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Sexual Ethics in Islam


Sexual Ethics

In Islam


Sexuality Today & Islam

• Although sex before marriage is not viewed as seriously as adultery, Islam only endorses sexual activity within a legitimate marriage.

• In addition to protecting basic human rights, Islam’s goal is to facilitate a wholesome and balanced spiritual development so that we find happiness in this world and the next.


Physical Desires

• Western sexual revolution with four decades of free sexual experimentation have not resulted in overall happiness, personal satisfaction or better social structures. This is in spite of the fact that the levels of education and material comfort have increased.

• The ever-increasing rates of rape, exploitation of women, theft and increased cases of depression prove we are worse off. This is because of the reality that our physical desires have no limit.

• The more they are stimulated the less satisfied they become — especially sexual desires. People who get bored with their partners want to “experiment” with others to fulfil new fantasies.


Personal & Social ConsequencesConsequences of extra-marital sexual relationships;

• The woman in the relationship is left in a vulnerable position. If the man leaves her, she would be deprived of her chastity, which is held in honour in many cultures around the world.

• The relationship may produce a child. In this case, she (and the society) would also be left with the liability of looking after the child. This has serious consequences, especially in societies without a welfare system where abandoned children provide examples of tragic humanitarian neglect.


Effects on children…• There is a high risk the child would not

know who his or her father is and would come to the world inherently disadvantaged.

• This can pave the way for the child to be more unsettled during their upbringing putting an even greater burden on the mother.

• The child’s basic human rights would be violated even before entering the world scene.


Therefore…

• It is for these reasons that Islam does not approve of sexual relationships outside of marriage.

• That is, Islam seeks to protect women’s and unborn children’s welfare and rights. Islam proposes marriage as the means of satisfying one’s sexual and personal needs.

• Only through marriage can healthy families be established and maintained. Healthy family units, in turn, ensure a healthy society and happiness and safety for all members of society.


What if…?

• The usual argument is “what’s wrong with having sex when both parties are willing and there is protection against the pregnancy?” The counter question is, do you go through the red light at night when there are no cars around? Of course you don’t or you shouldn’t because you might develop a habit of going through red lights. One day, out of habit, you might go through a red light at a busy intersection with devastating consequences.

• Similarly, promiscuous sexual relationships develop a habit, which generally results in one’s inability to establish long-term relationships or cause late marriages with few children.


Impact of Sexual Revolution

• We will see the full impact of the sexual revolution of the sixties when the next few decades will produce very lonely old people and a pension system unable to cope with the demand.

• There will be a lack of a sustainable younger population.

• Furthermore, Islam came for all times and all people. Medication to prevent pregnancy even today is not available for everyone, so the problems associated with sexual relations outside of a marriage still pose social and individual problems for most people in most countries.


Homosexuality


Same Sex Relations

• Homosexuality is very similar to the case of sex outside of marriage in that Islam prohibits homosexual relationships.

• Just as it is not right to make people of homosexual orientation as outcasts of society and oppress them, from an Islamic perspective, it is not right for gay people to marry their partners or adopt children to appear as normal families.

• “Test-tube” babies of the eighties are now adults and are looking for their true parents. Similarly, children born through an unknown surrogate mother will one day want to know who their real mother and father are. Knowing one’s true parents is a fundamental human right.


Therefore..• In the Qur'an, God tells us that

man and woman are designed physically and emotionally to complement one another.

• Their differences combine to produce a collective person in a family.

• Sexual relationship plays an important but only a partial role in the whole relationship between a man and a woman


Everything is in Pairs

The Qur’an also talks about the fact that everything is created in pairs: “Glory be to Him Who created pairs of all things, of what the earth grows, and of their kind and what they do not know.”


Pairs…

• In addition to being a description of a scientific fact unknown at the time of revelation, this verse says that pairs of opposite nature are the rule in the universe.

• Although there are exceptions to this law, exceptions do not change the fact that the divine intent in creating humans was for them to establish families in the way of a male and a female.

• Whether one accepts this or not, the stark reality is that this is the norm. Only the family unit made up of a male and a female can produce an interdependent entity that produces more value than the sum of its individual parts.

• This value is the child produced and the support structures that exist in the extended family.


Three Categories

Islam’s view on homosexuality can be summarised in three broad categories.


1st Category

Homosexual relationships practised by bisexual individuals and omnisexual people who do not care with whom they have a sexual intercourse as long as they satisfy their insatiable libido.

This category is clearly prohibited in Islam, as it is clear that there has been a choice to engage in homosexual relations when a heterosexual relationship could equally be chosen.


2nd Category

Individuals who are sexually attracted to the same sex and have no attraction to the opposite sex. There is currently a claim that this situation is genetic although there is also a strong argument that the environment can play a big role in determining ones sexual inclinations.

Islam still considers it a sin if a person in this state commits homosexual relationships. But because this is a tough test, Islam recommends a person in this case to be patient and promises the reward of Paradise for the inherently disadvantaged.


3rd Category

Individuals who have some physical traits of both sexes. Islam gives them the choice of selecting the sexual identity they prefer.


But He Loves God and His Prophet

• Islam treats “sinners” with compassion and views them as people in need of support rather than alienation.

• When a person spoke critically of a person for committing adultery, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) stopped him by saying, “but he loves God and His Prophet”.


Ordination of Gay People

As there are no religious clergy in Islam, the issue of the ordination of gay people, or for that matter, women in religious posts does not arise.


In Conclusion...

Islam is not against the satisfaction of sexual desires in the form of a legitimate marriage. This is the balanced path between the two extremes of no sexual desires (impotence) and having indiscriminate sexual activity with just about anyone. Any physical desire unchecked eventually becomes self-destructive for the person and the society.

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