There comes in a man’s lifetime a number of sexual milestones. Our first sexual experience is rarely one to write home about. Deflowering a young lady may provide bragging rights, but is rarely much better.
Our first experience of oral pleasure can be rightly commemorated, as can the victory cigarette smoked after we first persuade a young lady to take it up the wrong ‘un. But after that, it’s down to personal taste, fetishes and mere numbers.
Some time ago, I passed the point where I’d bedded seventy-two different girls since moving out here. Which made me think. And thinking can be a dangerous thing, as I will now demonstrate.
The Koran (together with the hadith) infamously promises all martyrs of Jihad a reward of seventy-two virgins, amongst other garish delights:
They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds… We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand…
– sura 56 verses 12-39, transl. NJ Dawood
I’ve always wanted a fatwa, so let’s explore one of modern western society’s best-known sexual myths, and how it compares with life as an infidel in Bangkok.
Why virgins?
Some readers will have slept with virgins in the west. Others may have slept with virgins in Thailand. Some may never have experienced it. I have - once, back in the UK. It really wasn’t very good. It didn’t help that she informed me of the fact afterwards. If I’d known beforehand, I probably wouldn’t have had that eleventh can of Skol.
But still, an encounter with a virgin is generally acknowledged as being one of fumbling, anxiety, possibly discomfort, and ultimately disappointment. An encounter with one of Bangkok’s legion of entertainment providers is usually quite the opposite.
To be perfectly honest, the only reason I can think of to want to sleep with a virgin is that, since we all remember our first time, we’ll be ensuring that the young lady in question remembers us forever. Raw unbridled egotism. A bit sad, really.
Sour Grapes
Anyway, it turns out that the amazing exploding fundamentalists will be feeling a bit silly when they finally get to the afterlife:
Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. We cannot go into the technical details of his methodology but it allows Luxenberg, to the probable horror of all Muslim males dreaming of sexual bliss in the Muslim hereafter, to conjure away the wide-eyed houris promised to the faithful in suras XLIV.54; LII.20, LV.72, and LVI.22. Luxenberg ’s new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields “white raisins” of “crystal clarity” rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris.
In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word “raisin” understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.
As Luxenberg’s work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.
–Ibn Warraq, in The Guardian
Return On Investment
Flights to “terror training camps” in Pakistan, raw materials for explosives, and, in the latest botched attempt at terrorism, a beating at the hands of John Smeaton. It all adds up, whilst air travel is getting cheaper every day.
There are rather more than seventy-two young and eager girls in Bangkok (Stickman reckons 29,265), and allowing the Thai Airways staff to fly you into The Amazing Sinking Airport is at least marginally safer than hijacking the plane and flying it into a building.
Who knows, our would-be martyrs may even experience spiritual enlightenment - if the cries of “Oh my God!” echoing through the alarmingly thin walls of one of Nana Plaza’s short-time hotels on Saturday night is anything to go by.
So. Virgins or bargirls? Your call.
Disclaimer
I’m actually not attacking Islam (although, like all religions, I think it’s more than a little bit silly). I’m attacking the idea that bedding a virgin is in any way desirable, especially compared to the idea of bedding a professional.
And if you Christians think you’re getting away with believing in cosmic silliness, remember that your religion can be summarised as:
The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. #
I am an equal opportunities religious critic. Bring on the fatwa…
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