Veiled Sexuality
Westerners frequently interpret the veiling of Muslim women as a form of political and sexual repression. But, for many Muslim women, rather than suppressing their sexuality, Islam embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channeling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.
NEW YORK –A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a headscarf or a full chador , walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch out languorously, almost fully naked. Could this image be any more iconic of the discomfort the West has with the social mores of Islam, and vice versa?
NEW YORK –A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a headscarf or a full chador , walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch out languorously, almost fully naked. Could this image be any more iconic of the discomfort the West has with the social mores of Islam, and vice versa?