Sexual Revolution in Islam?

                            Muslim Woman Gives Sex Advice on Arab TV

Heba Kotb is a conservative Muslim, wears an Islamic head scarf, and goes on television once a week to talk - frankly and in great detail - about sex.

On her show, "Big Talk," Kotb answers questions from Muslims all over the Middle East about the most intimate bedroom issues with an openness that is shocking and revolutionary in a society where discussing the subject is taboo.

"How do I talk about these issues? Very seriously," the Egyptian sexologist says. "I put on a mask-like face and make sure I speak in the right tone of voice."

She also does it by talking about sex in an Islamic light, arguing that the faith is in favor of pleasure for both men and women, with one important caveat - that it be only in the context of marriage.

"I'm very proud of my religion," Kotb told The Associated Press in an interview at Cairo University, where she teaches forensic medicine. "My studies revealed to me more and more how Islam was ahead in all sexual matters ... I discovered that Islam understood sex long before the rest of the world."

For example, Islam "stresses the importance of foreplay," Kotb said, and she often stresses to listeners that women should also enjoy sex.

Kotb's frankness is a hit in a region where sex education is minimal, male-female contact is often discouraged and talk on the subject is usually in hushed tones, allowing myths to circulate freely.

She lectured in Saudi Arabia and Yemen recently, where she said many men in the audience where shocked, while women - some with veiled faces - bombarded her with questions.

  It's difficult to see beneath the veils of secrecy and the hajiib, to know exactly what is on the minds and in the hearts of Muslim women. They cannot be terribly happy, sacrificing their sons on the altar of martyrdom. Or watching their brothers and fathers blow themselves up one after another. One can only hope that they can change from within, that which has resisted change from without, so very long. That may not be the case, they may be coweringounderneath all that cloth, much as most of the world seems to be. Which ever it is - they'd better get to it.

                        

                     Muslim Woman Gives Sex Advice on Arab TV

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

Cairo Egypt - Heba Kotb is a conservative Muslim, wears an Islamic head scarf, and goes on television once a week to talk - frankly and in great detail - about sex.

On her show, "Big Talk," Kotb answers questions from Muslims all over the Middle East about the most intimate bedroom issues with an openness that is shocking and revolutionary in a society where discussing the subject is taboo.

"How do I talk about these issues? Very seriously," the Egyptian sexologist says. "I put on a mask-like face and make sure I speak in the right tone of voice."

She also does it by talking about sex in an Islamic light, arguing that the faith is in favor of pleasure for both men and women, with one important caveat - that it be only in the context of marriage.

"I'm very proud of my religion," Kotb told The Associated Press in an interview at Cairo University, where she teaches forensic medicine. "My studies revealed to me more and more how Islam was ahead in all sexual matters ... I discovered that Islam understood sex long before the rest of the world."

For example, Islam "stresses the importance of foreplay," Kotb said, and she often stresses to listeners that women should also enjoy sex.

Kotb's frankness is a hit in a region where sex education is minimal, male-female contact is often discouraged and talk on the subject is usually in hushed tones, allowing myths to circulate freely.

She lectured in Saudi Arabia and Yemen recently, where she said many men in the audience where shocked, while women - some with veiled faces - bombarded her with questions.

Kotb, 39 and married with three daughters, studied sexology with Maimonides University, a private school in Florida, and combined it with her own knowledge of her religion to produce a dissertation titled "Sexuality in Islam." She opened a sexology clinic in Cairo in wrote sex advice columns in newspapers, appeared on talk shows and answered questions on an Arabic Web site.

She started "Big Talk" on the independent Egyptian satellite channel El-Mehwar more than two months ago.

Much of her advice is straight biology - laying out facts rarely aired elsewhere. Nothing is too sensitive. She discusses sexual positions, female orgasm, oral sex (allowed, "since there is no religious text banning it"), even masturbation (frowned upon but at least preferable to unmarried or adulterous sex, which is "haram," meaning forbidden by religion).

She takes a strict Islamic line on homosexuality - she calls it a disease.

Along with doctors, she sometimes brings Islamic clerics onto her show, and many callers ask about the religion's rulings on sexual issues.

Because Islam trumps all else on her show, some complain that it's part of a general inclination in the Middle East to view everything through the prism of religion.

"After Islamic banks, Islamic fashion, Islamic TV channels, Islamic hairdressers, Islamic swimsuits, Islamic writers ... now Islamic sex? This is too much," protested feminist writer Mona Helmi in a column in the Egyptian pro-government weekly Rose el-Youssef.

"Sex is an emotional and human condition, not a religious or identity issue," she said.

Some complain that youngsters are watching the show.

"So now girls and boys have heard all about Heba's talk about sex ... that will let them know more than they should and will get them excited," Somia, a housewife, told AP as she watched "Big Talk," too embarrassed to give her full name.

Kotb says frankness is essential and believes 80 percent of divorces in the Arab world are due to sexual problems brought on by ignorance and societal pressure, such as the idea that man must marry a virgin.

"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," she says.

She gives sex education courses for unmarried youths with the consent of their parents, but in her consulting practice takes only married couples. She says she is booked up for two months with couples from across the Arab world.

"It's a beautiful thing what she is doing," said Abier El-Barbary, a psychotherapist and faculty member of American University in Cairo. "It's a long overdue topic tastefully done,"   Link

Comments

[Phoenix]

How very heartening. (I'm not being sarcastic.) Yes, I agree that under the umbrella of Islam Sex, it's kind of stupid, but anyone listening is far more interested in the actual sex stuff than the religion stuff. Likewise, they are 'willing' to listen within the religion, and that can only open them up a bit more. Also likewise is that they have little choice but to learn it through the eye of Islam, but it's a step forward.

[oldcatman]

.........just roll over and have a bowl in the hookah!

[Bomb-a-rama]

They cannot be terribly happy, sacrificing their sons on the altar of martyrdom. Or watching their brothers and fathers blow themselves up one after another.

Careful with this - while this is how WE might feel about such a situation if we were in that position, they may view it quite differently.

[Omar Zaid, M.D.]

Salaam,

If anyone reading this can put me in touch with this good woman of Allah, Dr. Heba Kotb, please send me her email. I'm at [email protected]

I would like to collaborate with her on a book I am writing entitled "Human Reproduction: An Islamic Perspective"\\Waslaam and thank you most kindly,

Dr. Omar

[mahmoud Mokhtar]

I would like to thank dr Heba Kotb But I have to say to her Enough you repeat every thing and it seems so bad to us.
please send me her email address

Mahmoud Mokhtar

[taufieq_hdy]

yesus/ esau not GOD! he's man, do you now?!

[ozo]

fuck u

[ahmed nadeem]

Dr. Heba Kotb,

can my wife suck my penis and also i can suck her vagina

please reply me according to islamic law.

thanks

[Oldcatman]

Why bother?

Everything I wanted to know about mooosies I learned on 9/11.......

[Annoymous]

Hi, im a muslim women...enjoy sex...me and my husband enjoy it alot.... can i suck his penis and can he lick me vigina? Also another qestion i want to ask u i got few hairs around my nipples how can i remove them? i cant pluck it cus that hurts? what other option do i have? please reply to me ... thanx...

[Qatif Man]

All christians are on my penis. I have fucked a great deal of them

lol

[hameed]

hi i am muslim boy 20 years old.
I wan to ask that can i use the cream that the woman are using for removing the hair around the penis,and is it ok that we are tuching our peins by hand