Sexual Jihad or Sex Trade?

 

By TAMAN SHAKIR

We always hear that Islam respects women. But then we see great degradation of women when Muslim clerics encourage women to go to Syria and satisfy the desires of the Jabhat al-Nusrah fighters.

It is right to ask: Why do they see women only through a sexual lens? Why does sex occupy so much space in their minds? It is as if their brain is a sex organ.

This issue of sexual jihad came about after Sheikh Muhammad al-Arifi, a Saudi cleric, decreed that Muslim women go to Syria and hook up with the Islamist fighters. Though the cleric soon revoked his decree, a number of young women from Tunisia answered his call and made their way to Syria, where they hoped to satisfy the rebels and guarantee for themselves a place in heaven.

Al-Arifi called on Arab and Muslim women to pleasure their jihadist brothers before they are killed in battle and meet their true virgins in heaven.

Ironically, the Sheikh’s call was rather conditional. Girls of 14 years of age and over, as well as widows, can satisfy and pleasure the jihadists on condition that they take into account the modest Islamic dress code.

A marriage between a fighter and a woman could last as little as two hours, after which she can be divorced and handed over to other fellow fighters.

This kind of fatwa is in sharp contrast to a fatwa by another cleric, Sheikh Ali Rubaii. He says that women are not allowed to have sex with their husbands fully naked, and if they do their marriage is null and void.

Another Yemeni cleric named Habib bin Omar bin Salim says that Muslim women should not sit on chairs, because the jinni can perform sexual acts on a woman who sits on a chair. He says chairs destroyed the Arab and Muslim way of life. Prophet Muhammad and his companions never sat on chairs, he argues.

These fatwas are nothing but sexual obsession. It has no interpretation other than trading in women’s bodies the same way the mafia and sex trade networks do.

Taman Shakir is a Rudaw Kurdish columnist based in Cairo