a weekly gathering devoted to the intimate experience of storytelling

Erotic Islamic Literature

a course that preserves and celebrates the history of Islam’s erotic art and literature

We’re forgetting everything. We’re forgetting that it’s we Arabs, we Muslims, who shocked the West with our erotic texts in the fifteenth century. We invented the realm of the erotic. We’re suffering from collective amnesia.”

— Nabil Ayouch (Moroccan filmmaker) in ‘Sex & Lies’

Literature on Islam

a course that preserves and celebrates the history of Islam’s erotic art and literature

A watercolor painting depicting a religious scene of Jesus Christ on the cross, flanked by two men. One man in an orange and red robe is standing on the ground, holding Jesus' hand. Jesus is partially clothed, with a sorrowful expression, holding a ladder. The background features a landscape with clouds, trees, and a blue sky. Red Arabic script is written above the scene.
A colorful illustration of a royal scene with a seated king wearing a crown, holding a scepter, and surrounded by attendants, with Persian script above and below.
A historical illustration showing a woman sitting on a man's back, who is lying on a cushioned surface. The woman is dressed in pink, and the man is wearing orange and a red hat. They are indoors with a decorative background, including a fireplace and patterned wall. There is calligraphic text above and below the illustration, in an elegant script.
An illustrated Persian miniature painting depicting two women sitting on a carpet outdoors under a large red and pink umbrella, with trees and a building in the background, and Persian script at the top and bottom.
A historical manuscript with Persian script and colorful illustrations depicting couples in intimate scenes.

“Muslims can turn to a long written tradition, led by scholars, that saw no incompatibility between the needs of the body and the demands of the faith. From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, when Islamic civilisation reached its apogee, literature and the erotic arts flourished.

From the nineteenth century onwards, the intellectual, political and economic decline of the Arab world seems to have proceeded in tandem with increasingly puritanical views about sex. With the advent of the twentieth century, colonisation was in any case set to impose very restrictive laws in this domain. The aim was to establish a barrier between immigrants from the West and the native women, and so to contain the ‘unbridled’ sensuality of the local population.”

— Laila Slimani in 'Sex & Lies'

Blue tapestry featuring an architectural motif with a dome, central column, and decorative border, with fringed edges at the top and bottom. 
What to Expect

[coming soon]

  • I ask god for what I want

    and then I run.

    Bringing the body with you: the body as sin and sensuality as a form of resistance

    “The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know they are not being met.”

    — Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

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  • an unfinished initation (471) wolf

  • the vulnerability of severance: “Guilt and shame are powerful tools of domination and control because guilt and shame’s primary functions are to shut down intution”

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Schedule

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“The space where she meets her god is intimate and womb-like, and profoundly personal. ”
— Wildy Mercy, mirabi starr

  • testimonies

    coming soon

“The undoing of what we never knew was done might be the greatest journey of our lives: the long walk back to the beginning. ”
— Kristin Diable, New Orleans Musician
meet your instructors

poet, artist, and lifelong student of spirituality, mysticism, and the soma

My work is testimony to the unity of the feminine, the sensual and the divine, refuting the interpretation that they are in contradiction with one another. I’m devoted to the intimate experiences of the Arab woman and the world around her. Through my writing and art, I investigate the religious and cultural wounds that interfere with perception, desire, and pursuits, revealing  layers of existence in each body of work.