Event: FEMINIST GIANT & The Strand Present Halal Sex
FEMINIST GIANT and The Strand Book Store feminist book club returns on March 16 for a discussion on notable journalist and media professional Sheima Benembarek’s book Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America. I wish I had books like this when I was younger. It is for that reason that I am thrilled to have written a forward to this necessary book that I know will be a great and much-needed companion to many..
This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store’s 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of Halal Sex here.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at events@strandbooks.com by Mar. 2 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact events@strandbooks.com
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An unprecedented glimpse into the sex lives of female and gender-expansive Muslims living across Canada and the United States.
In the Muslim world, sex is permissible (or halal) only within the confines of marriage. Outside of wedlock, the act is considered haram, a sin of the faith. Girls are taught to protect their virginity; their mothers, if not forgoing “the talk” altogether, obscure the facts with elliptical language and metaphors.
So, what happens when immigrants and the children of immigrants set about pursuing an open and active sex life on a more sexually liberated continent, amid western peers and attitudes? The six deeply personal stories in Halal Sex attempt to answer this question, bringing a hushed conversation out into the open.
Within these pages you’ll meet Azar, a non-binary trans Sufi; Bunmi, a Nigerian navigating shame and Tinder; Eman, a lesbian stand-up comic in an interfaith marriage; Taslim, a virgin in her forties struggling to erect healthy boundaries; and Khadijah, an exotic dancer and sex worker.
With great empathy, Sheima Benembarek makes space for the honesty and vulnerability of each participant and handles their stories with gentleness and care. What emerges is a tapestry of a diverse Islam—encompassing a wide variety of cultural and religious and socioeconomic backgrounds—and a frank, feminist contribution to the advancement of Muslim sexual education and pleasure.
Sheima Benembarek is a Moroccan Canadian journalist and media professional. She writes about social justice, immigrant narratives and intersectional feminism for a variety of publications including The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Literary Review of Canada, Chatelaine, Broadview and Vogue Arabia. In 2020, she was named one of the five RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writers. In the fall of 2024, she was the Asper Fellow in Media at Western University’s Faculty of Information and Media Studies where she taught ethical journalistic interviewing techniques for racialized sources. Currently, she works as the culture and society editor at The Conversation Canada. Her nonfiction book Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America was released on March 21, 2023 by Penguin Random House, Viking Canada, and was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize and appeared on bestselling lists.
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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