The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women

Your body is talking to you right now. But what happens when your body gives you an answer you weren’t expecting?
In this episode, Salma sits down with “Aisha,” a Muslim woman in her early 40s who grew up trying to be the perfect “good girl” while carrying years of religious shame, sexual conditioning, and chronic pelvic pain (which she first noticed when she started having sex with white, non-Muslim men).
Aisha shares her journey with pelvic floor dysfunction, painful sex, vaginismus, and the mind-body connection, including how trauma, anxiety, suppressed emotions, and inherited beliefs around sex showed up in her body. Despite living with vaginismus and other pelvic floor conditions, Aisha is able to have penetrative sex in ways that actually feel good. She talks about building a sex life rooted in communication, curiosity, and play, and how having a patient, loving partner helped her expand intimacy beyond pressure and performance. Unlike many women with vaginismus, Aisha’s husband puts absolutely no pressure on her, and that safety has been a catalyst for deeper intimacy and healing.
Aisha also opens up about her miscarriage and the complicated relief she felt after months of excruciating pain during pregnancy. That experience led her to listen to and care for her body more deeply, and to question what motherhood could look like for her: alternate paths to building a family, becoming a motherly figure in other ways, or choosing a child-free future with her husband.
Together, Salma and Aisha talk about religious deconstruction, sexual shame, pelvic floor healing, miscarriage, motherhood, marriage, somatic tools to regulate your nervous system when triggered, and the terrifying freedom of realizing that you can change your life. Whether it’s a relationship, a job, a friendship, a family expectation, or a version of womanhood you inherited, this episode is about learning to trust your body when it says: this is not working anymore.
Listen to your f*cking body. She knows.
HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082 

CREDITS: 
 Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
 Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
 Written By: Salma Hindy
 Edited By: Salma Hindy
 Artwork: Rana Omar

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026
Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy
HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

In this deeply personal solo episode, host Salma Hindy shares what really happened during six ayahuasca ceremonies in Egypt: including visions involving family trauma, religion, sexuality, heartbreak, vaginismus, emotionally unavailable men, and the hidden emotional pain carried through generations. What begins as a spiritual exploration slowly turns into something far more unsettling, healing, and transformative.
Across multiple ceremonies led by facilitators, shamans, and complete chaos in the Sinai desert, Salma describes purging grief from her body, revisiting childhood wounds, confronting her relationship to men and “the male energy,” and uncovering disturbing patterns surrounding shame, consent, religion, and silence within Muslim families. The episode also explores the emotional aftermath of loss, creative collapse, romantic heartbreak, and the search for spiritual meaning during periods of deep isolation.
This episode contains discussions of sexual assault, trauma, religion, mental health, plant medicine, and family abuse. It also somehow includes: Quran played during ayahuasca ceremonies, hot tattooed Egyptians, shared puke buckets in the desert, a Brazilian shaman threatening to cancel a retreat, a Taylor Swift ego death moment, and Salma sobbing over a 21-year-old while being held by a man who looked like he walked off the set of Gladiator. Proceed carefully.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual assault, marital coercion, family trauma, religion, mental health, and plant medicine.
HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082 
CREDITS: 
 Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
 Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
 Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha
 Written By: Salma Hindy
  Edited By: Salma Hindy
  Studio: 30 Irving Studios
  Artwork: Rana Omar

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026
Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy
HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

This week on The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, Salma sits down with Spozhmi, an Afghan-Canadian woman, to share her journey of discovering her sexuality, falling in love with her partner of 10 years, and choosing herself in the face of cultural and familial pressure.
From being taken back to Afghanistan for an arranged marriage… to secretly building a relationship with a woman… to coming out to her family twice - first through a handwritten letter, and years later again over the phone - this is a story about love, identity, and the cost of living your truth.
Later in the episode, her partner Taylor joins to share what it’s been like navigating this journey together.
A powerful conversation on love, belonging, and breaking generational patterns.
To learn more about Spozhmi’s work, visit lovenaturally.ca 
HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082 

CREDITS: 
 Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
 Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
 Written By: Salma Hindy
 Edited By: Salma Hindy
 Artwork: Rana Omar
© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026
Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy
HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

For years, this has been the number one question she’s been asked: Why did you take the hijab off? In this deeply personal solo episode, Salma finally shares the full story, five years later.

This wasn’t one decision made in one moment. It was a long, painful, complicated unraveling shaped by heartbreak, therapy, faith, isolation, family pressure, and the slow realization that her relationship to the hijab was tied to much more than modesty. Salma reflects on growing up loving the hijab, the comfort and identity it gave her, and what began to surface when she started questioning religion, power, hypocrisy, and her own autonomy.

She opens up about the first time she ever went out without it, the fear she carried around her father, the grief of disappointing her family, and the devastation that followed choosing herself. She also speaks to the beauty that still exists in her relationship to Islam, and why this story is not about rejecting her faith, but about being honest about what this journey has actually cost her.

One of Salma’s most intimate episodes yet, this is a conversation about faith, identity, family, and the courage it takes to choose yourself - even when it changes everything.

This episode is for the Muslim girls. I love you.

HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082

CREDITS:
 Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
Associate Producer: Rania Harris
Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha
Writer: Salma Hindy
Editor: Luke Davis
Studio: 30 Irving Studios
Artwork: Rana Omar

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026
Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy
HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

Vaginismus is curable. And it’s not something that should take years.
In this episode, Salma sits down with pelvic floor physiotherapist and “Vagina Rehab Doctor” Janelle Howell to unpack the truth about sexual pain, healing, and what it actually takes to feel safe and connected in your body. What starts as a conversation about vaginismus quickly opens into something much bigger: shame, religion, pleasure, power, and the way so many women have been taught to disconnect from themselves.
Salma shares her full journey: from experiencing searing pain during her first sexual encounter, to navigating dilators, hookups, injury, and slowly finding her way to pleasure and confidence. Janelle breaks down why vaginismus is both physical and psychological, why so many treatments fall short, and how women can heal faster when they’re actually taught how to understand and trust their bodies.
She shares that most of the women she works with are married. Many of them struggle in silence for years, unable to consummate their relationships. And yes, healing is possible for everyone: one woman was finally able to have sex after 16 years of marriage…in cowgirl!
Janelle’s 5-step approach to healing includes: acknowledging fear and pain patterns, understanding and releasing the pelvic floor, guided dilation and tissue work, rebuilding confidence, and safely transitioning to penetration with a partner.
This episode is for the Muslim girlies everywhere navigating vaginismus in silence - carrying shame, confusion, and pressure without the language or support to understand what’s happening in your body. You are not alone in this. There is nothing wrong with you. In the words of Dr. Janelle, “your body is not broken, it’s bougie.” Healing is possible for you, so long as you have an obnoxious amount of hope.
Donate to our GoFundMe to keep the pod afloat for 2026: https://gofund.me/f646f3082 
CREDITS: 
 Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
 Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
 Associate Producer: Rania Harris
 Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha
 Writer: Salma Hindy
 Editor: Salma Hindy
 Studio: 30 Irving Studios
 Artwork: Rana Omar
© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026

Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen
HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy
HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy