Intimacy In Arab-Islam

Intimacy can present itself in many different forms. From sensual love-making, passionate love for another, or simple closeness to another human being, intimacy is something humans (hopefully) experience many times throughout their lives. There is not a second thought to how we assign intimacy to different acts or feelings, but in the Arab-Islamic world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some intimate acts could lead one to severe punishment or even death. Islamic law was (and still is) tricky to navigate and depending upon what school of law an individual observed, one would be subject to a variety of penalties. Add to that the gray area that is intimacy and sexual behavior and one is left with a problem-- at what point does behavior
Sadly, this was not the case for men and women living in the Middle East during the Ottoman Empire. The line between what was accepted and what was not was blurred by the fact that there was not a general agreement in society of how far was too far. Finding someone beautiful or attractive was okay as long as you thoughts were pure. Desiring to have sex with them, having sex with them, falling in love with them, or having a relationship with them was not. It is obvious as to where that line is-- do not do anything sexual with a boy or think about anything sexual. The inappropriate hinged on sex. The biggest gray area is where thought is involved. It is impossible to read another’s mind and if one were to accuse someone of sexual thoughts without proof, the accuser could be the one that was punished. So, for the population in the Middle East during the 1500s, intimacy between two men or two women could either result in death or no punishment at
The general consensus was the same among all of the four schools-- it is okay to look at beardless boys as long as you have no lust or desire. There were some problems with this though since the founders of some schools of law pushed the opposite. For example, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder of the Hanbali school of law along with Abu Hanifah, founder of the Ḥanafī school of law both abstained completely from looking at boys. Their argument was that “no one ought to consider himself immune to temptation and exempt from the prohibition of looking at boys.” This absolutist idea then trickled down to other prohibitions such as listening to music, smoking, and drinking of coffee. One can see many problems in this-- interpreting law and behaviors like this would only lead to mass suppression of ideas and limit individuals on every action they may or may not take. Even though Hanbal and Hanifah both took extreme views, most jurists of the time period were opposed to the idea that looking at youths for every reason was prohibited. Again, this muddied the waters of how to behave and how one could intimately navigate the social world in the Middle