Sex And Society In Islam

We live in an over-sexualised culture where sex and sexuality have become part of the public domain. This sexual revolution challenges Judeo-Christian and Islamic norms and boundaries. As such, sexuality education is a sensitive and extremely important issue, and its current implementation in schools has raised public concerns. This book explores the subject, contextualising it within the matrix of Islamic beliefs and practices. Islam binds sexuality and sexual education to a moral grid with rights and obligations, justice and equity. There is a dominant discourse and stereotype around ‘Islamic sexuality’, which presents sex and sexuality as the biggest taboo, fraught with fear and seldom discussed. This book dispels such myths and misconceptions, providing an overview of sexuality education in the modern world and the need for such education.

Offering writings in Middle East studies by renowned scholars and by the new generation of scholars of Islam and gender, this collection includes a wide variety of cases from Middle Eastern and Islamic societies. By including case-based articles, the collection highlights the clear links between concepts and theories and actual practices.

In this study of birth control in the classical Islamic world, Basim Musallam demonstrates the wide range of evidence available to dispel many assumptions that are rampant in many people's beliefs. Medieval Arabic discussions of contraception and abortion in Islamic jurisprudence, medicine, materia medica, belles lettres, erotica and popular literature show that birth control was sanctioned by Islamic law and opinion. Contraceptive methods were available throughout pre-modern times and were used to meet social, economic, personal and medical needs. Sex and Society in Islam considers the impact of birth control as a factor in demographic change, and therefore in social history.

Here is the first major work published about sexuality and eroticism between males in Islamic society. Through narratives, analytic essays, descriptions, and academic treatises, Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies provides a revealing and most fascinating look into what is--for most Westerners--still a very hidden, very foreign culture. Until now there has existed a lack of solid information about sexuality in Islamic society, but this volume portrays very clearly the relationship between same-sex eroticism and the ideal of the man as penetrator. As a result, Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies illuminates not only homosexuality but the whole sexual culture and role of gender in the Muslim world. The chapters focus on homosexuality among men in Morocco, Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Israel. Despite its occurrence in this region of the world, sex between males is not considered to be "homosexuality" by most men--a concept that is reiterated in chapter after chapter. In addition to major differences in the attitudes toward homosexual acts in Muslim countries and the West, this enlightening book also shows great differences among the Muslim countries themselves, depending upon the degree to which Islamic law is enforced, the impact of different western colonial influences and legal systems, and the sheer impact of cultural variation within so vast a geographic area. There are some keen observations and insights into the socialization of boys in Islamic culture, the status and inaccessibility of women, and sex roles and attitudes toward them. Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies captures a sense of the Muslim countries in the process of rapid change--from the anti-modernist and religious fundamentalism of Iran to the attempts in the cities of Turkey to develop a western style gay way of life, with all the difficulties that involves. An engaging book for readers interested in gay studies, anthropologists, orientalists, historians, students of comparative law, and sexologists, it should also be read by anyone in contact with Arabs, Turks, or Persians--as tourists in Muslim countries, social service professionals working with immigrants, or friends of Muslims.after chapter. In addition to major differences in the attitudes toward homosexual acts in Muslim countries and the West, this enlightening book also shows great differences among the Muslim countries themselves, depending upon the degree to which Islamic law is enforced, the impact of different western colonial influences and legal systems, and the sheer impact of cultural variation within so vast a geographic area. There are some keen observations and insights into the socialization of boys in Islamic culture, the status and inaccessibility of women, and sex roles and attitudes toward them. Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies captures a sense of the Muslim countries in the process of rapid change--from the anti-modernist and religious fundamentalism of Iran to the attempts in the cities of Turkey to develop a western style gay way of life, with all the difficulties that involves. An engaging book for readers interested in gay studies, anthropologists, orientalists, historians, students of comparative law, and sexologists, it should also be read by anyone in contact with Arabs, Turks, or Persians--as tourists in Muslim countries, social service professionals working with immigrants, or friends of Muslims. historians, students of comparative law, and sexologists, it should also be read by anyone in contact with Arabs, Turks, or Persians--as tourists in Muslim countries, social service professionals working with immigrants, or friends of Muslims.

What have different ideas about sex and gender meant for people throughout the history of the Middle East and North Africa? This book traces sex and desire in Muslim cultures through a collection of chapters that span the 9th to 21st centuries. Looking at spaces and periods where sexual norms and the categories underpinning them emerge out of multiple subjectivities, the book shows how people constantly negotiate the formulation of norms, their boundaries and their subversion. It demonstrates that the cultural and political meanings of sexualities in Muslim cultures - as elsewhere – emerge from very specific social and historical contexts. The first part of the book examines how people constructed, discussed and challenged sexual norms from the Abbasid to the Ottoman period. The second part looks at literary and cinematic Arab cultural production as a site for the construction and transgression of gender norms. The third part builds on feminist historiography and social anthropology to question simplistic dichotomies and binaries. Each of the contributions shows how understanding of sexualities and the subjectivities that evolve from them are rooted in the mutually-constitutive relationships between gender and political power. In identifying the plurality of discourses on desires, the book goes beyond the dichotomy of norm and transgression to glimpse what different sexual norms have meant at different times across the Middle East.