Morality and a Fine View
Aaron and Ahmed took me up a hill to their house for tea and some great sunset views over their sacred land. The women in Lattakia are much less veiled. It was nice to get a smile out of their sister.
Ahmed is soon to get married. He's redecorating his house and saving up. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a man in the ruins of Palmyra. He asked me if I was married. I get this question quite often in the Middle East. I said I wasn't and added for good measure that I didn't have a girlfriend either. I tried to carry this off with dignity, alluding with a chuckle to the liberating advantages singleness brings when contrasted with the formulaic template of togetherness. He smiled, so I think he understood. But who knows, maybe he thought these advantages included lots of free-spirited sex and intimacy with a fulsome repertoire of ladies, in which case he was very much mistaken.
The man at Palmyra was also unmarried. But in his case, from what I could gather, no personal difficulties with forming lasting relationships lay behind his status. I suspect there'd be a higher chance of encountering a Martian in the Islamic world than a man who, Morrisey style, would admit to existential difficulties with getting hitched. For one, this would be far too unmentionably unmacho. For another, it would perilously imply women had a real say in the type of personality they got together with. Finally it would imply, related to this, that matchmaking is a question of free choice, not a matter for parents and families and cool considerations of financial viability.
When I asked him why he wasn't married his response was simple, dramatic and very funny. His English wasn't great, so he mimed with his hands. He said that in England all you have to do, as a man, is buy a ring for your wife's finger (and he mimed putting a ring on his finger). But here, in Syria, you have to buy a ring for most of her fingers, and not just that but also bracelets and necklaces and heaven knows what else. I understood him perfectly and we laughed together against the rock, beneath the sun.
Ahmed wanted to talk about relationships and love in the West. Certainly I was interested to hear a Syrian perspective on the issue. However much his theology might be considered free spirited or novel, this cannot be said for his sexual morality, though when he spoke there was no malice or distemper in his bearing; nothing of that stone age thunderousness one typically associates with the religiously intolerant.
More than anything else it was innocence I discerned. I've seen this quite alot here. In many ways it's rather charming. Sexuality is strikingly absent in the Islamic sphere, in public anyway. This is no shattering revelation. Obviously, I sense this so much, however, because I come from the West. From a West which parades sexuality before the face of the world as if it's the Holy Grail itself, self-sprung from concealment, liberally presented triumphantly for all.
Ahmed is soon to get married. He's redecorating his house and saving up. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a man in the ruins of Palmyra. He asked me if I was married. I get this question quite often in the Middle East. I said I wasn't and added for good measure that I didn't have a girlfriend either. I tried to carry this off with dignity, alluding with a chuckle to the liberating advantages singleness brings when contrasted with the formulaic template of togetherness. He smiled, so I think he understood. But who knows, maybe he thought these advantages included lots of free-spirited sex and intimacy with a fulsome repertoire of ladies, in which case he was very much mistaken.
The man at Palmyra was also unmarried. But in his case, from what I could gather, no personal difficulties with forming lasting relationships lay behind his status. I suspect there'd be a higher chance of encountering a Martian in the Islamic world than a man who, Morrisey style, would admit to existential difficulties with getting hitched. For one, this would be far too unmentionably unmacho. For another, it would perilously imply women had a real say in the type of personality they got together with. Finally it would imply, related to this, that matchmaking is a question of free choice, not a matter for parents and families and cool considerations of financial viability.
When I asked him why he wasn't married his response was simple, dramatic and very funny. His English wasn't great, so he mimed with his hands. He said that in England all you have to do, as a man, is buy a ring for your wife's finger (and he mimed putting a ring on his finger). But here, in Syria, you have to buy a ring for most of her fingers, and not just that but also bracelets and necklaces and heaven knows what else. I understood him perfectly and we laughed together against the rock, beneath the sun.
Ahmed wanted to talk about relationships and love in the West. Certainly I was interested to hear a Syrian perspective on the issue. However much his theology might be considered free spirited or novel, this cannot be said for his sexual morality, though when he spoke there was no malice or distemper in his bearing; nothing of that stone age thunderousness one typically associates with the religiously intolerant.
More than anything else it was innocence I discerned. I've seen this quite alot here. In many ways it's rather charming. Sexuality is strikingly absent in the Islamic sphere, in public anyway. This is no shattering revelation. Obviously, I sense this so much, however, because I come from the West. From a West which parades sexuality before the face of the world as if it's the Holy Grail itself, self-sprung from concealment, liberally presented triumphantly for all.
There seems to be two reasons for our Western sexual obsessions. Firstly, we're trying to reclaim sexuality as an integral part of what it means to be human, after having lived through centuries of sex slander under the regimen of shy and brittle neo-platonists, gentlemen we've revered as priests of a God who's always favoured spirit far above matter, despite the fact he's gone to the trouble to create matter. Secondly, we're being exploited by a media and advertising industry that knows all-too-well, at least as much as the priests did, that sex is something we're far from indifferent to, something therefore they'd do well to focus on as they manipulate us into harbouring desires and fascinations for products of the capitalist system that, left to our own devices, we might see through as cheap, tacky and crass, or at the very least not see as the objects of our true hearts desires which we're brainwashed into thinking they are.
Ahmed doesn't believe in sex before marriage. As a twenty two year old I suspect this hasn't been much of a burden for him, especially now that he's marrying soon. I wonder if he lived to be 36 and unmarried, he'd think the same way. That's an interesting thing, isn't it, about the no sex before marriage ruling. In the past people always married young so it was never much of a problem. Obviously, though, since 'God's law' is written in stone, it doesn't make the slightest difference that people now marry later and later, or that life itself changes and is not stone.
Adultery, as well as sex before marriage, is also horrible to Ahmed. He said God will punish it. That it is the worst thing you can do. I suspected he was being rhetorical. I hoped so anyway. Actually, I don't know if adultery is legal in Syria, in the eyes of the secular state. One thinks somehow it should be, if you're thinking in a secular way. But clearly it's unacceptable on the Islamic street. I told him that adultery isn't a crime in the West, though I wished I could tell him when it was legalised, but I didn't know. I didn't defend adultery. My opposition to adultery, and to infidelity for the unmarried, is simply based on the fact that it constitutes a lie, that it's deceitful. People in monogamous relationships say to each other that they'lll be faithful to each other, and they expect that from each other too; or at least they expect it from the other if not from themselves. If they're not going to be faithful, why did they say they would be in the first place.
Certainly I didn't agree that God punishes adultery. I don't understand God as a punisher. Mankind is the punisher, not God. Nature is the punisher, not God. Call it Karma if you will. Karma is the punisher. I agree with the Buddhists in this. But God, who obviously cannot be hurt by anything we do to him, operates outside of the system of retalliation. Moreover, it was to put an end to punishment, according to my theology, that God came to get punished on the cross.
Even though Ahmed had just said that nothing was worse than adultery, he revised his opinion, as I suspected he might, when I asked him about homosexuality. This now became the ultimately bad thing.
What could I say? I could have tried to rile him by referring to what I'd heard, correctly or incorrectly, that homosexuality is not as rare in the Islamic world as one might expect it to be, given the severity of the prohibitions against it. But I was enjoying my tea and their hospitality and didn't want to generate bad vibes. All I really said by way of trying to forge a connection was that I didn't really understand homosexuality. Which is true, I don't.
Ahmed wanted me to stay longer but I was tired. It was fascinating talking to him but I needed to be alone, so I waited for a bus to drive me back the 30km to Lattakia at an absurdly excessive speed.
Ahmed doesn't believe in sex before marriage. As a twenty two year old I suspect this hasn't been much of a burden for him, especially now that he's marrying soon. I wonder if he lived to be 36 and unmarried, he'd think the same way. That's an interesting thing, isn't it, about the no sex before marriage ruling. In the past people always married young so it was never much of a problem. Obviously, though, since 'God's law' is written in stone, it doesn't make the slightest difference that people now marry later and later, or that life itself changes and is not stone.
Adultery, as well as sex before marriage, is also horrible to Ahmed. He said God will punish it. That it is the worst thing you can do. I suspected he was being rhetorical. I hoped so anyway. Actually, I don't know if adultery is legal in Syria, in the eyes of the secular state. One thinks somehow it should be, if you're thinking in a secular way. But clearly it's unacceptable on the Islamic street. I told him that adultery isn't a crime in the West, though I wished I could tell him when it was legalised, but I didn't know. I didn't defend adultery. My opposition to adultery, and to infidelity for the unmarried, is simply based on the fact that it constitutes a lie, that it's deceitful. People in monogamous relationships say to each other that they'lll be faithful to each other, and they expect that from each other too; or at least they expect it from the other if not from themselves. If they're not going to be faithful, why did they say they would be in the first place.
Certainly I didn't agree that God punishes adultery. I don't understand God as a punisher. Mankind is the punisher, not God. Nature is the punisher, not God. Call it Karma if you will. Karma is the punisher. I agree with the Buddhists in this. But God, who obviously cannot be hurt by anything we do to him, operates outside of the system of retalliation. Moreover, it was to put an end to punishment, according to my theology, that God came to get punished on the cross.
Even though Ahmed had just said that nothing was worse than adultery, he revised his opinion, as I suspected he might, when I asked him about homosexuality. This now became the ultimately bad thing.
What could I say? I could have tried to rile him by referring to what I'd heard, correctly or incorrectly, that homosexuality is not as rare in the Islamic world as one might expect it to be, given the severity of the prohibitions against it. But I was enjoying my tea and their hospitality and didn't want to generate bad vibes. All I really said by way of trying to forge a connection was that I didn't really understand homosexuality. Which is true, I don't.
Ahmed wanted me to stay longer but I was tired. It was fascinating talking to him but I needed to be alone, so I waited for a bus to drive me back the 30km to Lattakia at an absurdly excessive speed.
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