By Asif Akhtar

This just in - a Dutch website reports with some fascination that a Muslim entrepreneur in Amsterdam has decided to open an online store for halal sex toys for Muslims.

What!? I didn’t know Muslims had sex! That’s absurd – who allowed them to have sex? And with sex toys? Isn’t pleasure supposed to be haram?

I'm sure these developments perplex the simple ‘Western’ mind, trying to understand the sometimes fascinating, sometimes terrifying ‘Muslim World’.

Of course, when it comes to the media, opposites attract. Any two things that aren’t supposed to gel together are immediately newsworthy when juxtaposed. And since Muslims are always in the news these days – owing to a couple of global wars going on in the lands of the Muslims, and the chance that some random Muslim passer-by might just blow up in an unsuspecting Western neighbourhood – anything to do with Islam is good for selling newspapers.

So you get all these crazy diverging topics becoming headline stories these days. Muslim + Sex Toys is just one of them. Some of you must remember the Karachi bondage accessory manufacturer some American journalist ran into who made headlines. Then this random fashion show in Pakistan makes its way into international news, just cuz it’s a fashion show that happens to be happening in Pakistan.

Hell, even this - what would have otherwise been a no-name band in someone’s garage gets covered in everything from Time magazine to Fox News, just because it’s a Muslim punk band (from what I hear their punk side has had it up to here with the Muslim label).

It makes sense that Muslims have sex, and lots of it - that's why there are so many of them in the world, right? And it should be generally accepted that Muslims play with toys (during their innocent childhoods at least). So what’s the big deal about sex toys? Oh no, toys during sex - haram haram!

This whole thing about sex being taboo in the Muslim World must be a relatively recent historical development. If we look back just a few hundred years, the West was fascinated by the licentiousness of the Orient; the almost mind-numbing sensuality and sexual practices of the Muslims used to be the stuff of lore.

Somewhere down the line things seem to have gone topsy-turvy, at least in how cultures perceive each other. The West has become famous for its ravenous sexuality, so much so that common people in Pakistani cities expect Western women to be willing to sleep with anyone at the merest hint of sex. On the other hand, the very mention of Muslims and sex in the same sentence gets one stared at suspiciously as if the unspeakable has been uttered.

So here it is, cut and dried, for everyone who’ reading:

Muslims. Have. Sex.

Now both Muslim and Western readers – since there are only two categories of people in the world – should take some time to digest this information.