I have a question sister. You say that Kinsey’s claim that monogamy is not natural is wrong. I agree with what you are saying but my question is, if this is the case, than why in Jannah are men allowed to have many wives? Why is this the case if monogamy is supposed to be natural? A similar extrapolation could ask why men are allowed four wives maximum (not including taking care of a widow or doing some kind of favor). I don’t mean to offend, I am just genuinely curious, but Allah knows best.

What’s really sad is that within the Muslim community we’re presented with two extremes…

1) The “conservative” extreme where parents consider the very idea of sex to be haraam and forbid their children to learn anything about it (which as we all know is completely ridiculous) and obviously do not make any effort to educate their children about it.

2) The “liberal” extreme which insist that children need to be aware of these issues and think it’s ridiculous that we think that sex ed. classes at school are going to corrupt our children. Many of them will honestly consider it a conspiracy theory of sorts if we tell them exactly what is being taught at school!

It is also terrifying true that many schools and preschools are pushing for “sexual awareness” for preschools and kindergarten (never mind grades 1 and 2)… a friend of mine has worked as a preschool teacher and she was appalled when she discovered that children were taught that their “private parts” are “okay to play with.”
And then we wonder why child sexual exploitation is on the rise… when you sexualize a prepubescent child, you are destroying yourself, the child, and the entire society.

Maybe I’m just being really naive, but what exactly is taught in sex ed in schools these days?

I remember I had a few classes in school when I was younger, and we were just taught the basic differences between the genders, body changes in puberty, how women reproduce, how the cycle goes, etc, and how babies come, and that was pretty much it..

I don’t remember something so explicit that could have corrupted me?
But yes, I do agree that this is something that should preferably be discussed in the home environment by the parents and not by school teachers.

Jazak Allah Khair for this article. SOMEONE needs to inform parents, who sometimes I feel, choose to remain ignorant.

One last point, some people on here are claiming that certain countries don’t have problems and that the media generalizes too much putting the focus on those particular countries. But lets be honest. While western and European countries have their problems, you don’t see girls schools being attack, acid being thrown on women, so-called honor killings. In America or the West, when you kill or rape a person, you get arrested and there is court of law. In Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India, the middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan, Im sorry thats not the case. Usually a rape victim is the one who is solely blamed while the attacker runs scotch free. They manipulate sharia at their convenience and thats the God honest truth. Just because you know someone from those countries who are educated, so what. I’m looking at the population and government as a whole. In Saudi Arabia, parents had to watch a school of girls burn down with the girls inside because the girls did not have their hijab. Those girls were 9 year olds. The religious police ordered the girls to return to the burning building and burn to death. The parents were forced to watch their daughters burn to death! THIS IS INSANITY. How do you think that makes us look to others? I’m of Arab descent. I have no shame in admitting it. We are a community who is crying out for reform. You can’t compare and say well i’m from those countries and I am educated. No you live in the west and you were educated in the west.
I’m also a teacher. I tend to look at statistics. Education in those countries are stagnant and poverty is rising high. We (Muslim countries) don’t even make it on the charts. It’s pretty pathetic that not one muslim country out of the tens has an adequate education system. What has been our latest contribution to modern society? Our last major contribution was 500 years ago! This is not good. STOP living in the clouds and start looking at our reality. If we don’t recognize that as a community we need to encounter real relevant change, we will continue on this downward spiral of stagnation.
Islam is a religion of science, medicine, love, faith, freedom, and excellence. It is a complete way of life whose sole purpose is to enhance and lighten existence. Unlike christianity, islam and science have always worked hand in hand more in complimentary and less contradictory. What happened? More importantly, how can I alter it and become that agent of change?

I’m a high school teacher…
I don’t know about in the States but in Canada males and females have seperate health classes. In middle school the boys are usually taken into one room with a male teacher and the girls to another with a female teacher. The information is given in a mature manner and although I can only speak about the girls (of course I wasn’t in the boys room), most girls were too shy to talk about anything after anyways. We were given the basic info about birth that someone going through puberty should know about. Maybe because children (including Muslim chidlren) are going through puberty earlier now it’s important that they understand their bodies and the body’s functions. I don’t have any children, but if I had a daughter I’d definitely want her to be aware of her body as it goes through changes and understand the differences between hers and a males body because this is a life changing time for girl. This is information that a mother (or older sister/aunt/grandmother if there’s no mother) should be able to sit down and discuss with the girl. Otherwise she will use the Internet and no matter what kind of school you send that child to, she will always have the internet at her fingertips and you can’t moniter that 24/7 …Muslim child or not.

I went to a high school of more than 2000 students and I only knew of one girl who got pregnant. Some of the comments here make it seem like girl after girl after girl drops out because of early pregnancies. That’s ridiculous. I’m not sure what the age range of people commenting here are but it sure sounds like there’s a lot of assumptions from people who never did attend a high school in the West or are just relying on information from a “friend” who attended public school. We all know how much teens love to exaggerate and be dramatic, Muslim teens do this too. There are so many quoted parts in this article that really don’t make sense and I can assure those parents out there who are feeling scared after reading this article that those things aren’t even taught!! I mean come on, 5 years old and having sexual fantasies? — this site does one thing really well, public school bashing.

Instead of scaring others away from public school, how about just educating how Muslim parents can talk to their children? Comments saying that the best thing one can do is pull their children from school don’t help. How can running away from a problem solve anything? The majority of Muslim parents who send their children to public schools will never be able to send their children to private Islamic schools. It costs money. It’s not news that the Muslim community isn’t a financially able one. Look at the amount of low income Somali families in the rougher areas of Toronto, is it realistic to hope that they all pull their children from public school and send them to a school where they have to pay a tuition? No.

Why not organize a group of mothers – Christian, Muslim, whatever it is, petition it is whatever you feel most strongly about? Schools listen to parents because parents = money and they don’t want to lose that. Get to know the people in your community and find out who would be on your side to have discussion groups after school with your teen. You don’t have to be living in a Muslim community to find other parents who will agree with your values. Teens learn best with their friends, others who are going through similar things in life, so get your child together with other children who you feel are respectable people in your community and get them to take part in activities that include their parents. This could be a mother in the community teaching girls to knit (we did this at the school I teach at – it IS possible to take action), it could be a father teaching boys about car parts, whatever their interests are, then get them to open up and discuss sex ed in an environment where nobody needs to hide behind books or brochures left awkwardly in their teens room. Nobody learns from a book.

Just some practical suggestions…

great article! a lot of those things are unfortunately out there but…

I am going to have to disagree with the point where the sister said that this is taught in our schools. I went to public school all my life and I was kept from learning sex ed in the 7/8th grade by my mother which i regret on her part because I Feel we wouldve had a better relationship. When I did take a few of the classes there was nothing that was taught that is being said in the article.

My aunt who came from saudi arabia/pakistan was asking me and my brother if she should have her son learn the sex-ed and he was in 5th grade. We told her that she should due to a lot of reasons and he is starting to go through puberty so we told her that to build a good relationship with her son she should show her son that feelings like this aren’t bad as we tend to be taught. Also, the sex-ed in schools are mainly about anatomy and what will happen when one gets her period or when a boy has his first wet dream.

I know fairly well that those organizations are out there and they have things like that, but none of that is getting into the school curriculum. all those things are on the internet and magazines,etc. I’m just defending schools here because I am starting to get irritated how parents that homeschool their children seem to look for excuses to not send their children to schools/ public schools. I’m not saying thats the purpose of this article, but that first part where it was said that this is what is being taught in our schools, etc is way off from fact.

Salams Siraaj
Thanks for your comment. Sex education is not a long unit in school. Its usually a day or two in fifth grade, a couple more days in 7th and then a week or so in 10th grade. It is taught in a very serious, scientific and academic manner. And no program out there, no matter how liberal, denies the benefits of abstinence. All of them send the message: if you want to be truly safe, the only method is abstinence. But do they (comprehensive programs) teach about contraception and STIs and pregnancy as well? Yes, they do. And it’s to give kids the accurate information they need so that they can fully understand the consequences of having sex. Many kids don’t understand the gravity of many STIs (w/ the exception of HIV). They don’t realize that a large percentage (something like 85%) of chlamdya cases are symptom-free and unless tested for and diagnosed, girls are actually facing permanent infertility if it is untreated. They don’t realize that STIs also spread through oral sex and homosexuality, including lesbian sex. They don’t realize what the components to a healthy relationship are – that a sexual relationship should be one of mutual understanding and free of pressure – which is usually not the case in adolescent sex. The research speaks for irself: kids who receive comprehensive sex ed are not more promiscuous than those who don’t, and do not initiate sex earlier than their peers. Historically, we know that people have had pre-marital sex even in societies that we would consider models like the prophetic period. This is a reality we cannot deny. And it is necessary for us to address this for the public’s health and safety. To prevent the spread of disease, to educate about the potential consequences for actions, to avert consequences that can be life-altering, and to promote informed and responsible decisions. That is the purpose of sex ed. And the time that these kids spend learning about this from an academic perspective is still miniscule compared to the constant messaging and pressures they get from their peers, the media and society in general about having sex as a young person, and the effect of sex ed is further mitigated because they gain knowledge that even actions teens often consider consequence free (like oral sex) do truly have serious consequences like contracting STIs. And while you can’t make the media go away, you can definitely educate your child to be media literate and to critically think about these messages.

Our muslim youth, particularly who don’t get this education, do not understand that reality – how disease spreads and understanding the gravity of these diseases. When I mentioned Islamic school kids, I wasn’t speaking of the “irreligious” problem child, I was actually referring to the traditionally-trained, “religious” kid that comes from the traditional conservative family. Substance abuse, sexual experimentation, including pornography, sexting, oral sex and homosexuality is a reality in muslim schools, and I’m not just talking about the irreligious kid. They are problems that administrators and educators are fully aware of, and have caught students engaging in, but are unequipped as professionals to properly address them. In addition, we haven’t even spoken of the sexual perverseness that happens abroad, in “Muslim” countries. Sexual activity, oral sex and homosexuality are becoming a huge problem in places in like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. And we all know that these countries cultures do value abstinence and chastity.

The sex ed has to happen, as a way to protect the public at large. We can remain in denial for as long as we want, but that is our reality. But do kids need more opportunities for open dialog, think about these issues out loud, particularly from the perspective of their faith? Yes, of course. And that is the sheer purpose of HEART Women & Girls (www.heartwomenandgirls.org): to create a space space for these conversations to exist, happen, and to empower young girls with what they need to make healthy, responsible and mature decisions.