Kamel Daoud: Sexual Misery under Islam

Kamel Daoud
Wikipedia

Kamel Daoud is a columnist for the newspaper Quotidien d’Oran and is author of the novel The Meursault Investigation, a recent response to The Stranger, the famous short novel published in 1942 by Albert Camus. This article of his, "The Sexual Misery of the Arab World," was translated from the French by John Cullen for the New York Times (February 12, 2016). In it, Daoud argues that the Muslim separation of women from men poisons men's minds about sex, about love, about the afterlife, and especially about how to treat women in this quotidian world:

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed . . . . [S]ex is a great paradox in many countries of the Arab world: One acts as though it doesn't exist, and yet it determines everything that's unspoken. Denied, it weighs on the mind by its very concealment . . . . These contradictions create unbearable tensions. Desire has no outlet, no outcome; the couple is no longer a space of intimacy, but a concern of the whole group. The sexual misery that results can descend into absurdity and hysteria . . . . [O]ne hopes to experience love, but the mechanisms of love - encounters, seduction, flirting - are prevented: Women are watched, we obsess over their virginity.

Daoud notes the choice constructed by Muslims in pitting the West against Paradise:

One result is that people fantasize about the trappings of another world: either the West, with its display of immodesty and lust, or the Muslim paradise and its virgins . . . . [For Muslims in Islamic lands, o]rgasms are acceptable only after marriage - and subject to religious diktats that extinguish desire - or after death. Paradise and its virgins are a pet topic of preachers, who present these otherworldly delights as rewards to those who dwell in the lands of sexual misery[, that is, in the lands of Islam]. Dreaming about such prospects, suicide bombers surrender to a terrifying, surrealistic logic: The path to orgasm runs through death, not love . . . . [Now], with the latest influx of migrants [to Europe] from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship . . . with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe . . . . [in] a clash of cultures playing out on the West's very soil . . . . People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.

Such is Daoud's analysis, and it looks rather spot on to me. A Muslim such as Daoud had to be the man to offer this analysis because Muslim men are the problem here, and political correctness bars a Western man from pointing to the depth of Muslim sexism, or bars the Western man if he doesn't want to be accused of 'racism' - as if the religion Islam were a race!

Now that the issue has been broached by a Muslim man, however, someone like me can join in on the discussion without having to be concerned about inviting pee-cee condemnation, for I'm just asking questions about a point made by someone else,

Islamic State: 'Legitimating' sex slavery as part of "their own [lying] narrative of what Islam should be "?

Yazidi Slaves in Islamic State
Daily Mail

According to Memri (May 22, 2015) - which usually translates Islamist articles into English and summarizes them for anyone interested - issue 9 Of Islamic State's English-language magazine Dabiq offers an article justifying taking women as slaves: "Slave-Girls or Prostitutes," by Umm Sumayyah Al-Muhajirah.

Umm Sumayyah says that the Islamic State (IS) is "reviving a prophetic Sunnah," or tradition about Muhammad, in taking sex slaves, and she promises that "the slave markets will be established against the will of the politically 'correct'."

The Daily Mail also reports on Umm Sumayyah's defense of sex slaves but cites a critic, Richard Brennan, a political scientist at the counter-terrorism think-tank RAND, who says:

They [IS] have done an extremely good job of tainting what it is to be a Muslim. They've taken very specific verses of the Koran and used [these] . . . to create their own narrative of what Islam should be . . . . [but these verses used in this way] are lies . . . because there is no way to square these things - forcing people to be slaves and raping them - with the Koran. It's not Islamic, so they have to lie about that to make [those verses] . . . fit the narrative.

Is Brennan right? He acknowledges that the IS has cited verses from the Qur'an. He may be thinking of such verses as 23:6, which limits Muslim men from sex, "except from their spouses or their slave women, for then they are not blameworthy." Or 70:29-30, which warns believers to "guard their private parts except from their spouses and their slave women, for then they are not blameworthy."

We also read in the Hadith of Muslims having sex with captured women:

Sahih Muslim 3371:

Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa'id al Khadri (Allah he pleased with him): O Abu Sa'id, did you hear Allah's Messenger (May peace be upon him) mentioning al-'azl [coitus interruptus]? He said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah's Messenger (May peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Bi'l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger (May peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it [i.e., coitus interruptus], for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.

Similar reports are found in Sahih al-Bukhari 4138 and Sahih Muslim 3384. I could track down more sources if I tried, but I don't have time to spare.

At a minimum, though, one has to admit that Muslims of Muhammad's time took women captured in battle and used them for sex with Muhammad's tacit consent, if we can believe the hadith. At any rate, this report doesn't need much twisting to "fit the narrative."

Whether later rulings of sharia placed restrictions on the practice of taking sex slaves, I don't know.

Christ of the Ozarks: Embracing Identity Difference?

Christ of the Ozarks
Andrea Morales for The New York Times

Gerald L.K. Smith must lie smoldering in his grave.

The Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, seemingly all-embracing, appears now to stand confronted with a dilemma, acceptance of difference in sexual identity or rejection of the same.

Why's that a dilemma?

Because of tourists.

Tourists?

Yes, tourists. The tourists who'll show up in the Ozark town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas . . . or who won't.

If the town promotes tolerance of difference in sexual identity - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) - in order to attract LGBT tourists, it stands to lose Christian tourists who'd otherwise arrive to watch the local Great Passion Play, Christians whose understanding of 'passion' differs profoundly from the LGBT's own view.

There's misunderstanding on both sides. An anti-LGBT ad placed in a local paper reads:

If you think tourists are going to be excited about even the possibility that their wives, daughters and girlfriends will be sharing a bathroom with a guy who decides he's 'transgender' just to have a little fun (or worse) at the ladies' expense, you don't know tourists and you don't know sex offenders.

This fear doesn't sound especially realistic to me. A sex offender wouldn't want the infamy, and genuine LGBTs would criticize anyone pretending to be transgender and pulling such a stunt "to have a little fun." But the sexual identity people also perhaps misjudge things:

At the same time, a website promoting gay tourism, Out in Eureka, has already begun incorporating . . . into its argument that the city is "the antithesis of the redneck stereotype" and a "microcosm of San Francisco." Gay travelers, it says, can feel at home along with "all manner of colorful characters, misfits, eccentrics and rugged individualists."

I doubt that Eureka Springs is equivalent to San Francisco - the latter's Gay Freedom Day Parade would never go over in the Ozarks, not even in a liberal town like Eureka! And some of those rugged individualistic men would likely punch you in the nose if you were a gay fellow trying to make a pass. But so long as the flamboyance is kept PG, there ought to be only minor problems.

I hope . . .

Marius as Heathcliff?

Bad to the Bone
Google Books

I'm glad I'm not the only reader to see that Howard Jacobson was channeling Emily Brontë in his novel The Act of Love through his depiction of Marius as Heathcliff, though not in each and every respect, of course, but the resemblance is definitely there in Marius's dark good looks, rough roguish manners, and corruscating intellectual brilliance:

Marius is Much Wenlock's answer to Heathcliff, brooding and muscular. (Tim Adams, "Take my wife . . . and I wish somebody would," The Guardian, October 5, 2008)

Not that we had no assistance from Jacobson himself, for he 'hints' as much on page 41: "the Heathcliff-if-all-else-perishes rocky-eternity beneath you."

The book is morbidly fascinating and forces its readers into assuming the perversely voyeuristic perspective of the first-person narrator, Felix Quinn, manipulator par excellence who somehow brings his wife and Marius into an affair that appears headed toward disaster for all.

I say appears because I've finished all but ten percent of the novel and have yet to see how things end . . .

Gender: Finally Getting It Straight

Catholic Journal

From reading an article by the moral theologian Lisa Fullam (Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley) on "'Gender Theory,' Nuclear War, and the Nazis" in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal (February 23, 2015), I finally found out what people mean when they state that "gender" is a "social construct." Fullam in fact clarified several terms that have had me confused in many of the feminist articles I help edit for the journal of Feminist Studies in English Literature, among other journals, so here's your chance to get these terms clarified for yourself, if you're interested. According to Fullam:

1. Sex is a biological category like male and female. Of course, there are a substantial number of intersex people[,] . . . where external genitalia are inconsistent with genetic sex or the external genitalia are not identifiable as male or female . . . . [and the] common practice [has been] to assign a sex to babies at birth based on the easier surgical "fix" - usually to a female appearance[, often resulting some years later in a conflict between the sex assigned and the gender identity] . . . .

2. Gender Identity is one's inner sense of oneself as male, female or other [and is a biological trait]. If you want to know someone's gender identity, you need to ask. Gender identity emerges early in life, and usually lines up with one's biological sex. When it doesn't, . . . a large number of genetic[,] . . . epigenetic and other biological factors . . . have been implicated . . . . Gender identity is reflected in . . . the brain activity of people whose gender identity is different from their genital/chromosomal sex[,] . . . showing that gender identity, like sex, is a biological trait . . . .

3. Gender Expression is the way one expresses one's gender identity outwardly, in external and socially constructed signals like clothing, haircuts, voice, mannerisms, and such[, so gender expression is a social construct expressing a biological fact, i.e., gender identity] . . . .

4. Gender "refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women" . . . . Most children are socialized into the gender that matches their biological sex, though of course the particulars of that socialization vary with culture, personality and time . . . . To speak of gender as individually "chosen," it seems to me, merely reflects the historical fact that brave individuals stand up to challenge social norms before it is socially acceptable. (Lisa Fullam, "'Gender Theory,' Nuclear War, and the Nazis," Commonweal, February 23, 2015; emphases mine)

Now that that's all clear (though I wish it were still just a wee bit clearer), we can move on, and those readers interested in more details supplied by the article can click for more information here. These four categories give me something useful in my editing work for journals in areas outside my expertise, e.g., Trans-Humanities or the above-mentioned Feminist Studies in English Literature.

Genetics and Gender?

Eric Vilain
Human Genetics at UCLA

In looking for information to enrich discussion on issues of gender and feminism in one of the courses I teach, I stumbled onto a fascinating website titled Rediscovering Biology that featured a lengthly interview with an expert, a Parisian working at UCLA, Eric Vilain, on the "Biology of Sex and Gender," and the site is so interesting and informative about sexual characteristics, gender identity, and genetics that I've excerpted below, albeit heavily edited by me:

Sex determination is appealing to everyone because . . . . [o]ne of the first characteristics of a human being at birth is . . . boy or girl . . . . The field of sex determination[, however,] is very poorly understood . . . . We know a handful of genes that makes boys become boys and girls to become girls[,] but we know that we're missing a very, very large piece of this puzzle . . . . [such as] why . . . a number of babies would be born intersex . . . . What we know even less is how our brain becomes either more of the masculinized brain or more of the feminized brain . . . . [As for the body,] you can look at [it] with a different perspective[,] which is the makeup of the gonads, whether they're testes or ovaries . . . . We know[, however, that] there are individuals who have ovaries yet they can be XY and conversely . . . have testes and be XX . . . . [A]nother way of looking at [sexual determination] . . . is gender identity. It's one's own perception of one's sex[,] . . . how people feel . . . they are, either male or female . . . . You can have individuals who are fully masculinized, have a penis, have two testicles, they're XY, they have levels of testosterone of the majority of males, yet they feel . . . they belong to the [female] body and in their mind . . . are female . . . . When the sex chromosomes were discovered, it was immediately obvious that males and females were different at the chromosomal level. Females were XX; males were XY. Then the immediate question was: Well, what makes a male a male and a female a female? . . . . One [view] is it's the number of X chromosomes that makes you either male or female and females have two X chromosomes; males have only one. This mechanism is probably the most frequent in the animal kingdom . . . . [But there is the] Androgen Insensitivities Syndrome[,] . . . the inability for androgens -- that is essentially testosterone -- to bind to their receptor. In the Androgen Insensitivities Syndromes, the individuals are typically XY. They have a Y chromosome. They typically have two normally functioning testicles which do produce male hormones, in particular high levels of testosterone, but the testosterone cannot bind to its receptor[, which] . . . makes the external appearance of these individuals to be fully female. They do not have penis. They do have what appears to be a normal vagina and they look [like a] normal female at birth . . . . We [also] know that, there are a number of babies born who are male -- they have two testes and penis -- and yet they do not have a Y chromosome. We started to decipher the molecular mechanisms that lead to this situation and we now know that there [are] a few other genes that can sometimes mimic the action of the genes in the Y chromosome. So the Y chromosome is not this single force that pushes the whole male sex determination pathway . . . . The idea is in instead of having a simplistic mechanism by which you have pro-male genes going all the way to make a male, in fact there is a solid balance between pro-male genes and anti-male genes and if there is a little too much of anti-male genes, there may be a female born and if there is a little too much of pro-male genes then there will be a male born . . . . The pathway [to male or female] is made of a complex network of genes that interact with each other at the molecular level and these interactions depend highly on the dose of each of these genes. So the end result is a subtle balance between a number of genes, most of them still unknown unfortunately that lead to either the making of a male or the making of a female . . . . We know a number of things in sex determination. We know a handful of genes. We know a little bit how they work. We unfortunately don't know how to explain the majority of our patients, who are either intersex or with a complete sex reversal. We can understand what's happening in the molecular level in only about 30% of the cases and that's not very much . . . . Knowing that you're a boy or you're a girl is something that's unique to humans. This is what we call "gender identity" and we don't know how this happens. We don't know why suddenly at a certain age, and rather early actually, about 3, 4, 5 years of age, we just know that we're either boys or girls . . . . How do we know . . . ? I have no idea. I don't think anyone has any idea. I would love to know. We're trying to work on some biological determinance of gender, to try to understand what happens in our brain . . . . But that probably will not even tell us how we know at the time we knew it . . . . Studying gender is complicated: first because there is no animal model for it. You have to study humans. One way to study gender is by looking at individuals who don't feel right in their own gender. They have what we call "Gender Dysphoria." They're unhappy about their gender. Some of them may become transsexuals. They actually perform surgery because they're so intensely unhappy about the gender that was attributed to them that they feel the need to change using surgical tools . . . . Hormones have always been thought as the unique or major factor influencing the development of a male or female brain. We now know that hormones cannot explain everything in the making of a brain, whether it's masculine or a feminine brain. But we don't know really what the other factors are . . . . [S]ome of these factors may be genetic. Maybe pieces of the Y chromosome are important at some level in the brain['s] sexual differentiation. Maybe some environmental factors are also important: there are compounds in the environment that are hormone-like, they're estrogen-like for instance, that might play a role in this. These are purely speculative arguments, but those are the kind of things that we are trying to decipher . . . . Sexual orientation is an independent parameter from gender identity . . . . What we know about the mechanisms of gender identity is extremely poor. What we know about the mechanisms of sexual orientation is a little better but it's not clearly understood. It probably is a mixture of a number of factors -- social, environmental, genetic . . . . [We also have to understand intersex.] . . . . Intersex is an intermediate sexual phenotype. This means that this is a state of being in-between what's commonly accepted as male or female at all levels, that is an anatomical level, gonadal level, and brain level, and behavioral level . . . . Complete sex reversal corresponds to the extreme end of the intersex spectrum, where apparently there is no ambiguity of the genitalia at birth, but yet there is a intermediate state, at some level which is either the genetic level or the hormonal level or the brain level. But at birth sex reversal doesn't show. At birth phenotypically they look either male or female. It's only later on during their lives because they usually cannot go through normal puberty, that we find out that they had some intermediate state in terms of either their genetic makeup or their hormonal makeup . . . . The big dream for me and the big challenge in fact, is to understand the mechanisms of gender identity. This is really the big enigma and to me it's also the most important aspect of sex determination to understand because . . . out of all the definitions of sex, gender is the most important. In fact it's how people feel that is important, regardless of what they look like, of what their levels of hormones are, or what their face or genitalia look like. It's what they feel within themselves. That's what's important. And to understand what make[s] gender identity happen at some point in a human life is absolutely fascinating and extremely complicated to study but that's certainly the next challenge in the research in sex determination.

This might seem like a rather long excerpt, but the original piece is so much longer, and also in interview format, that I simply had to radically cut it and leave out most of the original text, but those readers interested in more can go to the link and read the entire fascinating interview.

Dr. Vilain's English is sometimes a bit awkward, but his explanations are usually very clear and tend to support Camille Paglia's advice, namely, that Feminists need to learn more biology . . .

Motor Mouth Man . . .

Word to the Wise

Free Dictionary

I read in "Annie's Mailbox" yesterday a perturbing letter of complaint by a pestered woman:

During the time we dated and for the first three years of our marriage, George and I had normal conversations about sports, politics, movies and books, but now it's only sex, sex and more sex. Frankly, I can't take much more of this . . . . I've gotten angry, I've tried diplomacy . . . . But it goes in one ear and out the other. When I try to steer the conversation into other areas, he always brings it back to sex.

This guy can't seem to keep his mouth shut. Listen, just because we men constantly think about this topic is no excuse for incessantly talking about it! Some man needs to give this guy a frank word to the wise to let him know that he's ruining things for his wife, himself, and most of us other men who know to keep our mouths sealed about what's always on our minds!

I'd link to the letter, but it doesn't seem to be online at the Korea Herald, though it can be found in the hard copy edition: "Annie's Mailbox: Handsy husband," Korea Herald (July 2, 2012, page 17).

Oddly enough, it's on the "Entertainment" page, though it's in fact not quite amusing.

Gay Marriage and Evangelicals: I Was Sort of Right

On Wednesday, I posted an entry on gay marriage and speculated that the younger generation of evangelicals was less opposed to the position than the older generation, adding that I suspected the older generation of having softened on this issue.

As should happen to turn out, I was right, more or less. Click and take a close look at these statistics posted in an article that I found by Tobin Grant and Sarah Pulliam Bailey on "How Evangelicals Have Shifted in Public Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage" (Christianity Today, May 11, 2012):

If evangelicals are roughly equivalent to "Born-Again," there has been significant decline among them in opposition to same-sex marriage. Now, look at these related statistics:

Evangelicals aged 18-35 are only 44 percent opposed to same-sex marriage. I suspect that this percentage will continue to decrease.

I therefore hold that my local experience reflects a larger American shift between older and younger evangelicals -- and evangelicals vis-à-vis non-evangelicals.

Go to the entire article for the various complications . . .

Gay Marriage: The Direction of History?

In the Balance
Photo by Nicholas Blechman

New York Times

In an otherwise fascinating NYT article by Bill Keller, "A Brief for Justice Kennedy" (May 27, 2012) , speculating upon how Justice Kennedy might vote on gay marriage, I encountered some expressions concerning the justices of the Supreme Court as a whole that -- speaking as a historian -- I dislike:

They can thwart history. They could rule that states are free to recognize only heterosexual marriages. This would be a disheartening setback, though I imagine it would energize the movement for marriage rights.

They can postpone history. This is the easy way out. The court could endorse the narrowly worded appellate court ruling on Prop 8, either by actively affirming it or simply declining to hear it. By restoring marriage rights in California, this would instantly double, to 23 percent, the percentage of Americans living in states that treat gays as equals. But it would put off the day when this right is afforded to all Americans.

What do I dislike? The expressions "thwart history" and "postpone history" for their implication that history has a direction. If history did have a direction -- say, an inevitable progression toward some earthly utopia -- we could simply sit back and wait for that couture-in-the-future to arrive, but it has no direction other than the one we press for. Otherwise, the struggle for human rights in this world wouldn't be so hard.

To be fair, I suppose that some individuals who use a phrase like "the wrong side of history" intend it as shorthand for "contrary to the aims toward which we have been striving" -- which, of course, raises the question of who "we" is, but leave that aside for now.

Personally, I expect gay marriage to be legalized nationwide in the US relatively soon. The younger generation sees it as a civil rights issue -- even a human rights issue -- and this tends to be the case among evangelicals as well. The older generation of evangelicals treated gay rights as something to oppose in the culture wars, but the younger generation has grown up knowing openly gay individuals and lacks animus toward them. Churches, even the conservative ones, are often more open about sexual issues these days. I've heard entire sermons on addiction to pornography in which preachers acknowledge that the percentage of those addicted is identical among non-Christians and evangelical Christians. My point is that sexuality is discussed explicitly among evangelicals these days with an openness and degree of understanding that would have shocked evangelicals of the 1980s.

Evangelicals know that gays attend church, even conservative churches -- this recognition stems from the greater openness about sex -- and I rarely hear even older evangelicals express animus toward gays. Not that they approve of the lifestyle, but they often understand that gays probably aren't choosing to be homosexual, not anymore than a heterosexual made a choice to be straight. They accept the orientation but oppose the act. That's the older generation of evangelicals, I emphasize. The younger generation tend to agree that the private acts of gays are nobody's business, that gay sexuality is an issue between a gay individual and God, precisely as with other sexual issues among consenting adults.

Such are my impressions, anyway. There are probably statistics on this, but I've not looked for any since I wanted this post to be based on my own subjective impressions, but if any knowledgeable people can link to stats on this issue, feel free, for I'm curious if my impressions correspond to larger trends among evangelicals or if they imply that the evangelical churches I've attended have instead been outliers.

But I suspect that evangelicals in the West are simply reflecting the larger cultural shift . . .

Neda Agha-Soltan: An Overdue Follow-Up

Ayatollah

Foreign Policy

An Iranian friend sent me a link to an article by Karim Sadjadpour, "The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets)" (Foreign Policy, May/June 2012), and in reading that for what it says about the Iranian Islamist regime's obsession with sex, I finally found an explanation for Neda Agha-Soltan's death. Some viewers of one photo of Ms. Agha-Soltan suggested that the pendant she wore was a cross. I looked at the image and also wondered if it were, but one anonymous commenter identified it as a faravahar, a national symbol of Iran. I suspect that's correct. She was thus not targeted for supposedly being a Christian, as some argued, but she was in fact targeted, according to information attributed to her mother:

[P]erhaps the seminal -- and most heartbreaking -- moment of the Green Revolution was the murder of a 26-year-old female protester, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose bloody death was caught on cell-phone camera and rendered one of the most viral videos in history. In an HBO documentary about her life, Neda's mother recalls a message that some sympathetic female Basij members relayed to Neda days before she was killed by a sniper: "Dear, please don't come out looking so beautiful . . . . Do us a favor and don't come out because the Basiji men target beautiful girls. And they will shoot you."

Assuming that this report is true, it means that Ms. Agha-Soltan was not accidentally, but rather intentionally shot . . . for being beautiful. Shot through her heart by sexually frustrated men who hated her, most likely because she signified for them something that they couldn't have.

The article has a lot of other informative details about the Islamist obsession with sex in Shi'ite Iran, but I imagine one could generalize to various Islamist factions in the Muslim world.

Anyway, read the article!

Salwa Al-Mutairi: More on Sexual Slavery!

Salwa al-Mutairi

aka Salwa al-Mteiri

(Image from MEMRI)

Readers will recall that I blogged on this 'clown' Salwa al-Mutairi several days ago, as well as -- more recently -- her comrade-in-arms, Abu-Ishaq al-Huwaini, but we now have a video of Salwa al-Mutairi's high hopes of introducing sex slaves to Kuwait. Here are excerpts, provided by MEMRI (Special Dispatch No. 3924, June 19, 2011):

"I asked [a Saudi mufti]: What is the law with regard to slave girls? The mufti told me that the law requires there to be a Muslim country raiding a Christian country -- sorry, a non-Muslim country -- and taking POWs. I asked him whether it was forbidden [to turn them into slaves], and he said that Islam does not prohibit keeping slave girls -- on the contrary."

Let's see . . . Muslims raiding a non-Muslim country and taking POWs (prisoners of war), identified by Ms. Al-Mutairi as slave girls! Since when are civilians considered POWs? Oh, right -- we're dealing with categories formulated according to Salafi insistence on shariah, which has absolutely nothing to do with modern, secular understanding based on human rights and the laws of just warfare. Rather, shariah stipulates that:

"The law pertaining to slave girls is not the same as for free women. Free women must cover their bodies, except for their hands and faces. The slave girl must cover up from the belly button down."

Well, that explains an image that I'd always assumed was a piece of Orientalist art, an Arab Bedouin posed with an Asiatic-looking girl naked from the waist up. I recall ridiculing the sketch as obviously an ignorant projection or Western assumptions about Arabs and sexuality since anybody with a modicum of knowledge on the Arabic world would know that the women were prudishly covered up. I was wrong. I hadn't reckoned on non-Muslim slave girls! As al-Mutairi kindly explains:

"There is a big difference between slave girls and free women. With a free woman, the man must make a marriage contract, but with a slave girl -- all he has to do is buy her. It's as if he married her. So there is a difference between slave girls and free women."

But the ever-rigorous Ms. al-Mutairi wanted to be absolutely certain:

"Here in Kuwait too, I asked religious scholars and experts about this, and they said that for the average, good religious man, the only way to avoid forbidden relations with women is to purchase slave girls."

Such a "good religious man" seems to lack sufficient self-control if this is his only way to avoid 'forbidden' relations. What can such a fellow do if he lacks sufficient money to purchase a slave girl? Well, there's always this . . . or is that solely for women? Nevertheless, Ms. al-Mutairi hopes for the best:

"I very much hope that such a law is legislated. Just like they allow servants, they should allow slave girls and legislate a proper law in this regard. We don't want our children to fall into the abyss of fornication and similar filth, God forbid. Allah willing, things will work out."

Just look at the face of this woman at about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the video, when she states this hope and calls on Allah to grant it. Such piety of expression! I say that without irony. The woman expresses herself with great reverence in appealing to Allah's will that sex slaves might be brought to Kuwait to prevent 'fornication'. What a twisted, despicable view of sexuality, marriage, human relations, and reverent religious piety. As if sexual slavery itself were not the depth of sexual depravity, deserving the label "fornication" if anything does. Yet, Ms. al-Mutairi imagines that she's doing those infidel women a favor:

"There are countries like Chechnya, which are at war with another country. In such a case, there must be POWs, so why not go and buy those prisoners? Is it better for them to be slaughtered over there? Go and buy them, and sell them to traders here in Kuwait."

Ms. al-Mutairi forgets that if infidel women are being slaughtered in Chechnya, it's the jihadis who are slaughtering them.

The more I read what Islamists have to say, the more I wonder if Edward Said got things entirely wrong in his book Orientalism -- and if those whom he called 'Orientalists' got it right.

Sex Slaves -- Useful Not Just Against Adultery!

Abu-Ishaq al-Huwaini

(Image from God Knows Where!)

Readers will recall that Ms. Salwa al-Mutairi advocated sex slaves for randy rich men to keep them from committing adultery -- so long as the slaves weren't Muslim and the men were. As one might expect, the Egyptian Salafi Shaykh Abu-Ishaq Al-Huwaini (or Huwayni), whom I referred to previously as a supporter of slavery, turns out to include sexual slavery as one of the categories:

Do you understand what I'm saying? Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars -- there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur'an by the name milk al-yamin, "that which your right hands possess" [Qur'an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur'an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn't need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point -- there is no disagreement from any of them.

But this is all for a good reason, better even than sex!

These did not convert to Islam except in the chains of war. If they had not been chained, bound, and had their freedom taken from them, they would not have converted to Islam.

You see? Sex slavery is a good thing, a very good thing!

What a relief . . .

Going to Great Lengths to Prevent Adultery

Salwa al-Mutairi

(Image from The Voice of Russia)

Some women take adultery very seriously, but choose a different solution than Lorena Bobbitt might suggest if she were to be asked about the issue. According to A. Saleh of the Kuwait Times, the political activist Salwa al-Mutairi has proposed a solution to adultery: "Female activist calls for legalizing sex slavery" (June 4, 2011):

A female political activist and former parliamentary candidate has recommended the introduction of legislation to legalize the provision of enslaved female concubines for Muslim men in Kuwait in a bid, she says, to protect those men from committing adultery or corruption.

The activist, Salwa Al-Mutairi, suggested apparently seriously in a video broadcast online that she had been informed by some clerics that affluent Muslim men who fear being seduced or tempted into immoral behavior by the beauty of their female servants, or even of those servants 'casting spells' on them, would be better to purchase women from an 'enslaved maid' agency for sexual purposes.

She suggested that special offices could be set up to provide concubines in the same way as domestic staff recruitment agencies currently provide housemaids.

"We want our youth to be protected from adultery," said Al-Mutairi, suggesting that these maids could be brought as prisoners of war in war-stricken nations like Chechnya to be sold on later to devout merchants.

"This is not religiously forbidden," she added, indicating that Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid (766-809 AD) was married to one woman but possessed 200 concubines.

One can see why the good Caliph had no time for adultery! There's simply nothing like a little sexual enslavement of women to circumvent corruption. And no wonder that Bin Laden wanted to restore the Caliphate, given the great good that it offered. Perhaps he even hoped to assume the noble position himself? No matter now, for he's gone on to his reward of 70 perpetual virgins.

But speaking of adultery, why isn't Salwa al-Mutairi doing her own part to preclude it? If she really trowels on the make-up and tricks herself out in clownsuits as she appears to do in the above photo -- if that's not just a photoshopped image -- then no wonder she worries about her husband straying from the strait-and-narrow path . . . if she even has a husband.

But to be serious about this issue of sex slavery, note that it already exists.

Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif: "Atheists, Christians, and Fornicators Are Responsible for Human Rights Treaties"

Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif

(Image from Memri)

Finally, an issue upon which atheists, Christians, and fornicators can agree: human rights. According, anyway, to Saudi Arabian Muslim cleric Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, who informs us:

"We are committed to international treaties as long as they do not violate Islamic law. If they violate Islamic law, we should throw them out, because they are not worth the ink they were written with. With all due respect, the international treaties are worthless."

Worthless? Why would that be? The unvarnished truth from Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif:

"Who is responsible for the human rights and international treaties? The atheists, the Christians, and the fornicators, with all due respect."

Muslims, atheists, and Christians are, I suppose, mutually exclusive groups, but none of these exclude actual fornicators, who can always be found everywhere. Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, however, is referring to 'fornicators' who exist only in his mind, where they multiply their numbers and conspire with 'atheists' and 'Christians' also present there to foment for thoughts of human rights and against thoughts of sharia.

But the conspiracy is even bigger than Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif imagines, for some 'thoughts' remain hidden even to himself, specifically, the 'Jews' of his mind who stand behind the scenes manipulating the 'fornicators', 'atheists', and 'Christians' . . . all in the interest of human rights.

With all due respect, Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, you haven't yet figured out the entire conspiracy, so try to introspect just a little bit more.

Adam and Eve: "the liveliest pair"?

Satan Watching

the

Endearments of Adam and Eve

1808

William Blake

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of our fine Milton scholars, Michael O'Connell, has caught a 'happy' typographical error in Gordon Campbell's edition of John Milton: The Complete English Poems and posted the delicious detail on the Milton List:

Ah, the pleasure of typos! I've been using the Everyman Complete English Poems of Milton this term, edited by our extraordinarily learned colleague Gordon Campbell. One word that escaped Gordon's eye was in PL 4, 321, where we learn that Adam and Eve were "the liveliest pair / That ever since in love's embraces met". A mischievous typographer? My students were understandably a bit disappointed when, duty bound, I gave them the true reading of the line.

That 'true' reading, of course, is "the loveliest pair" -- though O'Connell acknowledges that the error might itself be true:

But who's to say that A & E were not also the liveliest pair in their love's embraces?

"Were they?" I wondered, and did a Google search for "liveliest pair," whereupon I discovered another couple, finding them listed as the final item among the search results: Eva and Nick. I didn't look further into the details on these two, who are described in the search results as "enjoying the fruits of one another's loins," but I'm taking a wild guess that it's a filmed reinterpretation of Milton's account in which Eve has an affair with "Old Nick" -- as perhaps implied by Blake's ménage à trois above -- and that the forbidden fruit was none other than the aforementioned fruit of their loins.

I reject such a heretical re-envisioning of the lapsarian story, however, and suggest instead that not only is O'Connell right in suggesting that Adam and Eve might actually have been "the liveliest pair in their love's embraces" but even that Campbell might indeed have gotten the line right. I've proposed this point on the Milton List:

Or was Professor Campbell simply restoring the long-lost original line and thereby providing a more precise understanding of Milton's views on prelapsarian sexuality?

So far, no other scholar has disagreed with me, so I'm taking the universal silence on this point as unanimous acknowledgement.

Perhaps I should publish an article . . .

Secrets and 'Oozies'

The Rod of Aaron
"a rather odd rod"
From the Sarajevo Haggadah
(Image from Wikipedia)

When I was doing postdoctoral work in religion at Hebrew university in Jerusalem about ten years ago, I encountered an unexpected title while searching through journal articles on Moses, Aaron, and Miriam:

"The Rod of Aaron in the Garden of Miriam"

I didn't check to make sure, but I rather doubt that the article was about what it sounded like it was about.

I was reminded of this a couple of days ago as I was checking some book titles that my wife had translated from Korean. These were supposedly of 'self-help' books for girls in their early teens, but the first one raised my eyebrows a bit:

Secrets of Girls with Many Friends

I remember girls with many 'friends' from my own teenage years. They were popular, but there was no secret about it . . . not in the locker rooms, anyway. I brushed aside that memory and checked the next title:

Secrets Diary of Curious Girls

This was beginning to arouse my own curiosity. The climax came with this title:

Heart-Beating Secrets of Girls in Puberty

At this point, I looked up from my computer and asked my wife:

"Sun-Ae, what are these books really about?"

"Why?"

"Well," I explained, "they sound like pornography."

She looked surprised, so I read them aloud, affecting an exaggeratedly prurient tone, and she began to laugh. Apparently, these titles sound perfectly innocuous in Korean, and she hadn't even noticed their sexual connotations in English.

We left Secrets of Girls with Many Friends unchanged since a salacious reading had perhaps been the product of my own dirty mind, but the other two got rewritten. The title Secrets Diary of Curious Girls became Girls' Secrets for Better Health and Appearance, and the title
Heart-Beating Secrets of Girls in Puberty became What Girls Should Know about their Bodies and their Feelings during Puberty. That latter title change sounds rather pedestrian, I realize, but it better fits the book's content.

For some reason, though perhaps this is a non sequitor, I'm reminded of a news report that I read about twenty years ago. Some would-be robber wearing a big coat had entered a bank, approached the teller, and handed her a note, apparently with the intent of warning her that he was carrying an Uzi submachine gun. The note read:

"Give me the money. I've got an oozy under my coat."

The teller glanced at the floor, saw that nothing appeared to be leaking, inferred that this was an issue of the man's spelling rather than his spilling, and handed over the money.

But that could have been a very sticky situation, so let's take care always to use the right word, whether translating titles of books or robbing money from banks.

To Die For!

Omar Al-Sweilem

Miniscule Saudi Cleric

"No Nivea, no vaseline. No nothing!"

(Image from MEMRI)

In a video clip made available at MEMRI (Clip No. 1741), Saudi Cleric Omar Al-Sweilem . . . . Uh, is that pronounced "swell'em"? Anyway, this guy gets physical about the sensual traits of that "slender but busty babe" of the afterlife! Did I say "babe"? "Babe" ain't the half of it. Why there'll be a whole flock of those angelic babes! Swell'em promises, and he's got an authority to back him up:

Harith Ibn Al-Muhasibi told us what would happen when we meet the black-eyed virgin with her black hair and white face . . . . What hair! What a chest! What a mouth! What cheeks! What a figure! What breasts! What thighs! What legs! What whiteness! What softness! Without any creams -- no Nivea, no vaseline. No nothing! He said that faces would be soft that day. Even your own face will be soft without any powder or makeup. You yourself will be soflt, so how soft will a black-eyed virgin be, when she comes to you so tall and with her beautiful face, her black hair and white face . . . . Just feel her palm . . . How soft will a fingertip be, after being softened in paradise for thousands of years! . . . He told us that if you entered one of the palaces, you would find ten black-eyed virgins sprawled on musk cushions . . . . When they see you, they will get up and run to you. Lucky is the one who gets to put her thumb in your hand. When they get hold of you, they will push you onto your back, on the musk cushions. They will push you onto your back . . . . He said that one of them would place her mouth on yours. Do whatever you want. Another one would press her cheek against yours, yet another would press her chest against yours, and the others would await their turn . . . . He told us that one black-eyed virgin would give you a glass of wine. Wine in Paradise is a reward for your good deeds. The wine of this world is destructive, but not the wine of the world to come.

"Do whatever you want"! Hallelujuh for those earthy heavenly babes! I could just break into song! An old Babe-tist hymn comes to mind:

When we all get to heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see houris,
We'll sing and shout the victory!

Not exactly my Baptist grandma's view of heaven, though. She was against wine, and I can't imagine what she'd think of the babes waiting there.

But I know what a young man would think, and if some sexually frustrated but horny young Muslim lad gets brainwashed by stuff like this, he doesn't need a political reason to blow himself up -- he just needs to be desperate enough to want to get laid at all cost.

And I used to think that stories of alien seduction were weird...