My first peek into the American culture, that I had not already known via television and books, was 20 years ago, when I was an intern in Family Medicine.
I asked the 13-year-old girl if she had any questions before I left the exam room and she said she did. Could she go on the birth-control pill? I am still grateful for being able to pull the mask of impassivity out of thin air and successfully hide my outrage. After all I came from a culture where only marriage vows broke virginity and a woman with children was inevitably married or at least had been.
The patient’s mother sat knitting and I looked over and asked what mom felt about this. “Better the pill than pregnancy,” she said matter-of-factly, not dropping one stitch. And caught in this clash of cultures, I felt disjointed inside. Mom’s prescription seemed to fit though and almost robotically I complied. And that was just the preview. For that very year, rotating through obstetrics, I was delivering 13 and 14-year-olds, of babies that had been discovered that very night in the emergency department.
Imagine my naive mind and the sensory overload! Islam has permeated the culture of Muslim countries to the point that premarital sex is an absolute no-no. America goes by the Judeo-Christian tradition and both religions sternly condemn fornication. In Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament, it is forbidden in 22:20, 21, 23, 29 and 23:18 among some of the references. In Christianity, in Leviticus 21:9 and 19:29 it is condemned as well.
Since the late eighties America’s been inclining more and more toward God and there has been certainly a resurgence of faith. Is it that the faith of the majority is a Sunday-church based faith that this strong condemnation of fornication has been all but forgotten? For all of America has “lived together” at one time or another, either before marriage or on an ongoing basis. Or is it a matter of choosing one’s battles: Christians expend all efforts at preventing abortion and the Jews work toward the security of the state of Israel and the rest of the practice of the two religions, it seems to me, is glossed over.
It cannot be that premarital sex is a small issue in the larger scheme of teachings in the two religions. What has happened seems to be a matter of emphasis. Not to forget practising what one preaches. How is it that the single mother with four children, all with different fathers whose names she has trouble keeping straight, can have a different live-in boyfriend every month, and her fifteen-year-old daughter must practice abstinence? In this, as in other issues in child rearing, it is clear that personal example drowns out the heftiest of lectures.
The majority of Muslim-Americans, by virtue of Islam being for them a way of life, tend to follow most of the directives of religion. The **dos** of prayer, fasting, charity and Hajj are practised by the more devout. Interestingly the don’ts have a larger number of adherents and the main ones are avoiding alcohol, pork, adultery, fornication, (Quran 17:32, 24:2) and cheating. There are always exceptions that prove the rule and certainly there are Muslim Americans that cannot be distinguished from their neighbours by the way they live their lives, they remain, however, a minority.
Raising children is a challenge in and of itself and the curve-balls that life in America throws just adds to the fun and the adrenaline.
My then fourth grader was to be taught ballroom dancing in school and of course boys were paired up with girls. Perhaps this was to prepare them for the senior prom and the formal where the girls, dressed in more skin than clothes, are paired up with young men, supposedly for dancing, but actually to be entwined in head to foot embrace in dim strobe-lighted halls. And the newer rage called ‘freak-dancing’ and ‘grinding’ would make any parent very uncomfortable. The analogy of a candle and a flame comes to mind and sadly fits.
“What do you mean she’s pregnant?” yelled the fifteen-year-old’s mother. “How did that happen”? I realize quickly that she is entitled to rhetorical questions, though I am not too happy at being the messenger that got the fire.
Latchkey kids, lackadaisical attitudes, poor personal example, a teen in a self-discovery and self-hating crisis and one seeking validation, Hollywood role models and total ignorance of religious dictates, all lead to children having children. And if they do not have children, they have an abortion, which causes scarring in the pelvis setting them up for ectopic pregnancies, infertility, pelvic infections and chronic pelvic pain.
“So you are not allowed to date”? is the smirky question that my daughters get asked all the time. And on goes the broken record that they know so well now. Islam does not allow an unmarried man and woman to be alone together, but chaperoned or group dating is acceptable to most Muslims. I have allowed my daughters to go to the formal without a date, and they have had all kinds of fun watching the antics of barely clothed young women and the well-clothed tuxedoed young men.
Do parents stop and think what they are proffering to the world in their daughter when she is attired in a push-up bra with the most scooped of necklines cum bare back and shoulders? Is it all to conform to the “done” thing, the fashion of the day? Do they seriously believe that 18-year-old testosterone needs that titillation? Who do you blame for what you have yourself sown? The six million Muslim-Americans can really help right America’s moral compass. Muslim families as a general rule do not allow sleeveless outfits, halter-tops, mini-skirts, terribly fitted clothes and cleavage and belly button revealers. Dating is not allowed and no report has been filed that a child may have been scarred for life because of this. Young people are introduced and get to know one another in a chaperoned environment and such semi-arranged marriages have not only been taking place, they have been pretty successful in terms of marital happiness.
It is not just alcohol that is forbidden in Islam, but any substance that causes addiction. As much as promiscuity and drug addiction go hand in hand, the ban on addiction is another facet of Muslim practice that deserves an ear. Being an addictionist I will emphasize that addiction recognizes no boundary of education, race, religion or gender, and I have myself treated addicts that are Muslim. No formal study regarding addiction in Muslim-Americans versus the rest of the population has been done, but the anecdotal evidence points toward a lower incidence. The caveat that a Muslim avoids drugs and alcohol due to the fear of God and not the law must be kept in mind, and perhaps there lies the reason for the lower incidence.
Homosexuality is condemned in all three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The nature versus nurture debate rages unstemmed. The Quran remains unchanged since its revelation 1400 years ago, and it is hugely unlikely that there will be any yielding on this issue amongst Muslims. It is forbidden, period. Muslim families with a child uncertain of his or her sexual identity suffer greatly, but the answer to the problem is not condoning or promoting same sex unions. It is a serious and deeply unfortunate issue, regardless of how you cut it. Bending the religion to fit the situation is not an option. This inflexibility, if you will, serves the first very important tenet in Islam, which is not changing the Quran even as much as a mark of punctuation. The second issue is that those individuals that are uncertain of their sexual orientation don’t jump into homosexuality because the Muslim family and community are unlikely to lend an eye of benign ignorance. When there is no catalysis by society, the problem exists but does not flourish and acquire a life of its own.
Divorce is allowed in Islam, even women, the entity that the West thinks is so repressed, can obtain it. Grounds can be insanity, impotence, abuse or simply irreconcilable differences. It is a hated avenue though, and Muslims are admonished to try very hard to make a marriage work and not opt out at the first hump. When a couple are having problems the Quran admonishes that there be a sensible person from her side and one from his to resolve the issue, and thereafter to continue trying to keep the family together by admonition and counselling. Again anecdotally, divorce is probably not as common amongst Muslims as the general population.
With sexually transmitted diseases being the epidemic that they have become, single and teenage mothers increasing in number, the AIDS crisis and broken homes, America’s societal mores seem to be in a tailspin. Easy fixes do not exist. It might help though to look at the practices of its Muslim segment especially on an individual basis, and to learn some of the dos and don’ts that Muslims use, and extrapolate them to yourself. It certainly cannot hurt.
