I just read this awesome anti-teen-dating diatribe by Mohja Kahf. She compares the odd ritual of teen-dating as found in Western society to the alternative of early marriage:
"For Muslim parents to provide a nubile woman with a reliable life partner, with whom she can build a home as well as satisfy her sexual desires—someone who bears witnessed responsibility if she conceives a child, in a union nurtured by surrounding family—this is oppressive, while parents providing ill-prepared teens with the means for furtive groping amid all sorts of conflicting messages about what they are to do in this badly set-up ritual, that’s benign?"
And it reminded me of my rant on Sex Ed from two years ago:
"I would much rather have my adolescent son ask me why his wife gets upset every month or my daughter ask why her husband is so stubborn than to explain to them why their high-school peers are dating and they aren’t. I would rather have them struggle with the complexities of a marital relationship than struggle to create their own chaste space amongst their promiscuous schoolmates.
In the world I envision, Islamic sexual education would not be veiled behind social taboos nor would it be an instrument to blunt the natural urges of young adults. Rather, it would consist of teaching the adaab (etiquettes) of sexual education to couples preparing for marriage, not teenage kids worried about the next school mixer."
Yeah, I just quoted myself. I'm all about self-love.
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7 comments:
Excellent post! I wish more immigrant Muslim parents to the West would know how to handle such a serious topic better. From my own life I've seen how badly my immigrant relatives handled this situation with their kids. On the one hand they refused to allow their kids to marry young because they wanted their kids (both male and female) to finish college before even thinking of marrying them! On the other hand, after they saw how their kids were going astray through their lusts by dating and eventually marrying people not of the best quality due to the parents' own stubbornness of not getting them married earlier, the parents made things worse. How? The kids started getting threatened with getting taken back to the 'Desh for an arranged marriage if they misbehaved! Of course this threat made the kids all the more determined to defy their parents so that some of them wound up marrying either non Muslims or Muslims who hardly practiced Deen. Sometimes the parents refused to learn from their own mistakes by only placing the blame on the kids instead of sharing the blame with them. Thus it's very important for Muslim immigrant parents especially to be told the benefits of early marriage in which the child also has a choice in who they marry; in other words marrying kids in the Desh is not an option everyone should be forced to take if they don't want to.
I read the article. amazing.
I would get married if i could. lol but ya cant support a family ...
-The Muslim Kid-
lol! absolutely brilliant.
Sometimes the parents refused to learn from their own mistakes by only placing the blame on the kids.
To those religious people who have the view that people should get married before the age of 20 (at least in the US) please read this letter to engaged highs schoolers.
Rumor,
Very cute writeup. Too bad your sharp wit wasn't used to put together a more substantial argument.
Oh well, there's always next time.
Rumour
that post doesnt make any sense, even from the future, its too way out there
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