The Sufi metaphysicians were drawing on a longstanding distinction between the divine names that were called Names of Majesty (jalal), and the Names of Beauty (jamal). The Names of Majesty included Allah as Powerful (Al-Qawi), Overwhelming (Al-Jabbar), Judge (Al-Hakam); and these were seen as pre-eminently masculine. Names of Beauty included the All-Compassionate (Al-Rahman), the Mild (Al-Halim), the Loving-kind (Al-Wadud), and so on: seen as archetypally feminine. The crux is that neither set could be seen as pre-eminent, for all were equally names of God. In fact, by far the most conspicuous of the divine names in the Qur’an is Al-Rahman, the All-Compassionate. And the explicitly feminine resonances of this name were remarked upon by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) himself, who taught that rahmah, loving compassion, is an attribute derived from the word rahm, meaning a womb (Al-Bukhari, Adab, 13). The cosmic matrix from which differentiated being is fashioned is thus, as in all primordial systems, explicitly feminine; although Allah “an sich” remains outside qualification by gender or by any other property.

Further confirmation for this is supplied in a famous hadith, preserved for us by Al-Bukhari, which describes how during the Muslim conquest of Makkah, a woman was running about in the hot sun searching for her child. She found him and clutched him to her breast saying, “My son, my son!” The Prophet’s Companions saw this and wept. The Prophet was delighted to see their rahmah and said, “Do you wonder at this woman’s rahmah for her child? By Him in Whose hand is my soul on the Day of Judgment, God shall show more rahmah towards His believing servant than this woman has shown to her son” (Al-Bukhari, Adab, 18).

And again: “On the day that He created the heavens and the earth, God created a hundred rahmahs, each of which is as great as the space which lies between heaven and earth. And He sent one rahmah down to earth, by which a mother has rahmah for her child’ (Muslim, Tawba, 21).

Drawing on this explicit identification of rahmah with the “maternal” aspect of the phenomenal divine, the developed tradition of Sufism habitually identifies God’s entire creative aspect as “feminine” and as merciful. Creation itself is the nafas Al-Rahman, the breath of the All-Compassionate. Here, the Ash’arite occasionalism, which insists on preserving the divine omnipotence by denying secondary causation, is shifted into a mystical, matronal, register, where the world of emanation is gendered by the sheer fact of its engendering. “We have created everything in pairs,” says the Qur’an.

This “female” aspect of God allowed most of the great mystical poets to refer to God as Layla—the celestial beloved—the Arabic name Layla actually means “night.” Layla is the veiled, darkly unknown God Who brings forth life and Whose beauty, once revealed, dazzles the lover. In one branch of this tradition, the poets use frankly erotic language to convey the rapture of the spiritual wayfarer as he lifts the veil—a metaphor for distraction and sin—to be annihilated in his beloved. 

One thinks here of Christian bridal mysticism, but in reverse. St Teresa of Avila appears to use sensual images to convey her union with Christ. But again, Christ, as God the Son, is male. In Islamic mysticism, the divine beloved is female.

The kalam hence abolishes gender; spirituality deploys it exuberantly as metaphor, thereby displaying an aspect of the distinction between iman (faith) and ihsan (state of well-being). The third component of the ternary laid down by the hadith of Gabriel—islam—comprising the outward forms of religion, also recognizes and affirms gender as a fundamental quality of existence, and this finds expression in many provisions of Islamic law and the norms of Muslim life.

The pattern of life decreed by Islam, which is the retrieval of the Great Covenant (mithaq), is primordial, and hence biophiliac and affirmative of the hormonal and genetic dimensions of humanity. Body, mind, and spirit are aspects of the same created phenomenon, and are all gendered through their interrelation. To the extent that the human creature lives in wholeness, that creature’s spiritual essence is possessed of gender, whence the magnificent celebration of the genius of each sex, which is so characteristic of Islam. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) himself can only be fully understood in this light: his virility indicates his wholeness and hence his holiness. His archetypal celebration of womanhood, his multiple wives, recalls the virility of Solomon or other Hebrew patriarchs, or even of Krishna. Living life to the full, he embraced and utterly sacralized the divinely appointed rite of procreation.

His khasa’is, the rules that the Lawgiver fashioned for him alone, and which are listed by Suyuti in his Al-Khasa’is Al-Kubra, generally imposed upon him rigors from which his followers were exempt. The Tahajjud prayer was obligatory for him, but only optional for other Muslims. He was entitled to fast for 24 hours, or for much longer periods (the so-called Continuous Fast or sawm al-wisal); although ordinary believers were required to fast from dawn to dusk only. His khasa’is are for the most part austerities; and yet among them we find the inclusion of an expansive polygamy. Several of his wives were elderly, it is true (Sawda, Umm Habiba, Maymuna), and their marriages may have been straightforward matters of compassion and political wisdom; but other wives were young. By his triumphant polygamy, the Blessed Prophet was indicating the end of the Christian war against the body, and rhetorically re-affirming the sacramental value of sexuality that the Hebrew prophets had proclaimed.

Inseparable from this was his valor on the field of battle. His style of spiritual self-naughting linked to heroism has no European equivalent: It was not that of the celibate Templars, or the Knights of Calatrava, but resonated instead with the warrior holiness of Krishna, or the bushido of medieval Japan. The samurai ethic combines meditative stillness, military excellence, and love for women in equal measure; it is a spectacular expression of maleness which is illuminative of this, to many Europeans, most remote and ungraspable dimension of the Sunnah.