I wanted to share this news piece from the The New York Times about a remarkable woman who performs her duties as marriage and sexual counselor in Dubai. She just published a book on sexual advice for couples, all from a Muslim perspective.
Notice how her difficulties in publishing this volume are similar to our own. The puritanism, the hipocrisy, the unwillingness of discussing crucial matters of sexual health, and also for that matter the willingness of those who promote, taboos to let people (couples, especially) to experience intimacy purely on traditional misconceptions and guesswork.
Apart from describing the similarities in the reluctance to discuss sexuality, which in and of itself is a subject for debating the issue, and for comparing sociological data, the article is interesting because it challenges common misconceptions about the Arabs and the Arab world. You know, the usual ones about their culture and religion, as if those two aspects conditions a mold that fits the whole Arab world. As if all of them have not entered modernity. As if Arab countries are all the same. As if all they they needed was an infusion of a different religious dogma.
Read the article and tell me what you think.
From The New York Times:
THE SATURDAY PROFILE: Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran
Wedad Lootah, a marital counselor in Dubai, is the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/middleeast/06dubai.html
Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://nytimes.com/iphoneinstaller
Notice how her difficulties in publishing this volume are similar to our own. The puritanism, the hipocrisy, the unwillingness of discussing crucial matters of sexual health, and also for that matter the willingness of those who promote, taboos to let people (couples, especially) to experience intimacy purely on traditional misconceptions and guesswork.
Apart from describing the similarities in the reluctance to discuss sexuality, which in and of itself is a subject for debating the issue, and for comparing sociological data, the article is interesting because it challenges common misconceptions about the Arabs and the Arab world. You know, the usual ones about their culture and religion, as if those two aspects conditions a mold that fits the whole Arab world. As if all of them have not entered modernity. As if Arab countries are all the same. As if all they they needed was an infusion of a different religious dogma.
Read the article and tell me what you think.
From The New York Times:
THE SATURDAY PROFILE: Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran
Wedad Lootah, a marital counselor in Dubai, is the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/middleeast/06dubai.html
Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://nytimes.com/iphoneinstaller
Sent from my iPhone
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