Revising the Jurisprudential Literature Ruling the Couples’ Sexual Relationships with the Approach of Achieving Sexual Health in Marriage

One of the most important purposes of marriage is to satisfy the couples’ sexual needs. Islamic jurisprudence has long viewed the sexual needs in marriage and its elimination through the lens of rights and duties and meanwhile distinguishing husband from wife, it has considered the sexual rights of both separetly and finally it has intended to the predominant preference of the husband in terms of priority to satisfy sexual needs. The famous opinions of the jurists indicate the application of the husband’s right of sexual enjoyment; however, in the case of the wife, the minimum level of enjoyment is sufficient.Jurisprudential researches either aim to justify this inequality by referring to developmental or gender differences or they try to provide the ground for showing equalityand balance in satisfying this need by creating a restriction on the husband's right to enjoy and inviting him unnecessarily to pay more attention to his wife's needs.

In this analytical and descriptive research, jurisprudential literature ruling the couples’ sexual relationships is carefully read and reviewed in order to clarify the importance of satisfying couples’sexual health and also to what extent it is permissible and possible to enter jurisprudential inferences in couples' sexual relations and to determine its limits.

Based on the results of this study, it can be said that the couples’ sexual rights can be defined only on the basis of sexual satisfaction of both parties in the context of socializing and red lines of the Shari'a, and it may not be appropriate for Islamic jurisprudence to extend the scope of its duties to determining the quantity and quality of sexual merit of a husband and wife.