Published in Najaf, al Sedaqa is among hundreds of new periodicals, and
newspapers that have sprung up since Saddam Hussein's fall ended the
stranglehold of state-controlled media.
However, while the growth of free media has been touted as one of the few
successes of Iraq's fragile democracy, magazines such as al Sedaqa are not
spreading quite the kind of progressive attitudes that coalition strategists
had hoped for.
Instead, its outlook is much in tune with the more orthodox elements in the
country's new Shia-dominated government, whom many secular and non-Shia Iraqis
accuse of trying to turn Iraq into an Iranian-style theocracy. They fear that
will lead to clerical interference in areas.
Such a criticism might well be levelled at al Sedaqa's sexual advice page, for
example, which, it is fair to say, dispenses very different wisdom to that in
Cosmopolitan or Good Housekeeping.
Instead of an agony aunt, sex therapist or doctor, questions relating to
bedroom etiquette are dealt with by a theologian from Najaf's Kufa University
Law School, Ghufran Dikan Abbas, who relies mainly on advice from centuries-old
Shia edicts.
No man should ever look directly at his wife's private parts, she counsels, or
his son will be born blind. Nor should he read the Koran during sexual
congress, as this would most likely see both man and wife smitten in their beds
by hellfire.
A more contemporary vision of Iraqi womanhood is portrayed in al Tab'a al
Jadida - "The New Edition" - a weekly aimed at Westernised women in Baghdad.
It draws up a list of the attributes of the perfect Iraqi man - including a
well-padded bank account, a pot belly (to denote enough to eat), and an ability
to talk his way out of trouble.
The Telegraph
