Sheltered Muslim children vs. unhealthy sexual socialization

Submitted by V. Tikhonov (Norway), Aug 26, 2002 at 09:13

American or Western European ways of sexual socialization that developed after the end of the 1960s, in fact, go against the universal norms which are current in almost all other cultures and were not very dissimilar in Europe or America before too. In higher cultures of China, India, Korea, and so on - without any connections to Islam - a girl also is not supposed to begin her sexual life around 15-16 and change partners almost monthly. The reasons are rather well-founded concerns about the reproductive health, as well as the moral standards of a would-be mother, than all these "patriarchal superstitions" imagined by the Euro-American Orientalists. Why blame American Muslims for the fact that they are trying to do what everybody else should try to do as well - try to shelter their girls from geting involved into premature and unhealthy sex, accompanied with drug abuse, and so on? Why think that today's American way of life is ideal?

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