Look Who'S Rocking the Casbah - Letters - Letter to the Editor

Reason, Oct, 2003

Chuck Freund's article "Look Who's Rocking the Casbah" (June) touched on a fascinating topic, but I could not help but conclude that his evaluation of female sexuality in Arab cultures incorporated stereotypes and elements of Western bias.

Freund's analysis could have benefited from the excellent book Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, by Geraldine Brooks. Traditionally, sexuality in Muslim cultures has not been devalued and repressed as in the West. Rather, it is supposed to be strictly contained in the private sphere of the home. Women's sexuality has been fully acknowledged from the very beginning. Brooks' title comes from Muhammad's own remarks to the effect that a woman's sexual desire was nine times a man's. Hence Freund's claim that "a woman's enthusiasm for sex is considered suspect by traditionalists" is unfounded. I have seen Arabic movies where women at a wedding reception--segregated into a room separate from the men--sing bawdy songs about the pleasures the bride can expect on the wedding night.

Freund's intimations concerning "modernity" also hit on a topic accorded considerable attention in recent scholarship. Islamic societies are not anti-modern, but rather have been struggling to define their own versions of modernity as filtered through culture and tradition--a project with considerable potential for contradiction and irony, particularly in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Todd M. Michney

Cleveland, OH

Charles Paul Freund replies: Female sexuality in Islamic cultures is indeed supposed to be confined to the private sphere. But the ideal is not sexual enthusiasm, which may threaten a man's control of his wife; it is compliance. Syrian novelist Ghada Samman catches the traditional view through a character who describes the ideal bride this way: "A maid by day, a slave by night, she'll be the ring on your finger which you can turn around as you wish and take off when you wish. And if you rub it, it will say, 'At your service....'"

Certainly, a traditional wife does not make such demands of her husband, as the female characters of Egyptian author Alffa Rifaat know to their sorrow. Last summer's Egyptian film Sleepless Nights features a frustrated wife who actually threatens divorce, one reason the film became a sensation. In any event, Samr, the flirtatious singer whom I described, was expressing herself publicly.