Sex & Spirituality | Mufti Abu Layth

mufti why were promiscuous women looked down upon throughout history in your opinion is there an evolutionary explanation for that promiscuous women i'm not sure promiscuous women probably scares women even the term is right so because i don't like that term in that sense because i think that's it's part of the problem um if we're going to say um embracing one sexuality

i think in the past wasn't looked down upon i think women openly if you went back many thousands of years they did openly embrace sexuality hence a lot of the the goddesses of ancient cultures and things like that are goddesses that are often sexual deities because how how could that be um archetyped and symbolized as something in those ancient civilizations as

worthy of kind of this worship if it was seen as something abhorrent so i refuse i i don't believe that in in many if you went several thousands of years ago i feel that they would have openly embraced but i think in the last maybe between last few thousand years only that this culture has started to dominate and and i think actually maybe

yeah so so yeah it started to dominate and then it has kind of become the way especially leading into uh what would have become i think a lot of christianity um ended up because of and i'm not saying it's because of christianity at its core but chris and dumb really took on this thing of denying sexuality and and then obviously uh neighboring cultures and and i don't know whether they they influence one another or did they develop in parallel because because sometimes people can

just develop in parallel similar ideas so yeah so you know certain muslim cultures div embraced this view as well others didn't to be fair but over time this view seems to have preponderated so if you look at ancient india it was still very embracing of sexuality before um the british really take you know hold of india so even when the british are there in the early days uh but they're not they haven't completely taken over it's just the east india company there um india is still quite different and

you have to remember that they have this whole thing they have this culture they have even the hindu endogenous people with kama sutra being this whole thing of the sexual energy being something that one can attain samadhi through through that and this whole you know you can attain this blissful state of um bringing you closer to god is through uh meaningful and powerfully charged sex that was often in many cultures deemed

to be one of the most powerful ways and and you see echoes of that in the muslim culture as well like imam khazali speaking of the ecstasy of of the orgasm is is bestowed it's really a a a property from the realm of the afterlife which is kind of granted in this dunya and you can see the in in many ways the afterlife a place of greater proximity to the divine so how

through this ecstatic orgasmic state one can can be or at least experience or taste a [Music] a a sense of transcendental proximity i feel that these things were there but it's it's kind of died down with the whole um yeah with colonialism it really took a beating and really died a horrible death

and yeah so and even that's whether it was muslims or non-muslims they seem to have adopted this prudish kind of ethics which look down on this so i think that's a an anthropological development culturally speaking that cultures have been through that not just it's nothing to do with um and i think why they look down on women was maybe it was as a sense of control it was a fear that people had because ultimately from an evolutionary perspective it was more about just

wanting to know the the progeny the child is this this was where men would have that from an evolutionary perspective that sense of control or that fear as you so if the woman is is restricted then obviously all the more control that you have it is it kind of gives you more let's say a surety of your progeny so if this is we're looking at it from an evolution evolution perspective

and then i think society when that kind of plays out and manifests at a societal level it it it builds on the concept of shame and shaming someone for being sexual you know and it's it's a and it's a true shame that this that this this exists in muslim culture in some muslim cultures you know i spoke to this i spoke to someone this lady who was asking me for some advice and she had been through a terrible relationship you know may allah make it easy for

for her for everyone who who faces these kind of uh horrific horrific chains of abuse so she wanted a divorce and this is by the way this is a god-given you know this is a hug this is something which a person if they are in a relationship that they are suffering in it is their right in islam that you can't you can't force these people to be in a relationship if they don't want to be in it even if they did want to be in it 10 years ago or 15 years ago or five years

ago but if today they don't want to be in it even if it's because they're being stupid it's still their life their choice you have to accept it so this this lady she was in a relationship for so long and she just kind of just put up with it i guess and eventually she couldn't it got to that point so she was about i think she was 50 years old or in her early 50s and she was seeking a divorce so she went to some masjid um and to ask for assistance on this mata

and she wanted to apply for a hola or for a talaq and she wanted some guidance and the imams really honestly because it's it's it's so horrendous the reaction because they said to see their point was that and i could understand if they were just trying to come from the angle of uh i mean if that was their angle then it was a horrible manifestation of it that if because somebody could be somebody could tell you this problem and maybe you could say well you know what i don't because you don't know how bad it is and you could say look maybe do

you know do you want maybe counseling could work maybe reconciliation maybe you're trying to say look uh you know maybe uh keeping a home together and these are all noble intentions and it's coming from a place of love so that's admirable but if a person is suffering and they're saying look this is what they want then it's their life and so they said to her that look you know why do you want a divorce because look you're already 50 whatever it was like let's say she was 52 and they said like you're already in your 50s and you

what do you want another man and you know it's not going to be that long before you're in the grave i thought that is such a horrible thing to say is absolute bang out of order have no place on earth that there is no place in islam for anybody to say that to somebody you see so it doesn't matter if she's 70 years old she's 80 years old she's a hundred

it's still her life and to impose a kind of social guilt upon her to say well you know what do you want another man wait wait a minute back back it up a bit it's not your place to even ask that what has it got to do with you what is this social guilt and shame that you are trying to put on to her first of all whether she wants a man or she doesn't that's that's nobody's business but even if what's wrong with that like what why are people being put to shame over just being humans it's like oh so

he and then in this case that wasn't even the reason the woman had been in an abusive relationship but even if that was a reason what's wrong with wanting companionship with wanting intimacy with wanting um with wanting sexual wanting sex what's wrong with that so to kind of impose it from a religious perspective with a sense of guilt not even a table tablespoon but like a whole a bucket of guilt in there that is this what you want and look at your age you know you ain't you going to the grave i mean what the hell i honestly i

i heard it and i was you know like secondhand hurt by hearing it i was like who on earth said said that so we have to be careful as well when we speak about the deen to people because you're not allowed to say things like this okay and we are not the gatekeepers of the deed this is allah's deen and we're not and and secondly this this attitude of shame towards what is just very human and creature is this is the fitrah that allah has created

creatures with well why should you be ashamed allah why should you be ashamed that's like saying you should be ashamed of god so there is great responsibility in these things and we have to accept that look other people live their own lives sometimes you know people have said to me sometimes oh you know mostly i know certain such person they want a divorce but they're doing it for all the wrong reasons

so what it's their life they have to learn by their own mistakes you know what what that that's like you know if a person says look i want to get married to this person and somebody says well you know that's a recipe for disaster and it may well be a recipe for disaster it may well be but it's still their life you know they've got somebody says look i'm going to take this job you say well yeah you know i wouldn't recommend that please or somebody says something else stupid in life you know i'm going to do something which is actually stupid it's going to get them into trouble let's say or they're going to do

something but it's their life and it's their mistakes to make especially when they're legitimate choices even if they are foolish even if it's still their life and we have to respect that and people have to always say you know you could say well you know if they ask your opinion in my opinion but it's your life so may allah make things easy for everyone who is suffering i mean and you know and and really may we be able to have a a compassionate bond with this theme in its very natural fitra state

because it's it's totally it's amazingly mesmerizingly beautiful in its natural state right mariam what about promiscuous men exactly that was the that was the point