Asifa Quraishi

"Established Islamic jurisprudence therefore often describes marriage as a type of sale, with the item being purchased being a wife’s sexual organs. There are qualitative differences between the rights of a wife and a female slave, of course, and the jurists do carefully lay these out, but nevertheless, the concept of male ownership of women’s sexual parts becomes an important part of the traditional juristic understanding of what makes sex licit in Islam."

"Most Muslims today either are not aware, or do not like to emphasize, the theoretical presumptions embedded in the Islamic jurisprudence of marriage law because they are quite far from contemporary sensibilities. Established Islamic marriage contract law uses the contract of sale as its basic conceptual framework—a model which leads to some uncomfortable conclusions about what is being sold and the role of women’s agency in that sale. Even more out of step with modernity is a historical context in which slavery and concubinage were socially acceptable. Because of their presumption that a man may legally have sex with his female slave, classical Muslim jurists draw an analogy between a marriage contract and a contract for sale of a concubine, using this analogy to work out the doctrinal details of the respective rights (sexual and otherwise) of a husband and wife."