While Allah created a religion that promises men just about all the sex they can handle in this world and even more sex in the after-life, His Messenger is still a bit of a prude when it comes to some reproduction practices (if you can call them that) and nudity.

Gheorghiu in La Vie the Mahomet, Edition Robert Lafont, 1974, tells the story of how when the Prophet Muhammad first arrived in Medina and discovered that date bearing palms were artificially pollinated he was scandalized and ordered the practice stopped. He re-instituted the practice the next year after date production plummeted but insisted it be done when he wasn’t around

In a touching reminiscence Gheorghiu write about when the time the Prophet Muhammad had a vision in his home and was unsure if it was Satan or an angel. His wife Khadijah proved to her husband that it was an angel. She told her husband to get undressed and she did the same and they embraced. Do you still see him, she asked? No, said God’s Messenger! Then it must have been an angel, she said, because an angel would not have remained to stare at a naked couple embracing

Considering that the Prophet was officially married to fourteen women, kept a number of concubines for company and an unknown number of slave-girls, his extraordinary prudishness is surprising, to say the least.

Prudish men are known to be both attracted and repelled by the sex act, a trait often shared with misogynous males. For both stereotypes, a woman is both an object of desire and of contempt.

Could this prudish middle-aged man’s struggle between contempt and desire for the dozens of mostly young females he secluded within his household be responsible for the double standard in Islamic law and the disdain for females evident in many of Allah's revelations concerning the fair sex.

Did contempt win out, which is why believing women are in class by themselves, the lowest class, a class not deserving of any of the benefits of Islamic jurisprudence, only the punishment?

According to Islamic law and tradition, there were three groups of people who did not benefit from the general Muslim principals of legal and religious equality – unbelievers, slaves and women. The woman was obviously in one significant respect the worst-placed of the three. The slave could be freed by his master; the unbeliever could at any time become a believer by his own choice, and thus end his inferiority. Only the woman was doomed forever to remain what she was.

Bernard Lewis author of What Went Wrong, Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response.

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Allah does not engage in sex. If sex is beneath Him (no pun intended) the Prophet’s prudishness may also have something to do with protecting his God from being exposed to the sex act or the end-result of sexual activity, even of the unintentional kind i.e. nocturnal emissions (no quotation marks were in the original translation and I have chosen not to add any).

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: The Prophet (peace be upon him) was asked about a person who found moisture (on his body or clothes) but did not remember the sexual dream. He replied: He should take a bath. He was asked about a person who remembered that he had a sexual dream but did not find moisture. He replied: Bath is not necessary for him. Umm Salamah then asked: Is washing necessary for a woman if she sees that (in her dream)? He replied: Yes. Woman are counterpart of men.

Abu Dawud, Book #1, Hadith #0236

And then, there is his demand that the entrance to houses not face the mosque because the mosque is not lawful “for a menstruating woman and for a person who is sexually defiled”.

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) came and saw that the doors of the houses of his Companions were facing the mosque. He said: Turn the direction of the houses from the mosque. The Prophet (peace be upon him) then entered (the houses or the mosque), and the people did take any step in this regard hoping that some concession might be revealed. He the Prophet) again came upon them and said: Turn the direction of these (doors) from the mosque I do not make the mosque lawful for a menstruating woman and for a person who is sexually defiled.

Abu Dawud, Book #1, Hadith Book #1, Hadith #0232

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The Prophet may have been a prude when it came to sex and sexual reproduction, but not in matters of personal hygiene and grooming.

Like his Mentor, God’s Messenger is attentive to details and leaves nothing to chance. He even has advice on to how many stones you should use to clean yourself after answering the call of nature; and he has specific instructions on the care and maintenance of your various body parts, including those intimate parts to which his Mentor attaches so much importance.

Two, of a myriad of hadiths on the subject (no quotation marks were in the original translation and I have chosen not to add any):

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: “The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: When any of you goes to relieve himself, he should take with him three stones to cleans himself, for they will be enough for him.”

Abu Dawud, Book #1, Hadith #0040

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Ten are the acts according to fitrah (nature): clipping the moustache, letting the beard grow, using the tooth-stick, cutting the nails, washing the finger joints, plucking the hair under the arm-pits, shaving the pubes, and cleansing one's private parts (after easing or urinating) with water. The narrator said: I have forgotten the tenth, but it may have been rinsing the mouth.

Abu Dawud, Book #1, Hadith #0052