Sex in mosque riles angry mob

A young Indonesian couple facing the timeless teen dilemma — where can we sneak away to fool around? — chose a spot that nearly ended in their throttling by an irate mob.

The location? A mosque toilet.

Hundreds — yes, hundreds — of angry villagers swarmed the mosque after someone discovered the undressed couple engaged in an unholy deed, according to a report from the Indonesian language Kompas network translated by the Jakarta Globe.

The couple from Sulawesi island fled the mob and took shelter in police custody, according to the Globe. They were later released unharmed to their respective parents.

Pre-marital sex is strictly forbidden by the Quran. Doing it in a mosque, one villager told Kompas, is an outright desecration.

For more on the clandestine love lives of unmarried Muslims, I suggest the Spiegel piece "Love, Lust and Passion," in which the author describes an interesting workaround to sex out of wedlock: the "pleasure marriage — not a bond for life but one designed for intimate sins. Such agreements, presided over by imams, are not regulated by the state. They can be concluded for only a few hours or they can be open-ended. But particularly romantic they are not."