Muhammad and Rumi on Sexual Harassment

It is a time of reckoning for men around the world who have disrespected and brought distress and harm upon women. Rumi, writing about what could be called the “sacred feminine,” quotes the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him):

The Prophet said, “Woman

prevails over the wise man,

while the raw and ignorant prevail over her.”

Those men who lack tenderness and affection

are animals, not men.

[see Mathnawi I 2421-2437]

To paraphrase: woman can dominate a wise man who can recognize the creative power and divine quality vested in the feminine and willingly choose to serve and protect that beauty, while the ignorant and insensitive man imposes his crude desires upon her. Such a man is actually enslaved to the power of woman, but is deaf, dumb, and blind to what woman might offer willingly if her freedom and beauty were respected.

Or as Rumi says it:

If outwardly you dominate your wife,

inwardly you are dominated,

seeking her love.

What pleasure can a man receive from “groping” a woman (or worse), oblivious to the fact that the greatest pleasure of human relationship is in reciprocity? These are some of the spiritual secrets that have been lost to worldly societies, East, Middle East, and West. Too many men, emotionally crippled by both Puritanism and salaciousness, enslaved to lust, numb to intimacy, violate the sacredness of eros.

Again, from Rumi:

She is not that kind of beloved most imagine;

she is a ray of God.

She is not just a created,

she is creative.

All Rumi quotes from Love’s Ripening, Rumi on The Journey of the heart, Kabir Helminski and Ahmed Rezwani.