The Heart Team

Engaging Muslim Communities to End Sexual Exploitation

April 30, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

A collaborative effort between the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, HEART Women & Girls, the Rahma Network, and Karamah, Engaging Muslim Communities in Ending Sexual Exploitation: A Toolkit and Resource Guide targets groups within Muslim communities and any other individuals of faith who are passionate about ending sexual exploitation. This toolkit provides background information on issues surrounding prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation and can be used to raise awareness and mobilize your community to join the fight to end sexual exploitation.

In this first-of-its-kind guide, you will find information on the following:

Information on sexual exploitation – definitions, statistics, and difference between human trafficking and prostitution
Background on sexual violence and exploitation in the Muslim community – definitions, statistics and barriers to addressing the issue
Quranic passages and other textual evidence opposing sexual exploitation
Call to action – tips and strategies to raising awareness in the community and ending sexual exploitation
Activist spotlights – short background on activists currently working in the field
Resources to learn more

To download this useful resource, please click below.

Engaging Muslim Communities in Ending Sexual Exploitation: A Toolkit and Resource Guide

Was it abuse? Addressing Sexual Abuse in the Muslim Community

April 14, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

by Nadiah Mohajir

originally published on altmuslimah.com

******trigger warning*******

Just having returned from an intense karate class, Rania* reflected on her anger, and how tired she felt upon the release of her anger. “I just hate him,” she thought. “I really just hate him.” She sighed, and her gaze fell upon on the mug he gave her that she had used daily for more than a decade. “But part of me loves him too. Is that wrong?” Rania was 13 when it began. He was her 36-year-old-married-with-children uncle. The relationship began slowly, with just a few inappropriate comments here and there.

Then, it was a hug. Later, it became a more lingering hug, in a more private space. Before Rania knew it, she was in what could only be described as a romantic relationship with her uncle. Once she relocated and removed herself from the relationship, Rania had time to reflect on the 11-year emotionally intense and physically intimate relationship. “Was it abuse? Am I responsible because I let it happen?” This article will discuss the Rania’s struggle and will explore just how common similar situations are in the Muslim community. The unfortunate reality is that Rania’s struggle is not uncommon, nor is it properly addressed in the Muslim community. Moreover, young women, who are neither informed about their bodies nor educated on what constitutes as a healthy relationship, remain ill equipped to identify when they are being abused or who they can turn to for help.

According to the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. Fifteen percent of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 12. Seven percent of girls in grades 5-8 and 12 percent of girls in grades 9-12 report having been sexually abused. This number does not include the many more who do not report their abuse, or who are unable to determine that they are, in fact, being abused. More than 90 percent of victims know their attacker, with family members constituting approximately one-third of all attackers. Victims are more likely to suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as compared with those who have not been abused. Among the most chilling of statistics is that abuse victims are thirteen times more likely to abuse alcohol, and four times more like to contemplate suicide. As much as we may like to think that our religious or cultural values render us immune to these numbers, the Muslim community in the United States is not invulnerable to these issues. They just simply have not been exposed as often as they need to be.

I had the opportunity to speak with Rania, who refers to herself as Neighborhood Muslimah. She contacted me a few months ago, having come across HEART Women and Girls’ website, and wanting to raise awareness for her blog, which chronicles her musings on her experience with sexual abuse. Just a few minutes into reading her blog entries will take the reader into a relationship fraught with subtle coercion and sexual manipulation. Rania’s reflections are the first step to raising awareness about the importance of honest, candid dialogue coupled with sexual health education as a means to empower women and girls to identify when they are being abused, and how to respond.

As I spoke with Rania, she recalled how she was very young when the relationship with her uncle first became questionable. He was her maternal aunt’s husband, and both families were close. Rania’s parents would often allow her to spend her summer holidays in his home with his family. As their relationship progressed, she became dependent upon the attention and praise he lavished on her. They would engage in long conversations about history, politics and culture, and all the while Rania’s uncle would praise her for her maturity and insight. “He allowed me to feel stronger than him, and elevated me in my own eyes,” she explained. “He made me feel that I was special and superior compared to everyone else. He would talk to me as if I was his wife, and would tell me how I was so strong and pious; I would be a leader for all Muslim women.”

Rania learned the tricks of maintaining a secret relationship as many teenagers do. She lied excessively about where she was going, snuck out of the house, and even invited her uncle to her parents’ home when they were out of town. While they never engaged in intercourse, their relationship consisted of extremely intense and physically intimate moments. Guilt and confusion would overwhelm Rania, but if she questioned her uncle about how God would judge this relationship, he would quickly assuage, at least for the time being, her doubts. He would assure her that if God saw them as sinners, He would have exposed them, but instead they were able to continue the clandestine relationship. Never once though did the thought cross Rania’s mind that her uncle was taking advantage of the situation and abusing his niece.

Rania proudly told her friends about her “boyfriend.” They all had someone special they bragged about, so she felt obligated to do the same, changing his name and his age, even pulling out a picture of another younger boy so that he became real to both her and her friends. “I had convinced myself I was in love with him,” she explained. “Once in sex education class, the teacher asked if the victim of an abusive relationship can feel pleasure. When the class unanimously said no, I was convinced I wasn’t in an abusive relationship because I liked being in his company, even if I was uncomfortable with being physically intimate. He didn’t beat me. Instead, he praised me and showered me with gifts. How is that abuse?” she had reasoned.

For her entire adolescence, Rania lived a dual life, even creating a nickname for her uncle so that the duality of her uncle’s role – that of her doting uncle publicly, but of her significant other privately– would not be as glaringly obvious to her. Guilt, sadness, and supplication became her companions, as she didn’t believe she could confide in anyone. “I couldn’t turn to family because we were all so close,” she explained. “And I couldn’t turn to the community, because not only was I in this inappropriate relationship, but I was a respected member of Muslim youth in my city, always asked to give speeches and serve as a role model for other kids. People thought I was an angel. How could I tell them that their angel was actually a devil in disguise?”

As Rania related her story, I couldn’t help but think of all the various factors that allowed this situation to persist, and what we could have done as a community to prevent it. Was this in fact a case of abuse, despite Rania’s continuous consent?

Sexual abuse remains a shameful, cloaked reality affecting many young girls and boys in the Muslim community, and no matter our uneasiness with the subject, and anecdotal evidence suggests that Rania’s story of her eleven-year long relationship with her maternal uncle is more common than we think. In my conversation with Rania, she explained that at the age of 24 she decided to end the relationship that had been an everyday part of her adolescence.While traveling with her friend, Lubna, Rania described the kind, adoring man she had felt compelled to leave behind because their families would not approve of the relationship. Rania had believed that distance would help clear her mind and ease her into life without her uncle, but in the first few months the separation only exacerbated her confusion. She missed him terribly, and finally gave in to her loneliness, reconnecting with her uncle through phone and email.

Months later, after ending their relationship once and for all, Rania met Lubna again, who asked about her significant other. This time, Lubna heard a much different story. Rania’s tone and words were laced with acrimony, prompting Lubna to ask what had brought about the change of heart. Rania explained that the distance apart allowed her the time and space to reflect on the past decade. She began to recall experiences she had long buried, similar to selective amnesia. “I even forgot that he was my uncle,” she said. She continues to explain this further in her blog post about coping strategies – she describes the love and affection she developed for him over the years as a coping mechanism- “It’s what we do when we see no way out…when we have lost all hope.”

Rania felt she could not go anywhere for help. A simple literature and Internet search confirms that there are no culturally appropriate resources for young Muslim women who are survivors of sexual abuse. The community has not created any safe spaces for these women – the mosques, Islamic schools, and community centers do not have professionals and leaders equipped to address and counsel survivors. Moreover, the cultural barriers that exist to addressing these issues for Muslims prevent Muslim survivors from pursuing or trusting the secular resources and professionals that do exist. The instances in which she thought her family suspected that there was something peculiar about her relationship with her uncle did not evolve into honest dialogue, but instead remained uncomfortable silences.

Rania did not trust that her family or community would help her untangle herself from the relationship; she felt certain that if she did come forward, she would be the one to shoulder all the blame for the relationship. “If I felt I could have told a member of my family that I am in this relationship, and they would not reprimand me for it (maybe you shouldn’t have been so friendly, maybe you should wear hijab), perhaps I would have said something. But my fear was if I opened my mouth, I would be the aggressor, the cause of fitna.”

Rania didn’t have open discourse with her mother about the challenges of being an adolescent— feeling attracted to boys or finding a balance between her Muslim values of modesty and the Western culture in which she was being asked to practice them. Rather, Rania opened up to her uncle, who she thought listened to her with compassion and gave importance to her concerns and her point of view as though she was his peer. Once the relationship graduated from a friendship to a romance, Rania didn’t have the self-confidence to trust her instinct that something was wrong. Rania’s uncle had likely spotted this insecurity in his niece from the beginning, and began to manipulate her vulnerability in order to persuade her to fulfill his inappropriate desires. “Even though he was always in the driver’s seat in the relationship, he made me feel like the driver,” she recalled.

Our community has a responsibility to our young women. We have a responsibility to trust our daughters enough not to point the finger at them, even if they come to us with a nightmare of a situation. We must find the context and reasoning behind why these frightening situations happen, and reign in our reflexive desire to immediately judge and assign blame. As Rania told me, “The worst thing is to feel that you won’t be accepted if you speak up.” We have a responsibility to protect our girls from men like Rania’s uncle, who saw an opportunity and chose to abuse it. Open and honest dialogue about sexual health and sexuality, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable these conversations may be, is key. There is no doubt that the Muslim community needs to develop a culturally-sensitive approach to sexual health education, because if women remain uninformed about their bodies, they are unequipped to identify an abusive relationship or know where to turn for help. Moreover, we have an obligation to hold the aggressors in our community accountable for their actions, regardless of their position in society, and without compromising the survivors’ future and reputation and allowing them to become collateral damage in the process.So, he never hit her. In fact, he treated her like a princess and elevated her in the eyes of everyone, including herself. But she was 13 and he was 36 when their relationship first began. I ask you the same question Rania repeatedly asks herself in her blog: Was this abuse? If so, did we do enough to protect Rania, and all the girls who have the same story?* Names have been changed

Unheard Voices: The Sexual Exploitation of South Asian Girls and Women

April 10, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

By Sameera Qureshi

originally published on muslimsistah-sq.blogspot.ca

I woke up suddenly at 6:00am from a bad dream, wondering how men could do this, trying to understand the twisted psychology behind their behaviour. No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t come up with an answer. After an hour and a half of tossing and turning, I finally woke up and came back to my reality…a safe and sound home with a loving husband. But unfortunately, there are many girls and women here and abroad who aren’t blessed with the same fortune as I am.

About a month ago, I came across a 126-page document titled Unheard Voices: The Sexual Exploitation of Asian Girls and Young Women. It was published by the Muslim Women’s Network UK, and details approximately 30 cases of sexual abuse and violence against Asian girls and young women. How such innocent females were sucked into a ring of drugs and alcohol, gang rape, and prostitution. I read the majority of the document and it’s been on my mind since then. I think this morning, it was on my mind more than before.

I really don’t want to recount some of the stories I read in this document, partly because they are already re-playing through my mind and also because I want readers of this blog to read the document themselves.

All I can think is that such practices are not solely limited to the UK…They are just as often happening in North America and absolutely overseas as well.

I want to do something about this, but I don’t know what.

While there are agencies in the UK working to educate young girls, and the police force are criminalizing such acts, the thoughts justifying these acts (i.e. misogynistic thoughts, etc) are perhaps deeply seeded within the South Asian community. The majority of the victims in the case studies described are South Asian, coming from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Over 95% of the victims in this study were Muslim. The perpetrators are teenage boys and adult men, often recruiting their family members to pay them before violating these girls over and over again, while she’s unconscious in someone’s house. The following paragraph demonstrates this (graphic content and trigger warning):

“My mate called me and said ‘Bro I have a surprise for you, come over to this house.’ When I got there 15 of them were sitting in the living room. My mate told me to go upstairs for my surprise. When I went into the bedroom, another friend was doing this girl (she was a 20 years old of Pakistani background). The lads went up one by one and took turns and while they were waiting they were calling their mates, cousins and uncles to come over and join in and showing off. Others turned up too including two older men who were taxi drivers, who went straight upstairs. One older man said I am going to call my son over so he can practice on her and later his 15-year-old son arrived in his uniform. Everyone took turns and it took 6 hours. I did get concerned and said, ‘the girl is going to get broke, who will marry her?’ The girl is not paid but she gets looked after, she is given food and the boys make sure she gets home safely if it gets late. There are set days Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but some of my friends don’t like doing stuff like that on a Friday because it is Juma (holy day) and they go mosque.”

I can’t get this scene out of my head, and it’s to THIS dream I woke up this morning. I felt as I was there, floating around as an invisible witness, trying to figure out who could do this and how many men could let this happen to a girl. Tears well up in my eyes every time I think of this happening…it’s violent and repulsive…how can they do this?

How many of us know this happening within communities around the world? Did you know that in India, a woman is raped every 20 minutes? In the US, an American is sexually assaulted every two minutes. The statistic from India is alarming especially since only 10% of rapes get reported while in the States it’s just above 25%. Most sadly, it’s brutal gang rape more often than not, in ways that are unimaginable. How can we not pray for these women? How can we not pray that we find a way to STOP these men from committing such crimes?

It’s not just Muslims who are involved in rape and child sexual exploitation. It’s happening all over the world. Millions of boys and girls each year are sold into child prostitution, yet it doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.

I’m starting to think of ways I can contribute to this cause. Building awareness is one step, but it’s not enough. Most people will read this blog post, feel sad that this happening, and move on with their lives. I don’t think I can do that. I think there’s a reason I am this impacted by what’s happening…I think it’s a sign and perhaps the direction I am supposed to go towards. I am not sure, but it’s something I am going to look into.

And perhaps for us folk in Canada, we can work to educate young men and women here as a means to prevent this sort of violence from ever happening among our youth. We need to teach young men how to respect young women, the importance of consent, and how saying nothing is NOT consent for sexual activity. We need to teach young women about the power and control wheel and how to identify healthy and unhealthy relationships, and we need to teach families how to protect their children from such abuse. It’s not an easy task and there’s no easy prevention curriculum…but we need to start somewhere.

And for those of you who are reading this, please take the time to read or even skim the document I mentioned above. It’s not an easy read but the first step to raising awareness is to understand yourself what’s going on.

May Allah guide us all and protect us all from any form of exploitation or violence.

Sameera Qureshi, MScOT (c) is an Occupational Therapist and currently manages a mental health promotion project that is school and community based, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her work over the past six years has been primarily with Muslim populated schools and their families. Since 2011, Sameera has been working to implement Islam-oriented sexual health education programs both within these schools and the greater Muslim community. Her work includes developing the curriculum for both genders and teaching the curriculum to girls in grades 5-9, running parent sessions, collaborating with multiple Calgary agencies around sexual health, and making her work available to interested community member and professionals. She also maintains a blog called Muslim Sistah and can be found on Twitter @muslimsistah

Brainstorming for Sexual Assault Awareness in Our Communities

April 3, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

by Sarah Hasan

The other day I was looking up local Sexual Assault Awareness Month events and thinking about ways to get people from our (‘our’ in this case = Muslim) communities to come out and participate. I started to imagine people who came to my mind first and their responses if I were to make a suggestion, instigate involvement. The aunties and/or their daughters and the looks I projected on their faces in my mind were discouraging images.

As I continued to indulge my faulty expectations regarding an imagined conversation with community members, a parallel (and far more positive) train of thought began to brew: I wondered how we could spread awareness in our communities that were specifically tailored to Muslims? Surely we could at least hold an event such as handing out ribbons, spark dialogue. What could we come up with on our own? I mean, in the (hopefully not so distant) future I would think it would be cool to have one of these tailored towards our own community, but there is a long way to go before that comes into fruition. I was curious to see what kind of resources were easily/google accessible to me now- as a Muslim woman, if I were searching for help, answers, counseling, anything.

While I found some interesting links, some directing me to neat organizations such as a Directory of Programs serving Muslims, I also inevitably encountered a lot of misinformation. What piqued my interest was a campaign run by Canadian Muslims called Muslims for White Ribbon. This was a neat although short campaign that ran this past winter; their motto: “Never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women and girls”. It made me really happy to see this initiative pop up in my google search even though this was specifically about women and girls, and it is important to keep in mind that when we talk about Sexual Assault Awareness we shouldn’t just refer to assault against women; 1 in 33 American men have experienced rape or attempted rape – that’s 3% of the men in this country that have been able to report it. I wonder then if there are similar initiatives American Muslims have taken or are working on. And if we haven’t yet started, when do we plan on getting something together? Would this be a difficult initiative to take? What are your thoughts?

Sarah Hasan is HEART’s Program facilitator and is passionate about helping to raise awareness about neglected issues in the Muslim community.

How do we Develop Healthy Sexuality in our Youth?

March 25, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

by Nadiah Mohajir

As we’ve collected stories for the past four years, we have met countless women who struggled with some aspect of their sexuality. We met Farah*, a young woman who had been married a couple of years, struggling to consummate her marriage due to a treatable condition called vaginismus, but too embarrassed to seek help for it. We met Asiya, a newlywed and newly pregnant, who did not receive any contraception counseling before she got married, and did not express her wishes to delay pregnancy to her husband due to shame. We met Sumbul, a young woman in high school, struggling to find a way to leave her unhealthy and abusive relationship, unable to out of fear of exposing her own religious transgressions of being in a premarital relationship. We met Suzan, a young adolescent paralyzed by a recent forced intimate encounter by a man who she once saw as her loving uncle. We met Tania, who is a closeted lesbian, afraid to come out and become an outcast in her Muslim community. And we met Layla, a single woman in her thirties, depressed and frustrated with the reality that her faith does not permit sex outside of marriage, yet facing the reality that she just engaged in intimate activity with three different men without protection. For each of these stories we heard, we met numerous women who could relate to and attest to having similar experiences, and numerous others who had their own unique stories. And so, we gathered many themes:

These stories belong to a diverse group of women – some of these women were not educated at all, while others had graduate degrees. In other words, level of education did not impact the likelihood of a woman struggling with her sexuality, nor was it an indication of how much (accurate) sexual health knowledge she had.
These womens’ backgrounds ranged from conservative, sheltered upbringings to traditional immigrant families to some of the most open, progressive and liberal upbringings. As such, we ask, how ingrained are the Muslim community’s attitudes and beliefs toward sexuality that even those from the most open and honest families are struggling with some aspect of their sexuality?
When asked why these women did not reach out for help as they struggled with these experiences, ALL of them had the same response: that they did not know who to reach out to, and they did not have a safe space in which they could share their struggles without being judged, reprimanded, blamed, or shamed.

A few posts ago, I explored the following question: have we confused sexuality with sexualization? The post explored the need to make an important distinction. Using Dr. Leonard Sax’s thesis, I explored how sexuality is about an individual’s identity, while sexualization is about being an object of display for others.

While this is an extremely crucial distinction to make, HEART’s work in the Muslim community has brought to the surface a common mistake that communities make: that in our efforts to push back on the sexualization of women and girls, we have created the notion that women and girls are asexual beings. In other words, our response to the hypersexualized society we live in has been to close the door on any conversation regarding sexuality and to discourage our women and girls to feel sexual desire, eventually inhibiting the development of a healthy attitude toward their sexuality.

The aforementioned stories paint a grave picture of the dangers of not instilling a healthy sexuality in our young people, and why we must begin creating programs that do so. These are attitudes and skills they will carry with them throughout their adulthood, and informs many of the decisions they make regarding their sexual and reproductive health. As such, it is crucial that we begin talking about sexuality so that they understand it is a healthy part of them, but not the only part of them, and definitely not what defines them. Additionally, it is no longer satisfying or effective to tell Muslim youth not to have sex and just end the discussion there. Offering context, allowing them to critically think through why the faith upholds those values, and emphasizing that sexuality is both normal and healthy, but that Islam has prescribed guidelines around when it is permissible to express it offers a more effective strategy. Finally, instilling healthy sexuality in young people gives them the necessary skills to be able to identify a healthy sexual relationship from an unhealthy sexual relationship. While there is no data specific to the Muslim community about the frequency of sexual violence, anecdotal evidence reveals that it is a significant problem that continues to remain unaddressed.

So how do we start instilling a healthy sexuality in our young men and women? Here are a few tips:

Teach them the difference between shame and modesty. As I explain in an earlier post, “there is a difference – and a pretty huge one – between shame and modesty. Islamic tradition and teachings encourage individuals to be modest with respect to their bodies and their sexuality. Muslims are encouraged to keep their sexual encounters private and between the spouses. That being said, Muslims are not, however, expected to feel shame or embarrassed about their bodies or sexual desire, provided that they commit to exercising those desires within the confines of a marital relationship. The unfortunate reality is that the Muslim community has repeatedly fused the words modesty and shame into one. It has been deemed immodest and shameful to speak about sex, let alone express sexual desire.” For more on this, please read here.
Start having open and honest conversations from a young age. The earlier you begin having these conversations, the easier and more natural these conversations will feel and the more comfortable they will feel asking questions or sharing concerns with you. Many professionals recommend having age-appropriate conversations about anatomy, safe and unsafe touch, as early as the age of two.
Teach them about what the religious texts say about sex and intimacy. Because of the general discomfort around these topics in the community, young people often are surprised to learn that these topics are addressed quite openly and in much detail in Islam’s religious texts – the Quran, hadith, and scholarly works such as those by Imam al-Ghazali. It is very empowering to know that the religious texts have addressed these very issues and allow for a greater appreciation of the faith’s approach to these topics. Explore questions together such as: what does it mean that sex is sacred and an act of worship?
Create a safe space so your children can come to you with sexual health questions, concerns, or even a problem without the fear of being judged or punished. The reality is that our children will find themselves in situations where they will have to make decisions about their sexual health. They may even make a decision (or two or three!) that are not in line with the Islamic values you uphold. Not being approachable to them, however, should they experience an issue or concern, further alienates them from your family, the faith, and most importantly, puts them at risk for continued poor decision-making – exposing them to unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, dating violence, and the like. Too many of our youth have expressed the fear of being disowned if they reach out to their parents for help with an issue that involves them violating some of the tenets of their faith or family values. For more detail on how to establish this safe space, please check out our toolkit on starting these conversations with youth here.
Teach them to challenge gender stereotypes. The gender roles that are continuously reinforced by society and media messaging have a big impact on how men and women interact in a sexual relationship. If women are raised with the notion that certain behaviors are unladylike or if men are raised to believe that men should be aggressive and strong and that women should not express sexual desire, we are feeding into some serious gender stereotyping. Challenge them to think critically of their female and male role models and how they are portrayed in film and media. Try to demonstrate how these gender roles are reinforced, and what longterm impact that has on promoting violence against women, the objectification of women, and unhealthy attitudes toward gender and sexuality.
Teach your children how to navigate the internet and other sources for health information. There is a ton of misinformation, as well as pornography, out there which can contribute greatly to both myths around sexual and reproductive health as well as developing unhealthy attitudes and expectations toward sex and sexuality. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than half of 7th-12th graders say they have looked up health information online in order to learn more about an issue affecting themselves or someone they know. More importantly, the websites they are turning to often have inaccurate information. A recent study examined 177 sexual health web sites and found that 46% of of those addressing contraception and 35% of those addressing abortion contained inaccurate information.
Similarly, teach them everything they need to know to be safe should they be in a situation where they need to make a decision about their sexual health (and they will be!). Teach them about contraception and pregnancy. Teach them about sexually transmitted diseases. Talk to them about about sexual identity. And most importantly, teach them how to identify and address acts of sexual violence committed towards them or their peers. Having these conversations and offering this vital information will not increase their likelihood to engage in sexual activity. In fact, research shows the exact opposite: there is no evidence that providing this information leads to increased rates of sexual activity; instead, providing this information allows young people to have the tools and skills to delay sex and make more responsible decisions.
Teach your children to be a resource of this information for others. Even if you make a commitment to having these conversations with your children, other parents may not be doing the same thing. Equipping your children with accurate information and teaching them to be resourceful can be a great skill when they are supporting a friend through some difficult situations.
Teach them the distinction between sexuality and sexualization. For more on this, see my earlier post here.
Say no to porn and other media that objectifies the woman and creates unhealthy sexual expectations. Numerous studies have shown the negative impact that prolonged exposure to pornography has. What’s more shocking are the statistics about exposure to pornography. 93% of boys and 62% of girls have been exposed to internet porn before the age of 18. Put another way, only 3% of boys and only 17% of girls have never seen internet pornography. A good percentage of pornography includes sex acts involving bondage, sexual violence, rape, and bestiality. Exposure to pornography, long term, and during such an important developmental stage has extremely serious implications for forming unhealthy attitudes and expectations toward sexuality. For example, studies have shown that early exposure to pornography is related to greater involvement in deviant sexual practice, such as rape. Additionally, pornography has been shown to re-wire the male brain to be aroused by making real sex and the real world boring in comparison. The effects of pornography on our youth can be discussed in great detail, and we do hope to, in upcoming posts.

These are just a few tips on how to begin nurturing a healthy sexuality in our youth in a way that acknowledges the challenges of growing up in a hypersexualized society and honoring the faith’s traditions and values of modesty and sanctity. What have you done to help promote a healthy sexuality in the youth in your life? We’d love to hear from you!

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Lessons from the Field: Debunking Myths among Muslim Youth

March 17, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

By Sameera Qureshi

“Because girls are dirty”, was one response a grade five girl gave to my question.

We were talking about menstruation and praying, and that Muslim females are excused from performing the five daily prayers and fasting when they are menstruating. But hearing a young girl call herself “dirty” was heartbreaking. Even more heartbreaking was the fact that this young girl most likely formed this attitude because of messaging she received from her family and cultural context.

I took this opportunity to speak with the entire class and challenge the idea that girls are dirty when they menstruate. The Quran uses the term “impure” and I had to explain what that meant. So I took the positive approach. I told the girls that God did not give periods to women to then treat them as dirty. Rather, when they menstruate, it may be a tough time physically if they have pain or are not feeling like themselves. Despite the fact that they cannot perform their prayers, I reminded them that they can still be mindful of God while they are menstruating. A girl’s period is a powerful sign that she will someday in the future be able to bring life into this world…what’s so dirty about that?

Another of my students showed me that her mother had slipped something into her backpack and she didn’t know what it was or how to use it. She pulled out the pad her mother had placed in her backpack, and I was surprised that her mom had not taken the steps to educate her daughter and instead just put it in her backpack. When I explained to her that it was for when she would get her period, she seemed confused. It seemed too abstract when we spoke about hormones from the brain and puberty and the myriad of changes she would soon experience. So I sat down with her and drew it out…yes, I drew what a period was and what happened, and she understood it! Especially when I whipped her pad out and showed her how to place it on her underwear, her face lit up because she now had nothing to worry out when she first saw a red spot on her underwear in the future.

And thus began my journey educating Muslim youth about their reproductive health. It will be three years this September that I came across a colleague, Val Barr, from the Calgary Sexual Health Center and we started talking about the lack of sexual health education in schools with Muslim students. The schools didn’t even cover curriculum material that was mandated by the province for health class. The boys and girls were not learning about their sexual and reproductive health, and it was obvious from the incidences arising that parents weren’t filling that void either. And so, we decided that it was time to seek out an Islamic-friendly curriculum for these schools.

Except there was one problem – there wasn’t such a curriculum publicly available anywhere. We contacted other Islamic schools in the area, researched online and spoke to staff and the Islamic school in our city. Nothing had been formalized and the staff each did their “own thing” with students, mostly basing the information they provided on questions that the students had. This did not prove to be effective as it could be since classes didn’t receive consistent information and there were a lot of important topics such as self-esteem, identity, values, and media critiquing skills being left out.

It took about a year and many meetings with the Islamic school staff to re-work the provincial curriculum into something that had an Islamic framework. The result was a five-lesson curriculum based on physical, spiritual, and social/emotional changes, and we called it the “Gender Education Curriculum.” This initial curriculum focused heavily on educating girls about the physical changes, since we realized that the vast majority had not received this information before. And so in the spring of 2013, we ran this version of the curriculum across all grades and developed a version for the boys, which was implemented by the male (Muslim) physical education teacher. The feedback from students was great and we were surprised at the 75% consented enrollment rate across all grades. While there were a few parents who were concerned about which topics we would cover and not cover, the majority were very supportive and we were incredibly transparent about what the students were learning.

Not surprisingly, I have spent much of my time debunking myths during these sexual health education sessions with Muslim girls. What’s even more challenging is the amount of time it takes for girls to shift their thinking. I find it quite interesting that while most mothers admit to spending only a few minutes to talk to their daughters about menstruation and how to use a pad, should a girl be so lucky, the strength it takes to break these myths makes me wonder how many times they’ve been exposed to this misinformation. Among the myths I have heard are the following:

Hygiene-related: taking a bath/shower when menstruating will slow down the flow and therefore lengthen the overall menstrual cycle for the month
Religious-themed: girls should pretend to fast and pray so that the males in their house aren’t aware they are menstruating
Relationship-related: It is improper for a Muslim girl to feel attracted to a boy
Virginity-related: tampons are haram – impermissible – because using them makes one lose her virginity.

Even upon explaining to girls how these myths are false and have been circulating for many generations prior to theirs, it takes a while for them to come to terms with the fact that what they’ve been learning from their families and cultural context is inaccurate. The work around myth busting will always continue. I have found it useful to refer to religious texts to overcome these cultural myths, but that’s a whole other blog entry in itself.

The more I work with grade five students especially, who are learning about their “private parts” for the first time, the more I am validated in my belief that this information is long overdue. The girls already have so much shame and embarrassment around their reproductive system, and I suspect this shame would not be quite as strong if girls were learning about ALL of their body parts from a much younger age. Children should be learning this important information as early as the age of two, which is what many professionals recommend, especially for child sexual abuse education. Some girls can be quite vulgar and crude when they talk about their bodies, which may deter parents from letting their girls begin learning this information so early. Girls need to be matter of fact about their sexual health, the same way they are when they get a cold or a nosebleed: there’s a process on how to seek support if needed, but there’s also a simple process that will help girls understand what’s going on with their bodies, why, and what they need to do.

And so, for those of you reading this entry, what can you do? The first step, whether you do or do not have children, is to assess your comfort level and knowledge of your own bodies and to seek out information you’re missing:

Do you know the scientific anatomical names for our external and internal reproductive system structures? And their functions?
Do you know the stages of the menstrual cycle?
Do you know why some women get cramps while others don’t, and where those cramps originate from?
Do you know how to determine when a woman is ovulating?
Do you know why and how to track a menstrual cycle?
Do you know healthy and unhealthy signs of menstrual cycles?
Do you know how to identify common medical conditions such as urinary tract infection and yeast infections?
Do you know the importance of women seeing a gynecologist, regardless of whether they are sexually active or not?

For myself, it wasn’t until I was in my early 20s that I understood what the menstrual cycle was, in all its amazing intricate details and stages! We can’t expect to teach our children about something that we are not comfortable with. I strongly recommend the resource Menstrupedia and a book by the Boston Women’s Collective called Our Bodies, Ourselves. Both are reliable and evidence-based, and written from a sensitive and easy to understand approach.

While there may be initial discomfort in learning about our reproductive systems, the more you learn, the more this feeling will subside. With the girls I teach, I remind them over and over again that God created them in His perfect image, and menstruation is something to feel empowered about, not stifled by. The more we learn and talk openly about a natural and powerful process that women have gone through well before our own time, the more we will break down the walls of shame and embarrassment around ourselves and other girls and women in our lives.

And if you’re wondering how to talk with your children (boys and girls) about puberty from an Islamic perspective…stay tuned for this discussion in my next blog post.

Have we Confused Sexuality with Sexualization?

March 12, 2014 by The Heart Team 2 Comments

by Nadiah Mohajir

Is there a difference between sexuality and sexualization? How can we determine if our young girls want to dress sexually because they feel empowered, or because they feel pressured to fit in? The age at which girls are expected to dress sexually has become younger and younger, and if we don’t teach young girls to push back on those pressures, we will not be preparing them for when they will need to make decisions regarding their sexual behaviors.

The recent uproar and controversy surrounding the Made in Bangladesh American Apparel ad featuring a topless Bengali woman illustrates that many, including the model herself, can no longer distinguish when an expression of sexuality is healthy, and when that expression is actually an object of sexualization. Tanzila Ahmed writes a thought provoking letter to Maks, the model featured in this ad, exploring the balance between being expressive and “exotified and commodified.” She continues to explore this, writing

“You think you chose to be creative — but in actuality you were plucked by your employer to sell an object. I believe the object you are selling is high-waisted pants, but it’s unclear from the photo. They are rolled down so suggestively. What American Apparel is selling is sex, and in this case, by having “Made in Bangladesh” across your bare breasts, you are selling fetishized sex. One where the brown woman is objectified.”

So how do we distinguish when a young person is displaying a healthy expression of their sexuality versus being an object of sexualization? Dr. Leonard Sax explains offers one distinction in his book, Girls on the Edge:

“Girls today are bombarded with the notion that revealing your body is a valid means of self-expression, even a manifestation of ‘girl power.’ As parents, we must reject the notion that girls have to reveal their bodies in order to empower themselves. Boys don’t have to take of their clothes to empower themselves. Girls shouldn’t either.

Sexuality is good, but sexualization is bad. Sexuality is about your identity as a woman or a man, about feeling sexual. Thats a healthy part of being human, a healthy part of becoming an adult. But sexualization is about being an object for the pleasure of others, about being on display for others. Sexuality is about who you are. Sexualization is about how you look.”

He continues to explain that younger girls are being pressured to dress sexually, and often times, before they even are aware of their own sexuality. So, in other words, they are socialized into thinking that dressing that way is the norm, and to dress that way is pleasing to others, and an empowering and healthy way to express one’s sexuality. This desensitization leads to a “no big deal” type attitude toward anything sexual, ultimately desensitizing girls, and making them more accepting of partaking in sexual activity to gain boys’ pleasure and popularity, not because they feel empowered. The pressures to dress a certain way are very strong and embedded in subtle and not so subtle messaging in music, videos, and advertising. Even a simple stroll through the girls’ clothing section in any department store is enough to see our young girls are expected to dress sexually well before they are even aware of their sexual desire. So what can we do to help our girls feel better about themselves and not feel inadequate when they do not give in to the pressures of dressing sexually? Here are a few tips.

Talk openly and frequently with your daughter about her thoughts on the matter. As your daughter gets older, she will become more aware of the pressures around her. She will begin to notice her friends may be dressing more provocatively, and may also feel frustrated at the perceived instant popularity some young girls are awarded, and may correlate it to the way they dress. Ask your daughter to share with you why this frustrates her, and ask her to think about what she may think are healthy ways of self-expression. What motivation do young girls have to dress sexually? What are the benefits and disadvantages? Also ask her to think about the messaging she is getting from female celebrities and the media. What standards of beauty are female celebrities setting? What gender stereotypes are they reinforcing? What makes a woman empowered? What qualities define a musician or actress’s talent?
Begin helping your daughter build her sense of self well before the teenage years. The teenage years are by far the most confusing, and overwhelming, with the sudden physical, emotional, and social changes adolescents are forced to go through at once. It is very easy for young people to feel pressured to compromise on their values, or more importantly, begin questioning the values they have been taught throughout their childhood. Suddenly, what the popular girl in school is advocating seems to make more sense than the “archaic” values that parents have been advocating. Furthermore, it is very easy for a young girl to become obsessed with an ideal, and attaching her self-worth to it – whether that obsession is being thin, being fashionable, playing sports, pursuing a particular hobby, or excelling in school If a young girl’s preoccupation with a specific ideal leads to an obsession, she is risking losing her self-worth if that ideal disappears. A strong sense of self, one that is based on values and character, and her spiritual relationship with God, rather than external capabilities or interests, protects her from losing her self-worth. So for example, a young girl who defines herself as the “smart girl” may become paralyzed if she is ever faced with a challenge that she finds difficult, one that she may not succeed at and lose her “smart girl” status. Developing a strong sense of self will also help young girls to fight off the pressures to dress a certain way to please others, as they won’t feel as strong a pressure to define themselves by how they look, but rather by the values they stand for. In addition, it will help them push back on even stronger pressures, such as participating in risky sexual activity or other risky behaviors.
Exemplify the confidence you want them to embody. A young girl looks up to the older females in her life to set the tone. If the important women in her life do not exude confidence about how they look, dress and feel, they are likely to not view that kind of appearance as beautiful or appealing. Even if you find yourself being critical of how you look, try not to allow her to catch on to your lack of confidence (and try to work on raising that confidence!).
Nurture your daughter’s healthy self-expressions and creativity. We all have preconceived notions of what matches, what looks good together, and how one should dress in certain occasions. The beauty of children is that they do not enter the world with these preconceived notions or expectations. Allowing them to explore their creativity and self-expression early on will foster confidence as they make decisions when they get older. Expecting them to adhere to certain fashion norms (such as no gym shoes with party dresses, etc) will only make it harder for them to push back on the more unhealthy fashion norms as they get older, like wearing makeup and dressing sexually at a young age.
Help them develop a healthy body image. Teaching your daughter early on the difference between sexuality, which is about who you are as a person, and sexualization, which is objectification for the pleasure of others, will help her identify her motivations for how to express herself through dress. Teach her to think critically about the contradictory messages she gets from the media, about what society expects of women and the methods through which women are objectified. When a young girl has a positive body image, and loves her body for what it is, she is less likely to want to objectify it for others’ pleasure, but rather more likely to cherish it and give it its due respect. Her empowerment will not come from what she chooses to wear or not to wear, but rather from somewhere deeper within her self.
Similarly, teach her to be media literate. Challenge her to think critically about the ads and the messaging she is seeing. Is that ad really selling cologne? Or is it selling sexuality and beauty? What techniques are advertisers using to sell their product? What feelings of inadequacy are they trying to appeal to? Teaching young people to critically think about and challenge the media’s messaging and imaging enables them to be more aware of when women are being objectified and to not fall prey to the advertising techniques.
Have similar conversations with your sons. We would be missing an important part of the equation if we don’t have similar conversations with our sons. If we don’t start also challenging the norms our young boys are socialized to, we’re not making progress toward changing the discourse, we’re only creating a greater rift between the genders. It’s essential to teach our young men to challenge the messages they get, and to learn early on about how to respect women, instead of sexualizing and objectifying them, and how to honor sexuality in a healthy and respectful way.

These are just a few tips as we think about pushing back on the sexualization of girls, and objectification of women. It is crucial as to help our young girls develop a strong sense of self and positive body image, as it goes hand in hand with healthy sexuality and responsible decision making.

Breaking Barriers to Raise Awareness about Sexual Abuse in India

March 11, 2014 by The Heart Team Leave a Comment

Trigger warning for sexual abuse

I am so excited to see so much groundbreaking work coming out of India. This video made by Childline, a hotline for kids in distress in India, is a short, animated film teaching kids how to identify incidences of sexual violence, and how to reach out for help. It does a great job of developing the two main characters, a sweet young playful girl named Komal, and her family friend, a loving and playful friend of her father’s. He buys her gifts, teaches her to keep secrets, and generally behaves in a very loving and caring manner toward her. Until the one day he assaults her, leaving her to feel ashamed and confused. She reaches out to her mother and father, who decides to call Childline. The video then shows a counselor coming in to comfort Komal, and teach her and her classmates about how to identify and address child abuse. I particularly found this video to be especially great because:

it is respectful. There is modesty associated around the body parts in the South Asian world. It is considered disrespectful to openly use the names of male and female anatomy. In some communities, simply using the term can be enough to shut the individual out, making the lesson no longer effective. The video takes this into account, and still teaches about the four “no-touch zones” while honoring that cultural practice. The video uses diagrams and other animated images to specifically demonstrate where those private areas out, while still respecting the practice of not using those terms.
it offers clear and easy tips for anyone to be a resource. The second half of the video teaches what children can do to identify these situations, what they can do to help each other, and who are “safe” and “trustworthy” adults.
it clearly pushes back against victim blaming and shaming, which is rampant in South Asian societies. A big barrier to publicly address incidents of sexual violence in India and other South Asian societies is that often, the survivor is further victimized and blamed for the situation, rather than holding the aggressor accountable. This short film pushes back on the notion that it is the fault of the victim, and instead shows the aggressor being held responsible for his actions. It allows victims the space to come forward without feeling the stress of being blamed or judged.
it offers parents and teachers a way to facilitate a difficult conversation. Because of the taboo and embarrassment around these topics, in particular sexual abuse, it remains unaddressed, leaving many children unequipped to identify when they are in such situations. This video provides an excellent opportunity for parents and teachers to begin this much needed conversation.

Watch this video – also available in several Indian dialects, here, and let us know what you think!

The Heart Team

Footer