Sex Education In Bangladesh

I was reading Suroor’s post on sexual promiscuity amongst Muslims.

Bangladesh always seemed to have a laissez-faire attitude of gender segregation. Women, due to poverty, would often not cover up as much. It was a common sight to see poor women working as labourers in constructions of buildings all over Dhaka, carrying trays of bricks balanced precariously on top of their heads, wearing nothing but a sari draped over their body. Blouses were something of a curiosity. If you check out the movie Chokher Baali starring Aishwarya, you will see that when the husband brings home a gift for his wife – a blouse – it is treated as an exotic attire by her.

Similarly, due to circumstances, often large groups of people lived together in the same space and again segregation was chucked out of the window in favour of more practical solutions.

In such a scenario, you can’t help but be aware of the growing attraction of the other sex, and the sexuality that is a woman’s body. Hence, the need for sex education is paramount, and it’s truly lamentable that there is none.

My first introduction to the topic of sex was, in all places, a mosque. We were visiting our village and it was time for Jummah. I still remember what the imam of the straw hut (or the village mosque) said.

“I am told that in places like England (he called it Bilait) now men go to bed with men. Astagfirullah! Even in nature, if we take the example of monkeys (the term Bandor) we see that the male monkey is going to mount the female monkey. The key fits into the lock, brothers!!! The lock does not fit into the lock, nor does the key fit into the key!!!”

For some reasons monkeys, Jews and sex is a common topic for Bangladesh khutbahs.

And of course the whole congregation (men only, naturally) did taubah taubah and promised never to be seduced into the wicked West, before going home to count the amount of money their son working in London (probably as a waitor) was sending back to the village every month.

When I asked my father what the hell the imam was talking about I got some round about answer. I remember when I was six or seven and had asked some huzur (who used to teach us Quran) about where babies came from, he had replied that when the parents pray all night for a baby Allah is Merciful and puts a new baby beside them. Well, redefine prayer (“Oh God Oh God”) and he was closer to the truth than most people!

Around grade 7, I switched to an English medium education. For those of you in Bangladesh it was Scholastica and O/A Levels. All the students in English medium schools in Bangladesh are either rich kids (they are private schools and expensive) or army brats (free education for army kids).

Contrary to popular belief it is the lower, rural “religious” and poorer class of Bangladeshis that are more sexually promiscuous than the upper, richer, secular class. It is quite common for a maid hailing from a poor village to sell her body in the capital. It was well known that two former doctors of PG Hospital in Dhaka were the go-to guys for pregnant maids who needed a quick abortion. And often it was not the master of the house but his son who, lacking proper sex education, used the nearest available woman acceding to his requests.

The richer folk, on the other hand, my classmates, were educated in sexually transmitted diseases and other dangers of promiscuity. Thus it was not religion (of which they had less) that stopped them from behaving un-Islamically, it was sex education.

Not to say that we got sex education any better. We just had access to all the materials and we had to look them up ourselves. Our O Level Biology book had Chapter 10 on Human Reproduction. It was marked “self-study” lol the teachers (all male) could not bring themselves to teach it (to a male class).

Not that students while not being promiscuous were not engaging in sex. It was quite common for the elite girl to shack up with her “boy-friend” while on campus. We used to have a joke.

Q: What’s there to do in Dhaka?

A: An NSU student.

NSU was North South University. To be honest, I don’t know why it got such a bad rep, but it was the party central. We used to joke that “What does an NSU girl do when she wakes up?” and the answer “Walk home”. But yes, if orthodox Bengalis delude themselves into thinking that just because they don’t mention sex to their kids which is why their kids are not doing it, they are living in a dream world.

What stopped many more religious minded people from experimenting with sex (and believe you me the options in Bangladesh are not limited as they are reputed to be in the Middle East)? It was an Islamic education. They knew where the boundaries were. So, to conclude, sex education combined with Islamic education is what is needed in the Muslim lands.

And the need to be a little less judgemental of other people would go a long way for sure, but let’s not shoot for the moon yet …