Sex becomes a less taboo subject among some Arabs

Sex has always been pretty much a taboo subject in the Arab world. It’s simply something that wasn’t discussed openly. Now, though, the first cracks are appearing in that wall of silence, and one of the individuals who is shedding light on the subject, interestingly enough, is a 45-year-old Emirati woman who quotes the Koran and doesn’t go out in public without covering her face. Such is the interesting, sometimes paradoxical world of the modern Arabian Gulf. The NY Times has a story on the topic.

Wedad Lootah does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab — with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits — and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Koran.

Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice in which she … urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness. The book, “Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples,” is packed with vivid anecdotes from Ms. Lootah’s eight years as a marital counselor in Dubai’s main courthouse. It became an instant scandal after it was published in Arabic in the Emirates in January, drawing praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

Ms. Lootah, a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, is one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who often couched their criticism in a Western language of female emancipation, Ms. Lootah and her peers are hard to dismiss as outsiders because they tend to be religious Muslims who root their message in the Koran.

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