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Woman solutions
Beyond the Veil, Fatima Mernissi:
They’re not just any old sacred recitations he’s muttering to himself as he ploughs away—they’re incantations specially chosen to protect him because he believes you’re the embodiment of evil! That’s got to make any girl feel special.
[For hardliners] the sexual act is considered polluting, and is surrounded by ceremonials and incantations whose goal is to create an emotional distance between the spouses and reduce their embrace to its most elementary function, that of a purely reproductive act. During coitus, the male is actually embracing a woman, symbol of unreason and disorder, anti-divine force of nature and disciple of the devil. Hence a dread of erection, which is experienced as a loss of control and, according to Ghazali [11th century], referred to as darkness in verse 3 of sura 113:Say: I seek refuge in the lord of daybreakIn an attempt to prevent a complete merging with the woman, the coital embrace is surrounded by a ceremony which grants Allah a substantial presence in the man’s mind during intercourse. The coital space is religiously oriented: the couple should have their heads turned away from Mecca. “They should not face the ‘holy shrine’ in respect for it” [Ghazali]. This symbolism of spatial orientation expresses the antagonism between Allah and the woman. Mecca is the direction of God. During intercourse, the man is reminded that he is not in Allah’s territory, whence the necessity to invoke his presence.
From the evil of that which he created
From the evil of darkness when it is intense.It is advisable for the husband to start by invoking God’s name and reciting “Say God is one” first of all and then reciting the takbir “God is most great” and the tahlil “There is no god but God” and then say, “In the name of God, the high and powerful, make it a good posterity if you decide to make any come from my kidney”. [Ghazali]At the crucial moment of ejaculation, when the physical and spiritual boundaries of the lover threaten to melt in a total identification with the woman, the Muslim lover is reminded:It is suitable to pronounce, without moving the lips, the following words: “Praise be to God who created man from a drop of water”. [Ghazali again](Other reports on the words a Muslim is supposed to pronounce during coitus are in Imam Bukhari, al-Jami’ al-Salih, and Imam Tarmidi, Sunan al-Tarmidi.)
They’re not just any old sacred recitations he’s muttering to himself as he ploughs away—they’re incantations specially chosen to protect him because he believes you’re the embodiment of evil! That’s got to make any girl feel special.
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Indeed, as I alluded to. What I was getting at here, though, was how the sort of casual everyday misogyny, which I reckon has probably been about since the dawn of time, got elevated to such a hysterical level - and not just in Islam of course.
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But not necessarily. The dawn of writing stuff down, maybe, but much of that has gone on under lumbering, patriarchial, monotheistic, "he's the creator of the entire Cosmos but he needs constant validation" belief systems. For all we know, under those prehistoric fertility cults men held the constantly-belittled status women are now so generously afforded.
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It's possible, and some Wicca types certainly do hold this belief. Personally, I doubt it. I don't really see any reason why monotheism, writing and other civilisation advances should have gone hand in hand with distrust and hatred of women. The major religions may have codified it, but there's probably something deeper at work. Sagan talks a lot about "reptilian" behaviour, referring to impulses that originate in the base functions of our brains. I imagine that's the origin of all this nonsense.
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Because the more a literal, male-minded monotheistic regime distrusts creativity, free thinking and chaos, the very things it associates with femininity, the more it will want to stamp on it. And I know, I know, everyone's got a story of this one Jesuit guy who was all about the free thinking—but these people are always the minority. You don't get to be a successful monotheistic deity without mindless obedience from most of your devotees.
And I'm suggesting the writing happened to follow the establishment of unhelpful "no god but God" superstition, not that writing is of itself a misogynist act, though there is the odd ultra-feminist who thinks so—the pen being phallic and all.
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