Ikhwan to be loved by you...

Ishak Md Nor, 40, (2nd L) and his two wives, Aishah Abdul Ghafar, 40, (C) and Afiratul Abidah Mohd Hanan 25 -- both members of the Obedient Wifes Club -- laugh with their children after the club's launch in Kuala Lumpur June 4, 2011/Photo by Samsul Said (Reuters) from Faith World. No, you will not see any titillating photos in this post. Any you see elsewhere are not authentic.

Morning Edition had a story this morning about an organization founded in Kuala Lumpur last year under the name of the Obedient Wives' Club, now claiming 800 members in Malaysia as well as branches in Singapore, Indonesia, and Jordan, promulgating what they claim to be the Qu'ranic way of relating to a husband. I have to tell you, they didn't report the half of it, much of which is accessible through a Wikipedia article, including the fact that the sex manual they published in October was entitled Islamic Sex: Fighting Against Jews To Return Islamic Sex To The World. However it is not the case, according to the members, that it recommended a man's having group sex with all of his wives; rather, it merely mentioned that "a man who has reached the highest spiritual capability can have sex with all his wives simultaneously, spiritually."

Mohammad Inaamulillah Bin Ashaari, son of the founder Mr Ashaari, with his four wives, Rohaiza Esa, Ummu Habibah Raihaw , Nurul Azwa Mohd Ani,and Ummu Ammarah Asmis at the “Ikhwan Polygamy Club Family Day” in Rawang, north of Kuala Lumpur. From Biyokulule Online, Somalia.

The book itself was banned in November, and the Malaysian government is keeping a close eye on the ladies, who were workers at the Ikhwan Coffee House in Bukit Bintang (Fine Dining, Spiritual Harmony), which is a property of the Global Ikhwan Group ("a company whose businesses include bread and noodle factories, a chicken-processing plant, pharmacies, cafes and supermarkets"), which was a property of the late Mr. Ashaari Mohamad (died May 2010), founder of the heterodox Al-Arqam sect, which is also banned. Also, I think they are probably suspected, with some justice, of being the same ladies who founded the Ikhwan Polygamy Club in 2009, a club which has apparently not been banned, but is less active than its sexier younger sister.

What they are being investigated for is revealed in today's Telegraph: they are suspected of having

violated [Malaysian] religious laws with a morality campaign that describes the Prophet Mohammed as a role model for "sacred sex".

 Move over, Salman Rushdie, you innocent! I hope this gives you all some idea of the stresses a "moderately Islamist" government can come under, and for once I don't even mean to be sarcastic. The idea that is necessary to "fight against Jews" to "return Islamic sex to the world" is not very comfortable, even though the Malay polygamists here do not look threatening and clearly have all the Islamic sex they need in any case.

Anyway, all I really wanted to say about the story, before I acquired all this excess information, was that when I was listening to the NPR version—not fully awake, to tell the truth—I heard two things that are not in their published transcript: one, which I fear was real, was a parental warning that the subject of the story might not be suitable for younger readers; the other, which I am pretty sure I must have dreamed, was that the membership of the club was suspected of having a satirical intention.

That's the second time this week I am imagining some kind of conservative gesture to be satire (the first was with the 10,000 leftists threatening to join the Likud party), and I woke up with an idea for a post suggesting that there was a general international phenomenon of living satire, growing out of Billionaires for Bush and Stephen Colbert, but I'm pretty sure now, awake, that this is not the case.

1929 recording of "Kashmiri Song" (Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar...)