Jeffrey J. Prager, Jeffrey J. Prager, Illustrator
Iran’s men are having trouble dealing with the brave new world that’s imposing itself on their bedrooms: an unnoticed tide of sexual change that could prove far more important in shaping the country’s cultural and political values than the 2009 democratic elections. “It is still widely accepted,” Negar Farshidi writes, “that a groom can make his marriage conditional on the bride remaining a virgin, and cancel it if it turns out she isn’t. Traditionally, a blood-stained sheet was produced after the wedding night as evidence of an intact hymen, but nowadays many men and their families ask for a ‘virginity certificate’ in advance.” Similar practices are common throughout the entire world. The majority of newlyweds still want their brides to be virgins in most countries. But an official Iranian study, Farshidi records, has determined that more than half of all young people in Iran have had premarital sex – which means those certificates probably aren’t worth a whole lot. Iran’s powerful clerical establishment embraced the technological products of modernity, like computers and the internet, while railing against its cultural manifestations. But the fact is that modernity imposes its own culture. More and more young Iranians are working independently of their families. More and more Iranians are marrying late. More and more young Iranians are having premarital sex. Kelly Golnoush Niknejad had, a couple of years ago, written an insightful account of how the internet had made it increasingly difficult for the regime to censor what young people in Iran “see, hear and seek, especially when it comes to dating and sex.” Iran’s clerics aren’t stupid: unlike Xerxes, they see that even three hundred lashes aren’t going to tame the sea. Ziauddin Sardar, in a must-read article, wrote of the clergy’s efforts to battle this epidemic by promoting muta, or temporary marriages. Precisely how these marriages are distinct from hiring a sex worker, I am unclear – but the distinction at lea
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