BECAUSE so many Muslim men have their first sexual encounters with other males, they are inclined to bugger their wives out of ignorance, says Wedad Lootah, who has caused outrage in the Middle East with a frank book entitled Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples.

In her book, published earlier this year, the Dubai marriage counselor celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics in Islam like homosexuality, and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.

According to the New York Times, the book has drawn praise from some liberals and death threats from conservatives, who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

Said Ms Lootah:

People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed. Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: â€˜These problems happen every day and should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living’.

She is not a liberal by Western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality generally, not because of AIDS but because they are banned by the Koran. But her openness about the issue was itself a shock to many.

In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.

Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else. This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.

She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure, and the inequity of many Arab marriages in that respect. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.

Finally, she discovered orgasm! Imagine, all that time she did not know.

Publishing the book, she notes, was a difficult choice. Her father supported her, but other family members sometimes wondered why she had to be so public about it all. After it was published a man called her office phone and threatened to kill her. Other threats appeared on the Internet.

She brushes them off, saying she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth the risk.