Private Conversations

In many Islamic cultures, sex is rarely discussed, but when it is — whether in the domestic sphere or at madrassa — it’s usually understood as something permissible only within marriage. The Moroccan Canadian journalist Sheima Benembarek takes a more expansive approach to the topic with her first book. Halal Sex explores how six people (the term “womxn” appears in the subtitle but nowhere else) negotiate the tension between their families’ conservative expectations and their own expressions of femininity, desire, and faith.

Many of the individuals Benembarek interviewed found ways to embrace Islam’s spiritual core. Azar, who is a non-binary trans person, was born in Chicago in the early 1990s and raised “in a Sufi khanqah, a centre for spiritual gatherings.” Early on, they had questions about their sexual identity and orientation. These weren’t subjects their parents, Bashir...