GreatChineseFall, it's my perception that we've reached a certain degree of mutual understanding and so I'll concentrate on what I believe are the salient issues.
If you find I'm being over-concise or that I've redacted anything you deem to be of abiding importance, feel free to mention it.
As has been said before, divorce is only disliked without a valid reason. You can not have being in a marriage with a Christian disliked(or even forbidden) and ending a marriage with a Christian also being disliked. That would mean that no matter what you do, you would be doing something that is disliked. This is not possible.
This is what's called a "false dilemma" - it means you've presented only two possibilities when there are in fact more. I will focus on this tendency in this post since I believe it's key to resolving any remaining misunderstanding.
A third option to the above is of course to make temporary marriage with Kitabi women. A fourth option is simply to seek marriage with Muslim women, so the possibility of a disliked situation doesn't arise in the first place.
Furthermore, since Sunni Muslims also hold marriage with Kitabi women to be problematic, makruh or even haraam, this issue ultimately rests no more with me than with you.
So what about the married men? What if they are away in a Christian country or land with only Christian women. What is the solution to their situation and why can't they contract mut'ah and try to convert them? Why is it only allowed for unmarried men?
To my understanding this relates to the rights of his Muslim wives concerning him marrying a non-Muslim.
The question could equally be asked about a man travelling in a Hindu or Buddhist country. Just because there are certain women a man may not contract mut'ah with, it doesn't negate the overall generous provision Islam has made for him in the fulfilment of his genuine needs.
Secondly, something I forgot to mention before is the difference in what was allowed and what is currently considered to be allowed. Mut'ah was as I said was permitted under very specific circumstances where the choice was between castration and mut'ah. The same scenario applies to taqiyya for example. Sunni's believe that the circumstances under which it is allowed are very strict and find the concept of taqiyya in Shi'i thought extremely problematic and a license to deceive and lie.
Sunni ahadith present mut'ah in much more general circumstances than you imply. The practical application of mut'ah may encompass the more pressing circumstances, though that's not what it's limited to in your own narrations.
I find your reference to taqiyyah to be extraneous and inaccurate; taqiyyah according to the teachings of Ahl al Bayt(as) is also subject to strict rules.
No, because as you correctly stated it is "ONE OF THE primary rights" as there are many rights and also many obligations. We can't dissmiss them as peripheral because they are NOT peripheral, it's that simple. In the case of mut'ah, they are peripheral or totally absent and left to the discretion and mutual consent of the two engaged in it. Suffice to say that if one were to marry without stating any conditions, many rights and obligations would solidify due to absence of stating any conditions. Mut'ah on the other hand, if one were to contract that without stating any specific conditions it would result in hardly anything else besides conjugal rights and financial compensation.
I had hoped and expected that you would respond with the above. Yes, I agree that nikah and mut'ah are dissimilar in their social functions, but it's the degree of their disparity which is in question, and your screwdriver analogy indicates that you have a tendency to overstate this.
The use of mut'ah as a non-sexual means for couples to approach nikah and assess compatibility cannot be dismissed. Likewise the use of mut'ah as a source of companionship and financial support for those women who, due to age or situation, find they are unable to attract suitors for permanent marriage.
Your last sentence about mut'ah is actually what many critics say about the Islamic concept of marriage on the whole. The black-and-white language you're employing on this subject needs to give way to a more nuanced outlook, I would suggest.
Embarrassement or rather shame is intrinsically connnected to the value, stature and honour of a person and one feels shame if their honour is attacked or their stature and value is perceived to be lowered. Basically, embarrassement or shame can be of three types...
This brings us to what I see as the crux of the discussion. Again I will draw reference to restrictive ways of thinking which result in false dilemmas, or a false trilemma in this case.
Surely embarrassment is something which underlies myriad situations, principles and emotions, in such a way as to defy numeration.
To your three types above one can easily add embarrassment elided with empathy when observing others' inabilities, embarrassment elided with humility when we receive an honour which we feel we don't deserve, or embarrassment as a substrate of modesty in the graceful demeanor of the mu'mineen with good akhlaq.
And I'm sure we can add many more.
The kind of embarrassment under discusuon here, that which I have rejected, is the kind of embarrassment some attach to carnal desires whereby sexuality per se, in and of itself, is considered inherently shameful. It is this attitude which is then used to condemn mut'ah, despite the attitude itself being at fault.
This is not to deny that people feel shy to talk about their personal experiences, for the reasons you quite rightly outline. And it certainly isn't to endorse "promiscuity", which you seem to have mistakenly derived from my previous post.
"Promiscuity" describes the indiscriminate sexual behaviour which takes into account no religious rights or boundaries and thus is not at all comparable to mut'ah which is based upon both.
So to clarify, I'm not defending or condoning promiscuity, but rather attempting to point out that there's no need to regard mut'ah in the same way one would regard promiscuity.
If we regard "promiscuity" as the mere access of a man to numerous partners, then would put us in the territory of those who criticise the marriages of the Holy Prophet(saws), na'udhubillah.
The chief difference, to my understanding, is whether we engage with those partners according to our own whims, or according to the rules and regulations Allah(swt) has established.
Rather than debating side issues with multiple quotation boxes (a format which I find often generates more heat than light), I believe it's differences in conceptual outlook which are key.
In the webcam question (which is out of my remit to address in the absence of a specific fatwa from a scholar, and which could equally be asked of Sunnis) you appear to want me to respond in a way which demonstrates a lack of moral boundaries. But what makes you so concerned with where my own boundaries lie? After all, I'm a fallible person who can be wrong about anything. Is it not better that we try to find where the Islamic boundaries lie, and then draw our own boundaries in the same place? What makes you sure that your own attitude is in sync with that taught by Islam?
As you will be aware, the general rule in Islam is permissibility in the absence of prohibition, not the other way round.
The main, and perhaps the only issue here as I see it is whether you or anyone else can guarantee that they're looking at this from a purely Islamic perspective, or if it's possible that upbringing, societal influence and personal thoughts are responsible in varying degrees.
I put it to you that from the Islamic perspective, even if you believe mut'ah has been banned, there's no reason to object to it in principle.
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February 22, 2015, 07:23:14 PM