A review in the Times Literary Supplement provides some fascinating insight into Islamic and Arab sexuality:
One of the sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad – “Whenever a male mounts upon a male, the throne of God trembles” – sets the mood for Patanè’s story. Penetration is “the crucial act around which Arab eroticism revolves”, he writes, and the speed at which ejaculation is attained is considered “a sign of virility”. Passivity is thought irreversibly to damage virility: the passive partner is “an inferior completely stripped out of the status of ‘man’”, “a ghostly figure wandering in the margins of society, with no chance of planning a life outside society’s unbreakable laws”.
I think to truly understand the culture and politics of a civilization, one must first examine its sexual hang-ups. If an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement is to ever hold, the Israelis must recognize that an image of virility matters in tribal cultures. The settlements in the West Bank represent a dick being waved in the face of a culture obsessed with being the cock of the walk. If you're trying to reach a deal with an enemy who feels emasculated if his woman has her face showing to strangers, you should probably stop waving your dick in his face for a start. Arguments about Arabs having better living standards under Israeli rule than in other Middle Eastern countries may be true, but it is not calculations of rights that motivate a suicide-bomber; it is calculations of honour.
That goes for America's presence in the Middle East as well. The argument shouldn't be just about whether Muslims have reasonable grievances against the West. It may not be reasonable to be offended by American soldiers stationed on Saudi soil in order to deter an Iraqi invasion, but that didn't stop Osama bin Laden from making it his top excuse for 9/11. The prime intellectual contribution of Freud was to remind the Western world that people are not purely, or even mostly rational beings. Ironically many Muslims might agree with his psychoanalytical view of Man as inherently sex-motivated, given that the justification for the hijab is that a man cannot help but sexualize any woman who is not covered in shapeless black robes. Once American foreign policy starts recognizing such basic facts of human nature and cultural psychology, perhaps it will stop using explosive phallic symbols to liberate countries obsessed with being the top penetrator.
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