Facts of Muslim Girls

1. A trouble-free sex life

Islamic religious rules mandate that a girl give her husband sex at any time or in any manner he chooses. Muslim girls typically live up to this one in any sexual relationship.

For girls circumcision is common in some areas but covers a wide range of practices, from minor to absolutely brutal. The minor kind will not change the practice of sex much, but does seem to make losing virginity a more painful and bloody experience. I have no firsthand experience of the more severe practices. Circumcision is mandatory for men in Islam. Girls will not have a problem with a man who is not.

2.They're Not So Different

It should be obvious, yet Muslim women are often presented as different, exotic, or even a symbol of backwardness. A Middle Eastern secondary teacher urged me, “Tell women in the West that Muslim women are like them, in their family and community, their life and work. There are educated Muslim women, doctors, lawyers, teachers, workers—we’re all the same.” Personally, I find our common femaleness gives me a shared bond with Muslim women everywhere. I’ve had some great times hanging out with Muslim friends and enjoy being with them. In the west you see women sitting together in coffee shops, leaning forward, intently listening, talking about relationships, family, clothes and cooking. Muslim women talk about exactly the same things when they get together. It’s a common language of women world-wide. I attended a mosque women’s program in the Middle East for a couple of years, and much of the content was similar to what I’d hear from women in many church discussions—bringing up children and taking time for prayer and reading (their) scriptures. They also talked about how to live godly lives in the pressure of the world, or with spouses, who weren’t religious.

3.A Sense of Fashion Might be Inherent

Many wear the hijab (head covering), all kinds of versions of it—and many don’t. While hijab can mean ‘veiling’ or ‘screening,’ we shouldn’t let it screen us from friendship. I find that on public transport in the west, women in hijab are often more ready to chat with me than women in western dress. Western women are usually more focused on their phones or tablets. Dress choices that may look intimidating to us are usually about modesty. And Muslim women are very often fashion-conscious. For example, in Cairo women want to wear bright, matching colours and patterns of dress and scarf. In places where most women seem to be wearing look-alike full-length dark coats, they give careful attention to differences of style, material and buttons, and subtler colour variations. In Asia I watched TV programs showing how to tie headscarves as trendy fashion statements. And in women-only space, the most conservative black over-garments may be taken off to show designer wear underneath.

4.A Deep Concern for Purity

This includes moral purity. Often they are worried about the risks of exposure to the sexual freedoms of western culture, and may assume it characterizes all the western women they meet. Feel free to share your own concern about living according to biblical standards in the face of pressure from the contemporary culture.

It also includes physical purity. Physical impurity prevents Muslims from carrying out their basic religious duties of prayer, fasting, reading the Qur’an. Careful washing rituals are the means to restore purity. And defiled conditions affect women much more than men (any kind of emission from the body, whether solid, liquid or gas, is a cause of impurity). So all Muslims become impure and must wash to gain purity every day. Moreover, women become impure for a week each month. This is very different to western understanding. But the people in Jesus’ day constantly thought about purity and requirements for washing before religious duties. It means a lot to tell our friends about Mark 5, where Jesus heals from unclean spirits, and how he isn’t defined by the woman with the flow of blood. Nor is he unclean from touching a dead body (according to Jewish rules of the time). Rather, he heals a woman, gives life to a dead girl, and purity of heart to all of us.

5.Women in Islam

Islam grants women many rights in the home and in society. Among them are the right to earn money, to financial support, to own property, to an education, to an inheritance, to being treated kindly, to vote, to a bridal gift, to keep their maiden name, to worship in a mosque, to a divorce, and so on.