B005X0JS14 EBOK

by Feki, Shereen El

  6. Egyptian Cabinet, Information and Decision Support Center (hereafter IDSC), Istitla’ Ra’ii al-Muwatiniin hawla Makanat al-Mar’a [Citizens’ opinion poll on the status of women].

  7. In the World Values Surveys conducted in the Arab region from 2000 to 2008, Egypt led the pack, closely followed by Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan, in rejecting the notion that “marriage is an outdated institution”; those polled in Saudi Arabia were only slightly less enthusiastic on marriage. See www.worldvaluessurvey.org.

  8. Qur’an 24:32.

  9. As mentioned by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, one of the great figures of Islamic thought and author of the premier Islamic marriage guide through the ages, the eleventh- to twelfth-century Book of Etiquette in Marriage (Farah, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of al-Ghazali’s Book on the Etiquette of Marriage from the Ihya’, p. 49).

  10. Many of the statistics on Egyptian youth in this book come from a 2009 national survey of ten- to twenty-nine-year-olds, as detailed in chapter 3. Results calculated directly from the data are indicated by Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt. Some of this data has been published already, as in this instance, in Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” p. 125.

  11. Tradition aside, marrying a cousin makes economic sense; it reduces matrimonial costs by roughly a quarter and offers particular savings on housing, since around two-thirds of such couples set up house with their relatives (Singerman, The Economic Imperatives of Marriage, p. 23; Singerman, “Marriage and Divorce in Egypt”).

  12. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt. For more on what young Egyptians are looking for in the perfect mate, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  13. Ibid.

  14. More than 90 percent of Egyptian men under the age of thirty claim to have the final say in spousal choice, but less than half of the poorest young women in Egypt have similar scope; their fathers enjoy considerable say in whom their daughters marry (Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt).

  15. Osman et al., Ta’khkhur Sinn al-Zawaj [Delay in the age of marriage], p. 3.

  16. The latest statistics on Egypt, including marriage and divorce, are available from the government’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics at www.capmas.gov.eg. For more on marriage in Egypt and across the Arab region, see Osman and Girgis, “Marriage Patterns in Egypt.”

  17. Osman et al., Ta’khkhur Sinn al-Zawaj [Delay in the age of marriage], p. 5.

  18. Singerman, The Economic Imperatives of Marriage, p. 13.

  19. Zaiem and Attafi, “Les Mariages en Tunisie, 1991–2007” [Marriages in Tunisia, 1991–2007].

  20. Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” p. 122.

  21. Kholoussy, For Better, for Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt, p. 27.

  22. Qur’an 4:34.

  23. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt.

  24. Sabiq, Fiqh al-Sunna [Jurisprudence for Sunni Muslims], p. 219.

  25. Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” p. 127.

  26. Singerman, “The Negotiation of Waithood,” p. 72.

  27. For more on youthful suggestions to make marriage more affordable, see Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” pp. 128–29.

  28. For more on concerted efforts elsewhere in the region to get young people into marriage, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  29. The UAE Marriage Fund and its many criteria are detailed at www.zawaj.gov.ae/en.

  30. Bristol-Rhys, Emirati Women, p. 80.

  31. Bristol-Rhys, “Weddings, Marriage and Money,” pp. 23–25.

  32. Abdulla and Ridge, Where Are All the Men? Gender Participation and Higher Education in the United Arab Emirates.

  33. Tadmouri et al., “Consanguinity and Reproductive Health Among Arabs.”

  34. United Arab Emirates National Bureau of Statistics, Marriage Contracts and Divorce Certificates.

  35. For more on the tensions over foreign spouses, particularly foreign husbands, across the Arab region, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  36. Differences between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims over mut‘a marriage are discussed at www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  37. For more on the practice of mut’a marriage in its Shi’i homeland of Iran, see Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi’i Iran; and Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution. For Lebanon, see Drieskens, “Changing Perceptions of Marriage in Contemporary Beirut.” For the UAE, see Hasso, Consuming Desires: Family Crisis and the State in the Middle East.

  38. For more on ‘urfi marriage and its variations elsewhere in the Arab region, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  39. El Tawila and Khadr, Patterns of Marriage and Family Formation Among Youth in Egypt, p. 88.

  40. Al-Kordy, Al-Zawaj al-’Urfi fi al-Sirr [Secret ‘urfi marriage], p. 181.

  41. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, personal communication, 2012.

  42. Hasso, Consuming Desires, pp. 1–2.

  43. Al-Sayed, “Mufti of Egypt: Misyar legally permissible and not an affront to women.” For more on misyar marriage in the Arab region, see Hasso, Consuming Desires.

  44. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt.

  45. The sexual problems of Moroccan wives, and their husbands, are discussed in Chabach, Le Couple Arabe [The Arab couple]. For more on emerging research on married women elsewhere in the Arab region, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  46. Farah, Marriage and Sexuality in Islam, p. 106. For more on female sexual prerogative in the pre-Islamic period, the role of women in early Islamic society, and modern calls to revive some of these early features, see Al-Munajjid, Al-Hayat al-Jinsiyya ‘ind al-’Arab [The sexual life of the Arabs], pp. 15–25; Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, pp. 77–98; Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, pp. 41–63; and www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  47. Daniel, Islam and the West, p. 93. For modern-day successors to this early Christian condemnation of Islamic sexual mores, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  48. Elnashar et al., “Female Sexual Dysfunction in Lower Egypt.”

  49. Hassanin et al., “Prevalence and Characteristics of Female Sexual Dysfunction in a Sample of Women from Upper Egypt.”

  50. For more on this line of argument, see El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab, Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt, as detailed in chapter 3.

  51. Kotb, “Sexuality in Islam.” For more on Egyptian law on adultery, including the differing burdens of proof and penalties for husbands and wives, see Abu Komsan, Egypt Violence Against Women Study: Violence Against Women and the Law; and www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  52. ‘Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, p. 23. For an overview of the history of Arabic erotic literature, including a summary of the Encyclopedia, see Rowson, “Arabic: Middle Ages to Nineteenth Century.”

  53. Examples of such frank female advice can be found at www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  54. Qur’an 12:23–34.

  55. ‘Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, p. 245.

  56. For more on Arab women writers and their approach to sexuality, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  57. Al-Nafzawi, “Al-Rawd al-’Atir” [The perfumed garden], p. 19.

  58. Haddad, Invitation to a Secret Feast, p. 13.

  59. Haddad, I Killed Scheherezade, pp. 33–34

  60. Ibid., pp. 73–74.

  61. Ibid., p. 74.

  62. Ibid., p. 88.

  63. Haddad, Superman Is an Arab, pp. 163–66.

  64. Haddad, I Killed Scheherazade, p. 43.

  65. For more on the appearance of sex toys in the history of Arabic erotic writing, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  66. For more on sex during Ramadan, see Berrada et al., “Sexuality in the Month of Ramadan.”

  67. Tampon use remains rare in Egypt beyond a Westernized elite; its increase would be an interesting measu
re of socioeconomic change, though the United Nations might not be quite ready to use it as one of their standard indicators of “human development.” For more on tampons and menstrual hygiene in Egypt, see World Health Organization Task Force on Psychosocial Research on Family Planning, “A Cross-Cultural Study on Menstruation”; El-Gilany, Badawi, and El-Fedawy, “Menstrual Hygiene Among Adolescent Schoolgirls”; and Yosri, Mother-Daughter Communication About Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters.

  68. These and other fanciful creations are given their artistic due in Halasa and Salam, The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie. For more on lingerie battles in Saudi Arabia, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  69. Hull, The Sheik, p. 59. For more on the history of the desert romance, see Teo, Desert Passion: Orientalism and Romance Novels.

  70. Sellers, “Sheikh’s Honour,” p. 145.

  71. Taylor, “And You Can Be My Sheikh: Gender, Race and Orientalism in Contemporary Romance Novels,” pp. 1043–47.

  72. Kendrick, Promised to the Sheikh, p. 41.

  73. Sabiq, Fiqh al-Sunna [Jurisprudence for Sunni Muslims], p. 245. For more on the issue of anal sex at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  74. ‘Ali ibn Nasr al-Katib, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, p. 240.

  75. Qur’an 2:223.

  76. See Alami, “Le Comportement Sexuel de la Femme” [Female sexual behavior], p. 69; and Haffani and Troudi, La Sexualité des Hommes Tunisiens [Sexuality of Tunisian men].

  77. Ayman Zohry, personal communication, 2012.

  78. For more on tough times for foreign domestic workers across the Arab region, see Human Rights Watch, Slow Reform: Protection of Migrant Domestic Workers; and Jureidini, Domestic Workers in the Middle East.

  79. Qur’an 2:222.

  80. Ali, Planning the Family in Egypt, p. 130.

  81. Kotb, “Sexuality in Islam.”

  82. Al-Magribi, A Jaunt in the Art of Coition, p. 129.

  83. For two excellent examples of this emerging field, see Dialmy, Vers une Nouvelle Masculinité au Maroc [Toward a new masculinity in Morocco]; and In horn, The New Arab Man.

  84. El-Sakka, “Erectile Dysfunction in Arab Countries, Part I,” p. 1.

  85. Sengers, Women and Demons: Cult Healing in Islamic Egypt, p. 261.

  86. Badran et al., “Etiological Factors of Unconsummated Marriage”; and Shamloul, “Management of Honeymoon Impotence.”

  87. In the region, honeymoon impotence is not a uniquely Muslim phenomenon. For sexual stage fright among Orthodox Jews in Israel, see Shalev, Baum, and Itzhaki, “ ‘There’s a Man in My Bed.’ ”

  88. The Thursday night special is deeply rooted in Egyptian Islamic culture. According to sunna—the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad—believers should thoroughly cleanse their bodies after sex, a process called tatahhur. Sunna also obliges Muslims to perform ghusl al-jumu’a—a thorough wash before turning up to the mosque for Friday prayers. Ever-canny Egyptians developed the custom of having sex on a Thursday night, thereby combining two washes in one, a highly practical measure in places where bathing facilities are scarce. It is for this same reason that Thursday nights are a popular slot for weddings in Egypt.

  89. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyah, Medicine of the Prophet. For more entertaining advice on how to maintain male prowess, see arguably the most famous book of Arabic erotica, al-Tifashi, Ruju’ al-Shaykh ila Sibah [The old man’s return to his youth].

  90. Qur’an 16:69.

  91. El-Zanaty and Way, Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008, p. 68.

  92. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt. For more on shifting fertility in Egypt and the wider Arab world, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  93. Inhorn, “Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies,” p. 166.

  94. For more on Noor-mania, and how Turkish soap operas are shaping women’s romantic expectations in the region, see Salamandra, “The Muhammad Effect: Media Panic, Melodrama, and the Arab Female Gaze.”

  95. Inhorn, “Masturbation, Semen Collection, and Men’s IVF Experiences,” p. 42.

  96. Qur’an 23:5–8.

  97. Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam, p. 33.

  98. Inhorn, “Masturbation, Semen Collection, and Men’s IVF Experiences,” p. 41.

  99. Chebel, Encyclopédie de l’Amour en Islam [Encyclopedia of love in Islam], vol. 2, p. 85.

  100. For traditional methods of circumventing such restrictions, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  101. The line taken by Shi’i authorities on assisted reproduction, and their own differences of opinion on this topic, are discussed in Inhorn, “Making Muslim Babies: IVF and Gamete Donation in Sunni versus Shi’a Islam”; and Clarke, “Kinship, Propriety and Assisted Reproduction in the Middle East.”

  102. For more facts and figures on domestic abuse, including sexual violence in Egypt and across the Arab region, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  103. These figures fall dramatically with wealth and education; for more details, see El-Zanaty and Way, Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008, p. 43.

  104. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt.

  105. Qur’an 4:34.

  106. Alternative interpretations of this verse are discussed in Ammar, “Wife Battery in Islam.”

  107. For a thorough assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Egypt’s response to domestic violence, see Said et al., Egypt Violence Against Women Study: Overview of Services on Violence Against Women.

  108. Such trade-offs are explored in Yount, “Women’s Conformity as Resistance to Intimate Partner Violence.”

  109. In a number of countries across the Arab region, rape can be grounds for marriage, allowing assailants to escape criminal sanction if they marry their victims. In Morocco, the recent suicide of one such wife sparked a fierce debate around the practice, as well as raising broader questions about gender and sexuality in the country (Mamarbachi, “Moroccan Women Demand Reform After Rape Victim’s Suicide”).

  110. For more on where divorce rates are rising—the Gulf—and what is driving them, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  111. Osman and Girgis, “Marriage Patterns in Egypt,” pp. 23–25; and www.capmas.gov.eg.

  112. For more on historical trends in Egyptian divorce, and why they diverge from Western patterns, see Fargues, “Terminating Marriage”; and Cuno, “Divorce and the Fate of the Family in Modern Egypt.”

  113. For more on young Egyptians’ attitudes toward divorce, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  114. Divorce is highly restricted for Egypt’s Coptic Christians, and a source of considerable debate within the church. These struggles are discussed in Bishay, “Till Death (or Conversion) Do Us Part.”

  115. For more on debates over the Islamic basis of khul’, see Sonneveld, Khul’ Divorce in Egypt.

  116. Sholkamy, “Women Are Also Part of This Revolution,” p. 170.

  3. Sex and the Single Arab

  1. Dhillon and Yousef, Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East, p. 11. The youth bulge in the Arab region is set to slim down over the coming decades, thanks to falling fertility rates (Courbage, “The Demographic Youth Bulge and Social Rupture”).

  2. Qur’an 24:33.

  3. “Kitab al-Nikah” [Book of marriage], Book 8, Number 3231.

  4. For more on laws across the region that can, if applied, put a damper on premarital sex, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  5. The hard-knock lives of Egyptian street kids are detailed in Nada, Suliman and Zibani, Behavioral Survey Among Street Children.

  6. For details of these and other studies of youth sexual behavior across the Arab region, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  7. Nationally, Internet use is low among Egypt youth: less than 10 percent of men, and 5 percent of women under twenty-nine are online. But these countrywide averages mask vast differences, access being dramatically higher among the wealthiest, most educated, and urban youth of bot
h sexes (Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt).

  8. Rakha, The Poison Tree: Planted and Grown in Egypt, pp. 138–45.

  9. Population Council and IDSC, Survey of Young People in Egypt.

  10. For more on the etiquette of phone flirtation, and government efforts to clamp down on sexed-up calls and texts, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  11. Those aged fifteen to twenty-nine account for 70 percent of Facebook users across the Arab region; this number has almost tripled since June 2010, before the Arab uprisings. (Salem and Mourtada, “Social Media in the Arab World,” p. 7)

  12. See “Nude Art,” http://www.arebelsdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2011_10_01_archive.html.

  13. Fahmy, “Egyptian Blogger Aliaa Elmahdy. Why I Posed Naked.”

  14. Kobeissi and Suleiman, “Egypt Youth Movement Denies Ties with Girl in Nude Self-Portrait.”

  15. “Citizen censorship” can take many forms in Egypt. For more on a legal provision called hisba, which allows ordinary citizens to bring cases in pursuit of their Islamic duty to “promote good and forbid evil,” see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  16. Ammar, “Legal Action Taken Against Egypt ‘Nude Revolutionary’ Activist.”

  17. For more on this illuminating episode, see www.sexandthecitadel.com.

  18. Bucking global trends, in the Arab region men outnumber women on Facebook by two to one (Salem et al., “The Role of Social Media in Women’s Empowerment,” p. 2).

  19. For more on Morocco, see Axétudes, Enquête Connaissances, Attitudes et Pratiques des Jeunes [Study of the knowledge, attitudes and practices of youth], p. 49; for Algeria, see Toudeft, Étude sur les Connaissances, Attitudes et Comportements des Jeunes Universitaires [Study of the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of university students], p. 25; and for Tunisia, see Ben Abdallah, Enquête Nationale sur les Comportements à Risque Auprès des Jeunes Non-scolarisés en Tunisie [National study of risk behaviors among out-of-school youth in Tunisia], pp. 66–67.

  20. Other countries in the Arab region have their own rituals and customs to preserve virginity. For more on the tradition of tasfih in Tunisia, see Ben Dridi, Le Tasfih en Tunisie [Tasfih in Tunisia]. For a discussion of r’bit in Algeria, see Ferhati, “Les Clôtures Symboliques des Algériennes” [Symbolic closures of Algerian women]; and Moussa, Masmoudi, and Barboucha, “Du Tabou de la Virginité au Mythe de l’Inviolabilité” [From the taboo of virginity to the myth of inviolability].