EP 73: Pious and Pleasured
Angelica Lindsey-Ali is known to tens of thousands of Muslims worldwide as The Village Auntie. She’s a Black American Muslim therapist, wellness educator, public health professional and- sexpert. Through her platforms, she advises Muslim women on how to tap in to their femininity. She teaches them about arousal and erotic dance, and says female sexual pleasure is a neglected part of Muslim teachings, and a sacred act of worship that’s rooted in ancestral African ritual and practice.
We meet Angelica, we hear how she came to this work, what she learned along the way- and the trauma, trolling, and anti-Blackness that almost led her to abandon it all.
*A note to our listeners: this episode contains explicit sexual language, and a story of assault.
The Stoop
Pious and Pleasured
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Leila Day: Hey listeners, just letting you know that this is a more explicit episode, and it does involve conversations about assaults. So, take care of yourself while listening.
[00:00:15] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Alright, now it's time.
[00:00:18] Hana Baba: Hey Leila.
[00:00:19] Leila Day: Hey Hana.
[00:00:20] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Now what we're going to do is slowly roll our hips to the right in circles. Ready? 5-6-7-8 and 1.
[00:00:31] Leila Day: What is going on? Are we in some kind of dance class?
[00:00:35] Hana Baba: Yes, it's a special dance class. Erotic dance.
[00:00:40] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: It’s Slow. It’s slow moving. Savoring the gyration. Right, so let's go again. Ready?
[00:00:47] Leila Day: Savoring the gyration?
[00:00:50] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: You gotta bring your shoulders up sis. You gotta put a little hot sauce on it, right. Gotta put a little hot pepper on it. Okay?
[00:00:57] Hana Baba: This is an erotic dance class to prepare Muslim women for their big nights.
[00:01:02] Leila Day: Their big? What big night? What are we talking about here?
[00:01:05] Hana Baba: The wedding night. The first time they have sex with their partners.
[00:01:09] Leila Day: A sex workshop for Muslim women. Ooh, we gotta Stoop this out.
[00:01:15] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: 5-6-7-8. Feels good, right?
*Voices of The Stoop, intro music: The Stoop. The Stoop. The Stoop. The Stoop. Stories from across the Black diaspora that we need to talk about. My cousins were water and grease girls, and I couldn't be a water increase girl. That's what I'm talking about, ballerina in the hood. We be Gullah Geechee anointed people. When a Black woman walks up to the desk in labour, what preconceived notions do you have about her? I didn't even know we had a hair chart. The Stoop*
[00:02:05] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: All of our lives we’ve been told like, ‘Don’t stick your booty out. Don't shake your hips.’ You know, that is sacrilegious. No, this is sacred. This is what our bodies are made to do. My name is Angelica Lindsey-Ali Lindsey. I’m an intimacy and sexual health educator and a professional storyteller.
[00:02:23] Leila Day: So, Angelica helps women, particularly Muslim women, navigate sex.
[00:02:29] Hana Baba: Yes, and she says growing up learning about sex wasn't a straightforward thing for her. She went to the University of Michigan. Studied African Studies and she was learning about all these cultural practices.
[00:02:44] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I was taking an African art history course with professor [Professor name here] from Ghana at the University of Michigan and we were talking about a festival, the Gerewol festival, where basically, to summarize it, women are able to select a partner for them to engage in sexual pleasure.
[00:03:05] Leila Day: Yeah, I remember seeing pictures of this festival that happens in Chad and Niger, right? Did I say that right? Niger?
[00:03:12] Hana Baba: Yes! This is the Wodaabe people and it's beautiful.
[00:03:18] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: The men have black lipstick on, they have a yellow line down their nose to emphasize the alkalinity of their noses and they have their eyes make like these wild roaming gestures. They have their hair which looks like really, really tiny dreadlocks and they're moving up and down sort of in sync in a dance. And there's a woman that might be walking by them. she has really long braided hair with beads on it and she's the one who gets to select first and she might have her hand up in a display of coyness but she's really looking at who has the whitest teeth, who has the longest nose, who has the nicest build. And these are these men, they’re almost like human peacocks like really putting on this display and show- I was fascinated because I had never heard of anything like that.
[00:04:06] Hana Baba: Angelica just loved all of it especially there was this one thing about it
[00:04:11] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I was just so fascinated one at the level of agency the women had in selecting men that they would want to be engaged with and the fact that this whole festival was a celebration of culture, a celebration of connection but also as a celebration of pleasure. Sexual pleasure is a big part of it, and it's not shunned.
[00:04:31] Hana Baba: And she was so interested, she started doing some research.
[00:04:35] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I was really interested in the expansive views of sexuality that were present in African culture that seemed to have been concealed in a lot of the conversations that we were having in the university. So, that was when I first became interested in learning about like how do Black people, not just Black people in America, but like how did our ancestors look at sexuality?
[00:04:57] Leila Day: I love that she was learning about all these things at such a young age. Right?
[00:05:02] Hana Baba: Yeah. And Leila, to understand how a Muslim woman became a sex positive teacher who goes on to teach people about how to have incredible orgasms, we got to hear her story because Angelica wasn't born into Islam. She actually grew up Christian.
[00:05:21] Leila Day: Oh okay, so she learned about Islam through school during this time, when she was in college?
[00:05:27] Hana Baba: Yeah, she was drawn to the faith.
[00:05:30] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: And at some point, I just realise that this was in line with what I really believed. I didn't have to give up Jesus. I did not have to give up the rituals of worship and prayer. I did not have to let go of my belief in the oneness of God, but I was also accepting a level of discipline in my life that I felt like I needed at that time. So, I took my shahada and became a Muslim.
[00:06:04] Leila Day: Okay, so Hana, I'm going to take a moment to be honest here.
[00:06:08] Hana Baba: Okay.
[00:06:09] Leila Day: The image of Muslim women that we’re used to, I mean, it's that their reserved more conservative. A lot of people wouldn't think erotic dancing when you think of hijabi Muslim women.
[00:06:23] Hana Baba: Yeah, I get it because, you know, we are raised to be modest and conservative and to cover up our bodies and like, sex is explicitly tied to marriage and only marriage. And before that it's taboo and you just don't talk about it. So, it's like- It's like sex is bad. Sex is bad your whole life then all of a sudden, when it's close to your wedding night, it's now, ‘Let's talk about sex.’ And then someone, you know, a woman in your family or whatever gives you this crash course and how it all works, what’s going to happen, about your body whatever they happen to know, right. It's just messy and it's really problematic. And like, I've heard stories from cousins and aunties who have told me they had a horrible first year of their marriages because they were just trying to figure all of this out.
[00:07:22] Leila Day: Figure out their bodies.
[00:07:24] Hana Baba: Yeah, they had no idea about how their bodies worked.
[00:07:28] Leila Day: Okay so then what does Angelica do? She loves dance, she's fascinated by African dances and sexuality but now she's Muslim.
[00:07:38] Hana Baba: Right, well for Angelica you see everything she studied about African Muslims and how they live and all her research on their cultures and dances made her realize that actually the Muslim experience is diverse and it’s rich and that dance and sex and pleasure were all a part of it. So, she just continues dancing on, and she even started getting gigs to perform African dance at festivals around the state.
[00:08:11] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, I was performing. I would do, you know, shows here in there. Dance is like a moving prayer to me, and I remember that one of my professors in college, he said that Sabar, which is the national dance of Senegal, and it became my favorite dance, he said it's like jazz, but you play it with your feet. It’s like your feet only touch sand. It's like improvisation, syncopation. I just I loved it so, so, so much.
[00:08:38] Leila Day: Things were going well for Angelica, right? She had a new faith; she was getting dance gigs.
[00:08:44] Hana Baba: But things were about to take a turn. And what happens next involves a story of sexual assault.
[00:08:56] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: It was like a festival, and we went up the night before because the festival was to start early the next morning. I just remember we drove up at night. We had dinner and they showed me where I was to sleep. So, I went to the room, and you know got myself situated on a futon and went to sleep. There was a light from outside coming through the window, so the room wasn't- It wasn't pitch dark, but it was it was comfortable. Somewhere in the night I heard the doorknob turn and I woke up. He just came over to the bed and held me down and put his hand over my mouth and did whatever it was he had come there to do. I tried to fight him off, but he was- Although he was really thin, he was really strong. Really, really strong and it happened so quickly. Him turning the doorknob in him literally being on top of me, it happened so fast I couldn't- I couldn't do anything. And I remember after that he came to class. It was like a chill went over my body when I saw him I and I lost all of my passion for dance when I saw him there. I forgot to say that the man who raped me was also Muslim.
[00:10:51] Hana Baba: It took years before Angelica was able to even start healing.
[00:10:56] Leila Day: Hana, there are no words. I mean, this is such a horrible tragedy.
[00:11:03] Hana Baba: Yeah, she needed a lot of time to process what happened and she questioned herself a lot. This was someone she knew; someone she went to school with. Someone who was part of the dance troupe.
[00:11:18] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Had I said something, had done something, but I didn't do anything. I was literally sleeping. There was no kind of flirtation. There was nothing that would have led him on and in hindsight I was upset with myself for even thinking that I, in some way, had a responsibility for someone who committed violence against me but that's what went through my mind. And it took a long time for me to even be able to call it an assault and it took me 15 years before I could call it what it was which was rape.
[00:11:48] Hana Baba: And Leila, there was this other thing that Angelica had just become Muslim, and she was assaulted by a Muslim man.
[00:11:57] Leila Day: And what did that do to her sense of Islam? I mean you just embrace this faith and then someone from that faith assaults you.
[00:12:06] Hana Baba: Yeah, it's hard. I mean, she was conflicted, and she had to do a lot of thinking.
[00:12:14] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, I had two choices: One choice was to demonize the religion because of this person. The other choice was to try to find what does Islam say about healing? What does Islam say about rape? What does Islam say about the rights of women? What does Islam say about sex? And I chose the latter because I was a nerd, and I was a researcher and I like to read books. So, I read as much as I could, and I leaned into my faith and that's how I started learning about what does Islam say about a woman’s rights over her own body.
[00:12:52] Hana Baba: And then from that question came another question
[00:12:56] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: and what does it say about sex and pleasure?
[00:13:01] Hana Baba: As the years went by Angelica decided she wanted to actually intentionally lean into these questions of sex and Islam. It was like one way of healing. And what she found in some of the books on Islam and sexuality surprised her.
[00:13:18] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, I was reading this book. I was reading this book and the book was talking about sexual pleasure, it was talking about orgasm. And it was using evidence from Islamic jurisprudence and the author said that a woman is able to ask for a minimum of three orgasms per day. That wasn't the exact language that they used but it was somewhere along the lines of a woman can ask for completion of the sexual act to her desire for at least three times in a day.
[00:14:00] Hana Baba: She hadn't heard that anywhere since becoming Muslim.
[00:14:03] Leila Day: I haven't heard that either.
[00:14:05] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: And I had to close that book and say, ‘Oh my God. We have been dealt a poor hand.’ Really?
[00:14:13] Hana Baba: And Leila there was more. A lot more. In detail.
[00:14:21] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: And I found what was so fascinating was how prescriptive Islam is when it comes to women’s sexual rights. I knew about the man being able to have four wives and the virgins that you get when you enter paradise, but nobody ever talked about like women being able to say ‘Hey, I get to come first. Hey, I get to have an orgasm.’ We never talked about that.
[00:14:45] Hana Baba: And Leila, there were stories about the Prophet Mohammed, you know, the founder of Islam, that she had never heard before either.
[00:14:52] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I remember reading the stories about how he would play with his wives even while they were on their menstrual cycle. They weren't engaging in intercourse but there was foreplay, and it was very deep, and it was very detailed and I'm like, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute this is not the Islam that they sold me. This is a deeper like more expansive version of Islam.’ Reading about how romantic the Prophet Mohammed [Arabic words] would drink from a cup and he would pick up the same cup and he would find the place where her lips it touched so his lips could touch the same place. It was just such rich examples of physical and emotional intimacy that I was never privy to. And that a woman has rights to end a marriage if she's not sexually satisfied. That blew my mind. This is a type of divorce.
[00:15:58] Leila Day: Hana, were these things you knew about too? Is this news to you because it is news to me.
[00:16:04] Hana Baba: I know. It’s news to a lot of people, I mean, okay, so I knew the stories about the Prophet Mohammed. That he talked about you have to satisfy your wife, stories about him being loving with his wives and gentle with his wives, but most people don't hear about any of this and not just that Angelica was reading stories about women at the time of the prophet. That's like 1400 years ago. They would come to him and ask him about sex, and they would come to him and complain about their husbands and asking him what they should do because they asked him about everything. It was a new religion and they wanted to make sure that they were following it correctly because Islam has, you know, a code of conduct for all practices in life for everything you do.
[00:16:56] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I mean, it wasn't shameful, and it wasn't considered lascivious. There were no clutching of the pearls. It was just very matter of fact and that let me know how important pleasure was in Muslim marriage, but I also knew that that was something that not enough people were talking about.
[00:17:19] Leila Day: So, Hana, a couple things. I noticed she said in Muslim marriage. So, all of these Islamic references, they're talking about being married. Married couples only.
[00:17:30] Hana Baba: Yes, so Islam is very clear about fornication. No sex before marriage like some other religions are. So, all these texts are assuming that the sex is between a married couple, and she was discovering all of these texts that Islam is actually, originally, a sex positive faith and sex isn't talked about just in the context of creating humanity but also that it should be enjoyed. And that it's a sacred practice.
[00:18:01] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I've been told that it's crass to say that sex is an act of worship, but sex is the act by which we are created. So, why would it not be an act of worship of the creator that created us.
[00:18:14] Hana Baba: So, let's go back to Angelica’s story. Time passes and when she's 28 years old, she meets Mr. Right. And he's a Muslim Ghanaian American man and she remembers their wedding night.
[00:18:28] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, the idea of sex as worship is not something that I fully understood until my wedding night. My husband wasn't as excited, or I thought he wasn't as excited, as I thought he should be on our wedding night. And he was over in the corner praying. And I'm thinking like, I know the brother is religious but come on. We can't spend our wedding night praying. And this is when, on our wedding night, he taught me you know about different prayers that a couple can say before they engage in intercourse. A prayer that a husband says before he enters his wife and we spent the first couple weeks of our marriage really talking about sex as an act of worship and how something that was haram to us before marriage not only becomes halal after marriage, but you also get blessings from it. So, he really just shifted my whole mind like, ‘Wait a minute, every time we get busy, we also getting some blessings like, this is- sign me up. I like that.’
[00:19:32] Leila Day: Yes, to those blessings. Getting busy in the blessings.
[00:19:35] Hana Baba: Yes, yes! And so slowly Angelica started steeping herself in theology. She's taking classes. She's studying these sexual texts and at the same time though she never stopped that African dance and learning African rituals you know around femininity around self-care. She got certified as a sexual health educator. Things were happening.
[00:20:02] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Welcome to the village. Here we care for one another and form a bond of sisterhood so deep it transcends time and space. In traditional African societies there was always at least one woman in the village: A teacher, a healer and a guide. She was a part of the intricate quilt that forms our collective ancestral cultures. My mission is to reclaim that role. Women carry a divine connection and ability to channel this life force. It's time we returned to that embodied knowledge. We owe it to ourselves, our sisters, our daughters. I'm striving to be a guide back to the ways of our foremothers. This is where we begin our journey. I am the village auntie.
[00:20:53] Leila Day: I love her in this video. She is so beautiful. She's wearing a gorgeous hijab. Her makeup is on point. And the jewelry, with the head jewelry. Hana, you got this look going on too?
[00:21:06] Hana Baba: I aspire to that look. She's gorgeous. And Angelica, you know, she started this movement. She called it the Village Auntie movement and at first it was a few followers and she started making these videos.
[00:21:21] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Asalam Alaikum [speaking Arabic] It is Tuesday, August 16th and last week was international female orgasm day. I want to talk to you all about the A spot orgasm. ‘A’ spot. the letter A like auntie, like Angelica, like a [Arabic word], okay. So, the ‘A’ spot is the ‘A’ stands for anterior fornix erogenous zone. So, if the G spot is here, your anterior fornix is going to be somewhere here. It's going to be closer to the base of the cervix. The anterior fornix is between the cervix and the bladder. It's deeper, so it's also called the deep spot.
[00:22:10] Leila Day: Angelica is not holding back here, I mean, are these other Muslim women that are in this workshop? I'm trying to see. Are those all Muslim women?
[00:22:18] Hana Baba: Yes, this class is all Muslim women.
[00:22:20] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: It's not just about going deeper. So, please don't tell your husband, ‘Ooh, village auntie said something called an ‘A’ spot and I think you got the equipment to get me there.’ And if you just go think if he just goes ‘bang, bang, bang.’ Sis, that’s not it, okay. I done taught you better than that. Don't tell nobody in the streets that I told you that your husband is just supposed to just do, ‘Bang, Bang, bang.’ Okay. Brothers if you’re watching, take note. There has to be a stroke aspect.
[00:22:43] Leila Day: So, how did people even react to all this?
[00:22:46] Hana Baba: Well, I mean, as she started making more and more videos her following grew and grew, right. Like it was 100, then it was 500 people then it was 1000 and 5000. And these women were starting to ask her questions and she would answer and then she started teaching classes in person too. She says her number one question she gets still surprises her.
[00:23:14] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: The number one question that I get has nothing to do with sex. The number one question that women asked me is, ‘How do I love myself?’ I can teach you 18 different ways to orgasm. I can teach you Kunyaza. I can teach you all of the things but if you don't love yourself, are you really getting the pleasure that you deserve? Are you really validating yourself in the way that you need not from anyone else but from yourself?
[00:23:44] Leila Day: Kunyaza. What is that?
[00:23:47] Hana Baba: Okay, well you know Leila, I'll let her tell you. James, can we get that drum beat please? And a fan for Leila. You're going to need it. It's going to get hot.
[00:24:01] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: Ooh, Kunyaza. Kunyaza is my most requested workshop topic. I only teach it in person. Kunyaza is an ancient African technique. It’s practiced in Rwanda. It's practiced in Uganda. It’s practiced in parts of Kenya and Tanzania. And it is an ancient act of eliciting female ejaculation, known colloquially as squirting, it is a completely woman focused sexual pleasure practice where the penis is used to gently tap the labia to elicit sexual excitement. So, when you’re tapping the labia, underneath the labia are the crura of the clitoris. So, the clitoris, we always think it's just this really tiny little being-like thing that it emits from the vulva but there are actually legs of the clitoris that are underneath the labia. So, what Kunyaza does is, it engages those pleasure points, and it involves no penetration. It's a lot of fun and it's very, very easy. It’s also very Black. It's very African. It's very, very old. and I think women like it because women and men like it because one, you know, squirting is this thing that's got this like exotic meaning, and you know everyday life and like only porn stars do that. It's like no. Some old, old ancient African grandmother came up with this technique.
[00:25:35] Leila Day: Kunyaza. Ooh, Kunyaza, Kunyaza.
[00:25:40] Hana Baba: I told you. I told you. Fan, fan, fan yourself. Okay, so things were going great for Angelica until…
[00:25:51] Leila Day: Oh Goodness. Now what?
[00:25:53] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I would get a lot of brothers who would come into my DMs and my inbox. So, they would say, ‘Salam alaykum sister.’ ‘Salam alaykum, brother.’ ‘I have a question for you.’ ‘What’s your question?’ ‘Why do you think it's okay to mislead women as a hijabi and talk about things like sex, penises and orgasm's on the Internet?’
[00:26:13] Hana Baba: And then the DMs got worse.
[00:26:16] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I have been told that my mother should have aborted me. I have been told that no Muslim should ever listen to me.
[00:26:25] Hana Baba: So, Leila at that point she just started blocking these men and she made a point to say this space is for women.
[00:26:33] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: And so, I thought it would end but it continued, and it came from other women. And I think that's what hurt the most. I've had women say that I should be ashamed, that my children should be ashamed to have a mother like me. A lot of the women who come for me are South Asian and then Arab. And it hurt because the first thing that they would attack is my Islam. They would say, ‘Oh you don't even wear hijab properly.’ or ‘You have a lipstick. You're not even a good Muslim.’ So, it was you know - It was anti Blackness from jump, right. ‘You're not even a good Muslim because you're Black.’
[00:27:09] Hana Baba: And Leila, there's this other thing, you know, that she's a convert. And to be honest, converts to Islam have had a hard time convincing people who were born Muslim that they're, you know, Muslim enough.
[00:27:23] Leila Day: So, I mean that's yeah, a lot to take in. It's a big shift for a lot of people.
[00:27:28] Hana Baba: And people were taking it to an extreme.
[00:27:31] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, it really hurts when the people that I'm doing this for don't see the value in it and then take it a step further and tried to cause harm in some kind of way.
[00:27:52] Hana Baba: So, that backlash, it was hard on Angelica, and it almost made her give up. And she did stop for a little bit. But then she came back and decided to keep on keeping on and today she has a community of more than 50,000 people that follow her as the village auntie.
[00:28:15] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I'm really proud of myself. I chose a path towards healing. I'm thinking about the decisions that I could have made that would have been so much worse. The decision to keep the secret about my assault to myself. The decision to not learn more about my faith. The decision to walk away from Islam. Where would that have left me? And I hope that my work helps other women to see that it's okay to be pious and pretty, right. It's okay to worship Allah and you know be committed to your dean but also be desirable and also be sexy and also to want that. One doesn't cancel out the other. In fact, when you give yourself room to be your full like erotic sexual self, it can actually help you on your path to getting closer to Allah.
[00:29:19] Hana Baba: Leila, she said erotic and sexual and Allah in the same sentence.
[00:29:25] Leila Day: And Hana, if I get struck down and thrown into- And thrown into the fiery pits because of this episode, I will blame you.
[00:29:37] Hana Baba: You won’t, because, really, that was her whole point.
[00:29:59] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: So, let’s go again. Ready 1-2-3-4 again 5-6-7-8. keep going. 1-2-3-4.
[00:30:11] Hana Baba: And that's the Stoop.
[00:30:12] Leila Day: The Stoop is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. A network of independent listener supported artist owned podcasts.
[00:30:21] Hana Baba: The Stoop family includes producer Natalie Peart, sound design by James Rowlands, art by Neema Iyer and social media by Summer Williams.
[00:30:29] Leila Day: Thanks to California humanities, a non-profit partner of the NEH. Find them at calhum.org.
[00:30:34] Hana Baba: And special thanks to the NPR Story Lab. Leila roll those hips.
[00:30:40] Leila Day: Oh, got to move it. Oh, gotta do it.
[00:30:43] Hana Baba: Keep going. Keep going.
[00:30:46] Leila Day: Kunyasa, Kunyasa.
[00:30:48] Angelica Lindsey-Ali: I want you to move your belly, but I want you to imagine all of the organs that are in your belly, that are in your pelvis, that are being moved at the same time…
