COMMENT | Some 12 years ago, I befriended a Malay Muslim man by the name of Syed. He was in his mid-60s and was happily married with seven children and a few grandkids.
Our friendship began in the commentary sections of social media and quickly became very close.
As a businessman, Syed travelled to Kuala Lumpur quite often. Whenever he was in the city, he’d call and we’d plan a meeting to catch up on things. And when he returned home to Terengganu, we used to indulge in long conversations over the phone.
I took a liking to Syed because he was very humble, genuine and open. I enjoyed our talks about Malaysian politics, social issues and life in general.
He was very truthful about his marital dilemma right from the beginning of our friendship. His wife, according to him, is a wonderful woman, but due to her illnesses, she was not capable of fulfilling his sexual needs.
In the beginning, I was not too comfortable with him sharing his marital affairs with me. At the time I had just been through a divorce and I was quite aware of the societal stereotypes on divorced women (or janda in Malay).
However, I felt sorry for Syed, so I continued being a supportive friend. I mean, I did not see any reason to pull away from this man who was pious, decent and transparent in his friendship with me.
A couple of months into our friendship, Syed opened up about a contract marriage he had arranged with a foreign student from the Middle East. Under the arrangement, the 20-plus-year-old woman takes care of his sexual needs; and as an exchange, he takes care of her (and her expenses). This contract was exclusively for the duration of her studies in Malaysia.
Syed explained that the woman’s family was happy with the arrangement because they no longer had to worry about her safety and well-being. She was, after all, in the hands of her ‘husband’.
I was quite surprised by the story, however, Syed explained that it was a norm at the time. Apparently, quite a few elderly Malay Muslim men whom he knew were already practising it for years.
He assured me that the arrangement was not meant to degrade women as sexual objects. It was merely a solution for the problems faced by both parties.
Sex is very important, Syed said. People, especially men, cannot unlock their fullest potential if they are deprived of sex. God created us as sexual beings for a reason, he added.
I later found out that the contract marriage Syed had with the student was coming to an end. She was graduating and returning home to her parents in the Middle East.
Syed had to find a replacement. Not having someone to fix his sexual needs was not something he could manage.
One day, during one of our late-night chats, Syed proposed. Apparently, I was an easy replacement.
He explained that it will be a contract marriage for a duration of our choice. He will visit me to get his fix whenever he is in the city and in return, he will ‘take care’ of me.
I thanked Syed for his proposal but declined the offer. Soon after, Syed found someone else.
Syed is an example of many Muslims in our country who enjoys a healthy sexual life. And there is nothing wrong with it.
Despite our religious authorities’ constant effort to paint Islam as a non-sexual religion, Muslims remain to be sexual beings, just like everyone else.
The Islamic sexology
Recently, religious authorities and independent preachers in our country expressed disappointment when a ‘steamy’ promotional scene of a local Malay drama made rounds on social media.
The two scenes showing a Muslim Malay actress sitting on top of a Muslim Malay actor as she feeds him whipped cream and the actor removing his shirt in front of the actress were said to be ‘inviting immorality’.
In a country with so many immoral activities and conducts by the leaders themselves, I am surprised that many Muslim officials have come forward to condemn the two scenes from an unknown drama. Mind-boggling, really.
Frankly speaking, I do not see anything immoral about the scenes. They are just scenes about people being people, doing what people do.
The Muslim world today is widely dispersed and incredibly diverse, I must say. We have the religious authorities and Muslim critics reluctant to talk about sex on religious grounds. When sex does come up, we have scholars and preachers conducting sermons on modesty, gender segregation and marital responsibilities, all wrapped in layers of traditional beliefs.
We have plenty of Muslims who have no clue whatsoever on sexual hydraulics, getting hitched without learning about their full spectrum of desire. They seem to believe that devout faith mandated dull sex lives.
And then we have the relatively socially liberal Muslim-majority producing and consuming products that propose penis enlargement and vaginal tightening which promises to ‘take you down the delightful rabbit hole of pleasure’ and ‘teach you how to make your partner look at you with unbridled lust.’
The remaining are people like Syed and many others who celebrate their sexuality and desires on a daily basis.
I don’t quite understand why or when our sexuality became a taboo topic in Islam, but I do know that it wasn’t always like this. Many works of art back in the old days have proven the Muslim world to be a hotbed of explicit, freewheeling sexual advice and erotica.
Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Rumi (Rumi), the 13th-century Persian poet and religious scholar, himself had conveyed ideas about the quest towards divinity through surprisingly detailed sexual tales, such as one in which a woman catches her maid enjoying sex with a donkey.
While I am not a big fan of donkey sex and disapprove of animal sex, I do hope the Muslims in Malaysia will start warming up to mature open discourses on sex and sexuality without labelling everything sex-related as immoral.
FA ABDUL is a multi-award winning playwright and director in the local performing arts scene, a published author, a television scriptwriter, a media trainer and a mother. Her ultimate mission in life is to live out of a small suitcase.
All I will say is that if you repackage the nasi lemak that had gone "basi" with a new wrapper and a new label, you will still get nasi lemak "basi". (I am of course referring to the contract marriage in the narrative)
ReplyDelete