Recent surveys in the US suggest that healthy married couples engage in sexual relations about 3 - 6 times per month.   On the other hand, you can't escape the numerous TV commercials for "male enhancement", "Viagra", and the many pharmaceutical products to help male performance.  With this in mind, we were surprised to receive some negative feedback to the following article, primarily from non-Muslim males!

In the West, a woman may charge her husband for rape and he may be prosecuted and jailed. If the husband desires sexual relations and she does not and he insists it is considered rape. The wife has the right to say no.

Men and women are considered equal according to Western standards. No one has the final authority in marriage. Consequently, when the spouses differ and neither one backs down, the end result is divorce.

Men are considered the head of the family and the final decisions are in his hand. This has been the natural order in the vast majority of societies in world, ancient and modern. The man's responsibility is to provide food, clothing and shelter for his wife and her responsibility is to obey him as long as his requests are permissible according to Islamic law.

Women and men have different capacities for sexual relations. A woman may have relations without having any desire at all. For example, prostitutes may have sex with a large number of men, one immediately after the other, for money. Whereas, a man may be incapable of having sex if he has no desire at all. Consequently, the Prophet (pbuh) instructed women to come to their husbands whenever they are called upon but he did not instruct men vise versa. Thus, in Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was reported to have said, "When a man calls his wife to satisfy his desire, she must go to him even if she is occupied at the oven.  And he was also quoted as saying, "If a woman refuses her husband's bed and he passes the night angry with her, the angels will curse her until the morning.  In Islam, a woman is obliged to give herself to her husband and he may not be charged with rape. Of course, if a woman is physically ill or exhausted, her husband should take her condition into consideration and not force himself upon her.