Monday, July 03, 2006

The Male Container: Half-Full or Half-Empty?

Peace Be Unto Those Who Follow Right Guidance.

In what follows, I would like to offer a few brief exploratory comments on the topic of the assumed derivative nature of women relative to men. (I would like to dedicate this piece to Aisha, who is an ongoing source of inspiration for me on these and other issues...)

According to The Qur'an, God/Allah created the human being from a single 'self' (nafs) and from it created its complementary opposite (zawj), and from the two of them (that is, the pairing) brought forth a multitude of men and women. It is interesting to note that the word nafs is gendered feminine - or, alternatively, is jamaali ('beautiful'/'yielding') as opposed to jalaali ('majestic'/'imposing') in intrinsic nature. It is this 'passive'/'receptive' nature of the 'self' (nafs) which enables it to be moulded into a variety of behavioural and attitudinal 'shapes' (that is, characters or personality types). The Qur'an states quite categorically that the human being (insaan) was created from clay and it is in the nature of clay to take on the imprint of whatever is pressed into it. The human being is fashionable, impressionable.

There is a view that a woman is a "man with a womb (rahm)", implying thereby that a woman has something additional to what God/Allah has given man. However, a glass or container can be viewed as either half-full or half-empty: Perhaps it is not only that a woman has something in addition to a man, but that a man is in some sense less than a woman. Certainly this is true in that a man does not have a womb (rahm). God/Allah has tied the womb to two of His Names - Ar-Rahmaan and Ar-Raheem. For a woman to possess a womb is for her to naturally manifest these names in the created world; hence, a woman of natural disposition (fitrah) will always be more compassionate than a man. But does this mean that men do not have the capacity for manifesting rahmah or are somehow essentially deficient in this regard? Clearly, this cannot be the case since the seal of those who received revelation, Muhammad (peace be upon him), is described by God/Allah in The Qur'an as a rahmah for all domains of being (al-'aalameen).

But the fact remains that women possess wombs (arhaam) and men do not. If this is viewed as a deficiency of men, how can they make it up? Perhaps the answer to this question - and I should like to state that this answer was suggested by a Muslim brother, Isa Ibrahiim, during a conversation on the dynamics of sexual and gender complementarity with a Muslim sister - is that men become wombs for their wives (and families) by fulfilling the role of qawwaam (maintainer, provider, care-taker). In the same way that the biological womb (rahm) takes care of the developing foetus, protecting it in a soft, safe, nurturing environment, so by emulating the way of Muhammad (peace be upon him), and fulfilling their role as qawwaamoon, men can manifest the Muhammadan trait of rahmah and thereby acquire a womb-like relationship to their dependants, thereby making good their 'deficiency'.

The Qur'an states that the human being (insaan) has been created "from dried clay that makes a sound when struck". This can be understood symbolically in a number of ways:

(1) It means that human beings are capable of articulate speech (mantiq);

(2) It means that human beings are of a weak or 'brittle' disposition;

However, it could also be understood to mean that human beings are containers that have the potential for being filled with whatever is in their environment.

The glass or container can be viewed as half-empty or as half-full: From the perspective of rahmah, we can look at women as super-men or, alternatively, look at men as sub-women. But this is not necessarily a fixed or unchanging condition of the human male; rather, it is a challenge for men to dynamically change themselves in order to purify, prune and develop the 'self' (tazkiyyat-an-nafs) by manifesting complementarity in the created realm (khalq). Men fail to take up this challenge by not following the "Muhammadan way", by not becoming real men, that is men who acquire 'wombs' through their role as qawwaamoon to women.

Peace