The Frontline Club recently hosted Shereen El Feki, author of Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World. With her new book released in March 2013, El Feki explores the sexual lives of men and women in Egypt and in the Arab region. El Feki spent the past five years traveling across the Middle East and researching taboos of premarital sex, sexual education, abortion and unwed motherhood, state censorship in film and media, uses of pornography, the sex industry, varieties of marriage, contraception and family planning, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation, divorce, transgender identities and homosexuality, and the lack of HIV/AIDS awareness. Throughout the conversation with columnist and broadcaster, Jenni Russell, El Feki refers back to interviews, statistics, opinion polls, and personal stories mentioned in her book. Insightful, informative, and engaging, Sex and the Citadel bravely tackles sexual intolerance in the Arab region by critically examining the intertwining of religion, culture, politics, economics, gender roles and generation differences.
Political change is sweeping across the Arab region following the most recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Yet it may be too early to tell, but will this change in authoritarian leadership and inequitable parliamentary representation motivate a gradual shift in attitude concerning sexual tolerance and gender roles for Arab men and women? El Feki begins the discussion with a passage from her book expressing how, “Sex is the lens through which [she investigates] the past and present of a part of the world about which so much is written and still so little is understood… If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms.” With very few opportunities to articulate their sexual fantasies, fears, desires, and questions, El Feki mentions how she found it incredibly easy to interview women about their sex lives. Ironically, as pointed out by El Feki, religious conservatives and contemporary cultural practices forget that at the height of Arab civilization, their political, economic, and social power, Muslims and Arabs were more at ease in their sexual skin as historic literature reflects Arabic erotica from the tenth century.
Aside from sexual taboos, El Feki sheds light on the issue of sexual harassment, gendered violence, and the limitations of the law. In 2008, Egypt passed a law criminalizing female genital mutilation; yet, this practice remains a distressing issue in Egyptian society with a 2009 survey revealing that 80 per cent of girls ages 15-17 have been circumcised. Even though El Feki primarily focuses on Sunni Muslims in Egypt, until recently, research shows equal rates of FGM practiced among both Christians and Muslims as a way of controlling female sexuality. Interestingly, rates of FGM have declined within the Coptic population as a result of the Coptic Pope sending a message, through the centralized structure of the Church, down to the priests that FGM is “unacceptable and has no valid basis in doctrine” (El Feki). Misinterpretations of the Koran among imams, as suggested by El Feki, circulate a less cohesive message within the mosques condemning FGM. Nonetheless, rates of FGM practiced among both religious groups are not significantly different and “women keep on cutting, in part because they use it as a tool of resistance because they see that the law was passed by the Mubarak regime and that was unrepresentative of the people and was in hoc to the West. This is how they assert themselves” (El Feki). Legal reform needs to be critically reexamined concerning this issue, but realizing such a change requires education more than anything. Education does not need to be limited to an academic setting, but altering education in the home and the way young boys and girls are taught to treat one another is key to change. Hoping to make Sex and the Citadel available in Arabic, “One of [El Feki’s] chief aspirations for this book is for it to stimulate young people to ask the hard questions they now pose of politics to the individual and collective problems of sexual life.”
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