On Booze and Beauty Salons
Recently in the media there have been reports about attacks on beauty salons and alcohol stores through Sunni and Shi'i areas of Iraq. In Western media, these tend to be equated as more or less similar, as a resurgence of "hardline" Islamic values in the midst of Iraq's chaos, notwithstanding the relative stability brought about by the surge. But a healthy dose of skepticism concerning the Islamicity of all of this nonsense is warranted, because in reality the two circumstances, of alcohol stores on the one hand, and beauty salons on the other, have nothing to do with each other under any reasonable understanding of Islamic law in the context of our times.
Let's start with the alcohol, because that more clearly relates to rules of shari'a. Under classical rules of Islamic law, of which all too many scholars are enamored, as I have noted throughout this blog, three of the four Sunni schools categorically banned alcohol. A fourth, the Hanafi, only banned wines, and other forms of alcohol to the extent that they were consumed to the point of drunkenness. Shi'ism's rules were categorical against all alcohol, though far more nuanced with respect to other narcotic substances such as marijuana and opium.
None of these classical rules are close to relevant in the context of the modern shari'a, which, if the practice of modern Muslims means anything, bans alcohol absolutely, to the point where it takes a fairly well educated Muslim to even know that some forms of alcohol were once acceptable to Hanafi jurists in moderation. There is no particular logic that would dictate abandonment of the Hanafi rule; certainly in other circumstances (Islamic finance, for example), practices permitted by the Hanafis and no other school are unambiguously embraced. But law, as we know, operates not through logic but experience, and Muslims found the Hanafi rules on istisna in Islamic finance useful, and alcohol consumption less so, and the rules so evolved.
None of this is to suggest that jurists or clerics necessarily endorse wholesale the firebombing of these places, but that there is at least an Islamic kernel here, arguably. Iraq has traditionally been notoriously alcohol friendly notwithstanding the Islamic character of the place, whiskey being a particular favorite, more than the traditional arak. (Few bother to use Hanafi rules to justify themselves, they drink and suggest God will forgive, meaning that the widespread consumption of alcohol isn't really "Islamic" so much as something lots of Muslims in Iraq do while acknowledging its un-Islamic character.)
And it is certainly easier to purchase alcohol in Suleymania, for example, than it is in Pennsylvania. As a result, the argument might run that the recent attacks are the Islamic response to the historic secularism of Iraqis with respect to the question of alcohol. I think that's wrong, I'll show why in a second, but the argument is there.
When we turn to beauty salons, however, a different result is necessary. The female beauty salon has a prominent place in almost every Muslim society, no matter how conservative. Men in a large number of countries in the Middle East are not permitted in the beauty salons because veiled women, ie conservative, believing women, are within. Islamist women, wives of clerics and activist members of Islamist parties, routinely wear cosmetics and use the services of salons, though they reveal themselves only to their husbands and other women. This is entirely consonant with the juristic rules, which clearly permit cosmetics and beautifying techniques of every conceivable variety, so long as they are not meant to attract the attention of the wrong men (ie not close relatives). See Sistani's rules on the subject here. (In English.)
There is even more than this, however. Modern, conservative Islamists do not view sex in the context of a marital relationship as anything approaching sinful. It is a wife's duty to submit to her husband's sexual desires as a general matter, and failure to do so justifies his failure to provide her with the most basic necessities of life. It is a husband's duty to provide his wife with a regular, continuous sex life. (I focus on Sistani in the links, only because the media reports discuss with some regularity firebombings in Shi'i areas. Happily, the links, as is not the case with previous posts, are in English). A woman making herself sexually pleasing to her husband in this paradigm is not problematic, it is an unalloyed good. Fouad Zakaria reports something similar in Egypt, albeit entirely more vulgar, concerning a cleric's exhortation to veiled women to be "whores to your husbands."
Thus, the idea that those who are closely allied with the most conservative, Islamist sections of society, those seeking to remake the entire nation adhere closely to a particular, contemporary understanding of shari'a, have a problem with beauty salons is categorically false, both empirically and under modern Islamic theory, to say nothing of the classical era.
Naturally, whenever dealing with a subject as vast as Islam, and the immensity of different contexts in which Islam and its legal order manifests itself in the modern world, there are apparently exceptions. The Taliban, it is widely reported, banned beauty salons, not to mention kite flying, white shoes and grape growing. This is not an Islam with which I am familiar, and I've been in some awfully conservative places. Noah Feldman suggests in his book After Jihad that some of the Taliban prohibitions are tribal in nature, rather than Islamic. This may well be, but suffice it to say that when a part of the Muslim world, hewing to their own ideas of shari'a that seem to be tied to unique tribal customs, engage in activity that seems antithetical to most modern Muslim ideas of shari'a (not all, perhaps some of the more conservative Pashtun tribes in Pakistan might be similar), then either we disregard it in considering Islamic law in the modern world in other contexts, or we'll start to generalize Islam out of existence by demanding absolute universality before anything is Islam, in which case nothing is Islam.
So then what do I make of the firebombings, of liquor stores and beauty salons alike? Well, I saw one such activity in Mansour, a neighborhood in Baghdad, which more or less convinced me what this is all about. A gang of black shirted Mahdi army thugs got it into their head to get rid of a liquor store, and so they dragged the poor Christian owner out onto the street, beat him up a bit, stole the air conditioners and furniture from the place, and then lit it with Molotov cocktails. I don't think they'd recognize Quranic verses if they were read to them. Ill behaved youngsters looking to steal and set stuff on fire, and for the easiest excuse to do it. Same crowd that went to a house in a nearby Baghdad neighborhood, shot a widow claiming she was a prostitute, and then rented the place out to someone else.
My guess is that these types of thugs will continue to thrive so long as the social order is in the condition it is in Iraq, and as soon as it reasserts itself, these folks will be where they belong, dead or in jail. But that might be a while yet, surge or no surge.
HAH
Let's start with the alcohol, because that more clearly relates to rules of shari'a. Under classical rules of Islamic law, of which all too many scholars are enamored, as I have noted throughout this blog, three of the four Sunni schools categorically banned alcohol. A fourth, the Hanafi, only banned wines, and other forms of alcohol to the extent that they were consumed to the point of drunkenness. Shi'ism's rules were categorical against all alcohol, though far more nuanced with respect to other narcotic substances such as marijuana and opium.
None of these classical rules are close to relevant in the context of the modern shari'a, which, if the practice of modern Muslims means anything, bans alcohol absolutely, to the point where it takes a fairly well educated Muslim to even know that some forms of alcohol were once acceptable to Hanafi jurists in moderation. There is no particular logic that would dictate abandonment of the Hanafi rule; certainly in other circumstances (Islamic finance, for example), practices permitted by the Hanafis and no other school are unambiguously embraced. But law, as we know, operates not through logic but experience, and Muslims found the Hanafi rules on istisna in Islamic finance useful, and alcohol consumption less so, and the rules so evolved.
None of this is to suggest that jurists or clerics necessarily endorse wholesale the firebombing of these places, but that there is at least an Islamic kernel here, arguably. Iraq has traditionally been notoriously alcohol friendly notwithstanding the Islamic character of the place, whiskey being a particular favorite, more than the traditional arak. (Few bother to use Hanafi rules to justify themselves, they drink and suggest God will forgive, meaning that the widespread consumption of alcohol isn't really "Islamic" so much as something lots of Muslims in Iraq do while acknowledging its un-Islamic character.)
And it is certainly easier to purchase alcohol in Suleymania, for example, than it is in Pennsylvania. As a result, the argument might run that the recent attacks are the Islamic response to the historic secularism of Iraqis with respect to the question of alcohol. I think that's wrong, I'll show why in a second, but the argument is there.
When we turn to beauty salons, however, a different result is necessary. The female beauty salon has a prominent place in almost every Muslim society, no matter how conservative. Men in a large number of countries in the Middle East are not permitted in the beauty salons because veiled women, ie conservative, believing women, are within. Islamist women, wives of clerics and activist members of Islamist parties, routinely wear cosmetics and use the services of salons, though they reveal themselves only to their husbands and other women. This is entirely consonant with the juristic rules, which clearly permit cosmetics and beautifying techniques of every conceivable variety, so long as they are not meant to attract the attention of the wrong men (ie not close relatives). See Sistani's rules on the subject here. (In English.)
There is even more than this, however. Modern, conservative Islamists do not view sex in the context of a marital relationship as anything approaching sinful. It is a wife's duty to submit to her husband's sexual desires as a general matter, and failure to do so justifies his failure to provide her with the most basic necessities of life. It is a husband's duty to provide his wife with a regular, continuous sex life. (I focus on Sistani in the links, only because the media reports discuss with some regularity firebombings in Shi'i areas. Happily, the links, as is not the case with previous posts, are in English). A woman making herself sexually pleasing to her husband in this paradigm is not problematic, it is an unalloyed good. Fouad Zakaria reports something similar in Egypt, albeit entirely more vulgar, concerning a cleric's exhortation to veiled women to be "whores to your husbands."
Thus, the idea that those who are closely allied with the most conservative, Islamist sections of society, those seeking to remake the entire nation adhere closely to a particular, contemporary understanding of shari'a, have a problem with beauty salons is categorically false, both empirically and under modern Islamic theory, to say nothing of the classical era.
Naturally, whenever dealing with a subject as vast as Islam, and the immensity of different contexts in which Islam and its legal order manifests itself in the modern world, there are apparently exceptions. The Taliban, it is widely reported, banned beauty salons, not to mention kite flying, white shoes and grape growing. This is not an Islam with which I am familiar, and I've been in some awfully conservative places. Noah Feldman suggests in his book After Jihad that some of the Taliban prohibitions are tribal in nature, rather than Islamic. This may well be, but suffice it to say that when a part of the Muslim world, hewing to their own ideas of shari'a that seem to be tied to unique tribal customs, engage in activity that seems antithetical to most modern Muslim ideas of shari'a (not all, perhaps some of the more conservative Pashtun tribes in Pakistan might be similar), then either we disregard it in considering Islamic law in the modern world in other contexts, or we'll start to generalize Islam out of existence by demanding absolute universality before anything is Islam, in which case nothing is Islam.
So then what do I make of the firebombings, of liquor stores and beauty salons alike? Well, I saw one such activity in Mansour, a neighborhood in Baghdad, which more or less convinced me what this is all about. A gang of black shirted Mahdi army thugs got it into their head to get rid of a liquor store, and so they dragged the poor Christian owner out onto the street, beat him up a bit, stole the air conditioners and furniture from the place, and then lit it with Molotov cocktails. I don't think they'd recognize Quranic verses if they were read to them. Ill behaved youngsters looking to steal and set stuff on fire, and for the easiest excuse to do it. Same crowd that went to a house in a nearby Baghdad neighborhood, shot a widow claiming she was a prostitute, and then rented the place out to someone else.
My guess is that these types of thugs will continue to thrive so long as the social order is in the condition it is in Iraq, and as soon as it reasserts itself, these folks will be where they belong, dead or in jail. But that might be a while yet, surge or no surge.
HAH
At least I know one thing about Muslims: you will never see one of them in alcohol rehab.
http://www.drugrehabilitationnetwork.com/index.php?name=CmodsWebLinks&file=index&req=viewlink&cid=8&min=30&orderby=titleA&show=10
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