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In the early years of the Iranian Revolution, an obscure cleric named Ayatollah Gilani
became a sensation on state television by contemplating bizarre hypotheticals at the
intersection of Islamic law and sexuality. One of his most outlandish scenarios -- still
mocked by Iranians three decades later -- went like this:

Imagine you are a young man sleeping in your bedroom. In the bedroom directly below,
your aunt lies asleep. Now imagine that an earthquake happens that collapses your floor,
causing you to fall directly on top of her. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you're
both nude, and you're erect, and you land with such perfect precision on top of her that
you unintentionally achieve intercourse. Is the child of such an
encounter halalzadeh (legitimate) or haramzadeh (a bastard)?

Such tales of random ribaldry may sound anomalous in the seemingly austere, asexual
Islamic Republic of Iran. But the "Gili Show," as it came to be known, had quite the
following among both the traditional classes, who were titillated by his taboo topics, and
the Tehrani elite, who tuned in for comic relief. Gilani helped spawn what is now a virtual
cottage industry of clerics and fundamentalists turned amateur sexologists offering
incoherent advice on everything from quickies ("The man's goal should be to lighten his
load as soon as possible without arousing his woman") to masturbation ("a grave, grave
sin which causes scientific and medical harm").

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