What sexual health education would you suggest for faith-based communities?
Nov. 18, 2021 Sameera Qureshi
What sexual health education would you recommend for faith based communities?
Fantastic question. Having worked with Muslims in the field of sexual health for over ten years, I want to say, in summary, that we need to learn everything that everybody else would learn using Islamic perspectives and grounding this information in our tradition, which means that sexual health for Muslims not only addresses the body and mind, it also addresses spirituality in our soul.
And because we understand sexual health as Muslims as something that God has given us as a responsibility to take care of, it means that we have to learn it across our whole life. And it also means that sexual health is not only about sex, it's about knowing our body parts, thinking about our reproductive health, our fertility, our menstrual cycle, our body image and self worth, our ability to navigate relationships when we're trying to seek a partner and spouse marriage after we have a child and as we age.
So Islam, for example, see sexual health as something that grows and develops with us. So when we're learning about sexual health from faith based perspective, we have to understand, first of all, how did God create us? Do we only have a body in mind? Well, no, we also have spirituality in our soul.
So sexual health education for faith based communities has the same holistic, comprehensive, and accurate information as any other community. The only difference is that we want to understand those perspectives from our faith tradition, using uncolonised and spiritual perspectives that empower us to make decisions and that are not fear and shame based.
So overall, if you're faith based, you also have sexual health, the approach is different and the information is the same.
Fantastic question. Having worked with Muslims in the field of sexual health for over ten years, I want to say, in summary, that we need to learn everything that everybody else would learn using Islamic perspectives and grounding this information in our tradition, which means that sexual health for Muslims not only addresses the body and mind, it also addresses spirituality in our soul.
And because we understand sexual health as Muslims as something that God has given us as a responsibility to take care of, it means that we have to learn it across our whole life. And it also means that sexual health is not only about sex, it's about knowing our body parts, thinking about our reproductive health, our fertility, our menstrual cycle, our body image and self worth, our ability to navigate relationships when we're trying to seek a partner and spouse marriage after we have a child and as we age.
So Islam, for example, see sexual health as something that grows and develops with us. So when we're learning about sexual health from faith based perspective, we have to understand, first of all, how did God create us? Do we only have a body in mind? Well, no, we also have spirituality in our soul.
So sexual health education for faith based communities has the same holistic, comprehensive, and accurate information as any other community. The only difference is that we want to understand those perspectives from our faith tradition, using uncolonised and spiritual perspectives that empower us to make decisions and that are not fear and shame based.
So overall, if you're faith based, you also have sexual health, the approach is different and the information is the same.
