Sex, Sex, Sex, and More Sex: The "Forbidden", "Offensive" Word
So Esra’a told a story and asked “since when is it “offensive” to talk about sex and homosexuality?”
I get the same type of reactions and comments from Sudanese and Muslim conservatives about how I shouldn’t mention topics related to it on my blog.
Well, here’s the thing. It’s not like we’re talking about it 24/7 or promoting it. Blogs are a great means for public discussion (the only real ones in our “free” countries) and hence we use them to talk about the issue.
Ever heard of AIDS or HIV? No? How about prostitution? Don’t these issues involve bringing up the topic of sss… erm… ssee… Gosh, I’m so scared to say it. Okay, read the following backwards, xes. Yes, that word… we’re so afraid of hearing it because God forbid we naughty boys might end up with irreversible erections, right?
Excuse me, but most people don’t even realize the extent of how much room there was for sex to be discussed within the Islamic tradition a long time ago (before the lovely rise of Wahhabism and Taliban-mentality, or before many aspects of true Islam got buried under a pile of man-made cultural crap).
Check out what the guys at SunniPath, a traditionalist Islamic online resource, have to say for example:
The origins of Islamic erotic literature probably lie in early Abbasid Baghdad, where a fusion took place in educated circles between ancient Arab poetic traditions of amatory verse which described female beauty and the act of love with considerable frankness, and the translation of Indian texts.
… The genre is, when maintained within the fiqh boundaries, a legitimate branch of the Islamic sciences
… There are several works on the subject by Imam al-Suyuti, but apparently the most influential such text by an alim was the Ruju’ al-shaykh ila sibah fi’l-quwwa ala al-bah, by the great Shaykh al-Islam Kemal Pasha-zade, the leading scholar of the Ottoman state in the time of Selim I.
There is certainly a case for producing an advanced manual in English drawing on Islam’s rich legacy in this field.
OMG! A MANUAL? A SEX MANUAL so we can have better, ehm, “boom boom”? These perverted Muslims must be beheaded! How evil!
Here’s a suggestion. Let’s flush down the toilet the oppressive patriarchal aspects of our cultures and revive the lost, beautiful spirituality and openness of our faith.
Join the Conversation
Of course this beautiful literature has long been replaced by bullshit modern novels and oppressive guides to Islam. Didn’t religious institutions like Al Azhar burn pre-Islamic literature because it was too offensive?
More (It’s worth noting that the above was researched and written by a devout Muslim and good friend, Yasmin, so the argument of “omg the West is making this up to make us look bad!” won’t work here.)
And then to continue on what you were saying:
More
What now? Do we burn these books on the basis that it’s too offensive?
What about this stuff:
More
Taboos!
Sigh. There’s so much we don’t know about our own history, thanks to our censorship-ridden over-paranoid societies.
Here’s a slap in the face to those who stupidly argued here that homosexuality is a “Western-invented plague:”
Source
Source
I’m using a proxy to access this page. Both this entry and the one before it are blocked because of the words “sex” and “homosexuality.” Woo!
yeah, there will certainly be no more sex if they ban this word from the internet! – not so good?
As Esra’a shows, for a long time the Muslim world was much more tolerant against homosexuals than the Christian Europe – but at some time in the 19th century they must have changed roles…
Who needs sex on the internet when you can rape a child or an animal? (I’m generalizing in a satirical manner here, but these things do happen much more often than it is reported.)
The Muslim world was a leader in political tolerance and science, but thanks to many years of war, tyranny and poor leadership this changed entirely.
And economics:
i don’t think the problem is about discussing sex but HOW you discuss sex.
and before i process any further i ‘d love confess that i am sex-crazed.
there is some Islamic term called “hayaa” or shyness. you know what i mean, having hayaa while discussing ANYTHING will make it acceptable.
it’s a true the Muslim world was a leader in political tolerance and science, but i don’t understand what that has to do with you.
for example when Ibn Taimmyah for example led the prisons reform campaign in Egypt(before that prisoners were locked like animals in deep holes) he wasn’t doing it for a tap on the shoulder from his European friends or to feel good about the serving the universal declaration of human rights. his motifs were derived from his Islamic identity.
you guys need to understand that making the east a copycat of the west won’t work, get over your identity crisis.
Spanky,
It doesn’t. It has to do with our societies.
And concerning the rest of your silly comment, we discussed already how we address the topic of sex, and there is nothing wrong about spreading awareness on sex-education or sex crimes.
Finally, stop being an imbecile regarding “copycats of the West.” Being open is not the equivalent of being “Western,” you sex-crazed fool.
I love how our little Spanky narrows everything down to an “identity crisis.”
This is, as I recall, the same Spanky who argued that defending homosexual rights is a Western paradigm.
Then by your own definition, I assume you too are Westernized, even if it has been proven above that Arabs have been writing about sex and homosexuality long before our people could obsess about this immoral other “West,” constantly yet shamelessly.
And should you then wonder…
Why this is ‘no more’?
4 things contributed to this, things that many Arabs have justified over the years:
1 – Censorship, imposed both by government and by society in general (this goes way beyond politics and religious discussions, this concerns taboos like sex and homosexuality as well)
2 – Oppression of religious and ethnic minorities
3 – The systematic and widespread abuse of human rights
4 – Islamic absolutism
It is stupid and baseless to dismiss fighting the above issues as being “Westernized.” These things have been discussed and fought for centuries, before the “war on the West” which our retarded generation is so obsessed about, even started.
I just read an article about the UAE’s prime minister’s visit to Berlin. There’s a picture of him shaking hands with the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit – and al Maktoum is surely not the first Muslim leader to meet with him. When it comes to money, it doesn’t matter that Mr. Wowereit is homosexual…
you guys need to chill
try singing this
yes, this is me…and i am still waiting for anyone to tell me where the pioneer LGBT activism started.
hmmmm….excuse me but how being sex-crazed make anyone westernized?
you guys are a big box of contradictions and confusions.
because the conditions were this great achievements were made is no more, people like you on the who are trying to strip the Islamic world of its identity and make it a blind follower of the west, Salafis (who are a normal response to the secular extreme) and the Arab rulers (who are far more secular than Ataturk in his hell hole).
Hi Spanky, apologies for my hot-headed reply, but let’s continue:
In my room.
Human rights are human rights – it’s universal and has no origin. If homosexuality is also universal and has no real origin, why is gay rights activism somehow Western? Gay marriage and all, yes that is Western. But not gay rights in and of itself.
Elaborate! How is talking about sex and homosexuality blindly following the West?
How are we stripping the Islamic world of its identity, if homosexuality and sex were discussed very often throughout history in Arabic literature?
Esra’a
The funny thing is I couldn’t reach the page you posted about homosecuals, but this one wasn’t filtered, I guess the filters are frustrated as well
This one doesn’t have homosexuality in the URL (just like “there are no homosexuals in Iran” according to your president,) I guess that’s why.
We should come up with codes or something, like “s3x” in the URLs and “hummos” (like the food) instead of “homosexuals.” More than 5 people wrote me complaining that we should change the URL structures since it includes a lot of taboo words and they keep having to use proxies to access them.
Very good idea Esra’a, I go for Hummus
Yes our so called president claimed many things, including what you mentioned. They try to solve what they call a problem by erasing the quetion. Very smart!
@ Esra’a:
You can use plugins for wordpress which allow you to define the url for every single post, so you could change the url’s in case you are expecting problems with them.
Great articles and sources in your first comments Esra’a. Thanks
Simon, got a link to that picture of them shaking hands?
You guys might like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNq_9vwfSis
(from “Saturday Night Live”)
sorry, looks like the video was removed from youtube. if you get a chance to watch “iran so far away” from saturday night life (SNL), do so, it’s really funny. I will post the link if i find it.
@ Drima:
Here’s a photo, unfortunately they are not shaking hands:
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1089951,00.jpg
Ummm…there’s a book on Muslim Erotica coming out? Any idea where I can send for one?
Drima feared that “we naughty boys might end up with irreversible erections”
LOL! imagine galabiya-clad males with…oh no!
And gay marriage a Western thing..?.. well, In Denmark gays can marry legally, and even (if the priest agrees) in a church. This is a rather new fad, and not everyone is happy about it. But, if we stop killing homus’es and later stop imprisoning them, then sooner or later, we have to give them full rights.
There’s no such thing, not even consideration or tolerance for the concept of gay marriage in the Arab world. This goes without saying.
It’s not much to ask if we just give “homuses” their right to life, not necessarily the right to marriage or gay bars or all the little things that most “homuses” in our region don’t even care about. This is really the least of their worries.
But we can’t even begin to talk about “homusuality” without the “secks” taboo being tackled and discussed first.
And damn you all, now I want some hummos.
yes, it’s a slippery slope. If you accept the premise that being gay is no more “sinful” than being – say – left-handed, then ultimately you must grant them full human rights. But you need to go thru the“secks” taboo first. Take your time… no matter what the mullahs and Catholic priest say, the“secks” thingy isn’t gonna go away anytime soon.
And I want some hummos too
Fortunately there’s a Jordanian pizza man down the road that makes the most delicious hummos. Yay for globalism!