Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [404]
Since the word bur itself does not appear in the Ayya, the interpretation is somewhat obscure. “Those who restrain the eyes” (Aaruf ’ayn) can be interpreted in several ways. One key is to associate them with Quran 56:22, where the “pure of eye” (bur ’ayn) are described in a very similar description of paradise. Hence the women receive their name, the bur. In later tradition, they often are described as constantly repristinated virgins, possibly picking up on connotations of their designation as “pure.” But a more cautious interpretation would be that they are wives (’azw’aj), taking a clue from yet another, similar Quranic passage (36:56). In the original description, the bur are described as modest women. They restrain their glances and sex is never mentioned, though their glances may imply seductiveness. There are more than two bur but their number is not given.
Another opinion in later tradition, that “ḥur” is a specification of the fruit mentioned earlier in two locations, is unlikely grammatically and seems to be an apologetic against the later excessive sensuousness of this picture of paradise. But beautiful women who serve the needs of the men are a regular part of the folklore of the Hejaz. They are a conventional picture of the court and pleasure gardens of a wealthy, powerful sheikh (tribal chieftain) or an oriental potentate. Given the culture from which it arose, that the pleasures of kingship are used to describe Allah’s special paradise reserved for His martyrs ought not to be surprising. The strict regulation of sexual access before marriage in this part of the world, a custom that preceded Islam and is by no means confined to it, accounts for the paradisal vision of the pleasures and wealth, as compensation for forgone youthful pleasures in this world.
This alluring portrait is part of Islam’s efficient organization for conversion and conquest. Few have ever been convinced to fight to the death by a philosophical treatise. The mujahidin’s attainment of a sheikh’s harem is a more concrete and attractive reward. There is no corresponding reward for female martyrs.35 But wine-drinking (forbidden to Muslims on earth), garden leisure, and other pleasures can be envisioned. Christians and Jews have tended to denigrate this description, especially in its most florid versions, because orgiastic sexual relations are implied in heaven. Neither Jews nor Zoroastrians should find the more temporate descriptions so jarring, as both religions affirm the benefit of sexual pleasures on earth and, sometimes, in heaven.
As for continued sexuality in paradise, Jews and Zoroastrians opine on both sides of the issue. For Islam, the imagery of the pleasure garden was also transformed by sophisticated theologians and mystics; but the pleasure garden remains a lively tradition with ordinary Muslims and is still especially relevant for those who seek martyrdom. Each tradition picks its own vocabulary to express the balance between pleasure and piety. In Islam, the words of the Prophet himself are a useful guide: “la rahbaniyya fi al-Islam,” he announced, “There is no monasticism in Islam.” Neither is there in Judaism or Zoroastrianism. Modesty is a virtue but celibacy per se is not.
The concrete image encourages Muslims to greater bravery and piety. For intellectuals, for non-traditional Arabs, and for Muslims in non-Arab lands with very different notions of sexuality, Islam also contains a great many more sophisticated views of the afterlife, in which the nature and pleasures of postmortem identity are explored philosophically or mystically. But there is no doubt that the pleasure-garden motif is a strong characteristic of the traditional Muslim view of paradise. So characteristic is it of Muslim narratives of heaven that pleasures of this world and great works of art are regularly described as “the fragrance of paradise.”36
The Early Extremist Shi’a Mystics
OTHER ENGINES of Muslim religious conquest