Virgins: There Are No 72 Virgins Waiting for Anyone in Paradise
AbstractVerses referring to people having a “purified spouse” in heaven are usually assumed to be addressing men only because of a fundamentally incorrect association of purity with virginity, thereby attaching it to women. Yet the ubiquitous concept of “purity” in the Qur’an is the far broader one of righteousness and is never used to refer to virginity. Men and women are both promised “purified spouses/mates”, whether one’s righteous spouse from one’s time on earth or a spouse from among heavenly beings referred to as hoor or hooris. Virginity as relating to being born again and made equally and eternally young in Paradise applies to both women and men, who are said to be matching qualitatively as couples. Moreover, the myth of “72 virgins in Paradise” for a (presumably male) martyr is just that, appearing nowhere in the Qur’an.