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| Islam and the Divine
Feminine peNkaLai kâtalikkiręn So often has Islam been portrayed as an
exclusively masculine, patriarchal faith that many have never suspected
the central importance of the Feminine in Islam and would be astonished to
realize that it has been there from the beginning. Perhaps in part due to
the metaphysical interiority of the Feminine, this aspect of Islam has
lived a largely hidden existence — but it is no less vital for that. In
recent years there has been much discussion and controversy over how to
reshape Christianity to include the Feminine on the divine level, but in
Islam that has never been an issue, for the feminine element in Islam has
always been present, especially in Sufism. Although both masculine and feminine
equally have their origin in the Divine, I would like to take a special
look at the feminine in Islam to help redress the balance because the
feminine side of Islam has been mostly overlooked so far. Moreover, in the
sources of Islam and in the Sufi tradition growing from there, we find a
distinct, explicit preference for the feminine aspect of Allah, especially
the nature of ultimate Divine Reality as essentially feminine. The Polarity of Divine Majesty and Beauty The distinction between male and female is
not just a biological accident but a very profound element of the human
state. It goes back from the biological through the psychological and the
spiritual to the Divine Reality itself. On the highest level of the Divine
Reality, Allah is perfectly One. The root of the duality between the
masculine and feminine is found in the divine nature itself. Allah's
Essence transcends all duality, all relationality, so it is beyond male or
female. But even on the level of the Divine Nature, there are the roots of
the masculine and the feminine. On the highest level, Allah is at once
Absolute and Infinite. These two attributes are the supreme archetypes of
the masculine and the feminine. "Masculine" and
"feminine" are not simply equivalents of the human male and
female, since all men and women have elements of both masculinity and
femininity within them. That Allah is Absolute is the principle of
masculinity, and that Allah is Infinite is the principle of femininity.
Allah has revealed Himself in the Qur’ân in the names of rigor and
mercy, known as the names of Majesty (Jalâl) and Beauty (Jamâl). The
Generous, the Merciful, the Forgiving are names of mercy or Beauty, while
the Enumerator and the Just are names of rigor or Majesty. On the level of
the names are the principles of the masculine and the feminine: the names
of Majesty are the prototype of masculinity, while the names of Beauty are
the prototype of femininity. Vis-ŕ-vis the world, Allah is Creator.
This divine function is on the masculine side, representing the aspects of
action force, movement, rigor; Allah as Lawgiver. But then there is the
uncreating aspect of Allah. Allah is not exhausted by His creation of the
world. Allah is more than the creator of the world: al-Khâliq, the
Creator, is only one of the divine names. The Divine Reality did not
completely participate in the act of creation. Allah is Infinite and the
world is finite. The non-creating aspect of Allah corresponds to the
Divine Femininity. It is this to which Sufi poetry so often refers in the
feminine. The images of the beautiful Beloved are referring to the
metacosmic aspect of the Divine, not the creating aspect. That is why Ibn al-Árabî says Allah can
be referred to as both huwa (He) and hiya (She). Feminine Terms of Divinity Some of the key terms associated with the
Divine are in the feminine gender in Arabic. Three of them are essential
to understand the feminine dimension in Islam. One of Allah's names is
al-Hakîm, the Wise; Wisdom is hikmah. In Arabic to say, for example,
"Wisdom is precious," you could repeat the feminine pronoun:
al-hikmah hiya thamînah, literally "Wisdom, she is precious."
This has resonance with the forgotten Christian mystical tradition, in
which Wisdom is personified as a woman, the divine Sophia, associated with
the Virgin Mary. The second term is rahmah (mercy), related to the most
important name of God after Allâh: al-Rahmân, the All-Merciful, related
to the word for 'womb', rahim, the source of life. The source of life is
the Divine Mercy and the feminine aspect of it is very evident. The third,
the most remarkable of all, is the word for the Divine Essence itself:
al-Dhât, which is also feminine. In that the Divine Essence is
Beyond-Being, unmanifest and transcending all qualities, it may be
understood as Feminine. The renowned Sufi master Najm al-Din Kubra wrote
of the Dhât as the "Mother of the divine attributes." According
to a commentary on Ibn al-‘Arabî's Fusűs al-hikam, a hadith of Prophet
Muhammad "gave priority to the true femininity that belongs to the
Essence." Ibn al-‘Arabî himself wrote that "I sometimes
employ the feminine pronoun in addressing Allah, keeping in view the
Essence." On this metaphysical plane, femininity
corresponds to interiority and masculinity to manifestation. In the
traditional Islamic city, beauty is interiorized. All human beings contain
both elements within themselves, in their souls and bodies and psyches.
The perfection of the human state, al-insân al-kâmil, means the
perfection of both masculine and feminine qualities together, the
prototype of both male and female. In Sufism, men and women perform
exactly the same rites and worship, so the perfection of human
spirituality is equally accessible to men and women—unlike in Theravada
Buddhism, in which a woman must be reborn as a man to attain nirvana. Female Imagery of the Divine Beloved in
Sufi Poetry Sufi literature has the greatest discussion
of femininity in Islam. Sufi stories have transformed ordinary love
stories into the most sublime levels of meaning. The love story of Layla
and Majnun is the best-known of all. It originated as a simple love story
in Arabia, but Sufi literature elaborated it into the most beautiful love
story ever put into Persian poetry. It symbolizes not only the love of man
and woman in Allah, but the love of man for Allah. In these poems the
heroine is elevated to symbolize the Divine Reality itself. The Divine
Reality is spoken of in terms of female beauty. The hero goes in quest of
the Divine, which is a masculine act. In contrast to Christian mysticism,
in which God is actively masculine and the devotee is passively feminine,
Sufi love stories depict the Beloved as a woman who is a Presence waiting
in stillness while the hero is in quest for her. The name Laylá comes from the word layl
meaning 'night'. Night represents the Unmanifest. In the Arabian desert,
the night is a reality without boundaries: forms are dissolved, no sand
dunes or camels or anything else visible, all is formless, nothing but
darkness. This is direct symbolism of the unmanifested aspect of the
Divine Nature, Allah as Unmanifest. Blackness absorbs all light, as it is
above manifestation, so it symbolizes the Beyond-Being. In the poem, Layla
was named for the blackness of her hair and the beauty of the night. By
extension, it in fact refers to the beauty of the Divine Reality beyond
this world, beyond the act of creation, and therefore the supreme goal
that the Sufi seeks to reach. The name of Majnűn literally means 'crazy',
but here it means someone not in an ordinary state of mind, symbolizing a
person in quest of Allah. In this world in which most people forget Allah,
the person who remembers Him is considered crazy. As the male figure, Majnűn
symbolizes the aspect of yearning and striving, going out in quest of
Layla, while she is just sitting and combing her hair. The one who
undertakes the journey, longing and crying for Layla, is the soul of the
Sufi. Allah as the Beloved in Sufi literature,
the ma‘shűq, is always depicted with female iconography. Although Islam
is aniconic and does not make images of Allah, verbal depiction exists.
Sufi literature is replete with this imagery of our experience of Allah as
the vision of the Beloved and union with the Beloved. An elaborate
vocabulary developed in which every part of a woman's body, especially the
face, symbolizes the Divine Reality. For example, the eyebrows are likened
to a bow that shoots the arrow of the eye's glance, the arrow of the love
of Allah into our hearts and makes us go beyond ourselves. Like the eyes
of veiled women in traditional Islamic culture, where all you can see are
their beautiful dark eyes: their whole vocabulary of love has to be
expressed through a single glance. The ruby-red lips with their red color
symbolize wine. Wine is used in Sufi literature to symbolize going beyond
our ordinary consciousness into union with the Divine. Although wine is
forbidden in Islamic law, there will be pure wine to drink in Paradise.
Since Sufis experience Paradise here in this world by having inner
experience of the higher levels of reality, the wine of Paradise is
accessible symbolically through Sufism. Here, the redness of this wine is
conjoined with the color of a woman's lips. At the same time, the kiss of
the lips is an erotic symbol of union and intimacy. For example, Rumi said in the Masnavi: The Vision of God There was a question long debated in Islam:
can we see Allah? The Prophet said in a hadith: "In Paradise the
faithful will see Allah with the clarity with which you see the moon on
the fourteenth night (the full moon)." Theologians debated what this
could mean, but the Sufis have held that you can see Allah even in this
world, through the "eye of the heart." al-Hallaj said in a poem:
"ra’aytu rabbi bi-‘ayni qalbî" (I saw my Lord with the eye
of my heart). The Sufis said that since you can have the experience of
Paradise even in this world, you can have the vision (ru’yah) of Allah.
They have always described this theophanic experience as the vision of a
woman, the female figure as the object of ru’yah. The Tarjumân al-ashwâq, Ibn al-‘Arabî's
collection of love poems composed after meeting the learned and beautiful
Persian woman Nizam in Mecca, is filled with images pointing to the Divine
Feminine. The last chapter in his book Fusűs al-hikam relates that man's
supreme witnessing of Allah is in the form of the woman during the act of
sexual union. The contemplation of Allah in woman is the highest form of
contemplation possible: As the Divine Reality is inaccessible in
respect of the Essence, and there is contemplation only in a substance,
the contemplation of God in women is the most intense and the most
perfect; and the union which is the most intense (in the sensible order,
which serves as support for this contemplation) is the conjugal act. Allah as Mother In contrast to Christianity, Islam has
never depicted God as Father. Such a comparison is completely outside the
boundaries of Islamic discourse. However, Muslims have always found it
easy and natural to speak of the maternal qualities of Allah. Prophet Muhammad was the first to use the
example of mothers to illustrate Allah's mercy. After a battle, the
Prophet and his Companions came upon a group of women and children. One
woman had lost her child and was going around looking for him, her breasts
flowing with milk. When she found her child, she joyfully put him to her
breast and nursed him. The Prophet asked his Companions, "Do you
think that this woman could throw her son in the fire?" They answered
"No." He then said: "Allah is more merciful to His servants
than this woman to her son." (From the hadith collection of al-Bukhari). Another al-Bukhari hadith describes how
during the Muslim conquest of Mecca a woman was running about in the hot
sun, searching for her child. She found him, and clutched him to her
breast, saying, "My son, my son!" The Prophet's Companions saw
this, and wept. The Prophet was delighted to see their mercy, and said,
"Do you wonder at this woman's mercy (rahmah) for her child? By Him
in Whose hand is my soul, on the Day of Judgment, Allah shall show more
rahmah toward His believing servant than this woman has shown to her
son." Jalal al-Din Rumi, in an amazing passage of
the Masnavi on the Return to Allah, made reference to the story of the
infant Moses and addressed Allah directly as "Mother": On Resurrection Day, the sun and moon are
released from service: The Ka‘bah in Mecca, the very heart and
pivot of the Islamic world, naturally is associated with feminine imagery,
veiled in the black color of the Feminine Beyond-Being. Medieval writers
and poets have often compared the holiest shrine of Islam to a veiled
bride or a desired virgin, especially when on the pilgrimage. Their goal
was to touch and kiss her beauty mark, the black stone. Khaqani was the
Persian poet who most frequently employed this symbolism in his pilgrim
poems. But another look at the Ka‘bah can come from the root of its name
in the Arabic language. Although the word ka‘bah itself means 'cube', it
is very close to the word ku‘b meaning 'woman's breast'. This turns out
to be an appropriate metaphor, as indeed the Ka‘bah nurtures with the
milk of spiritual blessing all the faithful who come to touch and kiss it.
Consider also the eminently feminine Yoni form of the Black Stone's
setting. The Prophet's Feminine Soul Prophet Muhammad's soul had a deeply
feminine nature within. When his Companions asked him whom he loved most
in the whole world, he answered it was his wife, 'Â'ishah. They were
surprised to hear him announce love for a woman, as this was a new concept
to them; they had been
thinking in terms of the manly camaraderie between warriors. So they asked
him which man he loved most. He answered Abű Bakr, 'Â'ishah's father, a
gentleman who was known for his sensitivity. These answers confounded the
Companions who until then had been brought up on patriarchal values. The
Prophet was introducing reverence for the Feminine to them for the first
time. Surah 109 in the Qur'ân, al-Kawthar, gives
an especially revealing look into the Prophet's
feminine soul. It was revealed because his enemies had been
taunting him that he had no sons, only daughters, while they had been
given sons to perpetuate their patriarchal ways. Allah revealed this
message of consolation to the Prophet: "We have given thee al-Kawthar
... surely the one who hates thee will be cut off (from progeny)."
What is al-Kawthar? A sacred pool of life-giving water in Paradise-a
profoundly feminine symbol. It represents a heavenly exaltation of the
Feminine over patriarchal society. The name of Kawthar is derived from the
same root as kathîr 'abundance', a quality of the supernal Infinite, the
Divine Feminine. Woman as Creator One of the most outright declarations of
the Divine Feminine in all Sufi literature is in Rumi's Masnavi. In a
passage praising the feminine qualities of kindness and gentleness, a
passage that is increasingly well-known in these days of the resurgent
Feminine, he says: Woman is the radiance of God, she is not
your beloved. The Primacy of the Feminine in Islam Seen from the exterior, Islam may appear as
a masculine-dominated faith. That is because its external aspects, such as
the sacred law that governs the social order, are a manifestation of
Allah's jalâl attributes. The hidden side of Islam, little known to the
outside world, lives and breathes the values of interiority, the loving,
forgiving, merciful Divine Presence that draws hearts closer, the infinite
jamâl aspects of Allah's Beauty. The eternal primacy of Allah's feminine
nature is established in a hadith qudsi: "My mercy precedes My
wrath" (rahmatî sabaqat ghadabî). Beyond all, the infinite eternal mystery of
Allah's uncreated Essence is the Divine Feminine that is the ultimate
spiritual Reality, calling to the souls who love Allah to come home and
find perfect peace. with permission from the author |