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If this were the case, then wouldn't it have made more sense to make puberty-minus-1year for example the age of consent in Islam? Surely it'd be pretty daft for puberty to made the age of consent if one supposedly had tendancies for pre-pubescants??

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You think it would make sense for a law to require people to predict the date a girl hits puberty? Perhaps it makes sense to you because all the dirty old middle eastern men would get to line up prepubescent girls and study them in detail, rather than having to put up with post pubescent girl brides.

You can also read a whole book on the subject at Google Books:

SEXUALITY AND EROTICISM AMONG MALES IN MOSLEM SOCIETIES,  ARNO SCHMITT and  JEHOEDA
SOFER EDITORS

Good reference soren, but unless they are sanctioned as islamically correct by sheik ya doodle atum, then abu will decry it as western propaganda, against the good and noble men of his country.

By the way, what is his country?
I have seen him identify himself with lebanese, iraqis, afghanis, pakistanis, in fact most middle eastern backwaters, but not so much with australia, which sometimes gets described as a western "them", by him, against his "our" for the others.

Back to the pervy muslim sickos who molest children of both sexes, while you were looking up dirty deeds done by these islamic interferers, did you come across anything about their predilection for goats?

We know that ancient cultures were more accepting of zoosexual practices, and as Islam is so keen on sticking to it's ancient "roots" (sorry, I couldn't help myself, as mohammed said to the schoolgirl)

Richard Burton observed that sodomy was common in the Middle East and noted that a French officer (Sonnini) who had traveled to Egypt in 1717 "had drawn the darkest picture of the widely-spread criminality especially of the bestiality and sodomy which formed the delight of the Egyptians."( n30)

In early 19th-century Syria, Burckhart, visiting among the Druse and commenting on marriage customs and adultery, recorded that "unnatural propensities are very common amongst them."( n31)

Gustave Flaubert wrote from Cairo to a friend in 1850: "Here it is quite accepted. One admits one's sodomy, and it is spoken of at table in the hotel. . . . It's at the baths that such things take place."( n32)

At an international conference on the prevention of syphilis and venereal diseases held in Brussels in 1899, the report on Turkey stated that "[p]ederasty is very widespread in the Orient. Without exaggeration, one could say that most of the `hammams,' Turkish baths, are bordellos of boys."( n33)

Louis de Chenier was appointed French Consul at Mogador (now Essaouira) in 1767. He wrote that the rise to wealth and luxury in Fez had quickly been followed by licentiousness: "The public baths, which health, cleanliness, and custom, rendered necessary, became the receptacles of debauchery, into which men were introduced in the dress of women; and the youth of the city ranged the streets, after sun set, in the same disguise, to prevail upon strangers to go with them to the inns, which were rather houses of prostitution . . . ." Chenier suggests that the early rulers of Fez "connived at these abuses" and that the "subservience of all morals" was a source of political advantage.( n34)

A member of the French military mission at Fez in the late 19th century wrote that "[s]odomy is not a vice in Morocco, it is almost a virtue. . . . They are so little embarrassed by it that they arrange a rendez-vous in the middle of a cabinet meeting."( n35)

Relying upon several French sources, Gavin Maxwell states that, before the arrival of the French, homosexuality "between man and boy was never considered shameful or abnormal in Morocco," that homosexual prostitution existed, and that boys accompanied imperial troops for the satisfaction of sexual needs on military campaigns.( n36)

References:
(n30.) Sir Richard F. Burton, The Sotadic Zone (Boston: Milford House, 1973), 45-50.
(n31.) John L. Burckhart. Travel in Syria and Holy Land (London: John Murray. 1822), 202.
(n32.) Greenberg. 179, citing Gustave Flaubert, trans., Francis Steegmuller. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 111.
(n33.) Professor von During, "Prostitution et maladies veneriennes en Turquie," Conference internationale pour la propylaxie de la syphilis et des maladies veneriennes (Bruxelles, 1899), Vol. I, Part II, 93-98, 95. (My translation).
(n34.) Louis de Chenier. The Present State of the Empire of Morocco (London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1788), 73-74.
(n35.) Douglas Porch, The Conquest of Morocco (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1983), 32, quoting from Jules Erckman, Le Maroc moderne (Paris, 1885).*
(n36.) Gavin Maxwell, The Lord of the Atlas (London: Century Publishing, Ltd., 1983), 286-289, citing: Dr. Paul Chatinieres, Dans les grands Atlas marocains (Plon, 1919); Christian Houel, Le Maroc (n.d.);* and Maurice Privat, venus au Maroc (Documents Secrets, 1921).* See also Rom Landau, Moroccan Journal (London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1952), 180181 ("Sexual intercourse among men is fairly prevalent; in actual practice, neither active pederasty in a man nor passive pederasty in a boy is considered a disgrace.")

The anthropologist Carleton Coon found that the mountain Berbers of northern Morocco held markets where boys "stolen from their families" were sold for purposes of sodomy as well as to serve as apprentices in their purchasers' businesses.( n38) While Coon's understanding of "theft" may be questioned, Westermarck also found a homosexual dimension in the relationship between apprentice and master in northern Morocco, with intercourse between them considered a means for the boy's learning the skills or trade of his master.( n39) The prostitution of young boys remains common in Fez today.( n40)
These materials depict the homosocial world of Arab men -- the world of the streets, the cafes, the military, the hammams -- as one in which homosexual practices were common and accepted. Homosexuality may have functioned as an integral part of the pre-colonial Moroccan military system and may similarly have been important in satisfying the sexual interests of Ottoman troops. While-homosexual practices were not limited to the upper classes, the nature of homosexual relationships -- street encounters, prostitution, ongoing relations with favorites -- may have varied among the different classes. Moreover, they may have played an institutional role in the apprentice systems of craft and petty manufacturing economies. The apparent prevalence of male prostitution also suggests an institutional role within the social and economic structure of a patriarchal system. In pre-colonial Morocco, and perhaps in other parts of the Middle East, female prostitution was authorized by the government and served as a significant source of tax revenues.( n41) Male prostitution may have also served a fiscal function, whether through direct taxation or through fees collected from cafes and hammams. In both cases, fiscal regulation would reflect a dimension of state control.


The foregoing are not without parallels in the historical experience of Early Modern Europe. Thus, asymmetrical homosexual relationships have been identified as a component of the structure of the artisanal apprenticeship system of Renaissance Europe, an arena of hierarchical male intimacy.( n42)

Larbi Layachi's The Jealous Lover( n47) relates the story of two men in jail who are described as "lovers." The men, aged 35 and 20, have been imprisoned for a sexual incident with a young boy who had consented to having sex with the older of the two for money, and who had received payment but nonetheless reported the incident to the police. The other prisoners conspire to punish the couple and each night sexually assault, not the older man who had actually engaged in sex with the boy, but his lover who is "young and good looking [and not] too old to make love to."( n48) That the two men live together as "lovers" is presented nonjudgmentally. As for their "crime," the author comments: "Islam forbids a man to make love to boys. Of course. they all do it, but when someone gets caught it's still disgraceful."( n49) The theme of hypocrisy is highlighted by the prisoners' claiming justification for seeking sexual gratification with the younger of the lovers on the basis of having to punish the older one for his "filthy act." The crime is not homosexuality, but the public exposure of conventionally unacceptable, if nonetheless widespread, behavior, in effect a failure of a social strategy of concealment.

With Ali Ghanem's The Seven-Headed Serpent,( n50) the locale shifts to the mountain villages and cities of Algeria during the independence struggle. Themes of sexual repression and patriarchal oppression dominate the first part of the novel. In the village, the onset of puberty is accompanied by mutual masturbation among the village boys. For the young protagonist, the pleasure of sexual release is enhanced by the knowledge that masturbation is considered sinful and that his harsh, aloof, and seemingly arbitrary and unloving father would disapprove. Later, after the family has been forced to move to a coastal port city, the boy is beaten by his father on the basis of an unfounded suspicion that the boy has engaged in a homosexual act with a dockworker. As a result of this treatment, the boy accepts a homosexual proposition as a conscious act of defiance against his father. "The suspicious, authoritarian, upbringing that my father had given me produced the reverse of the desired effect. I felt no physical pleasure -- rather the opposite -- but I was transgressing a prohibition, flouting my father's authority."( n51)

Rachid Bonjedra's autobiographical novel, La repudiation,( n52) recounts his boyhood acquiescence, for purposes of blackmail, in his seduction by his Quranic schoolmaster. Such incidents are presented as commonplace and generally known about by parents who "shut their eyes to it, so as not to have to accuse a man who bears the word of God in his heart."( n53) The bitterness of the author's recollection gives way to the adult reflection that responsibility for the event lies with poverty, in a system that makes marriage and even brothels too expensive for the poor. Boujedra suggests a broad complicity in conscious dissonance between social realities and religious norms. The exploitive homosexual act is tacitly accepted as a functional accommodation of the constraints imposed by patriarchal control of sexuality.