By Jess McCabe | 26 April 2007, 20:26

A TV show about sex has become an unlikely hit across the Arab world, CNN reports.

Dr Heba Kotb’s weekly advice show is broadcast by satellite from Egypt, and confronts sex head on - as long as it’s sex between a man and a woman in the context of marriage.

“We talk about masturbation … sex over the Internet. We talk about sex and Ramadan. We talk about the wedding night,” said Kotb.

Dr Kotb used to be a surgeon, but had a change of career when she started a family. In the course of researching her PhD, she started to wonder why sex was so taboo in Egyptian society. She found a section of the Koran which put her on the path to giving sex advice to the masses:

The passage reads: “Your wives are as a tilth [land or soil to be cultivated] unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will; but do some good act for your souls beforehand; and fear Allah.”

“I was so proud of my religion when I saw that. My religion was advanced enough to talk about women’s rights in sexuality how many years before modern science did?”

Personally, couldn’t get quite that excited about a metaphor which says women are there for the tilling. But Dr Kotb got something out of it, so there we go. And, as it led her on to become a star sexologist, it’s hard to complain. Her advice, from the examples cited by CNN, seems practical:

“You have nowhere else to get your sexuality but from your spouse. It’s the only source available, so it’s very important.”

And for the men she has some blunt advice: “You have to have foreplay with your wife and you have to have sex with her frequently, not just when you want to.”

Photo by Al-Fassam, shared under a Creative Commons license