Exploring the contemporary dynamics of sexuality in the Middle East, this volume offers an in-depth and unique insight into this much contested and debated issue.It focuses on the role of sexuality in political and social struggles and the politicization of sexuality and gender in the region. Contributors illustrate the complexity of discourses, debates and issues, focusing in particular on the situation in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Turkey, and explain how they cannot be reduced to a single underlying factor such as religion, or a simple binary opposition between the religious right and feminists.Contributors include renowned academicians, researchers, psychologists, historians, human rights and women's rights advocates and political scientists, from different countries and backgrounds, offering a balanced and contemporary perspective on this important issue, as well as the implication of these debates in larger socio-political contexts.
Author(s): Pinar Ilkkaracan
Publisher: Ashgate
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 230
Contents......Page 6
List of Contributors......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 12
1 Introduction: Sexuality as a Contested Political Domain in the Middle East......Page 14
2 Criminal Law, Women and Sexuality in the Middle East......Page 30
3 How Adultery Almost Derailed Turkey’s Aspirations to Join the European Union......Page 54
4 Fighting Honor Crimes: Evidence of Civil Society in Jordan......Page 78
5 Sex Education in Lebanon: Between Secular and Religious Discourses......Page 96
6 Contesting Discourses of Sexuality in Post-Revolutionary Iran......Page 114
7 Who Said That Love is Forbidden? Gender and Sexuality in Iraqi Public Discourse of the 1970s and 1980s......Page 152
8 Militarization, Nation and Gender: Women’s Bodies as Arenas of Violent Conflict......Page 178
9 Towards a Cultural Definition of Rape: Dilemmas in Dealing with Rape Victims in Palestinian Society......Page 190
10 The ‘Natasha’ Experience: Migrant Sex Workers from the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in Turkey......Page 212
E......Page 228
L......Page 229
S......Page 230
Z......Page 231
