Islam, it appears, hasn’t always tried to “micromanage the sex lives” of its adherents. In the Arab world’s medieval heyday, sexual expression flourished alongside the arts and science. Even in the 19th century, European travellers headed for the Orient for “unbridled thrills”. Is a sexual revolution now possible? El Feki believes education could at least bring “greater tolerance and a loosening of controls. Modern Arabia’s dissatisfied lovers are waiting.”

Now evidence suggests that Islam’s modern sexual restrictions – with its “terror of female sexuality” and its ban on premarital sex, masturbation and even on married couples going naked between the sheets – create “confusion, hypocrisy and unhappiness”. One Saudi who discussed his sex life on a TV show was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and five years in jail. In Egypt, gay men are routinely raped by police or tortured with electric shocks. Some 80% of Egyptian girls have undergone genital mutilation, justified by “fear of female lust”. “Summer marriage” contracts are used to sell young women into temporary prostitution while respecting the letter of religious law.

For five years, Shereen El Feki, a Cairo-based journalist travelled the Arab world to explore the secrets of its sex lives. Along the way, she questioned young protesters in Tahrir Square about their secret sex lives. The result is “a meticulously researched mini-Kinsey Report rich in anecdotes and statistics”. El Feki has found evidence of a hidden sexual world that embraces everything from support groups for lesbians, to bras that play “Old MacDonald Had a Farm, of all things. (“Sex and the Citadel”, published by Chatto & Windus 345pp £14.99).

The prudery and the medieval restrictions on women and sex are all part and parcel of a huge
Islamic reaction against the literal and metaphorical invasion by the West, and was always , in my opinion, inevitable. The crudity of Hollywood, the casual invasion of countries you haven’t a clue about, the political bullying and colonialism, helplessness over Israel, and so on, had to provoke a backlash. When did we see something similar in history? Was the militancy of Mohammed and his followers was in part a backlash, albeit belated, against the thuggery and unpleasantness of the Roman era.

It will all takes decades to play through, and there is nothing we can do about it. It is, for the moment, an unstoppable historical movement. But it is reassuring that Moslem women still have ways to circumventing the religious control freaks. Liberty should include liberty from religion and the diktats of muftis and mullahs. Very Epicurean.