This is a continuation of a multi-post article. You can read the first post here. This is also part of a larger series called "The Koran from a Christian perspective." You can find other posts in this series here.When treating the subject of sex, the Koran always presents in from the man's point of view. Sex is always presented as something for the man, not the woman. Women are nothing more than objects for the satisfying of a men's sexual appetite. Even in marriage, sex is for the man's pleasure and women are merely objects for its fulfillment.
"Your women [wives] are a tillage [field] for you; so come unto your tillage [field] as you wish, and forward for your souls;" (Koran 2:223)Even during the holy month of Ramadan, God writes to men not to deprive themselves of sex and, where thy did not but had lied about it, God forgives them. God tells them that it was never His intent that they should deprive themselves of sex or try to hold in check their sexual desires, even during the holy month. Men are to enjoy sex as often as they like.
"Permitted to you, upon the night of the Fast, is to go in to your wives; -- they are a vestment [garment] for you, and you are a vestment for them. God knows that you have been betraying yourselves, and has turned to you and pardoned you. So now lie with them, and seek [with full desire] what God has prescribed for you. And eat and drink, until the white thread shows clearly to you from the black thread at the dawn; then complete the Fast unto the night, and do not lie with them while you cleave to the mosques." (Koran 2:183)What is missing from the Koran is any discussion of a man duty to his wife or the benefit of any pleasure sex might bring to a husband's wife. Sarah says something very interesting when she first heard the angel say she was about to become pregnant.
"Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?'" (Genesis 18:12)I believe that, at least in part, the pleasure Sarah refereed to was the pleasure of intercourse and she laughed, in part, because she understood Abraham's inability to perform as he once did. We know that Abraham, "contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old." (Romans 4:19) For them, sex was out of the question, yet Sarah had not forgotten the pleasure it once brought to her and to her mate. Paul goes on to teach about sex in marriage saying,
"The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does." (1 Corinthians 7:3-4)Here, Paul presents sex and something the two of them share together and with the open consent of each other. Sex is not one-sided; it's not something that the wive gives to her husband whenever he wants it; it's not something her husband demands or takes anytime he pleases. Sex is for their mutual satisfaction and pleasure and is an expression of their oneness in the flesh. When sex becomes one-sided it becomes a perversion of what God intended, even when it happens in a marriage.
Sex in marriage is never to be demanded or taken as a right, but God intended it to be consensual. In speaking of times when a couple might abstain from sex, Paul writes,
"Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." (1 Corinthians 7:5-6)Sex in marriage, including its time, place, and frequency is to be determined by the couple alone, by their common consent, and not demanded by one for the sake of their own sexual impulses or desires. Sex is not just for the man, but for the two that have become one. God always intended sex for the mutual pleasure of a wedded couple and as a token of mutual love between the two of them.
More to come...
David Robison
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