Religion, as a spiritual and moral part of people’s lives, has always had a great influence on people’s way of thinking and acting. It is closely interwoven with a person’s worldview and his or her mindset. Religion has always had the power to convince the believers of certain views and assertions, and, undoubtedly, it had an influence on people’s attitudes towards the question of sexuality. The interconnections between the religious and the sexual issues can be seen throughout the history of different religions.
In Islam, considered being repressive from the Western point of view, sexuality is seen in a positive light. Sexual desire is not blamed for but encouraged. It is not considered to be a corruption of body as in some other religions, but is spiritually and socially beneficial, having positive functions of procreation, sexual satisfaction, which is necessary for intellectual activity, and an opportunity for men to try Paradise on earth. While Western Christianity reproached sex and sexual issues to be even discussed as something evil and vicious, the Muslims saw sexual instinct and aggression be necessary to relieve, but in the right direction and for good purposes of God’s will. Without this relief, the soul of a person can be destroyed; that is why it is important to free the natural instinct of the body and not suppress it as per Christianity. The Koran does not censure sexuality, equating it with sin, but encourages fantasies and orgasm. In Hinduism, attitude to sexuality has changed through the course of history. It was exposed to the influence of Muslims and the British impact on the Hindu during the colonization period. In the earliest Vedic period, sexuality was associated with the powers of creation. Males and females completed each other for the purpose of the proper functioning of humanity and the cosmos. Then was the period of metaphysical view on sexuality with a body being a sordid shell incarcerating sublime soul. These are the two main opposing concepts of sexuality represented in Hinduism throughout its history.