By Ali Syarief
This afternoon, for what must be the umpteenth time, my Japanese friend “Sir Tanaka” invited me to soak in an ofuro—a public bath said to be one of the finest in Japan. The place was bustling, filled with people. As soon as I stepped inside, the scene unfolded: hundreds of men, completely naked, walking casually, chatting, or simply sitting in the steaming water.
The etiquette was clear: do not gaze at another’s body. Yet in reality, the eyes inevitably catch glimpses—whether intended or not.
As a Muslim, this is no trivial matter. In Islamic teaching, the aurat—the intimate parts of the body—are not to be exposed except to one’s lawful spouse. Even looking at them without necessity falls within forbidden bounds. And in that moment, my mind leapt far back in time, to humanity’s very first story: Adam and Eve.
In “Paradise”—a religious fiction, a mythic realm within the language of faith—they were naked without shame. But after violating God’s command, an awareness of their nakedness suddenly emerged. They rushed to cover themselves with leaves. From that moment, nakedness became something to hide—a disgrace.
This raises a question that to some may sound provocative: if nakedness in paradise was perfectly natural, why is it forbidden on earth? Did God change His mind?
The short answer: no. God does not change His mind. What changed was the condition of humanity.
In the fictional realm of paradise, nakedness did not invite sin because there was no corrupted desire. The gaze was free from lust, the body was not a commodity, and relationships were untouched by temptation. Upon descending to Earth, humans carried different baggage: the capacity for lust, ambition, and the struggle for dominance. An uncovered aurat now carries social, psychological, and even political consequences. Covering it is not merely a matter of morality—it is a bulwark of civilization.
In Japan, the ofuro stands on a different cultural logic: to be naked in certain public settings does not automatically mean indecency. There is a deliberate separation between communal bathing and sexuality. Islam, however, views the aurat not simply as a matter of intent but as a universal principle that transcends cultural context.
Leaving the ofuro that evening, my body felt refreshed, but my mind was filled with questions hotter than the bathwater: how did nakedness shift from a natural state in “paradise” to a source of shame on earth, and why do some cultures choose to preserve its normalcy?
Perhaps the answer is simple: God never changes. It is humanity that has changed, and the aurat stands as a reminder that we live here on earth—not in paradise, whether one sees it as truth or as a myth that has shaped moral law.
From an anthropological perspective, the story of Adam and Eve is a foundational myth—a cultural origin tale that explains humanity’s beginnings while also laying down moral foundations. Similar patterns emerge across civilizations: in Greek mythology, Pandora’s act of opening the forbidden jar transformed the world from a state of bliss to one of hardship, echoing the shift from paradise to the earth. In the Sumerian epic, Enkidu lived naked in the wild, unashamed, until “civilized” through human contact and clothed for the first time. Even in ancient Chinese legend, Fuxi and Nüwa are depicted covering themselves after imparting civilization to humankind.
Such parallels suggest that the narrative arc of “naked-then-clothed” is not unique to one faith but is a deep-rooted archetype in human imagination. It marks the transition from a state of innocence to a state of culture, from a world without norms to one defined by them.
In this sense, “paradise” is symbolic language. Whether one believes it as history or as fiction, the story works like a mirror—reflecting who we once were and why we now cover ourselves. And in the haze of the ofuro’s steam that evening, I realized: perhaps this tale is not merely about being naked or clothed, but about how we learned to become human.
Perhaps, too, the Japanese ofuro is. Still, a fleeting taste of the “paradise” imagined by humankind—a place where nakedness carries no shame—yet for me, that taste can only be savored on the surface of the hot water, while my faith keeps my feet firmly on the ground.
