Larry Flynt Was My Fleece (or How a Book about Sex Turned Me Into a Christian)

by JR Daeschner

In the end, it was the lies that got to me.

I was in Pompeii, you see, researching what I hoped would be my next big book, a History of Sex that would venture between the past and present, revealing the origins of our notions about love and romance.

Besides the obvious reasons, I'd picked Pompeii because of one little-known fact: the Roman ghost town is the site of the first known reference to the word 'Christian,' dating from around the time that the Apostle Paul visited nearby.

Even more intriguingly, the house that contained the 'CHRISTIANOS' graffiti stands across from Pompeii's brothel (and may have been a whorehouse itself).

But what struck me most was an offhand remark by Pompeii's chief archeologist as he tried to explain the exponential growth of an obscure Semitic sect just a few decades after Rome had crucified its leader like a criminal:

"No religion had ever spread so rapidly in such a capillary manner before."

And that got me wondering why.

Having been raised a Christian, I'd turned my back on the faith partly because I believed the lie that Christianity was anathema to knowledge--I thought that the more you learned about the "real world," the less faith you inevitably had.

As I began to discover, though, that wasn't necessarily true.

If anything, I came to realize that Christians have nothing to fear from learning--while the secular world has a lot to lose from an unbiased look at our past.

I soon learned, for instance, that it was Christ and his followers who gifted the concept of redemption to Western culture--the revolutionary promise that even a prostitute could be redeemed (as opposed to the once-a-whore, always-a-whore ethos of the ancient world).

And it was the early Christians who fought to stop Roman infanticide (making the modern Church's stance on abortion remarkably consistent), while it was Christ's gender-neutral character that enabled women to identify with Him and call themselves Christians--or 'little Christs.'

Contrast Jesus with Mohammed--a celibate pacifist versus a warmonger with a harem--and you can see why feminism took root in traditionally Christian societies.

Whereas polygamy inherently devalues women, it was Paul--the supposed source of Christian "misogyny"--who officially broke with Jewish custom and made marriage one-to-one, mandating that each Christian leader have only one wife and (contrary to Roman practice) actually be faithful to her.

In other words, it's very likely that the only reason Western women dare to demand monogamy from men now is because of centuries of Christianization.

Yet somehow the world continues to slander Christianity as "sex-negative"--and misogynistic to boot.

FREUD'S FRAUD

The cognoscenti will tell you that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is largely disregarded now, while blithely overlooking his pervasive impact on pop culture and the wreckage it's caused.

For instance, thanks to Freud's declaration that all children want to have sex with their parents (the Oedipus complex), many of his followers dismissed actual cases of sex abuse as wishful fantasies.

And it was one of Freud's disciples, Wilhelm Reich, who helped inspire the Sexual Revolution of the Sixties and Seventies, a period that most documentaries depict as an eminently groovy time to be alive.

But have you ever heard them mention its seedy side?

At a time when erstwhile "perversions"--homosexuality, sadomasochism, etcetera--were being declared perfectly normal, many "revolutionaries" argued that pedophilia was just another avenue for sexploration.

After all, who was to say that consensual sex with children was wrong? Or, as a Dutch magazine for gays put it in 1969, "Why Not Go To Bed With Your Son?"

Modern "pedophile activists" still regard those as the good old days. In the Netherlands, I interviewed the co-founder of an ultra-fringe political party trying to legalize pedophilia.

Who did he blame for putting an end to the child-sex movement? An alliance between an all-but-extinct branch of feminism (they wouldn't have called pole dancing "empowering") and--you guessed it--devout Christians.

That was a truth I heard repeatedly, be it from a dodgy Russian biznesman in Venice or an American pimp in Prague: Christianity acts as a check on decadence.

And time and again, I came across Westerners who were having to relearn history's lessons the hard way.

In Amsterdam, I met a former prostitute turned politician who led a crackdown that shut much of the Red-Light District.

"If you're a Christian organization, people don't want to hear (your views on prostitution) because you're Christian," she told me. "But it's new when a politician from the leftwing says it's not good!'

As for pornography, I interviewed one of the makers of the "Max Hardcore" franchise in LA, a man who's filmed some of the worst violence against women outside of warzones.

"With the sex business, you gotta keep ratcheting up," he said. "It's kinda like violence in movies. You gotta keep ratcheting up. People get inured at a certain point—it's gotta be more, greater, nastier. Filthier."

Funnily enough, that's just what porn's (Christian) opponents say.

JUST ANOTHER CASUALTY

Meanwhile, the media routinely hail Hustler founder Larry Flynt as a hero of the First Amendment, a martyr to free speech.

But did you know he once claimed to be a born-again Christian--and that during his conversion, he had a premonition of himself in a wheelchair?

I asked him about it at his headquarters in Beverly Hills. He admitted that if he had closed Hustler after his conversion--rather than continue defending it in court--he might never have been shot, and he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

Up close and in person, rather than a hero, Flynt looks like just another casualty of porn, a man who's made millions but lost everything that counts, including his "soulmate" and much of his family.

All of this eventually resonated with me.

Lie after lie, I kept coming back to the faith whose truths had been proven over centuries: rules and values that built Western civilization, not because God is a god of arbitrary demands, but because "God so loved the world."

Sure, I also experienced some personal and professional disasters (it's surprising how low some of us have to go before finally surrendering).

But ultimately once I realized the truth, the inevitable question became--what do you do with it? Or "who do you say that I am?"

Some may question my decision to publish The History of Sex.

Well, all I can say is I prayed about it. A lot. And Larry Flynt was my fleece (but that's another story…)

For those of you who struggle to reconcile faith with the "real world" (particularly sex), take it from someone who's had to learn the hard way: the Truth really will set you free.

* * *

The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Dome of the Rock, Muslim Porn, and Mohammed's Child Bride -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 26)

I ask him about a Web report I've seen that claims one of his sites featured a 'photo of an Arab woman fingering her anus in front of the Dome of the Rock.'

He sighs.

'Yes, it was a mistake.'

That montage was mounted on a US version of the site by his designer, who wanted to use images that were evocative of the Middle East.

So apparently a woman diddling her rectum next to Islam's holiest of holies sprang to mind.

'And immediately people emailed me to tell me it was dangerous.'

The Dome of the Rock was quickly excised, but the beurette and her butthole are still there (or at least they were when I spoke with him), alongside a couple of veiled but otherwise topless women, some palm trees and… a scattering of decorative oil derricks.

Mistake or not, Muslim fundamentalists have harassed and killed people for less.

As we speak, rioters in the banlieues are fighting the police.

And not so long ago, protesters around the world were demanding death for a Danish cartoonist.

Not surprisingly, Milukman is keen to distance himself from those examples.

'I never speak about Allah, and I never speak about Mohammed,' he says. 

Well, except for that one time.

'My designer once put some Arabic writing on the body of a nude girl, and immediately people emailed us that some of the writing contained the name of Allah. It was an honest mistake.' He shrugs. 'How were we to know?'

Possibly by doing some basic research in the first place.

But one of the most surprising aspects about Milukman's potentially life-or-death pastime is just how little he (and his designer) know about Islamic culture.

At one point, I ask him if Aïcha, the half-Moroccan billed as a 'superb brunette' on his site, deliberately based her porn name on the Prophet's beloved child bride.

He looks genuinely shocked—and not a little worried. 

'Aisha was the name of Mohammed's wife?'

I nod.

'There are lots of Aishas in the banlieues,' he mumbles pensively. 'Maybe we'll have to change that on the site.'

Salman Rushdie was ayatollahed for less.

The History of Sex: South of France -- The Ultimate STD -- (Chap. III, Pt. 4)

At the time, you see, the future saint was living in sin with a concubine who'd even given him a son.

Eventually, Augustine's mother convinced him to come back to the fold and get married, so he rather un-Christianly dumped his lover of fourteen years and got engaged to a more respectable prospect—a ten-year-old virgin.

Unlike the founder of Islam, though, the 'Father of Christian Psychology' (God help us) never deflowered his prepubescent fiancée: unable to wait the two years until she came of age, Augustine took another mistress.

And before he could get married at the age of thirty-three, he miraculously got religion.

The new convert embraced celibacy and spent the rest of his life telling Christians to do as he said, not as he'd done.

RE-ENACTING THE FALL

Tormented by fantasies and wet dreams (not to mention his early Manichean leanings), Augustine pinpointed lust as the manifestation of original sin—and its means of transmission. Sin became the ultimate sexually transmitted disease.

According to the newly chaste Augustine, copulation was necessary to produce more Christians, but it should be a passionless, lust-free affair: you could have sex; you just couldn't enjoy it. The truly Christian couple should 'descend with a certain sadness' into intercourse, as if re-enacting the Fall from grace.

Old-fashioned nightshirts:
note the strategically-placed slits

Not surprisingly, it took nearly a thousand years for the Church's take on chastity and celibacy to bed down.

In denying the flesh, though, the first Christian theologians inadvertently made it all the more desirable. By forbidding sensuality, they helped fetishize it, inspiring generations of monks, nuns and other ascetics to make the earth move by flagellating and mortifying themselves into ecstasy.

The first attempt to impose a sex ban on the clergy came around 306 AD at a church council in Spain near Granada.

The same meeting also instituted a female 'pact of virginity' that involved a bishop cloaking a woman's head and pronouncing her 'a chaste virgin to Christ.'

The veiled woman was then locked away—an odd parallel with the Islamic harem—to become what we now know as a nun.

St. Augustine and Monica (his mother)
by Ary Scheffer

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Islam's Model Child Bride -- (Chap. II, Pt. 16)

For traditionalists, the Prophet's marriage to a child bride also serves as a potent role model, Mehmet says.

'Many families give their daughters to older men when they're young. I've heard people say, "Aisha married when she was nine, so thirteen is fine for her."'

A 40-year-old groom poses next to his 11-year-old bride in Afghanistan
(photo by Stephanie Sinclair)

Even if the man is much older. 'When they come together on their wedding night, the girl is crying and shaking. For her, sex is a torture. It's kind of like rape.'

Traditionally, the newlyweds also have sex on a special piece of cloth to prove that her hymen is intact. 'If there's no blood, sometimes they send her back and say she is not a virgin.'

And thanks to mass migration from the countryside—encouraged by Muslim hardliners—this isn't just a rural problem.

Mehmet knows a family in Ankara, the capital, where the bride failed to bleed on her wedding night.

After their first night together, the groom wanted to send her back to her parents—a potentially lethal move.

However, the woman swore that she'd been a virgin, so both sides agreed to seek an expert opinion: 'Three people went to the doctor with her.'

A SMART MAN

The physician examined the bride and told her inlaws that she had a very deep hymen, which was why it hadn't broken.

'But if her hymen was that deep and blocked her vagina, how did she manage to become pregnant later?' Mehmet asks. 'I think the doctor was a smart man and lied to them.'

In doing so, he may very well have saved her from death—or a genelev.

As a father myself, I can't imagine murdering one of my daughters for sleeping with someone she shouldn't have. And purely from a selfish, propagation-of-the-species point of view, you'd think people would instinctively stop short of killing their offspring simply because it lessens the chances of their own genetic survival.

'Is virginity really all that important?' I ask.

Mehmet sighs patiently before explaining the paradox.

'Every man wants to have sex with a woman, but no man wants to marry a woman who isn't a virgin. It's very rare that a woman would have sex before marriage because if she's caught, that means her life is over. She can never marry.'

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Talking Dirty with 'Mohammed' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 14)

Mehmet reckons the best place to see Istanbul's underbelly is Aksaray, a grotty district popular with Russian, Eastern European and Iranian tourists.

Purchasable women are as plentiful as kebabs, but we shake off the touts to find a cafe terrace that shields us from the traffic. Overhead, above an expressway flyover, stands the dome of the Valide Camii—the Mother Sultan's Mosque—a monument marking the beginning of Women's Rule (and the decline of the Ottoman Empire).

With the mosque in the background, I settle down to talk dirty with 'Mohammed.'

As a gay Kurd, he's obviously a minority within a minority.

But as someone with experience of both men and women, Asians and Europeans, not to mention city and country life, he knows more than most about sex in Turkey.

For instance, he mentions that Turkish towns on the Georgian border saw divorce rates skyrocket after the fall of the USSR; local men were squandering all their money on Russian floozies.

Ukrainian women protesting in Turkish:
'Ukraine Isn't a Brothel'

'I think it's because Turkish girls don't open their legs,' he remarks.

'Eh?'

'For example, they don't do blow jobs. They think it's dirty. You see, in Eastern Turkey, even lip-kissing is very new. They think it's dirty to kiss someone's mouth. One woman in my mother's village, when she saw people kissing on TV, she'd say, "How disgusting! It's like kissing a dog!" But Russian girls, they do everything.'

Mehmet reckons the quick turnover at genelevs probably has to do with Turkish men's staying power. 'Men in Muslim countries tend to come very fast.'

I feel a fatwa coming on, but Mehmet quickly restores Muslim pride, assuring me that Turkish men have more repeating power than Westerners.

'With Western men, you usually have sex once, and then everyone sleeps—' —I stifle an urge to protest— 'But Middle Eastern men want to have sex several times in one night. Sex outside marriage is very difficult to find, and once they find it, they're going to have as much as they can!' He laughs.

'Also, in Western countries, you hear people say "I'm depressed" and things like that. But you never hear that in Turkey.'

'Why's that?'

'I think it's because 60% of people in Turkey have only a primary school education. So mentally, they're not very busy.'

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Islam and the Medieval Mindset -- (Chap. II, Pt. 10)

More generally—and controversially—it strikes me that Muslim women's prospects are limited simply because Islamic culture is locked in a medieval mindset, forever harking back to the good ol' days of Mohammed (while Christians were told to look forward to the return of Christ).

That may sound overly blunt, but hear me out: Christianity began as a high-concept religion that was more about spirituality than precise rules dictating what you ate or how you washed.

Jesus and his Jewish disciples broke with the legalism of their ancestors, whereas Islam actually revived many Semitic traditions, even going so far as to reinstitute circumcision (the early Christians also considered penis checks at the pearly gates, but Paul argued that faith was more important than foreskins—not for nothing did they make him a saint).

Turkish boy about to be circumcised
(photo by Dick Osseman)

Furthermore, Judaism and Christianity had the advantage of antiquity: they're so old, they effectively built the civilizations that practice them.

Islam, on the other hand, was late to the game and superimposed on ancient cultures that already had their own patriarchal traditions.

As a result, it tends to be even more male-oriented than Christianity or Judaism.

And as for holy role models, the asexual nature of Jesus allows both men and women to identify with him and become Christians—'little Christs'—whereas the most a Muslim woman can aspire to is being a godly sidekick: marrying or giving birth to a Chosen One who follows Mohammed.

Unfortunately, it's this sexism that may be Islamic culture's main contribution to sexuality in the West (apart from the enduring titillation of the harem, belly dancers and the likes of The Perfumed Garden).

For centuries, Northern Europeans attributed the jealousy of Mediterraneans to their Muslim heritage—the 'hotheaded Spaniard' couldn't help being jealous, they thought; he was half-Arab.

'THE HONOR-SHAME SYNDROME'

In recent decades, academics have begun to restyle these chauvinistic attitudes, dressing them up in more sophisticated terms.

According to the theory of 'the honor-shame syndrome,' for instance, a woman's honor is a material good with an actual value (her dowry) that also reflects on the honor of her family.

Academics argue that this phenomenon is particularly strong in those parts of Europe with an Islamic past—notably, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sicily.

(For the record, I doubt that Islam was entirely to blame, though it probably did reinforce existing tendencies.)

The reason it's stigmatized as a 'syndrome'—rather than a quaint custom—is that if a woman's virtue is compromised, her male kinfolk feel compelled to defend their honor by either avenging her or killing her outright.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Could Turkey Lead the Way on Women's Rights? -- (Chap. II, Pt. 9)

But what I really came here to find out is this: could Atatürk's Republic serve as a role model for Muslims around the world in the way that the Ottoman Empire was the self-styled Caliphate of Islam?

Binding East and West, could the Republic's alchemy of Islam and secular democracy provide a magical solution to culture-clash issues such as women's rights in Muslim communities?

The religious and the secular in Istanbul

To spare you the suspense, the answer is 'no'—or at least, 'probably not'—and it's naïve of me to even ask.

Despite reformist attempts by moderate Muslims, Turkey has enough problems of its own without having to worry about setting an example for all of Islam.

What's more, Islamic tradition varies immensely from country to country, and plenty of Westernized Turks will tell you they're a breed apart from the 'dirty Arabs' of the Middle East.

Likewise, Saudi Arabia and Iran view Turkey as a bad influence—thanks to Atatürk, their womenfolk also started agitating for rights—so they've pumped millions into building mosques in the Republic to stir up fundamentalism.

FLOUTING THE LAW

That's partly why you see more veils and headscarves in Istanbul these days than you would have in 1926 and why the pro-Islamist government has repeatedly tried to reverse some of Turkey's most progressive laws.

During the recent redrafting of the constitution, for instance, a clause ensuring equality was ditched in favor of one characterizing women as vulnerable souls in need of special protection: a sacrilege to the secularism of Atatürk, but completely in keeping with Islamic tradition.

Despite the argument that Islam is feminist in theory, in practice it's hardly ever turned out that way.

In Sexuality in Islam, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba—a sociology professor at the University of Tunis and an advisor to the UN—notes that polygamy and concubinage inherently devalued wives, making it impossible for women to be treated as equals.

Meanwhile, Muslim families routinely flouted Islamic law by disinheriting their daughters or forcing them to marry cousins to keep their resources within the clan.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Ataturk and the Keepers of the Harem -- (Chap. II, Pt. 8)

Eunuchs being in short supply these days—you just can't get the help—the current Keeper of the Harem is actually a woman.

Canan Cimilli works alongside two other women in an office where every expense has been spared: there's only one computer between the three of them.

Despite her imposing title, Canan speaks in a shy, girlish voice that's easily overruled by the trio's alpha female, a raucous, middle-aged mamacha who's probably never had an opinion she didn't like.

As Canan starts showing me photos of the many rooms in the Harem that are falling apart, her dark-haired elder pulls up a chair and hijacks the conversation, informing me that there are no restorers or curators in residence at Topkapi.

WOMEN IN CHARGE

'The Turkish Ministry for Culture not give money for Topkapi. The Turkish government keeps the reality secret.'

'What do you do as curator of the Harem?' I ask Canan.

The other woman flaps her hand dismissively. 'Curators of Turkish museum do everything: they guardsman, housewife, archeologist. Only women could work for such a small amount of money.'

'Why's that?'

Canan stops laughing long enough to reply. 'Because in Turkey the men have to make money for the family.' 

And before I know it, I'm immersed in a moanfest about the male domination of Topkapi and Turkey in general.

Topkapi's top managers are both men, it seems: one a secular academic, the other an imam who lives on site, along with the Prophet's relics.

'MACHIAVELLIEST'

As for Turkey's prime minister, well, my informer doesn't think much of Recep Erdogan, either.

'He's machiavelliest. You know what that means? He go to Europe and say one thing, then he comes home and does another. He's fundamentalist—he supports women wearing the headscarf.'

'You don't?'

'I'm atheist,' she volunteers proudly.

'But her mother was a Muslim!' Canan laughs.

'I hate religion. Do you know who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk? Atatürk is big man in Turkey—he is very handsome. He has blue eyes—like you—and light hair. All the Turkish women love him.'

Ataturk (with remarkably blue eyes)

Not least because Turkey's autocratic founder made sure the new Republic implemented female-friendly reforms that were not only revolutionary for the Mideast but advanced by Western standards: first he banned polygamy and the veil and then, in 1934, he granted Turkish women the right to vote and run for election—a full decade before French women had the same privilege.

Canan's colleague bustles over to her desk to retrieve a small, black-and-white portrait of Atatürk at his matinee-idol best.

It's a billfold-sized photo, the kind that a woman might keep in her pocketbook to remind her of a lover, only here it's propped up on a lone gilded shelf above the telephone (in addition to the standard, government-issue portrait of Atatürk in uniform, naturally).

THE PROPHET FOR ATHEISTS?

And I can't help but wonder if Atatürk is to Turkish atheists what Mohammed is to their Muslim sisters.

'In my life, my husband is first man'—the woman taps her wedding band. 'My father is second man'—she touches her heart. 'And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the third man.' She beams and shows me the photo again. 'I love him.'

'She's got three men in her life!' Canan cracks.

Funnily enough, the Father of Modern Turkey died in the Ottomans' Imperial Harem (no, not from that; he had cirrhosis).

One of the last sultans, the grandson of a French Queen Mother, had decided that he needed new digs to replace Topkapi, so he splashed out on a great big, frilly confection of stone in High French Style.

When the Dolmabahce Palace was finished, he transferred his Harem there in 1853.

Decades later, Atatürk used Dolmabahce's defunct Harem—complete with its pastel-pink hall—as his base in Istanbul.

By the time he died there in 1938, some eighteen women had been elected to Turkey's parliament.

* * *

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Entering the Harem (Privates Intact) -- (Chap. II, Pt. 5)

Last time I was in Istanbul, when I read that the Ottoman Harem was still standing—and that it was open to the likes of me—I responded the same way as in Pompeii: I beat a path to the Old City, even though I was only passing through.

Now, obviously, my fascination with this sort of thing raises some potentially disturbing questions about my own psyche.

All I can say is that the Harem of Topkapi Palace is one of those truly unique places that allow you to peer into history and glimpse how people before us lived and died (often in manners most horrible).

What's more, past generations of foreigners could only dream of setting foot in the sultans' very own garden of earthly delights.

Your guide looking far too pleased with himself
about being allowed into the Harem

The few men who entered did so at the cost of their manhoods—there were three degrees of castration—and most of the women had either been captured as literal war booty or pimped by their parents for consumption by a hairy doughball of an emperor.

So it's a real privilege to be able to saunter through the Palace of Felicity unmolested.

BY MOHAMMED'S BEARD

Throw in the fact that the building next door supposedly houses relics of Mohammed himself—including whiskers from his beard, a cast of his footprint, and his sword and mantle—and it's obviously a must-see. 

Hairs from Mohammed's beard?

Not that you'd know it.

The Harem sits in an unassuming building marked with a small museum sign—and dozens of tourists unwittingly lining up to be bored out of their minds.

For what should be one of the most fascinating experiences on the planet ranks right up there with the most frustrating.

And I should know—I've been through the Harem three times, on different days, with different guides, each time hoping that it would live up to the seraglio's past. Instead, the mandatory tour is a wasted opportunity, seemingly devised by someone who hates the Ottomans or has an autistic taste for names and dates but can't cope with the messy stuff that puts the 'story' into 'history.'

Even with an audioguide—and a flesh-and-blood guide—the knowledge imparted is of the historical anorak variety, telling you everything you don't need to know and very little that you might actually want to know: 'Here we can see the bath,' says the guide, in a chirpy voice that pings off the tiles. 'Which is where the sultan bathed.'

The sultan's toilet,
which is where the sultan...

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- The 24-Year Orgasm -- (Chap. II, Pt. 4)

Men, on the contrary, had heaven all mapped out for them—in every last horny detail.

One authority on the matter assured his brethren that there would be an endless supply of food and drink in paradise, but no backsides—or farts, urine or pubic hair, for that matter.

Every (male) Chosen One would be entitled to seventy dark-eyed houris with a thousand Negress servants each.

What's more, each wife would be a renewable virgin, while impotence would be unheard of ('the erection is eternal'), and orgasms would last for twenty-four years a pop.

Or as another expert summed up: 'The Christian will be asexual in paradise, whereas the Muslim will experience infinite orgasm.'

And when you put it like that… 

It's easy to see why Islam was a hit with men, but it's not so clear what was in it for women.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Modern defenders of the faith usually argue that Mohammed was a pioneer of women's rights, allowing them to divorce, get an education and own property.

That may be, but Islam was also the only religion among the Semitic Big Three to sanction wife-beating.

Rather than waste time arguing the issue—I'll leave that to the folks who claim that burqas are actually liberating—it's probably true that the new religion improved women's lives initially, particularly by the standards of the pre-Islamic Arabs who buried baby girls alive in the desert.

But accepting that Islam was an early defender of women's rights raises an obvious question: What went wrong? 

To find out, I'm going to the city where Europe meets Asia, home to the former Caliphate of Islam and the most successful Muslim empire the world has ever seen.

In modern times, Turkey has also been a trailblazer of women's rights.

And although the Ottomans viewed their base in Istanbul as a steppingstone to conquer Europe, I'm hoping that modern Turkey might help keep the East and West from tearing each other apart—as a kind of giant, geographical Band-Aid.

A Band-Aid between Asia and Europe?

Against the backdrop of the 'War on Terror' and Turkey trying to break into the 'Christian club' of the EU, as well as the massive population growth in the Muslim world and resulting migration to the West (in 2009, 'Mohammed' overtook 'Jack' as the most popular boy's name in Britain)—against all of that, I'm keen to find out what if any influence Islam has had on sex in the West and whether there's any chance that Turkey might be a template for Muslims living in secular democracies.

That, and I really want to get the lowdown on the Harem.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- Mohammed and the Infinite Orgasm -- (Chap. II, Pt. 3)

All this carnality is shot through with doses of piety. As the sheikh's patron puts it: 'I swear by God it is necessary to know this book.'

As for God's Messenger himself, the juicy goss about his love life comes not from the Koran but the complementary collections of hadiths, or sayings attributed to the Prophet that Muslims still use to nail down the particulars of everyday life.

For infidels like me, however, many of these tidbits fall under the heading of Too Much Information. Not for nothing did one Islamic commentator declare: 'The Prophet of God taught us everything, even how to defecate.'

Take these examples concerning Mohammed's only virgin bride, Aisha, who was eighteen when he died in his early sixties: one hadith recounts how the Prophet would fondle his child bride while she was menstruating (so long as she wore a special skirt to cover her 'unclean' bits).

And in a particularly bizarre anecdote, Aisha recalled spot-cleaning his garments: 'I used to wash the traces of semen from the clothes of the Prophet and he used to go for prayers while water spots were still visible.'

A 'Bahname' illustration from the late 1800s:
'bah'= potency/lust in Arabic; 'name' = booklet in Farsi
(Sexual Life in Ottoman Society)

Nevertheless, Muslim women often got screwed, so to speak, when it came to the bigger picture.

Despite their manifest usefulness for sex and the post-coital clean-up, a famous hadith quotes the Prophet as saying: 'I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women.'

Maybe that's why Islam never got round to detailing the afterlife for members of the lascivious sex.

The History of Sex: Istanbul -- 'The Ass Is Always Bigger' -- (Chap. II, Pt. 1)

Chapter Two 

THE ASS IS ALWAYS BIGGER… 

Harem Cruising and Honor Killings 

in Istanbul 

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient… 

As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. 

--The Koran (sura 4:34), c600 AD 

While the fall of the Roman Empire left the West fumbling around in the Dark Ages, a 'Prophet of Light' appeared in the East.

By all accounts, Mohammed was happily monogamous until his wife died when he was around fifty.

At that point, he began acquiring a harem, starting with a widow… and a six-year-old girl. Grandfatherly man of God that he was, though, Mohammed waited until little Aisha was nine to consummate the marriage.

Right from its conception some 600 years after Christ, Islam was a far sexier religion than its Semitic cousins.

If the Christian deity was a God of Love, then Allah was virtually a Love God, encouraging conjugal bliss among the Faithful to help boost their numbers against the Infidel.

Whereas Jesus was God incarnate—a seemingly asexual peacenik who died a virgin—Mohammed was fully human: a man's man and warrior.

Without the Christian concept of original sin to trouble them, the 'Last True Prophet' and his followers could enjoy guilt-free sex with more than one woman.

In theory, polygamy was also a divine way of seeing to the widows created by jihad.

Allah allowed men to take up to four wives (not counting slaves and concubines), though his Messenger wound up having at least nine—then again, he had the libido of thirty men.

For the average Mo, though, keeping more than one woman happy all too often took its toll.

I hate it when that happens:
A ram spooks a copulating couple
(from Hamse-i Husrev Dehlevi, 1498)