The former Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, told theTV channel CBC Sunday evening that watching porn leads to atheism because industry makers believe that the human body can be used in everything…. “Pornography, which is made public and is circulated through magazines and movies and has its stars, was an industry initiated in 1960 in the US and is the cause of all affliction in which the world now lives,” Gomaa added. Gomaa believes the industry has attempted to bring about a sexual revolution. “I hope we do not link this industry to freedom, because freedom is elevated and means human dignity,” he mentioned…. “Mankind has been plagued by pornography websites,” Gomaa added. He went on to say that watching porn was strictly prohibited by the Quran.
Over the years, I’ve heard and read many things that attempt to rationalize and/or explain the evidently radical idea that some people manage to live their lives quite successfully without God. They have a moral code, their lives and actions are redolent of kindness, they give of themselves…and yet they have no religious philosophy that explains it (How could that be???). Could it be that one can be good without God and that religion is not a prerequisite to having a functional moral code and living a moral life?
Or is it just that one’s an atheist because of their lifetime subscription to PornHub? Is this the religious equivalent of the “Don’t because it’ll make you go blind” argument? The Grand Mufti approaches pornography as it was something that gets between a person and their God, whoever or whatever that might look like. Pornography, like most anything else, is what you make of it. It can be evil and the source of dastardly soul-crushing moral corruption…if one chooses to view it that way. Another view might hold that it’s just people acting (albeit usually poorly) and having consensual sex of various and assorted derivations.
As for the porn industry bring about a “sexual revolution,” it’s hardly revolutionary to open up the enjoyment of sex in some many ways. Yes, some of it is exploitative, sexist, and misogynistic…but so are the Quran and the Bible. There’s long been a conviction within Conservative religious communities that sex is dangerous- when people are pleasuring themselves or one another they’re harder to control- and so the way to maintain social control is to teach that sex is dirty and nasty. This pretty sad, really…because sex can be a whole lot of fun…and if your flavor of God didn’t intend for us to enjoy our bodies and what they can do to and with other, why does sex feel so damned good?
More than anything, I feel sorry for the Grand Mufti, but perhaps I shouldn’t. From my experience, the ones who tend to be the most repressed and controlling about the sexuality of others tend to be the ones enjoying an awful lot of illicit sex themselves. Perhaps someone might consider getting the Grand Mufti a gift certificate to kink.com this Christmas?
No matter how hard I try, I still can’t wrap my head around why so many are so concerned with the personal (and private) sexual practices and proclivities of others. You get to decide what’s right and proper for yourself; you DON’T get to do it for others.
