Radio Netherlands: The right of young Turkish Muslims to have sex

Dutch/Turkish TV producer Senay Özdemir

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The right of young Turkish Muslims to have sex

Muslim parents in the Netherlands tell their daughters to stay virgin until the day of their wedding. An impossible requirement, says Senay Özdemir. It only leads to hypocrisy and disturbed family relations. Young Muslim women should have more freedom to experiment with sex before marriage.Former tv-presenter Senay Özdemir is a young Dutch woman of Turkish origin. As the editor of a digital magazine for women of immigrant background, SEN Magazine, she knows very well what is going on in the minds of young Muslimas in the Netherlands. Last week she published her view in an opinion article in the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. What many Muslim parents in the Netherlands are forgetting, writes Ms Özdemir, is that they themselves were mostly married at a young age and thus could legitimately have sex. In modern Dutch society, however, the age at which young Muslim women marry is steadily rising. The average age is now 23 years, but more educated women often do not marry before 30.

Ms Özdemir knows what she is talking about. As editor of SEN Magazine she daily receives e-mails in which young Muslim women speak freely about their love-life. "Young women of immigrant background increasingly consider oral sex as something quite normal and feel they can't refuse their boyfriends when they ask for anal sex, as that would not damage their virginity."She calls it the 'virginity paradox'. The prohibition of sex, argues Ms Özdemir, is totally ineffective. It has in fact the reverse effect that young Muslim women as well as men become obsessed by sex.