When I arrived at NUI Galway recently to deliver the annual lecture in Women's Studies, I was surprised to see dozens of Muslim men and women in the audience of several hundred. The women wore headscarves, and they segregated themselves on one side of the amphitheatre.
When the lecture was over, several Muslims objected to the "provocative" title of my lecture, "Repression and Desire; the Sexual Politics of Islam", and to the fact that advance publicity mentioned death sentences for adultery in Nigeria and the gang rape of a young woman in Pakistan at the orders of an "Islamic" tribal council. The rapists have since been sentenced to hang.
A professorial-looking man objected to my listing abuses of women's human rights in Muslim countries. "What about Holly and Jessica?" he asked, referring to the two schoolgirls who were murdered in Britain. "What about paedophilia, and the sexual abuse of children by priests? What about homosexuality and bestiality, which are widely practiced in the West? These things are an abomination to Muslims. Do they mean that Christianity is an immoral religion?" A woman wearing a headscarf, an Irish convert, said she had hoped to hear something different, but had been disappointed by my lecture, which she called "a list of things that have nothing to do with Islam".
A teenage boy asked why I opposed the amputation of thieves' hands. "In Ireland, if someone steals something, they just scold them and they keep stealing," he said.
A woman from Iraq told me she was pleased she received only half a man's share of inheritance; it was much better that way. Another veiled woman claimed that since a woman receives some inheritance from her father, husband and sons, she actually receives more than a man does.
A Libyan objected to my using Saudi Arabia as an example; the Saudis were not true Muslims, he said. In response to the UNDevelopment Programme report finding that half of Arab women are illiterate, he said that certainly wasn't the case in Libya. The same young man implored me to concentrate on Islamic theology - not its implementation.
A Palestinian castigated me for not mentioning the Palestinian women killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, or Intisar Ajouri, the woman deported by the Israelis from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip for allegedly helping her brother, a suicide bomber. What about the women who will be killed if President George W. Bush launches a war on Iraq? he added.
At the reception afterwards, two elderly Irish women put the obsessions of Shi'ite theologians in perspective. "The thing about the warmth of a woman's body on a seat - I remember priests saying the same thing," one said. Her companion continued: "I was told never to set the table with a white cloth when a young man came calling, because it might remind him of bed sheets."
