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Muslim Women Talk Sex
By Llyod Grove
April 9, 2004
Never mind the question - Mohja Kahf and Asra Q. Nomani are the American
Muslim world's answer to "Sex and the City." And if they're hoping to
shock, they just might get their wish.
Today, in the online magazine muslimwakeup.com, the Syrian-born Kahf, a
literature professor at the University of Arkansas, launches the mag's first
Islamic sex column, "Sex & the Umma." ("Umma" means "Muslim community.")
Her subject: "Do women get to have sex in paradise, too?"
In today's installment, an Islamic scholar at a New Jersey mosque says dryly:
"Any woman who wants such a thing is not likely to make it to paradise."
Later on in the column - written in the form of a short story - a group of
Muslim 
women shares their fantasies and frustrations.
When I asked Kahf yesterday how her fellow Muslims will react to such musings,
she answered breezily: "I think they will be thrilled, darling!"
But won't the traditionalists be scandalized?
"They will be smiling under their beards," replied the 36-year-old married
mother of three.
The Bombay-born Nomani, a 38-year-old single mom and former Wall Street Journal
reporter, will alternate with her own column starting next month.
"We're writing for people who are willing to challenge the status quo and
mainstream Muslim thinking," Nomani told me. "We're doing it from an Islamic
perspective, but we'd like to have a sense of humor about it."
The sex column was the brainchild of Mount Kisco resident Ahmed Nassef, the
Egyptian-born editor in chief of the year-old Web site.
"We started the online magazine to address the challenges of being a
progressive Muslim," the 37-year-old Nassef, a U.S. citizen, told me yesterday.
"Ninety percent of Muslims in the United States and North America are very
conservative. Most of the mosques are highly conservative. After 9/11, the
Muslims speaking for the community on television reflect the conservative side.
But we're giving expression to another point of view."
The Web site summarizes the column's goals: "To address modern day Muslim
sexual experiences even if they do not match Islamic prescriptions for sexual
conduct."
And "to affirm the sexual drives of women as much as those of men."
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