NYT: "Sex Talk for Muslim Women"
An Insider’s Assault on Islamic Values and It’s Shari’ah
Mona Eltahawy has contributed, as an op-ed writer an article “Sex Talk for Muslim Women” in the The Opinion Pages of New York Times on May 5, 2016 http://nyti.ms/23tgUoy. She is the author of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” and introduces herself in this essay as “I am not a cleric, and I am not here to argue over what religion says about sex. I am an Egyptian, Muslim woman who waited until she was 29 to have sex and has been making up for lost time. My upbringing and faith taught me that I should abstain until I married. I obeyed this until I could not find anyone I wanted to marry and grew impatient. I have come to regret that it took my younger self so long to rebel and experience something that gives me so much pleasure.”
An Insider’s Assault on Islamic Values and It’s Shari’ah
Mona Eltahawy has contributed, as an op-ed writer an article “Sex Talk for Muslim Women” in the The Opinion Pages of New York Times on May 5, 2016 http://nyti.ms/23tgUoy. She is the author of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” and introduces herself in this essay as “I am not a cleric, and I am not here to argue over what religion says about sex. I am an Egyptian, Muslim woman who waited until she was 29 to have sex and has been making up for lost time. My upbringing and faith taught me that I should abstain until I married. I obeyed this until I could not find anyone I wanted to marry and grew impatient. I have come to regret that it took my younger self so long to rebel and experience something that gives me so much pleasure.”
I think it is necessary that we analyse her arguments and prepare ourselves for the correct response.
Let me make it clear, to start with. She has a right to “have” her views and keep it to herself. But she wants to propagate them; moreover these views relate to my/our religion and therefore we have a right and a duty to analyse these “views”. I am not concerned with her. My target are her views that seem to misguide and corrupt my sisters in Islam. Let me try to answer point by point.
First, she starts as an Egyptian Muslim woman and is addressing Muslim women and then contradicts herself “I am not a cleric, and I am not here to argue over what religion says about sex……” Every proud and practicing Muslim first looks for guidance from the Islamic Law and Jurisprudence (Fiqh/Shari’ah) on any topic before embarking on it. So, Ms Mona if you want to talk as a Muslim to Muslims on sex then first read or consult a cleric on what Islam has to say on this subject and then give your reasons to alter or reject them on the basis of Shari’ah, knowledge and reason. To make the carnal desires as central to the argument conveys too much of an animal and too little of the human. If you are not a believing Muslim and you have a right to do that (though our Mullas will go for your neck for that!!) then please talk as a woman and address other women in general. You cannot eat the cake and have it. If you are a member of a club it is your civic duty to follow its rules and regulations. If you have serious differences with them, you are honor bound to voluntarily quit.
The writer goes at great length to describe the results of interviews at her Book reading, Book tour “that took me to 12 countries. Everywhere I went — from Europe and North America to India, Nigeria and Pakistan….”, her jammed emails on this subject and “when I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma in 2010”. She enumerates the statements of some women as “I, too, am fed up with waiting to have sex”, “I’m 32 and there’s no one I want to marry. How do I get over the fear that God will hate me if I have sex before marriage?”, how to “get rid of this burden of virginity”, “ask about hymen reconstruction surgery if they’re planning to marry someone who doesn’t know their sexual history”, “the sexual straitjacket we force upon women”, “the stories on women’s sexual frustrations and experiences”. She then adds “Many cultures and religions prescribe the abstinence that was indoctrinated in me.” I would like to respond thus:
First, elementary human physiology teaches us about the hardship of holding on sex gratification till marriage. The writer did not need the interviews to learn that.
Second, for every single woman that she has interviewed there are tens of thousands of women from the 1.6 billion Muslims who brave this trial period voluntarily and happily to build the family - unit of a civilised Muslim society - on rock solid grounds.
She has quoted some sites of “sex-positive attitudes” like the blog Adventures From the Bedroom of African Women, founded by the Ghana-based writer Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, and the Mumbai-based Agents of Ishq, a digital project on sex education and sexual life. She adds “As the writer Mitali Saran put it, in an anthology of Indian women’s writing: “I am not ashamed of being a sexual being.” I would like to remind the writer that a sense of shame is a highly noble attribute of civilised human beings. Animals and other sexual beings are just incapable to achieve that level.
The climax of the article appears in the last sentence: “My revolution has been to develop from a 29-year-old virgin to the 49-year-old woman who now declares, on any platform I get: It is I who own my body. Not the state, the mosque, the street or my family. And it is my right to have sex whenever, and with whomever, I choose”.
This ‘revolution’ to the vast majority of sisters in Islam, including the educated and intellectual is a steep decent and degeneration into abyss and disaster.
Yes, Ms. Mona Eltahawy it is obvious to the blind that you own your body. Humans have been using their body as they like over a wide spectrum over the centuries. One extreme on the right are the Catholic Nuns and the other extreme on the left are the Prostitutes, euphemistically aka sex workers who are forced by circumstances to use their bodies to earn a living. Your revolution lands you in this latter neighborhood with one very strong difference: they do it for money; you propose it for gratification of one’s carnal desires. There are some reports to suggest that even some species of animals do not indulge in such free sex. It is your car and your life; still you cannot drive at any speed everywhere. It is your body and your physiology, yet you just cannot have the right to relieve yourself on the streets any where and whenever you like. All civilised human societies have a set of values, rules and regulations to control and guide our action and “our body”.
Yes again, it is your right to choose the pattern of sexual behavior you like. But do not deny us the right to call this behaviour (not you but the behaviour you are advocating) as depraved and disgusting. Apart from significant sections of European and American “liberal” cultures, rest of humanity does not approve of promiscuity and debauchery, unlimited or selective. Free sex, like dishonesty and a craze for wealth is a powerful and strong and widespread base animal passion in human beings. There have been some notable proponents for this behaviour like the famous British Philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russel. However, most of humanity of all religions, philosophy and cultures have all along discouraged and denounced this abominable practice.
