"El orgasmo no es un complot de Occidente". Lo clama el escritor argelino Kamel Daoud, harto ya de una oleada de tabúes que se van apoderando del mundo musulmán: cada día se exige más a las mujeres que sean decentes, púdicas, religiosas, vírgenes... pero también cada día aumenta el acoso sexual en la calle. A las que parece que no lo son, primero, y luego, a todas.
The dichotomy occurs between the virtuous and virgin woman, who does not raise a threat to the patriarchy, in front of a 'westernized', that is, sexually permissive, which is a moral depravation.It is all a matter of a modest regulated by the ‘fetua’ (religious opinions) of imames and telepredictors, fundamentalists of a new Islam that has demonized sex and has turned the woman's body into her great obsession.Something that must be covered with an EVLO and have strict control.
The Moroccan sheikh Abdelbari Zemzemi is the king of sex.He has given his blessing to women to use "a carrot or a bottle" to masturbate and men to buy an inflatable doll as a couple.Anything is fine "not to fall into sin", that is, to have sex out of marriage.That never.
Zemzemi's permits only apply - he says - to people "who need it" and especially those who are having "impediments" to join in the Holy Marriage.For others, "Amen" to every experiment, as long as it is between spouses.In a previous opinion, Zemzemi considered that the sex of a husband with his late wife, newly deceased, is "totally legitimate" because she, her wife, "belongs to her before and after death".
In the absence of laws, society is responsible for establishing the rules: a man and a woman cannot spend the night together in an Egyptian or Moroccan hotel in the absence of a marriage certificate.Without this role, even a romantic walk along the coast of Tangier, caught by the hand, ends at the police station.Kissing in public is already disrespectful, with a ring or without it.
The dichotomy occurs between the virtuous and virgin woman, who does not raise a threat to the patriarchy, in front of a 'westernized', which is a moral depravation
Protecting the honor of the family above all, being a good girl, and acting according to the pre -established is the maximum citizen duty of each female.Hence, violating a woman is not considered so much an aggression against her freedom but as a crime against public morals;A crime in which she will have part of her if she - in the eyes of society - did something for man to feel "driven" to violate her.For example walking alone or wearing a short skirt.The crime is not aggression, it is sex.That is why it is also punishable in almost all Muslim countries, the freely consented sex among adults (article 490 of the Moroccan Criminal Code provides for up to a year in prison for this, although it rarely applies).
Female sexuality as a threat
"The mind has been drilled with that sex before marriage is bad and that my virginity is the most important thing," says Mariam, 24 years old."The majority of Arab women with whom I have had relationships only keep anal sex so as not to break their hymen, and even so, then they have many regrets," explains Karim, 27 years.“Although it is a matter of shame and shyness, of taboo, it also has much of ignorance.We all know how children have, but nobody talks about sex because they are ashamed.Talking about enjoying it is already something unimaginable ”.
The obsession to regulate and control every detail of individual relations in Muslim societies, spurred by the wave of religious fundamentalism that the region has been experiencing for a couple of decades, has turned the question of sex into a social taboo increasingly severe.The idea of a "Muslim society", as defined by Islamic fundamentalism, is precisely that of a society in which there is no "moral depravation of the West", that is, the possibility of freely shared sex and enjoyed between adults.In Islamic society, as they try to fix the sheikhs of fundamentalism, the honor of a man lies in the control of the body of all the women of his family: his wife, his daughters, his sister, his mother.The sexuality of them is a threat to the social order, a source of immorality: they have no capacity to control themselves and need a man who protects his virtue and purity.
"Be a man: cover your women".This was the motto of a campaign that furious on social networks in Morocco last summer.It was not a new idea: it copied an initiative released in Algeria in 2015.The message loaded men of the responsibility of ensuring that "their" women were not in bikini to the beach or wear short or tight clothes in summer.The answer did not take: the Moroccan activist Betty Lachgar - already experienced in launching campaigns for sexRifeña Zoubida Maallem Boughaba spread the slogan "Be a free woman".
"Our grandmothers had no veil"
Zoubida Maallem and another activist, Melillense Mimunt Hamido Yahia, blog coordinator will not cover us, regret that these campaigns against "nudity" - being in bikini tells how to "be naked" - are "colonizing" North Africa, where evenThere was not so much sense of modesty."Our mothers didn't carry hiyab, and our grandmothers less," Hamido defends. Distingue entre el típico pañuelo campesino, que se ha llevado en todas las sociedades rurales del Mediterráneo, y el hiyab moderno, que se asocia a una idea de castidad y pureza, de ocultamiento del cabello de la mujer por su supuesto atractivo sexual y que incluso ha llegado ya hasta a las pasarelas de moda de marcas como Dolce & Gabbana."In my grandmother's photos the braids are seen under the scarf," he says.
The idea of concealment of women as sinful object of desire underlies Islamic theology, but only was present at the public level in Muslim societies in the last 30 years.The land began to take shape in the seventies, when political Islam began its journey, but it became visible for the first time from the stands of power with the Iranian revolution in 1979.Then came the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the civil war - a militarily luch, but won in the social field - of the Islamists in Algeria in the 90s and, already after the Arab spring, the rise of the Muslim brothers in Egyptor of the Ennahda party in Tunisia.
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The globalization of these movements, which declare saving of a secular world, has been accompanied by an increasing prominence of preachers who are inspired by Saudi and Qatar Arabia, two countries dominated by the Wahabí school, an ultra -orthodox movement born in the18th century, and considered almost heretic sect until the 20th century.Now he is in the process of becoming the only known version of Islam, especially in Europe, where immigrant Muslims groups, often second or even third generation, totally ignore the faith of their grandmothers and feed only on the fetus thatThey find in the Internet forums, impregnated with an exacerbated fundamentalism not so far from the Daesh ideology.
Sex out of marriage, the great taboo
This love-hate relationship that Islam maintains with sex is quite recent.During the centuries of splendor of Arabic civilization, until approximately seven.Flirteo was considered one of the Fine Arts, from Córdoba to Baghdad, and there is no point out that being successful would be punished with lapse."We are lucky that the Muslim religion, unlike the Catholic or the Jewish, considers that the sexual relationship must give pleasure, not only to serve the procreation," says the Moroccan feminist Aïcha Zaïmi Sakhri, which at the end of the years of the years at the end of the years90 launched the magazine 'Femmes du Maroc'.
Among beauty, fashion and critical reports with patriarchy reports, a black double page with sexual information was hidden in each number: clitoris anatomy, advice on how."Of course he is bold, my God will say, what they are talking about ... but it is not prohibited.What we cannot do is talk about sex out of marriage.From this topic we speak only between lines.Because these relationships are prohibited by law, ”acknowledged Sakhri.But pleasure itself is not demonized by theologians.
The substitute for sexual education, pornography, creates a distorted conception of relationships where consent is not necessary
Similar initiative launched, a decade later, the artist Joumana Haddad in Lebanon, with Jasad magazine (body).But in countries between Casablanca and Beirut, there are little material for them and them to inform themselves.In Egypt the Ma3looma digital platform (“a fact”), founded to combat the enormous ignorance of youth in sexual matters for a few years.The most attractive is your questions and answers, always anonymous.The questions expressed show the level of sexual education: "No, you cannot get pregnant with a kiss"."No, either for washing his underwear next to that of a man," he warns, in response to the hundreds of questions every more.
Sexual taboo in Egypt is so wide that - unlike what happens in Morocco - an interview with a television sexologist can become a national scandal."These issues are to speak them in the couple and the room," insisted the very popular presenter Tamer Amin.Egyptian writer Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison for "violating public morals" with one of the chapters of his novel.The plaintiff, a reader of his book, accused him of causing "tachycardia and a low blood pressure".For this reason, sex education does not exist either in schools or in conversations between parents, friends or even brothers.Because knowledge leads to love, they believe.Talking about sex will make young people try to have sex without waiting for the wedding.
The problem is that the substitute for sexual education, pornography on the Internet, creates a distorted conception of relationships between men and women, a world where consent or respect is not needed.And the consequences are in sight: the rise of street sexual harassment.A verbal harassment, which often derives in rubbing.Its authors are justified with the impossibility of "relieving" their sexual drives in another way.Not being able to establish a normal dialogue with a girl -they tell them not to talk to strange boys -the female body becomes a mere object.
And that object of desire is still there, even under all the layers of fabric.When Rania Fahmi, 20 years old and from a rural area of Egypt, goes out, she makes it dressed in black and long, with nothing to mark a curve, with the hair covered...But it seems that the simple presence of a woman in a alley is enough to awaken the male beast.Rania has been forced to sneak several blows with the bag to the man who harassed her, giving viral on social networks and taking her aggressor to prison.
Who is the fault if the meat uncovered?
The severity of the situation forced to react last September to the University Al Azhar, one of the greatest religious authorities of Islam, a fief of conservatism."Some try to make a woman's clothes or her behavior a pretext to justify the terrible crime of the stalker, as if the woman were responsible for such a sin," said this institution.But the fetua had little impact among the wave of messages that every day arrive from telepreacators and religious websites, and that all coincide that the woman is responsible for avoiding harassment, not giving opportunity.The Australian sheikh Taj Aldin Al-Hilali, a native of Egypt, launched its famous parable of the cat and meat to explain harassment.If you leave a meat on the table without covering, and the cat eats it, who is the fault?Of the cat: Just follow your instinct.What you have to cover is the meat, the preacher concluded.
Simile perfectly summarizes Islamic theology with respect to the woman's body: it constitutes 'fitna', that is, tares, confrontation, incitement to rebellion.The man - this school stands - is a raptor animal by nature;If you want to prevent it from being paid on a woman in the street and thus disturbs the social order, you have to avoid having a chance for it.You have to avoid women on the street or, if there are, at least you have to cover them so that it is not prompted to assault them.
This is precisely the theological reasoning that bases the use of the Islamist veil, known as Hiyab.Or its strictest version, the Niqab or Burka, which covers the whole face.Therefore, Mimunt Hamido argues, defending the veil in Spain as a sign of "multiculturalism" or "respect for foreign customs" is to completely ignore the meaning that entails and that is "a sexist separation of societies between aggressors by nature and guilty attacked"."The veil is not one more garment: it is a symbol that classifies women in decent and indecent," he denounces.Along these lines, an Egyptian lawyer, Nabil to Wahsh, has even affirmed on television that violating women with tight jeans is a "national duty" and harassing them is "a patriotic obligation".Because, he said, nobody wants to see a woman attracting the attention of men.
Another famous simile to convince the girls to chooseWould you choose? "The "flies", in this version, are the boys who follow a woman in the street to shout obscenities.But suffering this harassment is not the fault of the flies: it is the fault of those who do not carry the wrapping.
Socially.Not legally, or no longer.Last September, the Moroccan government finally announced a new law, long claimed by feminist movements, to eradicate violence against women.Not only typifies for the first time as a crime to force someone to marry their will, but also penalize sexual harassment with six months and fine harassment.It remains to be seen if it will apply.
Egypt's experience does not leave much to optimism: there is also the harassment with six months in prison and a fine from a legal reform of 2014.But when activist Amal Fathy published this year a video on social networks in which he related how he had been sexually harassed when he made efforts in a bank and denounced that the government is not doing enough to protect women against this scourge, theLegal weapon became Bumerán.The video arrived at the international press and the police soon went home and arrest it.At the end of last September, a court sentenced it to two years in jail and a fine of 490 euros for "spreading false news" and staining the image of the country.
The hymen at all costs
Trapped between their sexual impulses and the responsibility of monitoring the decency of "their" women - a concept that for many does not include only those of their family, but all of their country or even any Muslim in the world - many young people havediscovered a valve: the others.Those who are not Muslim.The 'Western'.They do not need to be decent: whores are born, more or less.Ligar with a European is the perfect solution for a Muslim boy who has no means to marry, but is horrified by the idea of staining the honor of what could be his future wife.
It is the escape route of Tareq (fictional name), a 25 -year -old Egyptian for which "there is no other solution beyond marriage" to have sex with a woman.Recognize that it is "a human need to say what the religious say" and ironic that is "fed up with porn"."I want to touch a human body without paying for it," he sighs, while drinking a beer in an Amsterdam bar.The Red Barrio is his favorite attraction: “And what do you want me to do?Violate girls on the street?Here at least give people this exit, we drowned with what there is ”.Next summer will celebrate her wedding in style with a girl five years younger and whom she barely knows.Both reside in Cairo.He had a few months left but "they are an eternity".He has no regret for what his fiancee may think.It is a marriage arranged with "a decent girl and with studies," he says proudly.
She doesn't have this escape as she prepares for the same wedding.It will be the day in which the virginity will lose, that symbol of dignity that guarantees a marriage.A symbol that has not lost vigor since the days of the tradition in which it guaranteed the public honor of the family.It makes a generation - says the Moroccan sociologist Soumayaya Naamane GueSSous in her thesis "Beyond the modestLong of reissues - there was no missing mothers who gave their daughters the advice of 'rolling' with their novietes everything they wanted...as long as they will preserve the hymen.Not that.
Today, obsession comes further.There are cases in which a boyfriend couple, after a stage of sexual encounters, decides to marry...And that by mutual agreement they decide that the girl goes to a clinic to recover the hymen and be a virgin again for her now future husband.Because how is he going to marry a girl who hasn't managed to preserve himself for wedding day?
In the Maghreb, the flourishing Hit -awareness industry is sometimes denounced as a business that takes advantage of taboos and, of course, reinforces them.But in other lengths it can be a lifeguard.In the Arab countries to the east of Egypt, and to the southeast of Turkey, the terrible custom of honor murders persists: if the neighborhood suspects that a girl could have lost her virginity, or that she acts as if she could be willing to lose her,About the family falls the obligation to kill her.A tradition so strong that several countries virtually allow it by law: in Jordan, the punishment for the murderer does not usually exceed six months.
When it was proposed, in 2003, to reform the law to abolish the mitigating 'honor', the deputies of the Muslim brothers voted against.When asked how they could protect with their vote a tradition that does not come in the Koran or is compatible with the Islamic norm that no one should be executed without public trial and judgment of a judge, the answer was easy: no, killing is notIslamic, they adduced, but it serves to prevent girls from committing a sin.
