VOTE: Should #Muslim #Women Talk Openly About #Sex ?
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Why are you talking about your virginity publicly? You are totally embarrassing your parents; your two million first to fifth cousins; aunts and uncles around the world; their Iranian friends and the Iranian friends of their friends; Iranians who know them or of them; Iranians who know you; and Iranians who live near you. Just pray to God that this never gets to your grandparents.
This is the kind of response Iranian American Zahra Noorbakhsh would have expected to get had she ever spoken openly about having lost her virginity at age 22, not married, not engaged to be married, not even in an exclusive relationship.
Today, she does speak openly about sex, along with 23 other Muslim women. Not around tea or coffee. More openly than that. More precisely, in a published collection of very personal essays titled “Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women.”
The book’s two co-editors, Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi, came up with the idea in an effort to lift the veil on the true lives of Muslim women in the United States as they cope with the complex issues of love, sex, religion, cultural norms and family expectations.
“We felt that it was about time that we started telling your own stories, and we thought what better stories to tell than love stories, which have universal appeal,” said Mattu when asked about what prompted the endeavor.
Maznavi added that one goal of the book is to “demolish the idea that Muslim women are submissive” and “lack control over their lives.”
Aside from sexuality, including homosexuality, the book also explores such subjects as interfaith relationship, conversions to Islam and such issues as alcohol and drug use.
Mattu explained that to gain the women’s trust to write about their innermost thoughts, she along with Maznavi, allowed the authors to have full control over their stories.
Book cover of "Love, InshAllah"
One contributor to the book, Tolu Adiba, not her real name, writes about her conversion to Islam as a gay woman and the “hidden world of gay Muslims” she discovered as a result. Asking whether being a gay Muslim and finding love were “a contradiction or disgusting,” she speaks with envy about gay couples having the courage to live openly as homosexuals, and expresses hope that one day she will be able to do the same.
“InshAllah” is the Arabic equivalent of “God willing.” It was included in the book’s title as it represents a yearning for love that is universal to all people, says Maznavi.
Both Mattu and Maznavi hope the book will inspire an “international edition” with local versions highlighting the plight of women in various Muslim countries, and maybe even a sequel about love and Muslim men.
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