The Adventures of Chester: Sex in the Muslim world
Several articles of late have discussed the sex lives of Muslims (or the lack and frustration thereof). Der Spiegel reported a few weeks ago on the topic.
Rabat, Morocco. Every evening Amal the octopus vendor looks on as sin returns to his beach. It arrives in the form of handholding couples who hide behind the tall, castle-like quay walls in the city's harbor district to steal a few clandestine kisses. Some perform balancing acts on slippery rocks and seaweed to secure a spot close to the Atlantic Ocean and cuddle in the dim evening light. The air tastes of salt and hashish. On some mornings, when Amal finds used condoms on the beach, he wishes that these depraved, shameless sinners -- who aren't even married, he says -- would roast in hell.It's true. Here's the GoogleTrends report for "sex".[ . . . ]
A Moroccan study published in early 2006 in L'Economiste, a Moroccan business publication, shows how paradoxical young Arabs' attitudes toward religion and sexuality can be. According to the study, young Muslims in the Maghreb region are increasingly ignoring the clearly defined rules of their religion. Premarital sex is not unusual, and 56 percent of young men admit to watching porn on a regular basis. But the respondents also said that it was just as important to them to pray, observe the one-month Ramadan fast and marry a fellow Muslim. When seen in this light, young Muslims' approach to Islam seems as hedonistic as it is variable, almost arbitrary.
[ . . . ]
Google Trends, a new service offered by the search engine, provides a way to demonstrate how difficult it is to banish forbidden yearnings from the heads of Muslims. By entering the term "sex" into Google Trends, one obtains a ranked list of cities, countries and languages in which the term was entered most frequently. According to Google Trends, the Pakistanis search for "sex" most often, followed by the Egyptians. Iran and Morocco are in fourth and fifth, Indonesia is in seventh and Saudi Arabia in eighth place. The top city for "sex" searches is Cairo. When the terms "boy sex" or "man boy sex" are entered (many Internet filters catch the word "gay"), Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the first four countries listed.
There's more. An article in another German outlet discusses sex in Egypt.
A heavy testosterone cloud hovers over the city, clumps of young men that nobody needs in dusty street cafés. "People are sexually mature at the age of eleven or twelve," explains psychiatrist Ahmad Abdallah,who is the director of the youth clinic as well as the website IslamOnline. "But then it can take fifteen or twenty years before they have official sex because parents won't agree to a marriage until the son has a decent job, ideally as an engineer or a lawyer, and an apartment or at least enough money to feed a family." But there is almost no work to be had. The number of Egyptians increases each year by 1.5 million, the minor education and health reforms that Mubarak's government set in motion are being devoured by this "youth bulge."The interesting thing about this is that Bollywood films adhere to Indian standards for sexuality, meaning that couples are allowed to writhe against each other while partially clothed on film, but not even kissing is allowed.Those who want to break the sex prohibition have to do it in a car or simply in the street dust. On some evenings, you can see one Citroen after the next parked on the strip next to the Egyptian museum. Youths who go to American films and wish to melt into the intimacies shown risk being branded as traitors, and so they sneak into hysterical Bollywood soap operas or Egyptian productions with the kohl-eyes and the constant moaning and screaming that is supposed to represent passion.
And in another article in Der Spiegel, the sad tale of an Iranian actress unknowingly caught in flagrante on video is related:
Actress Sahra Amir Ebrahimi is familiar with the role of the bad girl - the fiery-eyed young woman based her career on it. Her screen persona, the beasty little character Sohre, is one of the protagonists of the cult series "Narges" -- and Sohre is known for her intrigues and machinations.[ . . . ]
But that's all over now.
Twenty-five-year-old Ebrahimi is said to have appeared in a porn flick that is selling like hot cakes on street stands across the country, and ever since, she's been considered a hussy in real life too. What, people are asking, drove the Islamic Republic's most promising soap star -- normally seen dutifully wearing her headscarf and an ankle-length coat -- to perform on a narrow bed in front of a shaky camera?
In the prudish mullah republic, even tame films of private pool parties meet with eager customers on the black market. But demand for Ebrahimi's unexpected onscreen performance is literally unbelievable. Despite its comparatively steep price of €10 ($13), it is believed that more than 100,000 copies of the cheap DVD have been sold in Tehran.
Commentary
It was the 1950s that preceded the 1960s both chronologically and culturally in America's psyche. Forget about democracy. Might there be a correlation between sexual repression and attraction to terrorism? Maybe it's not freedom the Muslim world needs, but free love.
Posted by Chester on November 30, 2006 11:11 PM to The Adventures of Chester