“Oral Pornography,” they called it. These women call it an intimacy seminar

Image description: The illustration shows two hands gently interlocked beneath a glowing crescent moon. Above them, the Arabic word “ʿIbadah” (worship) shines in gold against a deep blue background.

Editors Note: This story was supported by a reporting grant from our collaborative news agency, Advance. 

Lagos, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — The last place Akram wants to be today is anywhere outside his home. To get out of bed again after Fajr prayer feels like pushing an elephant through the eye of a needle. Every fibre of his being, body and mind alike, agrees that he shouldn’t even try. He’s already done his part, or so he tells himself. He paid the registration fees weeks ago, mostly to keep his wife happy. But how does he tell her now, on the morning of the long-awaited outing, that he no longer has the heart for it?

Then he remembers her excitement—the way she’d spoken about the event as if missing it would be a national tragedy. Her reminders had followed him everywhere: into the kitchen while she brewed tea, down the corridor as he left for work, and even into his dreams. The memory of her joy, and the quiet dread of her disappointment, melts his resistance. With a sigh, he swings his legs out of bed. The speed at which he does it surprises even him. No trace of reluctance must escape him; Amal must see only enthusiasm. He pastes on his best smile and begins to dress.

It is a mild Sunday in October 2024. The sun leans gently through the clouds as Akram and Amal make their way to the Lagos State House of Assembly Central Mosque for the third edition of Muslimah Spiels’ Deeper Than The Finger event for couples. The courtyard hums with greetings and laughter. They weave through the crowd, clasping hands, brushing shoulders with friends and familiar faces. By the time they find their seats, Akram feels his earlier hesitation dissolve into the warmth of the room.

As the day unfolds, he listens, really listens. The speakers’ words slice through layers of complacency he hadn’t realised he carried. Each talk peels back something in him, revealing small ways he has neglected Amal’s needs. His chest tightens; his eyes moisten. By the event’s close, a quiet resolve blooms within him: to love better, deeper, more consciously. Later, when Amal’s touch that evening carries a tenderness that mirrors his own awakening, he realises she too must have made a vow of her own.

When he writes his feedback to the organisers, it overflows with gratitude. Perhaps, he muses, this is exactly what the Muslimah Spiels team had hoped for all along.

Muslimah Spiels is an initiative dedicated to addressing the pressing concerns of Muslim women in particular, and the Muslim community at large. Its focus is on offering couples sound Islamic guidance to help them nurture and strengthen their bond, whether they are newlyweds or have been married for many years.

Started by Safiyyah Taiwo, the series of talks was born out of both need and opportunity. The COVID-19 lockdown gave people an unusual gift: time—time to look inward, explore interests, and pour energy into creative pursuits. For Taiwo, it became a period of deep learning. “I watched a whole lot of YouTube channels, particularly the ones that talk about women in Islam or those run by women,” she recalls. But she soon noticed a troubling pattern: “It usually takes a lot of extra effort to find videos of female scholars.”

That gap in visibility inspired her to act. Taiwo began researching women of knowledge in Islam,beyond the familiar figure of Aaisha (RA), and then breaking her findings into modules for YouTube. She shared the idea with a few like-minded friends, brainstorming ways to bring these women’s stories to life.

“We were like, let’s think African. And that was where we had the likes of Asmaau bint Fodiyo,” she explains. Naming the project, however, proved more challenging. “I didn’t know what to call it. I had the idea and plan and everything, but I didn’t want to use the word ‘talk’ or anything too common. One day, I googled synonyms for ‘speak’ or ‘talk,’ and ‘spiels’ came up. That’s how the name Muslimah Spiels was born.”

At the start, the team had been much smaller and less structured than it is today. Taiwo recalls that,  back then, it was really just the people who were meant to speak on the channel. The plan had been to feature three people per episode, but somehow, she says with a laugh,  they had all ended up appearing in every one. 

“Over the years, I’ve had people reach out to me for relationship advice, marriage issues and whatnot. Most times, intimacy issues in their marriage,” she says, tracing back the inception of the Deeper Than The Finger Seminar. While she was neither certified nor charging fees for her relationship and intimacy advice, people kept referring others to her, and she tried to stay abreast by devouring YouTube videos and books on intimacy in Islam. One book that stood out for her was Habeeb Akande’s A Taste of Honey, because it provided  concrete Islamic evidence. She posted nuggets from it on her WhatsApp status, and a lot of people engaged—drawn by how  she challenged societal norms with solid Shariah-based evidence. 

“One day, Habeebah Ibrahim [now a member of the team] replied to my status and was like ‘Have you even thought about monetising this thing that you do? Can you create a niche in that space?’” she explains. “I insisted that I’m not doing marriage stuff; that we have a lot of people already doing that. She insisted that, even if I don’t have the intention to do it professionally, for money, I can continue to do it for charity and make it more structured, insisting that some people that don’t have access to my status, for example, don’t get to see the things I share, which are very beneficial.”

From this conversation, they conceived the idea for an event where they could talk about intimacy in a structured setting and agreed that people should pay for it so they would appreciate its value. They drew up a plan and assembled a five-woman  core team of high-achieving Muslim professionals: Asmaau Yahya, 35, broadcast journalist and entrepreneur; Faa’idah Oyeleye, 27, a Creative Media & Publicity specialist; Habeebah Ibrahim, 35, a psychologist and STEM & Robotics entrepreneur; Nusaybah Ismail Badmus, 33, a physiotherapist and entrepreneur; and the convener, Safiyyah Taiwo, 33, an educationist,  PhD candidate and entrepreneur.

This team went live with Deeper Than The Finger (DTTF) as Muslimah Spiels’s flagship offering in August 2022. The first edition took place in October that year, carving a niche around Shariah-compliant intimacy. Since then, they’ve held an edition every year, with the fourth held in October. 

According to Taiwo, “You don’t come to DTTF and expect us to talk about how to become a better wife or husband generally. We have tons of that outside. We have what we do basically at DTTF.” 

The Muslimah Spiels team understands that their work sits at the edge of discomfort in a deeply conservative Islamic community, where intimacy remains cloaked in silence, even within marriages.

“The average home in the community we find ourselves in doesn’t know basic things about intimacy,” laments Asmaau Yahya. “They don’t just not know. They’re not even willing to learn,” partly because the mainstreaming of pornography in the world today, even among Muslims, makes people “think that there’s nothing more to learn” outside those scripted scenes.

Faced with a culture that treats pleasure as taboo and submission as duty, the team anchors their work in religious authority: the Qur’an and Sunnah, which are the major sources of Islamic jurisprudence. DTTF’s approach reframes sexual knowledge and mutual fulfilment as part of a Muslim’s spiritual responsibility. “When I’m talking about things that are halal or haram [intimacy-wise], it has to come with a daleel – evidence,” Taiwo discloses. “I don’t want something from a da’eef – weak hadeeth. It really has to be perfect.”

Ultimately, by using prophetic teachings and classical scholarship, they challenge the idea that faith and pleasure must be at odds. “You both [spouses] have the right to pleasurable intimacy,” noted Bushrah Okeowo Bombata noted while examining “Sex & Intimacy (What Women Want)” at DTTF 2.0. “Not intimacy that is more like a chore.”

In these seminars—held physically in the South-West, drawing audiences from other regions and virtual attendees from the diaspora—desire isn’t separated from devotion; it is deepened by it. As Yahya puts it, “What we do at DTTF is intimacy. And that, too, is ibaadah when done right.”

Layla, another attendee, realised that her approach to sustaining her marriage, especially regarding intimacy, had been shaped by advice passed down from older generations—advice that was no longer serving her. She even wept, saying, “AstaghfiruLlaah – I seek forgiveness from Allah,” because she too had told younger women going into marriage to “do it whenever your husband calls.”

An encounter with Shariah-grounded knowledge opened her eyes to intimacy beyond duty. Despite being married for 13 years, she couldn’t relate to the word orgasm. She’d never heard it before. A dictionary entry offered no help. She had never experienced it and didn’t know what it meant to find pleasure in marital intimacy. For years, she had gone through the motions as a religious duty,  bearing three children for a husband now on the verge of taking another wife.

Intimacy as duty 

After three years of facilitating faith-based intimacy seminars, the Muslimah Spiels team has come to recognise deep-rooted truths about Muslim marriages and the silent struggles within them. What began as an effort to fill a knowledge gap has evolved into a revelation of collective, intergenerational pain. The team has discovered how cultural pressure reduces intimacy to duty, erasing emotional and spiritual fulfilment.

“Our society has made us believe that it doesn’t matter whether you enjoy it or not. You just have to do it when your husband calls,” reflected Ustadh Saheed Salman while discussing Fiqh of Intimacy at DTTF 3.0. “But intimacy is not just one person’s duty. Rather, it’s the right of both of them.”

The most jarring insight for the team, however, is that many women have never experienced pleasure in their marital lives. Taiwo reveals that she had met women who had been married for over a decade, with several children, yet had never orgasmed. “Some don’t even know what it means,” she says.

What the team has come to understand is simple but radical: a marriage that is not worked on is dead. And for many couples, working on it begins with unlearning shame and relearning love.

One such couple is Khabib and Urwa, who attended the second edition of DTTF and resolved to keep returning every year as long as they could afford it. Others, like Affan and Najma, decided to make DTTF their annual couple’s getaway. Along with other attendees, they pushed for the programme to evolve beyond a single-day event. This feedback shaped the upcoming edition, which will be a staycation.

A generational gap

Behind the growing impact of Muslimah Spiels lies an uphill journey marked by personal sacrifice, resistance, and relentless labour. Running faith-based intimacy seminars in a society where such conversations are seen as shameful has tested the team’s resolve in every way.

“We face a number of challenges up to this moment,” Taiwo admits. “Right now, we have this year’s edition to deliver, and life has been dealing with us [the team] in different ways.” With no external funding and every member holding a full-time job, the emotional and financial strain is constant. “Everything goes down to money. If we had solid financial backing, we could hire people to help. The work would be much easier if we could just supervise,” she adds, her voice carrying a bittersweet tinge.

Beyond logistics, the team also struggles to find qualified speakers. “We still need a lot of certified intimacy coaches or therapists [to speak at our seminars],” Yahya explains. “From the feedback we’ve been getting, there are a lot more intimacy problems eating into peoples’ marriages that the event alone cannot solve. And quite unfortunately, although I know one or two certified sex therapists, they are not Muslims. And that’s another gap we need to fill, but it’s quite expensive. I’ve gotten quite a number of offers to get certified, but right now, I can’t afford it. I can’t advise that a Muslim goes to non-Muslim therapists, because the Shariah has limits.” 

Still, the all-girls Hijabi team persists, even when it comes at a personal loss. “So far, we’ve not made a profit on DTTF,” Yahya confesses. “Rather, team members chip in. Some volunteer, ‘Don’t pay me full, it’s my business, just pay this little’ and we get things done.”

For the Muslimah Spiels team, being young, visibly Muslim women, who are audacious enough to speak publicly about intimacy, has come at a cost. As Hijabi women navigating a patriarchal religious landscape, society often views their efforts with suspicion, not only because of what they discuss, but also because of who they are. 

Hijabis in Nigeria continue to face discrimination in society, from workplaces to schools and even within their families and religious comm A 2020 report by the Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) revealed that 87.6% of the 675 Hijabis surveyed had experienced bullying, intimidation, harassment, or discrimination specifically because of their hijab. The report also found that the more a woman covered, the more likely she was to be targeted. 

“We’re in a community where a lot of people see us for our ages,” Taiwo says, “and they’ll call you and talk to you as if you are a primary school pupil. Like, ‘What nonsense are you people doing?’ and other condescending stuff.”

The Muslimah Spiels team’s audacity to lead conversations traditionally reserved for male scholars—or silenced altogether—has alienated them from many in the older generation. Ibrahim refers to this as “a  generational gap” marked by ageism and dismissiveness. “We know for a fact that our older generations have issues with their marriages, but they won’t come. They feel like, ‘These people organising this event are not our age mates. Why would I now be taking my problem to them?’ Even if, today, we plan that there’s a freebie for this certain [age group or] level, they still won’t come”.

But instead of backing down, they drew a firm line: “This is not just any random da’wah program. It’s meant to benefit people, ours and beyond.” And, true to their word, they’ve waxed stronger, going from 25 couples in the first edition to 31 and 35 in the second and third editions, respectively.

From the moment Muslimah Spiels announced their flagship seminar, Deeper Than the Finger, backlash followed like an angry tiger, swift and ferocious. Critics accused the team of overstepping religious boundaries simply because they dared to place intimacy on a public Islamic agenda. 

“We got like 70% of backlash,” Safiyyah recollects. “People we didn’t even ask for their advice came, put up their noses, and gave it anyway.”

The name alone sparked moral panic. “People said we wanted to do oral pornography,” Yahya adds. “They said we wanted to cause fitnah.” The idea that young, veiled, visibly devout women were hosting a mixed-gender event on love and sex only fuelled the outrage. “How would females be talking to men about love?” some asked. “What if there are men whose wives don’t know how to show love, and they start pining for the speaker?”

The team even had a funny encounter with a much older couple they invited to speak at the first edition. The wife pulled out when she learnt that men and women would sit together, insisting that it was against the Shariah. This prompted the team to introduce breakout sessions where men and women discussed deeply intimate topics separately.  Yet the same older couple later showed up at the event and nearly created a scene.

“Last year, we decided that we are no longer doing breakout sessions,” Taiwo explains. “We realised that as much as it’d seem that we are doing hayaa as they wanted it, [it was] slowing down what we [sought] to help couples achieve in the bedroom. If a wife gets to listen to aspects that pertain to her husband, should the husband forget to do what he needs to do, the wife will remind him, and vice versa.”

Despite the criticism, the team remains steadfast. Thy deploy anonymous surveys after every edition of DTTF and again before the next, finding that over 80% of participating couples consistently report breakthroughs in their intimate lives.

While Deeper Than the  Finger is their flagship event, the team expanded its work in response to feedback. “We have an event for singles and, every year, we also have two spiritual events,” Taiwo explains. They open the year with a Tawakkul programme and hold a Tadabbur event that lasts all through Ramadan, closing with a get-together after. “The only thing we wanted to do, at first, was DTTF. Then, we spotted other issues and, in our way, tried to fill the gaps and do the little we can.”

And, through it all, their compass remains clear: “We want to revive marriages because what’s really breaking them is this intimate life no one wants to talk about.”

Author’s Note: In light of the deeply personal and culturally sensitive themes explored in this report, the names of all the couples have been changed to ensure confidentiality.

---

Edited/Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, Awom Kenneth and Uzoma Ihejirika.

This story was commissioned under the Advance Grant by Juliet Nkemdy and Shameer Ramdin.

Illustrated by Rex Opara.