Here is a video from MEMRI TV entitled: Saudi Cleric Omar Al-Sweilem Extols the Breasts and Thighs of the Black-Eyed Virgins of Paradise. I’m not going to take a screen shot of the video because, honestly, I found it kinda lame that MEMRI would even bother to transcribe this guy’s speech.

Here is the transcript:

Omar Al-Sweilem: Harith Ibn Al-Muhasibi told us what would happen when we meet the black-eyed virgin with her black hair and white face – praised be He who created night and day. What hair! What a chest! What a mouth! What cheeks! What a figure! What breasts! What thighs! What legs! What whiteness! What softness! Without any creams – no Nivea, no vaseline. No nothing! He said that faces would be soft that day. Even your own face will be soft without any powder or makeup. You yourself will be soft, so how soft will a black-eyed virgin be, when she comes to you so tall and with her beautiful face, her black hair and white face - praised be He who created night and day. Just feel her palm, Sheik! He said: How soft will a fingertip be, after being softened in paradise for thousands of years! There is no god but Allah. He told us that if you entered one of the palaces, you would find ten black-eyed virgins sprawled on musk cushions. Where is Abu Khaled? Here, he has arrived! When they see you, they will get up and run to you. Lucky is the one who gets to put her thumb in your hand. When they get hold of you, they will push you onto your back, on the musk cushions. They will push you onto your back, Jamal! Allah Akbar! I wish this on all people present here. He said that one of them would place her mouth on yours. Do whatever you want. Another one would press her cheek against yours, yet another would press her chest against yours, and the others would await their turn. There is no god but Allah. He told us that one black-eyed virgin would give you a glass of wine. Wine in Paradise is a reward for your good deeds. The wine of this world is destructive, but not the wine of the world to come.

Now, I find this to be akin to any other ramblings about religious mythology, no matter what religion. Others might view this as highlighting how different this Islamic mythology is from Christian or Jewish mythologies. As an anonymous source remarks “I didn’t expect heaven to be pornographic.”

Interestingly, I have been reading material which seems to suggest this anonymous source is mistaken.

William James was a phenomenal and influential psychologist and philosopher who wrote a book that chronicles the tales of several people who had purported odd, supernatural experiences. The book is called On The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. In this work James looks at, well, a variety of religious experiences, one of the more notable being those experiences recorded in the written work of Teresa of Avila. Commenting on James is Alivin Plantinga:

Conversion, therefore, is fundamentally a turning of the will, a healing of the disorder of affection that afflicts us. It is a turning away from love of self, from thinking of oneself as the chief being of the universse, to love of God. But what is this love of God like, and how shall we understand it? William James, that cultured, sophisticated New England Victorian gentleman, notes the throbbing elements of longing, yearning, desire, eros in the writings of Teresa of Avila, looks down his cultivated nose, and finds all that a bit, well, tasteless, a bit declasse. Sniffs James, “in the main her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation … between the devotee and the deity.” Here the joke is on James. There is an intimate and long-standing connection between eros and developed spirituality. The Bible is full of expressions of that longing, yearning, Sehnsucht, desire; the Hebrew word for knowledge, as in knowledge of God, is also a word for sexual intercourse; and when the children of Israel are unfaithful, turning aside to false gods, this is represented as adultery.

Warranted Christian Belief, 311

I find it interesting that sex and religion are so closely associated with each other.

Hmm…

I’m busy today, so I’ll have to think about this more later.

Sehnsucht: