Islamic Sharia Laws
Love, Sex and Marriage in the Quran
By Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam
Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009
May 13, 2012.
The Qur’an treats sexuality as a divine bounty. It recognizes human impulse of love and mercy for the opposite sex (30:21), allows the members of either sex without specifying any age to have admiration for a believing member of the opposite sex (2:221). Its verses directly relating to sexuality also invoke divine mercy (7:189) and heedfulness of God (taqwa) (2:223) thereby precluding any notion of sexual abuse or coercion as widely practiced in many Muslim lands and committed by some Muslim husbands against their wives. Sexual intimacy is however forbidden during the fasting hours in the month of Ramadan (2:187) and with the wives who are in their monthly courses (2:222). There is, however, no restriction on women during their courses with regard to their religious or temporal duties and activities. As a woman is divinely ordained to bear the burden and pain of pregnancy, delivery and nursing of the baby, a man remains under the divine obligation to take her full care as her qawwamah (4:34) and acknowledges this by compensating her with a gift or dowry (saduqat) as the essential part of marriage contract authorizing sexual intimacy with a woman (4:4). Men and women in wedlock, however, act as guardians (awaliya) of one another and, notwithstanding the man’s normative role as qawwamah, a woman can have independent income (4:32) and be the co-qawwamah of the household depending upon her financial contributions.
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