Lack of electricity so they can wash up after sex. So they don’t have sex.
How ever did they manage to get laid for 5860 of the past 5930 years [given that the earth was created sometime in 4000BC according to that bishop, and figuring 1930 as a feasable date for electricity to trickle into a major city like Bagdad] without electricity?
Did they ever think of heating water on a portable charcoal brazier on a balcony/streetside/patio equivalent/fireplace? Use bottled gas/spirit stoves? Sponge baths count as does going to a public bath, which I am sure there are a few started up again…Heck, I have gone without power here chez Aru and sponge bathed for several days in cold water. Never stopped us from getting laid. Many years of the Pennsic War thousands of us suffered ice cold showers, or bathing in a seriously cold spring fed stream. Never seemed to stop anybody from doing anything.
All I gotta say is that if the lack of hot water for a shower is enough to short circuit your reproductive drives then you deserve to be outta the gene pool!
No they don’t, at least not for what’s being described in the article, which is ghusl, or Islam’s version of the mikvah. The bare minimum required is that every exterior bit of the body be covered with water at least once during the bathing, and the standard version has a prescribed series of washing of various parts of the body.
The problem is that prayer, recitation of Qur’an, entering a mosque, and many other things are forbidden when one is in a state of janaba, or the greater ritual impurity. If there is not enough water to perform ghusl, or if there is, but one fears not having enough water later to sustain life (such as when travelling in the desert), tayammum or the dry ablution may be performed, but if one is living in the city with running water, there’s no religiously viable excuse for missing prayer because one didn’t want to perform ghusl with cold water.
Oh, come on. You’ve got a religion that places a huge emphasis on the importance of thorough ablutions after sex.
Sponge baths do not count, if you’re going to have sex. The Qu’ran specifically requires a total immersion bath after sex.
A muslim can make do with a whore-bath and still be in the clear, unless they have sex, in which case that’s not going to cut it.
You might think this is extreme, but early Christians had nearly identical rules surrounding pooping. You couldn’t just wash the spot and get on with your day, or God would look askance at you.
So unless you’ve got an easy way to heat a tub full of water, sex is not an option for a devout muslim – unless they’re going to just knuckle down and do it in the icy water. (Which I’ll bet some of 'em do.)
Just this year I had a hot water tank bust, and tried to have a bath with water heated on the electric stove. Even with four nice convenient elements and a bunch of big pots, it didn’t really work out, and took up about two hours of my day.
A charcoal burner or an alcohol stove is not going to do the trick – and I’ll bet there are plenty of the same people laughing up their sleeves would choose to skip sex if it meant getting into a tub of cold water.
Hell, if Pennsic is anything like some of the other wars and such, it didn’t stop anybody, but likely encouraged them!
As for the complaint…lack of hot water is a wuss’s excuse. You live in a bloody desert. Solar heat should do just fine. Stick a 5 gallon jug of water in the sun, tear off a piece or three, then bathe. I’m not seeing the problem here. If it was that big a problem, Islam would have died out centuries ago from lack of hot water.
Do showers count? If so, see previous comment about “wuss.” If they don’t, then 10 gallons. I’m just not seeing how a population of nomads managed to handle this for the 1000+ years or so before semi-modern plumbing arrived on the scene. Now, people living in Cordoba I could seehaving no problem, but the groups that weren’t in cities?
People do extreme stuff to stay within their comfort zone. This isn’t about Muslims from the past, who probably had a different set of ideas about the world. This is about people in Baghdad today being put in a situation where they are unable to maintain their standards of cleanliness and religious purity.
I’ve seen westerners give themselves infections because they refuse to use a squat toilet when travelling in Asia. I’ve seen people freak out abroad when given water to wash with instead of toilet paper. I’ve seen people who can scarely afford it spend fortunes on motel rooms with ensuite bathrooms in areas where that is not customary. I myself have skipped many a bath when only cold water was involved. I’ve seen people refuse to eat perfectly good food because it doesn’t fit their culture’s understanding of “acceptable” food to eat. We banned eating horses here in California- any good reason? No. It just offends our sensibilities. I’ve seen people scream when they find a hair- which represents almost no chance for infection or contamination- in their food.
We’ve all got ideas about what is ‘clean’ and ‘unclean.’ Some of us ritualize it more than others. But it takes a hell of a lot to break those feelings, and for some people it may never happen. Some of us would never get used to using a squat toilet and washing with water and feeling “clean.”
It’s all a dastardly American plot to prevent them making more little potential Saddams: that’s why it’s taking them so long to restore the electricity. Bwahahahahooha!
Simple, you stand in a basin, and use a pitcher to pour water over oneself that has been heated over charcoal/gas/spirit/solar shower bag. Bloody hell, you can stand in the fucking bathtub or shower stall and pour the water over yourself.
FWIW, horse is actually pretty tasty, as is dog. Never been given cat to eat, though I will try it if offered. I will fully admit I draw the line at insects, and that is fully cultural conditioning which I admit to.
I use regular toilets, toilet and bidet, squat toilet and roadside [with and without screening shrubery. I spent 6 months using a bedpan with assistance, Ill crap anywhere if I need to go. I have sod all false body modesty left :rolleyes: ]
They have unreliable electrical power, and this is causing certain inconveniences in their lives. Seems like a legitimate complaint to me, something any American can relate to. Why would you call it a “whine”?
Having endured periods without running hot water myself, something else occurred to me.
Do you suppose that some of the complaints are merely a genteel reversal? (ie; it’s more polite to say that proper washing after sex is the main concern, rather than proper washing before?)
“Make-do” ablutions, in my experience, never leave you as clean as you’d like to be before you jump between the sheets. You want a hot shower.
“Hey, our intimate life is suffering because we’re concerned about prayer requirements” is a heck of a lot easier to say than “Hey, our intimate life is suffering because we’re starting to smell manky over here from a month of whore’s-baths!”
Perhaps, but mrAru pointed out that the complaints from the rural folk involve the cost of gas to run generators to pump water from deep wells…
So, it seems the rural folk with almost no access to regular electricity on a daily normal [prewar] basis dont seem to have trouble getting laid.
Though honestly, being fat and diabetic with kidney trouble, I dont have any problem keeping clean with sponge baths when the power goes out [nor with pouring more or less warmed water into a shower bag, though I would LOVE to have a zodi shower buddy for when the power dies in the winter … =)
I get the feeling details are missing from that article. You see, my family lived way the hell out in the desert, with our own well that wouldn’t work when the power went out (which was pretty darned often). We had a good sized water tank that we had set out in the sun. Even in winter the water would be warm by afternoon. The key was to keep it topped off for when the power went out.
Why not something similar for these folks? Our neighbors used a couple of big plastic trash cans for their emergency water tanks, which weren’t too expensive. Placed anywhere you’d have the space and some sun, you could get the water where you wanted with some hosing and a good set of lungs by siphoning. Refill when the power is actually working.
The cost of a generator to run the wells out in the countryside, isn’t so easily solved. How did they do it before electricity?
