On Sex, the (Muslim) Experts Weigh In

Of course, Islamic religious authorities have lots in common with the Pope and Pat Robertson, including the belief that masturbation makes you weak and blind (although, in fairness, the "trembling feet" attributed to excessive monkey-spanking might be a wholly original Muslim concept).

Dr Rashad Khalil, an expert on Islamic law from al-Azhar university in Cairo warned that being completely naked during intercourse invalidates a marriage. ... Another religious scholar suggested it was OK for married couples to see each other naked as long as they don't look at the genitals. To avoid problems in that area, he recommended having sex under a blanket. ...

Delivering a fatwa on oral sex, 79-year-old Dr [Yusuf al-]Qaradawi describes it as a disgusting western practice, resulting from westerners' habit of "stripping naked during sexual intercourse". But he continues: "Muslim jurists are of the opinion that it is lawful for the husband to perform cunnilingus on his wife, or a wife to perform the similar act for her husband (fellatio) and there is no wrong in doing so. But if sucking leads to releasing semen, then it is makruh (blameworthy), but there is no decisive evidence (to forbid it) ... especially if the wife agrees with it or achieves orgasm by practising it."

On this issue, Dr Qaradawi's views are more permissive than those of several other clerics on the internet. One states that oral sex is definitely forbidden, adding that "this hideous practice will draw the anger of Allah". Another, asked if oral sex is permitted, replies: "I don't know what is oral sex, please define it."

Comments

[ozymandiaz]

Must I then start my own religion where spanking the monkey is a virtue?

[Martin Owens]

There was once, says legend, a bird called the
Killi-Loo, which flew faster and faster, in ever-decreasing circles, until it disappeared up its own ass.

To judge from the evidence, however, it apparently taught these so called "clerics" how to think before it vanished.

Here's a religious question: since the Koran does not specifically mention walking on your hind legs, has there been a fatwa yet commanding the Faithful to go on all fours?

[Jeff the Poustman]

I don't understand the objection to what the Muslim authorities are saying.

If we are not Muslim, what the tenets of their religion are on sexual practices are none of our business. If we *are* Muslim, then we deal with them by internal debate (or whatever mechanisms, if any, are available to Muslims in good standing.)

Why do we consider their ideas worth mocking? Simply because we disagree? That's beneath those of us who consider ourselves thinking people. All it provides is an opportunity for us to snigger and consider ourselves superior.

If we really *are* superior in our thinking (which I'd like to think we are) we don't demonstrate it by mockery. Mockery only works on the *assumption* of superiority. It begs the question; that is, it assumes that we've already won the very debate at hand.

The debate at hand is in the area of ideas about sexuality. If we are superior, we must demonstrate our superiority by showing that our ideas about sexuality are superior, not simply by mocking the ideas the other side holds.

Do we believe there is some deeper truth-- about the universal okayness of a given sexual practice, for example? Or the universal okayness of *any* sexual practice? We ought to *prove* it. If we don't do so at some point we are no better than the mullah's whose participation in conversation is simply a means of hammering home the ideas they already hold. We're open-minded westerners, confident enough in what we think that we can easily examine contrary ideas and show how our own are better.

Certainly we may assume that everyone taking part in this particular conversation in this particular corner of the world (Rogier's site) is already of the same mind, and we are just rolling our eyes together. But unless his blog becomes simply a mechanism to nudge each other in the ribs, I'd like to think we could at least work a little to demonstrate *why* these ideas are invalid, or foolish, or whatever.

As a disclosure, I give and take oral sex with intense delight fairly regularly. However I don't see how that pertains at all to what members of a given alien religion 'should' think about oral sex, or any sex.

[Phil]

Jeff: You can't disprove their god saying anything is bad. It's an arguement you cannot win unless you can ask the guy (or girl). Which, last I checked, you can't. Mainly because it doesn't really exist, but that is beside the point.

An act invoving two (or more!) consenting adults should be allowed in pretty much any circumstance, even if you think it's ooky. That is a thing we like to call freedom.

Besides, mockery is fun.

[Martin Owens]

The problem is not what they believe or disbelieve. The problem is that this sort of blind, sheeplike groupthink is the seedbed of the Salafist/Wahabi/Hanbali axis of radical, rejectionist bloodthirsty tribal "Islamic" thought and action.

Where you find these pathetic pleas for people to be allowed to use their own bodies, there you find the repression and abuse of women, the prohibition of art, literature and music on pain of death, the open calls for murder and human sacrifice ( what else is it when you kill innocent people to please your gods?); that is where you find the whole of society organized as a standing conspiracy against knowledge and human dignity.

This is where you find the male population composed of idle, arrogant machos. This is where you find a religion that does not love God nearly as much as they hate the neighbors: hypersensitive to insults, real and imagined, hypervigilant to detect sinners and apostates under every shadow, red hot to detect problems whose only cure is rivers of Infidel blood.

The problem is not how silly their differences with us are. The problem is how eagerly they invent differences as a pretext for killing.

[Tlaloc]

"but there is no decisive evidence (to forbid it) ... especially if the wife agrees with it or achieves orgasm by practising it."

Wow, who would have guessed that Islam would be less misogynistic than Christianity? I mean sure they are fundamentalist dickheads but our fundamentalist dickheads regard women as mere sperm receptacles. Imagine actually valuing female orgasms!

[Jeff the Poustman]

Phil said (above) "An act invoving two (or more!) consenting adults should be allowed in pretty much any circumstance".

As I understand it, that postulate is precisely what the mullahs in question disagree with.

My confusion is simply about how we can debate a matter with such Muslims when we have no commonality to appeal to. One side says 'some sex is wrong', the other side says 'all sex is right'. How do you finally solve the disagreement?

The only *ultimate* solutions I see are 1) a mutual agreement to fully respect the other side's views, to the point of not objecting, mocking, proselytizing, or in any way acting to assert your own views as against the other, or 2) naked force (no pun intended) to kill those who disagree.

Any other solutions are simply way stations on the road to one end or the other.

Opinions?

[Jeff the Poustman]

I should have written also:

It seems to me that our North American (Enlightenment) approach is 1), the middle-Eastern Muslim approach is 2).

My concern is that when we in NAmerica mock, we are not really following our own ostensibly preferred approach. We weaken our position when we do this.

[Jeff the Poustman]

Why does mockery weaken our position? Because at the root it is not persuasion, but force.

No one can be persuaded by mockery, because mockery by nature assumes a basic agreement on something. Otherwise, mockery wouldn't work. A muslim mullah wouldn't mock someone from NAmerica, say, effectively by pointing a finger and laughing "he has sex without blankets over him! What a loser!" The NAmerican wouldn't consider the mockery to be mockery, but actually something of a compliment, because he disagrees about the matter in question at a fundamental level.

Mockery is a shot using words rather than bullets. It is ineffective as persuasion (the Enlightenment method of fighting the war of ideas) and is ineffective as violence (the 'primitive'? method of fighting the ware of ideas.) While it is indeed often *fun* (I have to agree) it is counter-productive.

By the way I don't want to come across as a stick in the mud, I'm deliberately choosing to look at the serious side of the blog entry, though the flip side invites a great deal of mockery among those who already think the mullahs are mistaken, I admit.