Muslim Virginity, Times Front Page

Es Nisht di Khale far a-Moytse!

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

Is an article like Muslim Women and Virginity: 2 Worlds Collide, which also appeared on the NY Times web site today under the titles In Europe, Debate Over Islam and Virginity and Surgery Offers Muslim Women Illusion of Virginity, really news, and did it belong on the front page?

I do not follow the Times as I do the Boston Globe, but the Times has also put MEMRI propaganda on the front page. Is there an ongoing propaganda effort to marginalize Muslims as primitive exotic Orientals alien to American norms?

Tamar Fox at Jewcy.Com pounced on the article to give the real dope about revirginization among Catholics without bothering to point out that Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish circles generally place at least as much importance on virginity as Muslims.

She asks: "Is faking virginity really the best way to deal with a young woman's sexuality?," but do all groups in modern society have to approach sexuality in exactly the same way?

Do all Muslims from Lithuania to South Africa or from Mauritania to Indonesia have exactly the same sexual morality? Or were Lithuanian Muslims traditionally like Lithuanian Christians and Jews, and is there perhaps a common Balkan or Arabic sexuality that correlates more with regional than with religious culture?

Because the Times article provides no contextualization, its purpose seems more to inculcate prejudice -- perhaps on the basis of superior American sexual practices -- than to provide any real information.

[Emancipation of Jews and Women discusses the connection between sexuality and chauvinism. Note that when Harvard Graduate Masoko Owada married Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993, and she had to be certified for virginity, the NY Times did not run a front page story on Japanese sexual morality.]

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