Notes on an Islamic Education

By Abu Fatoush

I came to know Islam through a woman and for what it’s worth I think that’s the only way to go about it. It seems somewhat counterintuitive that I would learn about Islam while engaging in the most un-Islamic of activities, namely living with a believing woman I wasn’t married to, doing things only married people are supposed to, but I’ve always figured God to be the best joker of all. I was more than willing to roll with the punches. And so for me Islam, more than anything, has always been a tad bit sexualized.

Sure there are other aspects of the faith to be celebrated, the commitment to justice, giving to poor, being humble before God. Yeah, I understood all that. These are things she taught me. We’d have countless discussions on what this or that religious point meant. I even confessed that were I to become a Muslim that I would be Shi’a. The Shiites always seemed to me be about the Blues. I could relate to the injustice. I thought Ashura was a bit over the top but I understood where they were coming from.

Yet all this Islamic instruction was, for me, simply sex by other means. Now you may say that I have too much sex on the brain. Sure. I’ll concede that but so does everyone else. It’s who we are and no faith can ignore it. Thus while my religious education might have deviated from the normal Islamic pedagogy, the substance of what was learned was spot on. All of which brings me to the epiphany I had a few days after she informed me that she had met someone else.

Mind you this was to be expected, the “someone else,” I mean, not the epiphany. Our relationship had run its course. We knew how the movie was going to end. There was no sense in watching the credits roll, again. We wanted different things. There was no way to get around it and so we separated--at least in theory. I say in theory because we continued to sleep together. I for one could see no reason in stopping that and for a time, bless her, neither could she. It was far too enjoyable to be thrown out with the bathwater. Besides, I still wanted to learn more about Islam and from what I could tell, her curriculum was way better than anything on offer at Al Azhar.

But of course, to torture this metaphor even further, school eventually had to end. And end it did. And that’s where the epiphany came in as I walking home thinking, not even thinking really, I think the more apt word is obsessing. Anyway I was obsessing over what she and her new lover were doing at that precise moment. You don’t need to be the Grand Mufti for me to tell you that in my mind they could be only be doing one thing--and doing it repeatedly. Time of day it was unimportant. I was convinced of that. But that wasn’t the epiphany, that was garden variety male neurosis.

The epiphany was that the space carved out for women in Islam is based largely on that thought I had walking home. I didn’t want her having sex with another man, ever. No matter that we had broken up. I still wanted to control access to her. I wanted to possess her. Because, point in fact, I was still more willing to watch the credits roll again than have the house lights turned on.

I still wanted to be the focus of her attention. The thought of another man touching her, another man kissing her, another man making love to her, that thought made me ill.

And it is that illness that gives you the hijab and the niqab and all points in between. I simply didn’t want her to have a sexual life outside of hers with me. It is a purely selfish idea I know but a very real one nonetheless.

Of course this covering debate has gone on and on and will continue ad nauseum but it will never get passed the idea that it is essentially something to ease men’s fears. For men, it will always be about possession, about security. Women can claim that it brings them closer to God and that’s all well and good but the fact of the matter is they are doing backstrokes in the male id and every man who’s honest with himself knows it. I suspect women know it too. You can see it behind the eyes of the first wife when the second one is brought home.

At the end of the day a man doesn’t give two bits about a woman’s faith in God. What he wants to know is that the woman he loves isn’t having sex with anyone but him, ever. It’s the fiction we tell ourselves, that there were none who mattered before us and there will be none after.

We are the alpha and omega. We can build up an elaborate theology to mask it but who are we fooling really? A woman’s piety is her chastity. That is the entry point to heaven. Faith itself is a man’s game. The rules are there to keep us in that theater, happy with the fiction and oblivious to the fact that movie stopped playing long ago.

Thus far I have not commented on whether my former lover is happy with her new one. I imagine she is quite happy and I would be lying if I said I didn’t want her to be happy. I love her as the dearest of friends and I want her to be happy. But her happiness is not what I was thinking of in the instant before my epiphany and while I think of her happiness more and more, there a moments of weakness when the mind drifts to that other thought.