The Divine Feminine in Islam manifests metaphysically and in the inner ...

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" The Divine Feminine has always been present in Islam. This may be

surprising to many people who see Islam as a patriarchal religion.

Maybe the reason for this misconception is the very nature of the

feminine in Islam. The Divine Feminine in Islam manifests

metaphysically and in the inner expression of the religion. The

Divine Feminine is not so much a secret within Islam as She is the

compassionate Heart of Islam that enables us to know Divinity. Her

centrality demonstrates her necessary and life-giving role in Islam.

 

Sûfîsm, or as some would define it " mystical Islam " has

always honored the Divine Feminine. Of course, Allâh has both

masculine and feminine qualities, but to the Sûfî, Allâh has

always been the Beloved and the Sûfî has always been the Lover.

The Qur'an, referring to the final Day, perhaps divulges a

portion of this teaching: " And there is manifest to them of God

what they had not expected to see. " [39:47]

 

Islam is aniconic. In other words, images, effigies, or idols of

Allâh are not allowed, although verbal depiction abounds. There

was a question long debated in Islam: can we see Allâh? The Prophet

said in a hadith, " In Paradise the faithful will see Allâh

with the clarity with which you see the moon on the fourteenth night

(the full moon). " Theologians debated what this could mean, but

the Sûfîs have held that you can see Allâh even in this

world, through the " eye of the heart. " The famous Sûfî

martyr al-Hallaj said in a poem, " ra'aytu rabbi bi-`ayni

qalbî " (I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart). Relevant to the

focus of this paper is that Sûfîs have always described this

theophanic experience as the vision of a woman, the female figure as

the object of ru'yah (vision of Allâh). "

 

Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the

Ahlul Bayt Sufis