Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn 'Arabī, Gender, and Sexuality

Chapter 7. Ibn ʿArabī and Islamic Feminism

ChapterSeven Ibn ʿArabī and Islamic Feminism In this final chapter, I outline how my approach to gender in Ibn ʿArabī’s work differs from other contemporary interpretations of his work. In the process, I highlight and reiterate how his central teachings offer unique ways to engage the process and goals of Islamic feminism. I conclude with some reflections on how Sufism in general and Ibn ʿArabī’s teachings in particular shift the foundations of the debates in relation to both Islamic and secular feminism, offering enriching ways to engage questions of gender. Engaging Traditionalist Interpretations Given the nuanced and often subtle manner in which Ibn ʿArabī’s approach both incorporates and transforms traditional gender constructs, his work is open to multiple readings. My interpretation of him differs significantly from some of the standard ways in which contemporary scholars have engaged with him. I believe my approach provides unique ways to grapple with and overcome some of the substantial limitations of the prevalent traditionalist interpretations of his work, which effectively reinforce patriarchy . Two prominent contemporary scholars of Ibn ʿArabī who exemplify this approach are Seyyed Hossein Nasr,1 and Sachiko Murata,2 a former student of Nasr. Their approaches are selective, highlighting one dimension of his work while marginalizing other aspects of his writings. These interpretations and invocations reflect a partial and incomplete perspective on Ibn ʿArabī’s work and do not adequately engage his varying positions. Moreover, their approaches present gender constructs as articulated by Ibn ʿArabī and other specific premodern Sufis as signifying an ontological reality outside of historical and sociological mediation. Scholars such as Nasr and to a more 204 Ibn ʿArabī and Islamic Feminism limited extent Murata ultimately are committed to reading gender essences into the Sufi writings. Consequently, they often reify such gender constructs instead of allowing them the fluidity and deconstructive potential inherent particularly in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings. In varying ways, both Nasr’s and Murata ’s approaches universalize particular elements in Ibn ʿArabī’s work as part of building a broader traditionalist gender paradigm, but these elements reflect his own contextual constraints and language culture. In contrast, my reading addresses some of these aporias in the traditionalist approach and therefore opens up possibilities for rethinking gender relationships in ways that remain grounded in the soil of Islamic spirituality. Nasr and Traditional Gender Complementarity Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a prominent academic scholar of Sufism and a recognized shaykh of the contemporary Maryamiyya Sufi order in the United States, draws on, among other works, the writings of Ibn ʿArabī. While Nasr maintainstheideaofasharedhumanitybetweenmenandwomen,heargues for fundamental ontological differences between them. His work features a pervasive notion that men and women microcosmically embody and reflect different divine qualities that are complementary. As such, men and women are to have harmonious but distinct social functions. Nasr then translates these gendered constructs into practical and social realms: “God is both Absolute and Infinite. Absoluteness—and Majesty, which is inseparable from it—are manifested most directly in the masculine state; Infinity and Beauty in the feminine state. The male body itself reflects majesty, power, absoluteness ; the female body reflects beauty, beatitude and infinity.”3 Whereas Ibn ʿArabī’s references to “masculine” and “feminine” states relate to active and receptive modes, respectively, and are not restricted to biological gender, Nasr directly links these states to men and women. So, according to Nasr, majesty and other jalālī qualities are not only related to a “masculine” state—that is, a spiritual state of activity in Ibn ʿArabī’s terms—but are also reflected in the nature of a man’s body and being. Similarly , beauty and other jamālī qualities are not simply related to a “feminine ” state—that is, a state of receptivity—but are reflected in the body and being of a woman. In such a gendered landscape, one finds a narrow and traditional construct of complementarity in which qualities of majesty are associated with men and qualities of beauty with women. Despite referring to the attainments of some eminent women in Islamic Ibn ʿArabī and Islamic Feminism 205 history, Nasr pursues a hierarchical construct of gender complementarity into the personal-­ political realms. He thus asserts the ontological normativity of male power and its corollary, female obedience: “This [gender] complementarity was rooted in equity rather than equality and . . . on the human levels it recognized the role of the male as the immutable pole around which the family was constructed...