Do women get to have sex in paradise? That’s the question with which Mohja Kahf opened an online series called Sex and the Umma. (The answer, according to the visiting Islamic scholar attending the weekly ladies’ Quranic circle, is: “Any woman who wants such a thing is not likely to make it to paradise.” Which doesn’t stop the good women in Kahf’s story from speculating.)

Sex and the Umma made its debut on the progressive Muslim website Muslim Wake-Up! (www.muslimwakeup.com) just four days ago. Since then, Kahf’s piece has drawn over 70 responses on the website itself, been discussed on mailing lists with furious intensity, and sparked a news item in the New York Daily. Kahf, a professor and a mother of three, will be alternating with Asra Q. Nomani, author and single mother, on the subject of sex in the Muslim community. And judging by the responses, when Nomani sits down to do her part of the jugalbandi next month, she’ll be writing into the heart of a hurricane.

The image that Kahf, Nomani and several of the other writers on the MWU website want to challenge is the image of the Muslim woman shrouded in a burka, silenced by the veil. The website aims to “address modern-day Muslim sexual experiences even if they do not match Islamic prescriptions for sexual conduct.” If I may borrow an expression from another faith, amen to that.

The problem with most faiths in general and certainly Islam in particular is that they tend to define women’s sexual identities in terms of prohibitions. Take the 10th Commandment: the reason why it reads “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” instead of the simpler “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour” tells a story in itself. In the minds of the men who passed down this particular Biblical edict, there was no question of a woman coveting her neighbour’s husband, because a woman was assumed not to possess the same sexual appetites — or opportunities. (The Bible, incidentally, was slightly two-faced about this; there are plenty of curious women (Eve) and lustful women (Jezebel) but they tend to come to a bad end.)

And faiths of all kinds appear to be united in their belief that women’s bodies are sources of pollution. Think of the temples that bar their doors against women of childbearing age, think of the ritualised fear of menstruating women (you cannot do certain pujas if you’re in this ‘unclean’ state), think of the Christian dogma that teaches that the pain of childbirth is Eve’s punishment.

The apparently simple question that the woman in Kahf’s story poses hit a nerve. The website received hate mail (“u not really a muslim woman”, “this is not a sex forum, remember? The last time I checked this was an Islamic forum so we must behave”). But it also got a lot of heartfelt applause. And it received a suggestion that really made me wonder.

“We need to rethink paradise,” wrote Shareefa on the website. “I think we need to recognise the way in which our traditional visions of paradise are reflections of the unjust patriarchal order here on earth.”

Ah, paradise. According to the Manu Smriti, heaven was the place a woman could reach only through absolute obedience to her husband, regardless of how vile, debauched or cruel he may have been. You can also get there by committing sati, according to some texts. In Buddhism, bad karma ensures that you will be reborn a woman. And in Islam, don’t ask whether women have fun; you already know the answer. Paradise; it’s a great place to be — if you’re the right gender!