and attitudes relating to reversal or confusion of sex identity like transsexualism, transvestism and intersexualism or hermaphroditism. On bestiality, the Islamic law is unequivocal. In the words of a Prophetic tradition: 'Whomever you find who has had intercourse with an animal, kill him and kill the animal'. On the reversal of the sex or gender identity the absence of details about a few known cases render it difficult to make positive identifications of them either as transsexualism, or transvestism or hermaphroditism. It is, however, interesting to point out that Bellamy finds it 'curious' that an alleged transvestite (mukhannath) was 'not classed with the sodomites'. A modern sexologist is not likely to equate transvestism with 'sodomy' or male homosexuality. A transvestite is perhaps more capable of a homosexual relationship than a normal male person, but is often married and has children. However, the Prophet's dislike for these deviations is expressed in a hadith in which he curses men who act like women and women who act like men.

Various other ideas and practices with bearings on sexuality find mention in early Islamic literature, while many others such as sadism, masochism, necrophilia, cunnilingus, fellatio or irrumation are not mentioned. There is no word for incest in Arabic, but this is covered by the prohibited degree of consanguinity for marriage. There are depictions of incestuous situations, but in all cases the culprits suffer bad end.

Masturbation is frequently mentioned particularly in the religious-legal literature, although the law is somewhat uncertain about this sexual practice, The opinions are sharply polarized on its moral and juristic defense. The Malikites forbid it completely, and the Hanbalites and a section of the Hanafis allow it to relieve the pressure of sexual desire. A hadith includes the masturbator among seven offenders first to enter the hell fire.

Finally, the issue of coitus interruptus ('azi) also engages the attention as much of traditionalists and jurists as other writers of materia medica, belles-lettres, erotica and popular literature. B.F. Musallam's thorough study on birth control in Islam clearly reveals the popularity of the issue. The Prophet did not seem to have a strong feeling against it, saying: 'If God wants to create it (the foetus), this action will not prevent it'. Despite some early reservations against this practice, the sheer weight of evidence clearly establishes its general acceptance in the Muslim world. One of the reasons for birth control cited by Muslim jurists was that a man might wish to divorce his wife in the foreseeable future - and divorce was fairly easy in Islam. A second argument most frequently used was the fear of begetting slave children of a concubine, legally recognized in Islam.


VI

The study of sexuality in reference to Muslims in South Asia is problematical because of the nature of its sources. First, South Asia does not have the natural advantage of West Asia where the primary Arabic religious-legal tradition not only had set down the normative guidelines for sexual morality but also somewhat reflected the situation in the region. The same tradition based on the Qur'an and sunna provided the theoretical framework of sexual behaviour for South Asian Muslims, but who did not derive their ideas from the South Asian situation.

Secondly, the South Asian question is further complicated by an almost total lack of any interest in studying Muslim sexuality in this region. It is quite commonplace that the historiography of South Asian Islam has been rather more disproportionately oriented towards either political or religious-cultural than social or societal concerns. And the study of sexuality has elicited no interest whatsoever among scholars. This apathy may well have been related to the strong sense of pudency that have steadily grown in Islam, as discussed above.

Finally, in the absence of any basic study in the subject, any attempt in this direction must involve an extremely painstaking and time consuming research in regional literatures of diverse genres - a task quite daunting for an individual scholar. In the circumstances, I have chosen to offer only an impressionistic picture on a none too wide canvas, drawing upon scarce and scattered material, supplemented largely by a corpus of primary literature that belongs to a particular region of South Asia with which I am most familiar, namely Bengal.

Muslim Bengali literature, like its Hindu Bengali counterpart, is broadly divided into traditional verse and modern prose (effectively from the late 19th century for Muslims). The Muslim literary tradition in verse comprises religious manuals or books of instruction in Islamic fundamentals, religious-historical or semi-historical and legendary narrative poems, mystical pada (short song) compositions on the model of the Vaisnava padas; and finally, long narrative poems based on secular romantic themes. Sexual and erotic matters may be found to lie scattered in this literature.

But the 19th century saw a new genre of didactic literature written, unlike the old tradition, not in chaste Bengali but in a mixed Bengali-Urdu diction, being churned out from the cheap presses in Calcutta and becoming rather popular with the Muslim masses. Although this literature concerned itself, like the old tradition, with both religious and secular matters, it brought to bear on its attitude a new missionary zeal in instructing Muslims in all aspects of life including sex and sexuality. Rooted in the classical Islamic tradition as expounded by the Muslim theologians and jurists, this literature reveals undoubted traces of local influence.

One of the most popular sex manuals of this variety clearly acknowledges its indebtedness to Kokasastra, the famous twelfth-century Sanskrit sex manual attributed to the poet Kokkaka or Koka-pandit. The women, in this literature, are classified, as in Hindu sexology, into four groups such as padmini, chitrani, hastini, and sankhini on the basis of their physiognomical features and their corresponding sexual dispositions. There are also innumerable references to indigenous medical properties and prescriptions, and other recipes for the purposes of enhancing sexual virility and concupiscence, making the penis larger and stronger, facilitating the vaginal passage, enlarging or reducing the breasts, maintaining total sexual dominance over wife, bringing sexually coveted women or men under control, and so on.

VII

Muslim interest in Hindu sexology was evidenced as early as the first half of the 14th century, when Ziya Nakhshabi (d. 1350), 'a master of simple and elegant prose', translated Kokasastra. This erotic interest was often expressed in the works of Muslim litterateurs. In Malik Muhammad Ja'isi's (1493-1542) Padmavat, a brilliant product of early Indo-Islamic literature, 'there are examples of purely erotic poetry of the type called sringar rasa in Sanskrit'. Abd al-Rahim Khan-i Khanan (in the early Mughal period) and Raslin or Saiyid Ghulam Nabi Bilgrami (in late Mughal period) were 'regarded as having excelled in erotic poetry'. The greatest value of their writings, says M. Mujeeb, 'lies in their having placed the Indian concept of female beauty, which was true to nature, in opposition to the conventional Persian concept, in which the sex was disguised.'

Love poems in Urdu which are modelled on the Persian ghazal are saturated with erotic imageries and nuances. The general motif of this genre of composition in which two people are involved in a most intense love relationship without the readers being told about the legal status of the lovers is in itself a significant challenge to the law. In both Persian and Urdu ghazals, true love emerges as driven into illicit relationship by the force of fate (nasib) and circumstances. True love, inspiration, life joy and humanism are contrasted with orthodoxy and legalism, or as Burgel puts it,'eros stands against ratio'.

On the other hand there is often an undoubted element of 'Udhrite love in these compositions. There is clear recognition and acceptance of the fact of separation and its rationale. In the opinion of two scholars on the Urdu love poetry under the later Mughals:

'Love was seen as a danger to ordered social life, and was persecuted accordingly... the unfortunate lovers themselves shared this view of love. The character of Urdu love poetry is determined by this background.'

Even in the nineteenth-century Urdu novel, like The Courtesan of Lucknow by Ruswa, the lovers address the beloved in a style typical of the 'Udhrite poetry. A strain of mystical love mixed with 'Udhrite as well as sensual love often lent to Urdu poetry an element of uncertainty and oscillation between mystical and profane meanings, or between sensuality and spirituality. This art of 'glittering ambiguity' or of 'veiling and unveiling' in Urdu poetry is shared in common with its Persian prototype.

During the period of Mughal decline, the provincial culture of Oudh developed a popular style of music called thumri, or 'love music that makes a sensuous appeal through repetition of words and musical phrases'. Its 'theme is human love, not a symbolic representation of divine longing as in the older music'.

An indeterminate fusion of mystical and erotic love for South Asian Muslims was perhaps most poignantly expressed in their attachment to and pursuit of the Krisna tradition both in literature and life. The appeal of Krisna to some medieval Muslims of mystical or other persuasions has been long known, and the Qur'anic sayings such as 'And every people hath its guide' (Sura 13:7), and 'To every people we have sent an apostle' (Sura 16: 36) had made it easier for them to accept Krisna and Rama as prophets.

The devotional songs of the Vaisnavas, or the followers of Visnu and Krisna, 'excited more mystic ecstasy in the Sufis than other forms of Hindi and Persian poetry'. Some were attracted to the Krisna tradition because of its 'strong element of sensuousness', while some 'went further towards worship and devotion'. As early as the 14th century Jamshid, a disciple of a reputed orthodox Sufi Makhdum Jahaniyan, fell into a trance of mystic ecstasy to see a group of singing and dancing Vaishnavites and joined them dancing and roaming for three days and nights on the streets of Kanauj. Saiyid Ibrahim of Pihani (b. 1573), alias Rasa Khan, was a devotee of Krisna, who 'gave up everything and came and settled at Krisna's reputed birthplace, Vrindavana'. A Pathan was converted to the intensely devotional and emotional Vaisnava movement in Bengal under Chaitanya, and became popular as Haridas, the servant of Hari, or Krisna. Mirza Saleh and Mirza Haidar, two Mughal dignitaries were known to have Vaisnava leanings.

Muslim interest in Vaisnava love themes also found expression in music. Sultan Husain Sharqi of Jaunpur is generally credited with the foundation of the romantic school of music called khiyal. Based on the Hindu devotional theme of Krisna's love for the milkmaids (gopini),khiyal 'transformed the devotional theme to thinly veiled invocations of human love and romance'.

There is a very large and rich corpus of Bengali Muslim lyrics modelling itself, in both style and content, on the Hindu Bengali Vaisnava pada, or short songs, on Radha-Krisna love. Elsewhere I have discussed this subject in some detail. Much of this literature is of sufic or mystical nature, while there is an undoubted element of the Vaisnava adoration of the divine love between Krisna and Radha. Regardless of the nature and source of their poetic inspiration these Muslim compositions are replete with strong and bold erotic imageries. While Radha fills her pitcher with water Krisna 'observes Radha's breasts'. Radha's youth is about to give away 'under the weight of the fruits of her bosom'. A look at her face 'sends waves on the ocean of desire' and with her mercy the poet is ready to 'plunge into her youth'. Kami (Krisna) is 'unsettled to see Radha's brassiere (kanchuli)' and his 'mind is arrested to see Radha's breasts'. Kanu appears from nowhere, throws away his flute and 'embraces me' (Radha), 'puts his lips on mine', 'presses on the breasts and tears away my brassiere with his nails'. Kanai (Krisna) tells Radha, 'you are the lotus and I am the bee. Let us go to the garden and satisfy'. Radha is fast asleep 'unaware of Kanu lying in her embrace'. 'My (Radha) lotus of a hundred petals is in full bloom, but my bee, Krisna, is not beside me'. Radha and Krisna 'remain awake in love very late in the night... Binodini (Radha) lies beside him... loses herself in a blissful state. With Kanu in her embrace and one's lips on the other's, Radha is not awake.'


VIII

The obvious erotic elements in the love-dalliances of Krisna and Radha, combined with the sexual ideas and practices of Sakta-Tantrism and of the Buddhist Sahajiyas gave birth later in the 17th and 18th centuries to a number of rather mixed Vaisnava orders at the popular level, the members of which were generally called Vairagis. Some of these groups were strictly esoteric in practices and were given to sexual exercises. Hindus and Muslims alike could join these fraternities as they could and did earlier in Bengal with the Vaisnavism of Chaitanya.

The activities of some of them provoked strong reactions and denunciations from both Muslim and Hindu purificatory fundamentalist and revivalist movements. Dayananda Saraswati of the Arya Samaj launched a vicious attack on them, while the Bengali Muslim didactic and revivalist popular literature in the 19th and early 20th centuries contain similar fulminations against Muslim adherents of them. Some Muslims were known to have been founders themselves of fraternities of this type such as Hazrati, Gobrai, Pagal-nathi and Khusi-biswasi.

In the early part of the present century, Maulana Akram Khan, a distinguished Muslim theologian and reformer, wrote strongly against 'shocking and demoniac' practices of those Muslim 'marfati, faqirs, nedas, or mystic mendicants' or 'Muslim versions of the Chaitanya sects'. He accuses them of practising the rituals of 'five essences' (pancha-ras) rather similar to what was known among the Bauls as 'the piercing of four moons' (chari-chandrabhed), or rituals involving 'four matters derived from the parent's body namely, blood (rakta), semen (virya), excreta (mal) and urine (mutra). The five essences were popularly referred to as black (liqour), white (semen), red (menstrual blood), yellow (excreta), and finally, the esoteric teaching of the murshid, pir, or guru.

These rituals involved coition with the practitioner's wife or other women. They attached special meanings to the Qur'anic terms and concepts. Hauj-i kauthar, or the divine ambrosia, was identified with menstrual fluid (rajas). The ritualistic drinking of semen was based on the interpretation of the key Islamic word 'bismillah' (in the name of Allah) as 'bij me Allah' or 'Allah is in the semen (bij/virya)'. The women disciples were sometimes involved in a ritual with their pir in which the women placed in a room with the pir would take off their clothes, and the pir would put their clothes away, imitating the practice of Krisna stealing the clothes of the milkmaids. This was done to the accompaniment of song and dance, culminating in the women surrendering themselves sexually to the pir who invariably occupied a place of supreme importance among these vaishnavite sects.

For the sect called Aul or Auliya, extra-marital coition was considered of greater merit for the attainment of their religious object. They were specially taught to conquer jealousy resulting from adulterous relations. Reference was also made to a ceremony associated with 'the fulfillment of desire' (Ichhapuran- bhajan). Its aim was to urge every member of the group, male or female, 'not to feel hesitant or shy' about letting other members fulfil their sexual desires with them. All members, for this purpose, would assemble in a 'secluded spot', resort to intoxicants, and fulfil their sexual desires. Any member unwilling to cooperate was treated as a 'great sinner (maha papi).'

Also elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent, religious gatherings and festivals served to ventilate the sexual urges of individuals subjected to severe limitations on the free social mixing of sexes. Muslim participation in Hindu festivals of Holi and Basant partially achieved this object. Even Muslim festivals such as Id al-Fitr performed similar functions. On this occasion, unlike the Roman Catholic Lent, 'rejoicing and voluptuous excesses' followed rather than preceded the particular day of abstinence.

The death anniversaries ('urs, literally 'marriage') of popular saints provided similar occasions for massive mixed gatherings. The 'urs of Salar Ma'sud Ghazi, popularly called Ghazi Miyan, at Bahraich in Oudh was resorted to by many, seeking marriage and fertility. At Makanpur the shrine of Shah Madar was also a popular resort especially for the blind and the lame. In such large gatherings of men, women and 'beardless boys', 'great liberties were taken. Even a rigid Mulla like Abdul Qadir Badauni, the historian, committed an act of impropriety at Makanpur on the occasion of a pilgrimage and was severely beaten and attacked with swords by the relatives of his beloved.'

Mujeeb describes the features of these festivities, consisting of 'song and dance, display of charm, meeting and lovemaking', and adds:

'the lustful indulged themselves without fear where there were crowds of 'boys' such as would 'break the vows of ascetics, sons of gazelles matchless in love-making', 'a world of sinners attaining their heart's desire' and 'multitudes of lechers going about their business'.

The cult of ephebe, or catamites, or pederasty, or handsome boys, was as well known in South Asia as in West and Central Asia. Both Abu'l Fazl and Badayuni of Akbar's times made pointed reference to it. The former considered it 'a custom of Transoxiana transported into India'. It was 'customary with the aristocracy to keep a large number of handsome pages in their train.'

From Tavernier, a foreign traveller in Mughal India, we hear about a Muslim governor of Surat who 'wanted to enter into unnatural intercourse' with a young page, a faqir's son, at his employ. The incident led to a confrontation between the governor and a group of faqirs. Shah Quli Khan Mahram was reprimanded by Akbar for his love for a boy named Qabul Khan. Ali Quli Khan was 'in love' with Shahnam Beg, the son of a camel driver to whom he gave away his own wife, a former prostitute. Shahnam, after having enjoyed her, made her over to Abd al-Rahman. The latter's refusal to return her back to Shahnam led eventually to the murder of Shahnam. Khan sought revenge on Rahman for Beg's murder without success, and consecrated his love and grief for Shahnam with the raising of a lofty building on his minion's remains near Jaunpur.

The Muslim mystics were equally, if not more attracted to amrad, 'the beardless boys' or the divine beloved. Rasa Khan, noted before, fell in love with a boy. Madho Lal Husain (1539-1594), a mystic, given to song, dance and drinking, was named Madho 'out of his intense attachment to a Brahmin youth of that name'.

The case of Sarmad, a friend of the Mughal crown prince Dara Shikoh, was very well known. A Persian Jew, Sarmad accepted Islam, and on his arrival in India he became 'infatuated with a Hindu lad, namely Abhai (Abhaya) Chand, and casting off his clothes, sat down at the door of his beloved. When Abhai Chand's father became convinced of Sarmad's purity of love, he allowed him to take away the boy into his house.'

IX

It has been pointed out that medieval European Christians were concerned and felt threatened by two aspects of the Muslim phenomenon: power and pleasure. If Islam's political power and might terrified them, its sexual life and morality also drew a great deal of their attention.

The medieval European travellers to South Asia provide ample justification for this view, as they offer clear impressions of the sexual life of South Asian Muslims, especially the upper classes. Manucci wrote: 'all Mohamedans are very fond of women, who are their principal relaxation and almost their only pleasure'.

In the words of Careri, Muslims 'spent all they have in luxury keeping a vast number of servants, but above all of concubines. These being many every one of them strives to be beloved above the rest, using all manners of allurements, perfumes and sweet ornments. Sometimes to heighten their master's lusts they give him much wine that he may require company in bed. Then some drive away the flies, others rub his hands and feet, others dance, others play on music, and others do other things.'

Manucci also pointed his finger at sections of the Muslim 'holymen' who had 'control of the women' resorting to them, and added:

'They know how to make use of their opportunities, sparing neither Muslim, Hindu, nor Christian women, if they are good-looking. In addition, they have numerous wives and slave girls in their houses.'

According to Yasin, 'the excessive indulgence of the Muslim community, particularly of the upper classes, in sexual pleasures was encouraged by the abundant booty of captive beauty in war or easy purchase in the slave market'. Besides, courtesanship was a consistent feature as much of the pre-Muslim as post-Muslim phases of South Asian urban social life. They were both a caste and a profession. Ala' al-Din Khalji (1296-1316) tried to control their market, as with other commodities, by putting up a fixed schedule of remuneration for their services. In Akbar's times their number became 'so scandalously large that he was obliged to segregate them in a separate quarter designated as Shaitanpur or the Devil's Quarter and have registers maintained to enter the names of those who visited their quarter'. A prospective young entrant to this quarter was personally interviewed by the Emperor to ascertain if there was any undue influence and pressure on her decision. Aurangzib attempted their expulsion from the city of Delhi or getting them married.


X

The popular instructive or didactic literature in mixed Bengali-Urdu diction since the nineteenth century and still available in reprints, of which we have spoken above, comprises a genre of what may be called a complete sexual manual, dealing with almost all conceivable sexual concerns. The following account is based on Saiyid Shah Sa'dat Ali's popular work.

In this type of writings, marital copulation is very strongly recommended and its virtues are loudly proclaimed. It is soothing for the mind and is also rewarded with progenies. A wife is a 'priceless jewel' should she be a chaste woman. Excessive copulation is, however, to be avoided as being rather 'damaging' for health, since a drop of semen is equal to seven drops of blood. Once a week in normal cases, and once in three days, where there is greater concupiscence, are recommended.

The literature goes at length to list occasions and grounds for not engaging in copulation. Coition on the very first night after the marriage, or on a full stomach are to be avoided. A child with no sense of shame and propriety is born consequent upon copulation in the nude condition. Coition in a standing posture gives birth to a child with bad manners. A thief is the likely issue of a coition during the dawn or the dusk, and an ill-tempered child results from a sexual union in a condition of unhappiness. Other occasions to avoid sexual intercourse are storm, earthquake, eclipses of the sun and the moon, after six months of pregnancy, and the menstrual period, the latter causing insanity in the resultant child.

Copulation with a woman over fifty years of age is as undesirable as that with a minor girl. The jurists also prohibit, according to the author, a sexual intercourse with a woman on the top of a man. Finally, while men should not engage in copulation before the age of twenty, they usually suffer from the lack of sexual virility after sixty.

Following the precepts of Hindu sexology, the Muslim didactic literature classifies women into four classes, as noted above, on the basis of their sexual dispositions determined by their physiognomical distinctions. As in the Hindu literature, the two superior types - padmini andchitrani - are placed on the highest pedestal by virtue of their physical beauty, psychological endowments and sexual richness. Likewise, the inferior types — hastini and sankhini — are thoroughly castigated.

Again, the Hindu sexological notion of the seats of concupiscence in a female body on each day of the lunar month are also adopted in this literature. This information is designed to help concentrate erotic acts on the particular region in the woman's body in order that orgasm is facilitated and hastened. Similar beliefs are also attached to determining the sex of the progeny with the help of choosing the time and circumstances of copulation.

The bulk of this sexual manual concerns itself with a whole range of indigenous Bengali and general Islamic popular recipes for achieving sexual objects such as keeping as well as bringing the coveted woman or women under control, enhancing concupiscence, redressing impotency, strengthening and enlarging the penis, thickening the semen, prolonging the duration of coition, enlarging or reducing the size of the breasts and ensuring pregnancy.

The literature also discusses other venereal matters like masturbation, lesbianism and anal intercourse, and these practices are all strongly condemned. The last named practice sends the culprit straight to hell.


XI

Perhaps the most seminal and relevant issue concerning sexuality has reference to the role and place of women in society. The system that governs the place of women in general in South Asia, though may have had its local labels, is generally recognised as parda (literally 'curtain') referring to a system of veiling and seclusion of women. There are two major facets of parda, namely physical or spatial segregation, and covering of the female face and body. Hanna Papanek has sought to explain the meanings of its observance in terms of the twin concepts of 'separate worlds' of men and women, and the 'symbolic shelter' of women for protection from their sexual vulnerability in the outside world.

Despite a widely prevalent belief in the Islamic origins of parda in South Asia, most modern scholars are convinced of its independent inception in the Hindu society. The recognition of their independence has, in its turn, induced some to draw a marked contrast between the social purposes and objectives of the apparently 'common' Hindu and Muslim practices of parda.

According to this view the aims of the Muslim parda is directed primarily against the 'outsiders', that is, the people outside the family and kins, considered a potential threat to the sexual inviolability of women. The Hindu observance of parda, on the other hand, is said to be geared to preserving the unity and integrity of the family and kins by upholding the respect and avoidance relationships, maintaining the differential position between the conjugal and natal families, and generally refraining from posing a threat to the male-centred family and kin structure.

The case for this differential systems of Hindu and Muslim parda is strengthened by relating these to the respective Hindu and Muslim social organizations and values. It is pointed out that Islamic law, unlike Hindu law, provides for close kin marriage, and the consequent existence of small and almost endogamous marriage groups obviates the necessity of a bride observing seclusion in a strange surrounding with disruptive potentialities.

This notion of a total dichotomy between the Hindu and Muslim observances of parda appears simplistic in the light of other findings and studies. First, despite Islamic legal sanctions for close kin marriage a substantial proportion of Muslims in South Asia, especially the large number of service and artisan groups, practised lineage exogamy in the same manner as their peer Hindu groups. Among Muslims of this circle, intra-family respect and avoidance relationships were very commonly observed. Secondly, Muslim veiling practices outside the family do not seem to correspond to the normative pattern of 'kin-outsider' polarity. In the words of Sylvia Vatuk:

'in many modern Indian Muslim communities the object of the veil is not so much the total outsider or stranger as it is certain persons standing intermediate to these in one's social universe, namely members of one's wider kinship circle, neighbors of one's residential district, and other Muslims to whom one or one's family is known. In other words, one observes purdah with reference to the social approval of persons whose opinion about one's respectability matter. Beyond this group, where one is completely anonymous, the veil become unnecessary.'

Thirdly, veiling and other forms of parda practices were observed by Muslim women, like their Hindu counterparts, before other women, in a variety of situations, thus clearly modifying the popular concept of 'symbolic shelter' from male sexual aggression.

From myriad ethnographic reports on the practice of veiling, especially among urban Muslim women of the younger generation, the use of the veil before strangers appears clearly on the wane even for those who continue to use it in the vicinity of the home. This clearly indicates that 'there is more to the issue than sheltering a woman from the unwelcome advances of outsiders'.

Finally, following from the doubt raised immediately above, one may postulate about a common central concern underlying the South Asian parda system as a whole. Undeniably, the dominant concern in South Asian social development has been the preservation of the structural unity and integrity of the kin group. Marriage, involving admission of non-kin outsiders, contained serious disruptive potentialities that needed accommodation and containment. While violation of sexual purity and modesty posed a grave threat, bringing ignominy to the family and the kin group, maintaining internal hierarchical allocation of status and authority based on sex and age was no less crucial for the structural integrity of the family and kins.

Parda represented a rather complex and intricate system of social and cultural devices to ensure the place of South Asian women in the local community of interacting kin and lineage groups. To ensure sexual modesty, such devices ranged from fixing standards of dress to imposing behavioural restrictions on direct eye-contact, raising the voice, uncontrolled laughter, touching and so on. Likewise, the internal structure of authority was upheld by measures ranging from standardized gestures of deference to more extreme measures of avoidance relationship including veiling and spatial segregation.

XII

In conclusion, a couple of issues relating to Islamic perspectives on sexuality may be underlined. First, Islam is characterized by its positive affirmation of sexuality as a practical and necessary human concern, as we have seen before. This positive attitude was, however, squarely based on an assumption of woman's subordination to man, as characteristic of a traditional society and culture. The Islamic religious tradition, as Hanna Papanek puts it very succinctly, 'stresses the equality of all believers before God but clearly puts men a step above women'.

Islam had undeniably raised, as noted before, the marital status obtained in pre-Islamic Arabia where women were no better than childbearing chattels. The provisions for dower (mahr) and the right to inheritance for women were rather substantial enhancements of women's position and status. And yet the overall position of women's subordination cannot be obscured. There is monogamy for women, polygamy for men; non-marital sex is totally disapproved of for the former, while the latter is permitted concubines and 'girls from the bazaar'; men can divorce very easily, women cannot; two women are equivalent to one man as legal witness; a very widely adopted motif in Muslim fictional literature such as Tuti Nama and The Thousand and One Nights is the wife being encouraged to have an affair with another man by the prolonged absence of her husband from home - all this clearly reflect the dominant male sexist attitudes.

Much of the legal-religious underpinnings of these attitudes are, however, being gradually set aside in many Muslim countries today under pressure either from the growing forces of secularism or Islamic modernism.

Secondly, it appears now in retrospect that both Islamic and Hindu laws began with an advantage on traditional Christianity in terms of bringing a much greater realism to bear on the issue of sexuality in human life. With the rapid secularization of Western law in the recent past, law and sexual morality in Western countries have been clearly differentiated and demarcated. Subject to the three overriding principles of adulthood, consent and privacy ('consenting adults in private'), state and law have been content to leave sexual morality to the individuals concerned. Even Hindu law, in the post-colonial period, underwent significant changes amounting to the virtual secularization of sexual morality. Islam, on the other hand, still largely continues to dominate and control the sexual morality of its believers, forcing even its modernizers to seek the legitimization of reform not in secular but in religious terms, though reinterpreted and reformulated.

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