The veil of protection--or of seduction?

We all know the veiling and covering of the female form is, so we’ve been told by Islamists, for the woman’s own good, since a mere glimpse of flesh may prove too much of an ordeal for a normal man to control the sexual beast within himself. In her book Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes “I found it remarkable how many esteemed Muslim thinkers had philosophized at such length about precisely how much female skin could be bared without causing chaos to break out across the landscape…This was because her bare skin would involuntarily cause men to feel an uncontrollable frenzy of sexual arousal…Some scholars held that the eyes of women were the strongest source of sexual provocation: when the Quran said women should lower their gaze it actually meant they should hide their eyes. Another school of thought held that the very sight of a woman’s lips…could bring a man into a sexual state that could cause his downfall…other thinkers spent pages and pages on the sensual cure of the chin, a pretty nose, or long slender fingers and the tendency of some women to move their hands in a way that attracted attention to their temptations.”

Of course the very nature of such obsessions turns on itself, as if this hidden sexuality is being reflected in a mirror as an assortment of intense fetishes. Ali, again in Infidel, quotes a male friend who tells her “Before the [Muslim] Brotherhood came, you could see everyone’s arms and legs. We never used to notice. But now that women are covering so much, all I can think about is those round calves and silky arms and the hair…I never used to think about a neck before, but ooh, a neck is so sexy now.”

Traveling through Muslim Khartoum, it didn’t take Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari) long to discover this fetishistic effect. “I saw a man and woman heading to the mosque…they were both dressed up for the occasion. Without question they were husband and wife, for she was decorated with henna…the privilege of a married woman. The woman was very attractive…tall and black and slender, in a gold-colored gossamer veil. Parting it with the toss of her head, she gave me a glimpse of her face. Her figure was apparent in the sinuous movement of her gown, and she wore black high-heeled shoes. The hem of her gown became entangled in one stiletto heel, and as she stopped to disengage the wisp of silken cloth from her heel point with a gloved hand, lifting her gown a bit higher, I saw the filigree of dark henna on her foot and her ankle and reaching up her leg, delicately painted, as though she were wearing the sexiest French tights. In addition to the pretty shoe and naked foot, the principal fascination of this lovely painted leg was that it belonged to a woman that was veiled. The explicit fetishism of her feet, her only exposed flesh, left the hidden charms to the imagination. Nothing to me was more erotic.”

Note: I once tried to get a girlfriend to wear a veil while she was naked but she wouldn’t go for it (and she wouldn’t go for the threesome either).