{"id":32714,"date":"2022-12-15T16:08:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T15:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/sessualita-diritto-islamico-cosa-significa-haram\/"},"modified":"2022-12-15T17:16:34","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T16:16:34","slug":"sexuality-islamic-law-what-does-haram-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/sexuality-islamic-law-what-does-haram-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexuality and Islamic Law. What does \u201cHaram\u201d mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discovery of our body, the desire of exploring it to learn the secrets of pleasure, the explosions of joy in sharing it with someone else in a love hug, namely our sexuality, is disciplined by prohibition in many religions, and it\u2019s the subject of various taboos. Rules concerning sexuality are seen as repressive and castrating, the best way to control single individuals and groups: sex as sin, a sin that generates shame and dangerous feelings of guilt. Yet, do we really know what \u201csin\u201d, usually translated with \u201cHaram\u201d, really means in Islam? Serena Tonino, Junior Professor of Islamic Studies at Hamburg University, answers the question.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The closest concept to sin is no that of \u062d\u0631\u0627\u0645 (haram) but that of \u0630\u0646\u0628 (dhanb, that means exactly \u201cSin\u201d). Moreover, while in Christianity there is a state of sin inherent in the human being (original sin), Islam has no such thing. Sin is a specific act that’s committed by a single human being and only concerns that one person. The semantic field of haram is much wider than the one of \u201csin\u201d and it includes everything that in Islam is prohibited, but isn\u2019t necessarily a sin.<\/p>\n

Its root also refers to everything that\u2019s sacred, private or to every place that unauthorised people or who are in a state of impurity, cannot access. In fact, from the same root hrm (\u0631\u0645 \u062d) comes the word \u062d\u0631\u064a\u0645 (hareem; harem) that, as everybody knows, referred to that part of the \u201cprivate\u201d house that was off-limits to men and to the people living in that same house. Also, the Great Mosque in Mecca is called \u201cAl Masjid Al-Haram\u201d.<\/p>\n

Different meanings<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nowadays, haram is colloquially used as an exclamation for something that\u2019s forbidden, or to say \u201cWhat a pity!\u201d, but not necessarily with a religious meaning. For example, if I see someone wasting food, I can say \u201charam!\u201d to express my sorrow. If I see baby crying, I can say \u201cya haram!\u201d, meaning \u201cHow sad!\u201d. There\u2019s been a semantic change, from an exclusively religious meaning to a much wider one.<\/p>\n

If we look, instead, to its technical meaning, haram represents one of the five categories in which the Islamic Law divides human actions, that are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u0648\u0627\u062c\u0628 (Wajib), the \u201ccompulsory\u201d act, for example, fasting during Ramadan;<\/li>\n
  2. \u0645\u0633\u062a\u062d\u0628 (mustahabb), the \u201cvirtuous\u201d act, that is not required but will be rewarded in the afterlife, such as fasting outside the month of Ramadan;<\/li>\n
  3. \u0645\u0628\u0627\u062d (mubah) o \u062d\u0644\u0627\u0644 (halal), the \u201cneutral\u201d, \u201cpermitted\u201d act, that people can do without consequences, neither negative nor positive.<\/li>\n
  4. \u0645\u0643\u0631\u0648\u0647 (makruh), the \u201cdisliked\u201d, \u201cdisapproved\u201d, \u201creprehensible\u201d act (although performing such an act does not automatically lead to punishment it would be best to avoid it; for most jurists, for instance, divorce belongs to this category).<\/li>\n
  5. \u062d\u0631\u0627\u0645 (haram), the \u201cforbidden\u201d act: perform such an action, is subject to punishment in our life on earth and\/or in the afterlife.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    introduction by Rosanna Maryam Sirignano<\/strong>
    \ntext by Serena Tolino
    \n<\/strong>translation by Sara Ahmad<\/strong>
    \n\u00a92018 Il Grande Colibr\u00ec<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The discovery of our body, the desire of exploring it to learn the secrets of pleasure, the explosions of joy in sharing it with someone else in a love hug,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":32715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[406,413],"tags":[7949,7948,1765,7946,7950,7947,2023],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32717,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32714\/revisions\/32717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}