This post is the latest in an ongoing project to read and review the books written as the major project of graduates of the University of King’s College Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction Writing.

With Ramadan starting February 28, I thought this week’s blog post would give a nod to the Muslim faith. I’m not sure what I expected when I started reading Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America (Viking, 2023) by Sheima Benembarek (class of 2020), but what I found was so much better than anything I imagined. 

As a baby boomer who grew up in the seventies, I always thought of myself as a person who didn’t have too many sexual hangups. As a middle-class white woman who grew up in a secular Christian household, I had many preconceived notions (largely wrong) about Muslim women. So, it was a surprise to me to read the stories of a half-dozen Muslim women who are forging their own paths sexually. 

Hind is a self-described niqabi—she wears the full body-covering niqab, with only her hands and eyes showing, which she chose because she tired of being subject to the male gaze. I’m guessing many if not most Western women think of the niqab as a sign of women’s oppression. I let go of a friendship years ago because the person in question said outright that she had no respect for women who wore even a headscarf for religious reasons because they were submitting to male oppression. But the male gaze can be oppressing too and I understand the perspective that covering up might have a freeing effect.

Regardless, underneath her niqab, you never know what colour HInd’s hair might be—turquoise, maybe—as she practices a form of self-expression that’s meaningful to her. She’s also in an unusual marital situation—divorced from her first husband, now sharing her second husband with another woman (her idea), but living separately and independently because she doesn’t get along with his first wife. Her husband spends two days a week with her and the rest of the time with his other wife and children. (I could deal with such a relationship.) She has an abundant sexual appetite but her first husband didn’t, which was one of the reasons they went their separate ways. And despite the conservatism of her faith, she’s very open in talking about sexuality and educating young people in her community about it. 

Benembarek writes skillfully about a half-dozen women who are expressing their sexual identity in their own ways. Like Azar, a nonbinary transgender Sufi, which Benembarek describes as the hippy group of Islam. And Bunmi, a black bisexual Texan Muslim of Nigerian heritage who gave up the headscarf and can now be found roller skating and smoking a joint.  And Eman, who’s “one half of a popular Jewish-Palestinian lesbian comedy duo who, after marrying, combined their last names and professionally call themselves the El-Salomons.” 

And then there’s Khadijah who,

sashays back and forth in her cherry red pleather thigh-high boots, watching herself in the floor-length mirrors in front of and behind her. It takes practice to stay up on those eight-inch heels and even more practice to confidently swing around on a pole in them. The boots are made of polyvinyl chloride, a durable type of plastic; she wears stockings to avoid sweating profusely and to ease the labour of peeling them off. Her brown curls are conveniently out of the way and up in a messy bun, and she adjusts a sheer black cape that’s not long enough to conceal her frilly black high-rise panties. …

Khadijah worries her pole dancing isn’t as sophisticated as the other women’s; she has more experience in burlesque. She’s the only woman of colour dancing in the studio that afternoon, and the combination of leather and black and red fabrics suits her. The stern yet sultry look she’s putting on does too.

None of these women are what would come to my mind if you had asked me to describe a Muslim woman before reading Halal Sex. But then, if there’s anything I love in any book, it’s the opportunity to learn. For me, Halal Sex was all about learning. 

Books with a feminist leaning:

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir, by Nellwyn Lampert.

No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, by Reneé Pellerin.