Ha Ana Za! - Wed, 2008-03-19 00:47 By
Arab attitudes to sex are admittedly very strange. On the one hand no one talks about it at all and yet if the population explosion tells us anything then it would seem that everybody is doing it.
A study carried out at Oxford University suggested that 50% of Lebanese women lost their virginity before marriage. In Morocco, surveys have shown the figure to be more than 70%. Yet despite these astonishing figures, our culture still insists on virginity at the time of marriage (for women at least) and no one wants to marry 'spoiled goods'. If this attitude rested on religious views alone then this would be understandable and indeed commendable but what about those who do not practice their faith in any other way and may have already had pre-marital relations themselves? Should they expect their spouse to be lily white?
Ultimately, it is culture that dictates these attitudes and leads to some going as far as paying out for hymen repairs (on the market in the UK for between £1,500 and £2000- quite an investment), despite the fact that gynaecologists quite clearly state the the majority of women do not bleed on their wedding night for a variety of reasons.
Another attitude that needs addressing is the focus on sex as a gratification for the male or as an exclusively procreational activity, a study showed that only 50 percent of men and 38 percent of women found their sex lives satisfying. Is it this that pushes people to seek pleasure outside the boundaries of what is permitted to them by religion or society?
This issue has been largely ignored until recently when Egyptian Heba Kotb burst onto the scene, who grounds a healthy sex life within the teachings of the Qur'an, Sunna and Hadith.
"Many women know nothing about their bodies, not to mention sex, and they were raised to believe sex is for men and a dirty thing, but this is just a cultural attitude and has no roots in Islam".
It seems to me that it is high time that attitudes such as the one espoused by Kotb are circulated in society and the Middle East started to revise its attitude to one of humanity's most basic functions. This does not have to mean encouraging promiscuity and lax morality but rather bringing up the next generation to believe in a healthy and loving physical relationship within marriage. If such an attitude existed then perhaps men and women would not feel compelled to seek satisfaction outside the confines of what is deemed correct.
Arab attitudes to sex are admittedly very strange. On the one hand no one talks about it at all and yet if the population explosion tells us anything then it would seem that everybody is doing it.
A study carried out at Oxford University suggested that 50% of Lebanese women lost their virginity before marriage. In Morocco, surveys have shown the figure to be more than 70%. Yet despite these astonishing figures, our culture still insists on virginity at the time of marriage (for women at least) and no one wants to marry 'spoiled goods'. If this attitude rested on religious views alone then this would be understandable and indeed commendable but what about those who do not practice their faith in any other way and may have already had pre-marital relations themselves? Should they expect their spouse to be lily white?
Ultimately, it is culture that dictates these attitudes and leads to some going as far as paying out for hymen repairs (on the market in the UK for between £1,500 and £2000- quite an investment), despite the fact that gynaecologists quite clearly state the the majority of women do not bleed on their wedding night for a variety of reasons.
Another attitude that needs addressing is the focus on sex as a gratification for the male or as an exclusively procreational activity, a study showed that only 50 percent of men and 38 percent of women found their sex lives satisfying. Is it this that pushes people to seek pleasure outside the boundaries of what is permitted to them by religion or society?
This issue has been largely ignored until recently when Egyptian Heba Kotb burst onto the scene, who grounds a healthy sex life within the teachings of the Qur'an, Sunna and Hadith.
"Many women know nothing about their bodies, not to mention sex, and they were raised to believe sex is for men and a dirty thing, but this is just a cultural attitude and has no roots in Islam".
It seems to me that it is high time that attitudes such as the one espoused by Kotb are circulated in society and the Middle East started to revise its attitude to one of humanity's most basic functions. This does not have to mean encouraging promiscuity and lax morality but rather bringing up the next generation to believe in a healthy and loving physical relationship within marriage. If such an attitude existed then perhaps men and women would not feel compelled to seek satisfaction outside the confines of what is deemed correct.
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