After we had all calmed down, we continued our debate with the questions “What is the perfect man?” and “What is the perfect woman?”.

For the first question, all my male students came up with the same answers: the perfect man is strong, loyal and has a sense of responsibility. We women added that he is also intelligent and honest. All men and women agreed.

When the male students started talking about the perfect woman, I first heard a lot of talk about “tits” and “ass”. When they saw that we women did not appreciate this, they changed their mind and came up with the following qualities: patient, calm, serene, tender, intelligent. Intelligent? Yep, apparently their prefer an intelligent woman; they don’t want to spend their life with a “supid blonde”. And they all quickly admitted that they can’t live without a woman.

Things became hilarious when the men asked us women if we thought they were macho. We turned the question around: do they think they were macho? The Muslim men said no, whereas we women said yes. We all had a good laugh about this one, but it was interesting to see how we perceived ourselves and each other.

Last but not least, one of the Muslim men said that for him it was very important that his wife shared the same religious views. Immediately, the other Muslims joined him, whereas the others didn’t (seem to) care about religion at all.

Can we indeed say that Muslims are more traditional or more conservative? More religious? Are all Muslim men macho? Are we talking about religious differences or differences in education? What do you think?