“After the honorable wedding”.. Invitations to teach sex education in Egypt

After the “Sharifa wedding” caused much controversy in Egypt, some voices returned to demand the necessity of teaching sex education in schools, saying that what happened was evidence of widespread ignorance among many young people.

According to local news portals, the husband divorced his wife on the first night of their marriage, claiming she was not a virgin, prompting the girl’s father to request a virginity test for his daughter to silence the tongues of all who questioned his daughter’s daughter. “honor.”

In this regard, the well-known Egyptian journalist, Ibrahim Issa, through the show he hosts on a local channel, explained that there is no fault or objection to teaching sex in schools instead of producing “sexually deformed” generations.

He added: “Egyptian society is a sexually ignorant society…and the guy, my eyes, enters the wedding night. I don’t know if the girl is a virgin or not, because he is sexually ignorant.”

And the video incident of the “chaste chaste wedding” caused a lot of controversy and outrage on social networks in Egypt, after a minor girl appeared in one of the villages lifted on her shoulders, and hundreds of men and women surrounded her cheering as many cars honked..

During the “Cairo Talk” show, which airs on the “Cairo and the People” channel, Issa confirmed the existence of a “distortion in the sexual culture of Egyptians”, adding: “They say that (sexual culture) is a lack of modesty … and this is lack of reason Sex is not (un)forbidden Sex is a human act that takes place within the framework of the Sharia and the law in a relationship called a marriage relationship.

Issa claimed that “Egyptians have the highest percentage of access to porn sites in the (world) and this is not important in the eyes of many…the important thing in their opinion is that (sex education) is not taught in schools…and this is a matter of madness .”

He added contemptuously: “It has become normal for people to see sex in secret and not accept it being taught in schools.”

He pointed out that underage marriages are “a reflection of the dominance of Salafist ideology” over Egyptian society, stressing that incidents of child marriage have spread like wildfire, “especially in our rural communities.”

“conservative state”

For her part, the feminist activist and human rights activist, Mai Selim, in an interview with Al-Hurra, believes that the Salafists do not have that much influence in imposing or preventing the teaching of curricula in schools, noting that the problem lies in the fact that “the Egyptian state is a conservative state that refuses to clash with the prevailing values ​​in society and enter into such conflicts.

She added: “It may be possible to influence the presence of some Salafist teachers who try to impose their strict logic and views on students in many aspects, including those that may be related, closely or remotely, to sexual culture.”

Last September, the Egyptian Ministry of Education decided to integrate the concepts of sexuality education, sexual harassment and physical violence into the primary education curriculum.

The speech emphasized the need to implement an awareness program in primary and secondary schools (general – technical), with the participation of “visiting nurses – psychologists – social workers – religious teachers”.

The letter emphasized the need to “provide posters and booklets” to raise awareness of the dangers of abnormal deviations in behavior and to publish them in places where children and adolescents gather (clubs – schools – universities – gymnasiums – homes for children without parental care).

“people’s rule”

When Al-Azhar University professor of comparative jurisprudence, Saad Al-Din Al-Hilali, asked him about the ruling of Islamic law regarding the possibility of teaching sex education to adolescents, he replied in his interview with Al-Hurr: “This is the wrong question. . Who am I to speak for Islam? I am just one of more than 100 million Egyptians. They have the right to express their opinion.”

And he added, explaining: “I believe that the sovereignty of our Lord (rule is only for God) is for the whole people, not for its individuals, and therefore when we discuss this issue with its positive and negative sides in social dialogue and in agreement with specialized institutions, then, for example, the Ministry of Education presents its project related to the teaching of this article to the Assembly of People’s Representatives, which consists of 596 representatives representing all sectors of the nation, and whatever is approved, I as an individual agree with it.

For his part, Selim confirms that teaching sex education is an issue that has occupied most human rights activists in Egypt for years, pointing out that “adolescents, especially girls, have the right to know important and necessary details about their bodies, due to its importance in ensuring their other human rights.”

Salim emphasized that many young people, even after they get married, have “extremely limited information or a lot of inaccuracies and mistakes, as a result of getting it from yellow books or pornographic sites, which leads to numerous social and humanitarian problems and dilemmas.”

The Egyptian human rights activist emphasized that the lack of awareness of sexual culture and the lack of scientific and simplified speech about it in the media, as well as the absence of seminars to raise awareness of this harm, contribute to the spread of ignorance under the pretext of unwillingness to “westernize our society.”

And she continued: “During my many years of human rights work, I have come across very unfortunate incidents of girls being killed by their families under the pretext that they were not virgins at the time of their marriage. Many parents do not know that there is a rubber hymen that does not leads to blood when broken.”

She added: “In fact, the level of ignorance can reach doctors, because many gynecologists and obstetricians have caused the death of girls when they ignorantly told their families that the hymen was ruptured, so forensic medicine is the only one capable of confirming a girl’s virginity or not.”

And she added, “Here I want to emphasize my rejection of those practices represented by the so-called (virginity tests), because honor is not so much connected with female genitalia as with lofty thoughts, socially useful work and the protection of the rights of women, children and all vulnerable minorities in society.”