Sex education from an Islamic perspective

Elsewhere in this issue we have carried a report from the Medical Advisory Board (MAB) warning the community of the HIV virus and AIDS.  AIDS is taking a heavy toll on Tanzania’s economy as large numbers of the country’s trained work force are succumbing to the disease.

In his May Day address, Tanzania President Benjamin Mkapa called for a change  in the approach to fight this virus in Tanzania. He said, “some ministries lose about 20 employees each month to AIDS, and 365 workers of the Tanzania Electric Supply Company died between 1995 and April this year,”  He said the hardest-hit ministries including defense, education and health.

The HIV and AIDS crisis has a global effect with the epidemic not only having health implications but also affecting development plans and the economic stability of countries.

The World Bank projects that Tanzania’s gross domestic product will decline by between 15 and 25 percent by 2015 if AIDS continues to spread at the current rate. Recently the Tanzania President said that every one in ten Tanzanian is suffering from the virus and according to another report between 15 to 30 percent of the members of Tanzania’s armed forces are infected with HIV. Researchers reveal even more alarming figures with an estimate that about 20 percent of Tanzania’s 31 million people are HIV-positive. The figures are similar if not worse in Kenya and Uganda.

At community level we have so far paid lip service to the proposals calling for a radical change in our approach to how sex education and AIDS-related issues is made available to our children while alarming statistics portray the stark reality.

When it comes to educating our children on sex and viruses like HIV etc. some say it is better that parents should talk to their children on sex because they are best to judge what is confusing them or what their curiosities are. The problem here is how many parents do we have who can communicate candidly with their children? And even if they can communicate well, are they educated enough to advise them correctly? And if the parents opt for silence does this not lead to their children remaining vulnerable to illicit sex or life threatening viruses?

Talking about sexual education, one16 year old Muslim student said that half of what he learned was from biology and friends. The other 25% was about the ills of drinking alcohol, importance on eating right, and the usage of condoms when one is married. The other 25% taught him statistics of how many people have STD’s and HIV, why women get raped, negative influences of porn and drugs, and abortion. These are all valid subjects which ought to be taught to children at an early stage in their lives.

As a matter of fact non-Islamic religious organisations and almost all schools promote abstinence from illicit sex through speeches and presentations made to students. The counter argument however is that when students learn about condoms or birth control pills, they are encouraged to try these out. However it is an open secret that if children are not taught about sex eduction in schools they will learn of this through their friends whereby they can easily be tempted to eyeing sex from primarily a glamorous perspective.

Allah (swt) has blessed us with the best way of life, superior to all other systems. What is the point of not following it in all aspects, including our sexual lives? Islam is not prudish, it is practical and straightforward. A child who knows clearly what is halal and what is haraam is far better able to protect himself from the filth that abounds in society.

Many of our community children do possibly learn about sex education indirectly in Madressas which help to regulate their moral conduct. But madressa subjects do not handle the subject in an indepth manner because sex education goes hand in glove with such subjects as biology. Moreover in almost all of our madressas we have voluntary teachers who are not necessarily skilled to teach with the right approach.

Our students attending non community schools may be few in Africa but in North America and Europe most of our students attend non-Islamic schools where sex education forms part of the curriculum. Approaches by these western schools is wrong when they encourage promiscuity but why should this stop us from introducing Islamic sex education in our schools? The approach should be that sexual abstinence before marriage is all about freedom. If you stay away from sex you are free to go on with your dreams and goals and you are also free from sexually transmitted diseases, from pregnancy and emotional scars of lifelong painful memories.

For those whose children attend un-Islamic schools, there is a parental responsibility to fulfil. Muslim parents need to be educated themselves about sex education before going to their children’s schools to protest or discuss its contents. At the same time our community needs to address this issue from a parental point of view by providing parents with pertinent information through Islamic education and forums where Muslim parents get together. This can guide parents to talk to their children more freely about sex and can also guide them to counter wrong methods being used to teach sex education in some schools.

“Muslims shy away from using the word s-e-x on their tongue,” says Ahmad Sakr, author of 'The Adolescent Life.' This book talks about, among other things, youth in Islam, modesty, social behavior, abortion, dancing and drinking. One of Sakr’s books, Matrimonial Education in Islam, was almost not published because it was originally entitled Sex Education in Islam. It was published after the title was changed.

If parents decide to give their kids sex education themselves, it is not a responsibility that should fall solely on mothers’ shoulders. One retired Muslim school teacher from Canada who spent 30 years working in the public school system said to this effect, “I think the fathers need to know, not only mothers, and we should have people speak to them about the Islamic perspective on sex education, how the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) used to openly address these issues.”

“If early Muslims, starting with the Prophet himself were open in discussing what we now consider private subjects, then they must have had the right idea and we have the wrong one and the questions and answers you find in the Hadith prove it,” notes Sharifa Alkhateeb, who was the President of the Muslim Education Council in Virginia, which educates administrators and educators about Islam and Muslims.

While cultural taboos and embarrassment may make many parents reluctant to discuss sex with their children, they should remember that the kind of sex education their children receive in public school is reinforced by the surrounding culture. This wave of pressure has to be countered by Islamic sex education at home or within the community in our own schools.

For those who are really uncomfortable talking to their kids about the topic  it is suggested that they request someone neutral from the community who is ethically and morally committed to be invited to speak on this subject to their offspring.

Marilyn Morris, President and founder of Aim for Success, an American organization that promotes abstinence from sex through speeches and presentations to students in grades six to 12 started Aim For Success in 1993 based on her own experience of receiving no sex education as a teenager in the 1960s. This partly led her to getting pregnant at the age of 17.

“I was a good girl, I came from a good home, I was in Church every Sunday and I got pregnant in my senior year at high school,” she recounts. She and her boyfriend married before the birth of her baby, and they are still married today, 30 years later. Her husband, Chuck Morris is also involved with Aim For Success.

“We’re convinced that if somebody had talked to us we would have listened,” she says.”But back then nobody was talking about sex. Nobody talked about it at home, nobody talked about it at school and church.” The only place it was talked about, she notes, was amongst kids. “The only message I heard back then from my friend was that sex is no big deal, everyone’s doing it and nobody gets hurt. I learned the hard way sex is a big deal and there’s a huge price to pay.”

Islamic schools and sex education may seem like a contradiction for some. However students in these schools are now openly appreciating the advantages. One Dalya Aglan  a 16-year-old, in her biology class, was taught on pregnancy, menstruation, and sexual maturation amongst adolescents at her Muslim school in Montreal, Canada.

“She talked about it Islamically,” says Aglan about the approach her Muslim teacher used. “She talked about what was Halal, Haram and Sunnah. It’s not like she was doing anything wrong. She was teaching us something we need to know.”

The class was mixed (boys and girls) but the question and and answer session was separate. Students were asked if they were uncomfortable. They all said no. The teacher also got the students’ parents to sign permission slips for this.

“There was so much stuff we didn’t know” says Aglan matter-of-factly.

Many parents assume Islamic schools to have an environment where their children don’t have to talk about sex and that they will somehow be protected and isolated from mainstream society. They condone the effects of television, magazines, billboards, and even Muslim friends with lower standards of morality who can influence children even if they attend an Islamic school. In this scenario is it not better that we teach our children sex education with Islamic values?

While some Muslim schools may be teaching sex education in one form or another, most do not have a proper curriculum for sex education from an Islamic perspective. The schools also lack adept counsellors who can speak to children when serious pertinent issues may come up which a teacher with no such background may not be able to handle. For example, if a child who has been sexually molested confides in a Muslim teacher after a class or discussion on proper gender relations (i.e. no touching between the sexes, and even between the same sex), the teacher must know how to handle this. A specific position can be created for this job at Islamic schools.

Teachers of sex education in Islamic schools will ofcourse be expected to maintain the right etiquette because morality can only be taught morally by avoiding graphic, even within the same sex class group. In the same vein, when discussing pregnancy and childbirth, books that are used should not contain photographs. Biology diagrams should be enough to teach about the human body. Similarly skeletons can be used to portray body parts. In this way the basic information is the same but the approach is Islamic.

When a Muslim teacher educates children with an Islamic approach is there still something to worry about? Logically should we not be more concerned when our children are deprived off Islamic sex education?