In Western cultures nearly all public schools, including college campuses, are coed. In recent years dormitories and student housing facilities have become integrated as well. In the beginning of coeducational settings many parents were worried and did not like the idea, but as time passed, desensitization set in and they came to accept it. However, the trend persists and so do college drinking parties, teen pregnancy, and cases of venereal disease. Henry Wechsler, director of the Alcohol Studies Program at Harvard School of Public Health, said his team surveyed 17,592 students on 140 U.S. campuses in 1993. The results were listed in the Journal of the American Medical Association as follows: “Forty-four percent reported binging[1] on alcohol on at least one occasion in the two weeks before the survey. At about one third of the schools more than 50% of the students were bingers.” A problem defined in the study was “that nearly half of U.S. college students who are given to alcohol make life miserable for much of the other half.” The study further cited, “At big drinking schools sober students were twice as likely as those at the lower-level schools to be insulted or humiliated; to be pushed, hit or assaulted; and to experience unwanted sexual advances.”[2]
The aforementioned liberal practice of coeducational facilities is in direct contrast to what would be described as an Islamic education, where all levels of education are segregated, except, perhaps, the very first grades of elementary school and kindergarten. This sets a very different stage for learning in comparison to the West’s education system, where school is equated with a place to practice social interaction. Education structured Islamically is not necessarily thought of as a place of social importance and is more conducive to learning and less distracting for both genders. The student’s attention is on learning rather than sexual thought processes. This is very helpful during the teen years when hormones begin to change. In Islamic settings Muslim families do not have the various life altering and sometimes life threatening problems seen in Western cultures, such as teen delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, rape, or teen pregnancy.
One dean, who has been working on college campuses for twenty-five years, expressed that physical and sexual abuse towards women “has been occurring all along.” And he voiced his opinion, “Now, the problem is out of the closet, thank goodness… society isn’t going to tolerate sexual abuse as appropriate behavior any more. The whole consciousness has changed. Everyone views the body as private.”[3] If he is referring to Western trends, then he is sadly mistaken. With only a quick glance into the public, the magazine stands, the television and video markets, the way men and women interact with one another, and the way women show off their bodies in public, there is no indication to the validity of his statement. The Western woman’s body is not kept private whatsoever. The fact is, she is exposing more and more than ever before.
The problems created by coed facilities do not only plague college students. Problems begin at earlier ages, in the junior high and high school level, where students face invasion of their privacy due to a poorly fashioned education system. Surveys are making some startling revelations. One article devoted pages to outline what parents of the 1990’s are facing. It included this alarming statistic: “It is projected that 40% of American 14 year old girls will get pregnant by the time they are 19 years old.”[4] As the evidence mounts, casual relations between the sexes has created numerous problems which must be addressed. How long will it be before changes are implemented in order to save many women from being victimized?
[Women’s Ideal Liberation: Islamic Versus Western Understanding by Rukaiyah Hill Abdulsalam, p. 95-97]
Notes:
[1] Defined as downing five drinks in a row for men and four in a row for women.
[2] Study by Henry Wechsler, “Collegians’ Drunkenness Ruining Campus Life for Many Sober Students,” Arab News, 1993.
[3] The Record, “Sexual Abuse on Campus, Where is the True Gentlemen Today?” Center for Women Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, Spring, 1987, p. 7.
[4] Hal Mattern, “Good Values vs. Bad Influences,” The Arizona Republic, Section H, September 5, 1993.
