Sex and the Citadel (49 page)

110
. For more on where divorce rates are rising—the Gulf—and what is driving them, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

111
. Osman and Girgis, “Marriage Patterns in Egypt,” pp. 23–25; and
www.capmas.gov.eg
.

112
. For more on historical trends in Egyptian divorce, and why they diverge from Western patterns, see Fargues, “Terminating Marriage”; and Cuno, “Divorce and the Fate of the Family in Modern Egypt.”

113
. For more on young Egyptians’ attitudes toward divorce, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

114
. Divorce is highly restricted for Egypt’s Coptic Christians, and a source of considerable debate within the church. These struggles are discussed in Bishay, “Till Death (or Conversion) Do Us Part.”

115
. For more on debates over the Islamic basis of
khul’
, see Sonneveld,
Khul’ Divorce in Egypt
.

116
. Sholkamy, “Women Are Also Part of This Revolution,” p. 170.

3. Sex and the Single Arab

  1
. Dhillon and Yousef,
Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East
, p. 11. The youth bulge in the Arab region
is set to slim down over the coming decades, thanks to falling fertility rates (Courbage, “The Demographic Youth Bulge and Social Rupture”).

  2
. Qur’an 24:33.

  3
. “Kitab al-Nikah” [Book of marriage], Book 8, Number 3231.

  4
. For more on laws across the region that can, if applied, put a damper on premarital sex, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  5
. The hard-knock lives of Egyptian street kids are detailed in Nada, Suliman and Zibani,
Behavioral Survey Among Street Children
.

  6
. For details of these and other studies of youth sexual behavior across the Arab region, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

  7
. Nationally, Internet use is low among Egypt youth: less than 10 percent of men, and 5 percent of women under twenty-nine are online. But these countrywide averages mask vast differences, access being dramatically higher among the wealthiest, most educated, and urban youth of both sexes (Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
).

  8
. Rakha,
The Poison Tree: Planted and Grown in Egypt
, pp. 138–45.

  9
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
.

10
. For more on the etiquette of phone flirtation, and government efforts to clamp down on sexed-up calls and texts, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

11
. Those aged fifteen to twenty-nine account for 70 percent of Facebook users across the Arab region; this number has almost tripled since June 2010, before the Arab uprisings. (Salem and Mourtada, “Social Media in the Arab World,” p. 7)

12
. See “Nude Art,”
http://www.arebelsdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2011_10_01_archive.html
.

13
. Fahmy, “Egyptian Blogger Aliaa Elmahdy. Why I Posed Naked.”

14
. Kobeissi and Suleiman, “Egypt Youth Movement Denies Ties with Girl in Nude Self-Portrait.”

15
. “Citizen censorship” can take many forms in Egypt. For more on a legal provision called
hisba
, which allows ordinary citizens to bring cases in pursuit of their Islamic duty to “promote good and forbid evil,” see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

16
. Ammar, “Legal Action Taken Against Egypt ‘Nude Revolutionary’ Activist.”

17
. For more on this illuminating episode, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

18
. Bucking global trends, in the Arab region men outnumber women on Facebook by two to one (Salem et al., “The Role of Social Media in Women’s Empowerment,” p. 2).

19
. For more on Morocco, see Axétudes,
Enquête Connaissances, Attitudes et Pratiques des Jeunes
[Study of the knowledge, attitudes and practices of youth], p. 49; for Algeria, see Toudeft,
Étude sur les Connaissances, Attitudes et Comportements des Jeunes Universitaires
[Study of the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of university students], p. 25; and for Tunisia, see Ben Abdallah,
Enquête Nationale sur les Comportements à Risque Auprès des Jeunes Non-scolarisés en Tunisie
[National study of risk behaviors among out-of-school youth in Tunisia], pp. 66–67.

20
. Other countries in the Arab region have their own rituals and customs to preserve virginity. For more on the tradition of
tasfih
in Tunisia, see Ben Dridi,
Le Tasfih en Tunisie
[
Tasfih
in Tunisia]. For a discussion of
r’bit
in Algeria, see Ferhati, “Les Clôtures Symboliques des Algériennes” [Symbolic closures of Algerian women]; and Moussa, Masmoudi, and Barboucha, “Du Tabou de la Virginité au Mythe de l’Inviolabilité” [From the taboo of virginity to the myth of inviolability].

21
. Cohen, “Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?”, pp. 138–39.

22
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, p. 197. For more on female circumcision elsewhere in the Arab region, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

23
. The various types of female circumcision are detailed in World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research,
Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation
.

24
. For more firsthand accounts of female circumcision across the generations in Egypt, see El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab,
Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt
.

25
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, p. 201.

26
. For more on the fallout from the CNN broadcast, which raised hackles across Egypt, and its complex intersection with Arab-American geopolitics, see Malmström, “Just Like Couscous: Gender, Agency and the Politics of Female Circumcision in Cairo,” pp. 33–66.

27
. See Mostafa et al., “What Do Medical Students in Alexandria Know About Female Genital Mutilation?”; and Rasheed, Abd-Ellah, and Yousef, “Female Genital Mutilation in Upper Egypt.”

28
. In 1994 Gad al-Haq Ali, then head of Al-Azhar, issued a fatwa stating: “Female circumcision is a part of the legal body of Islam and is a laudable practice that does honor to the women.” For more on this, and other religious pronouncements on FGM, see Gruenbaum,
The Female Circumcision Controversy
, pp. 62–66.

29
. Moussa, “Coptic Religion and Female Genital Mutilation,” p. 24. The differential success of efforts to eliminate FGM among Christians and Muslims are discussed in Yount, “Symbolic Gender Politics, Religious Group Identity, and the Decline in Female Genital Cutting.”

30
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
.

31
. The Grand Mufti’s comments on FGM are available at
www.aligomaa.net/initiatives.html
.

32
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
. A revealing study of the challenges in convincing local Muslim religious leaders to change their private beliefs and public pronouncements on FGM can be found in El-Gibaly, Attar, and Fahmy, “Is Change in the Attitude of Rural Imams Toward FGC [Female Genital Cutting] Happening?”

33
. United Nations Population Fund Cairo, personal communication, 2009.

34
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, pp. 204–06.

35
. El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab,
Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt
, p. 15.

36
. El Sayed, “Medical and Ethical Perspectives,” p. 27.

37
. Those interested in the nitty-gritty results of this research should visit
www.sexandthecitadel.com
for a full discussion.

38
. El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab,
Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt
, p. 16.

39
. Ibid., p. 21.

40
.
Fahmy, El-Mouelhy, and Ragab, “Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting,” p. 184.

41
. El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab,
Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt
, p. 23.

42
. Ibid., p. 28.

43
. Malmström, “Just Like Couscous.”

44
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, p.197; Harbour and Barsoum, “Health,” p. 44.

45
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
; and Tag-Eldin et al., “Prevalence of Female Genital Cutting Among Egyptian Girls.”

46
. El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, pp. 202–04.

47
. Ibid., p. 199.

48
. “Egypt parliamentarians and advocates attacking the government because of the ‘Chinese membrane’ ”; and Najjar, “China promotes synthetic hymens in Egypt.”

49
. “She guarded her chastity, so We breathed into her from Our spirit” (Qur’an 66:12).

50
. Qur’an 55:56. For more on the age-old debate over sex in paradise, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

51
. Juynboll,
Encyclopedia of Canonical Hadith
, p. 496.

52
. For more details on opinions toward premarital sex across the Arab region, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

53
.
Dukhla baladi
as a social compromise is discussed in further detail in El-Kholy,
Defiance and Compliance: Negotiating Gender in Low-Income Cairo
.

54
. El-Mouelhy, Fahmy, and Ragab,
Investigating Women’s Sexuality in Relation to Female Genital Mutilation in Egypt
.

55
. My thanks to Hinda Poulin for sharing her preliminary findings on hymen repair in Egypt.

56
. For more on religious arguments for and against hymen repair, see Rispler-Chaim “The Muslim Surgeon and Contemporary Ethical Dilemmas Surrounding the Restoration of Virginity.”

57
. Eich, “A Tiny Membrane Defending ‘Us’ Against ‘Them’ ”; and Gomaa, “Fatwa Number 416: Hymen Restoration Surgery.”

58
. Hinda Poulin, personal communication, 2009.

59
. For a rare pocket of resistance to premarital testing in the region, see Boutros and Bahgat, “Sexual Health and Human Rights: Middle East and North Africa.”

60
. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, “Imposition of Virginity Testing: A Life-Saver or a License to Kill?”

61
. For more on how ideas about Arab sexuality became weapons in the war on terror, see Hersh, “The Gray Zone”; and Patai,
The Arab Mind
, pp. 126–51.

62
. Amnesty International, “Egyptian Women Protesters Forced to Take ‘Virginity Tests’ ”; and Human Rights Watch,
Egypt: Impunity for Violence Against Women
.

63
. See
www.marwarakha.com
.

64
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
.

65
.
For more on youth and
wasta
, see Silatech and Gallup,
The Silatech Index
, 2009.

66
. Qur’an 31:14.

67
. See Harb,
Describing the Lebanese Youth: A National and Psycho-Social Survey
; Farhood, “Family, Culture and Decisions”; and Dwairy et al., “Adolescent-Family Connectedness Among Arabs.” See also the World Values Survey at
www.worldvaluessurvey.org
.

68
. Osman et al.,
Ta’khkhur Sinn al-Zawaj
[Delay in the age of marriage], p. 8.

69
. In contrast, just over a third of young women in rural areas reported being harassed. It is possible that rural settings, with stronger community ties and traditions, keep sexual harassment in check; it is also possible that rural women are less likely to report the phenomenon than are their urban counterparts (Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
).

70
. For a male perspective on sexual harassment, see Schielke, “Ambivalent Commitments: Troubles of Morality, Religiosity and Aspiration Among Young Egyptians.”