Unsurprisingly three quarters of girls found their experiences harmful. Sadly this is just one aspect of the prolific teenage dating scene. Sexually transmitted diseases (STI’s) which affect fertility and even life expectancy have only increased, despite government initiatives. STI’s have increased by a whopping 58% between 2003 and 2007 amongst under-16s. Additionally the much debated issue of teenage pregnancies is rarely out of the news, recently punctuated by the 13 year old boy who fathered a child with his 15 year old girl friend. Over the years the government has ploughed millions of pounds into numerous initiatives to curb the rise of these problems. Blame is put down to numerous issues, Pat Troop, chief executive of the Health Protection Agency cited mediums like television programmes as a source of influence since they encouraged unsafe sex. To curb these and other influences the call from bodies like the NSPCC and the government is to increase sexual education. In a bid to catch them as young as possible the controversial SRE lessons has been working its way into UK schools. These lessons are aimed at teaching children as young as 5 a range of issues from different ‘kinds’ of relationships to the names of intimate body parts.
In trying to protect the youths right to choice the government initiatives are aimed at helping them make an informed decision whilst providing them with facilities like sexual health clinics to allow them to do what they wish as long as its ‘safe’. Despite many attempts the government continues to fail to make any major dent in these problems. The recent £250 million Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was deemed “absolutely disastrous” by David Paton, a professor at Nottingham University Business school at a meeting with government officials. It is clear that the strategy to solve and cater to the results of a certain kind of behaviour has failed and will continue to fail. Despite the government’s best efforts it is clear that the problem is not a lack of knowledge amongst teenagers, since no matter how much money, education and facilities are offered, the quality of teenagers lives are getting increasingly worse. One aspect of the lives of youth which is never under discussion is what really drives them to ignore education or even common sense and to act in a potentially harmful way. The values these teenagers learn from society is to live life in any way they want, to think only of themselves and their enjoyment in their daily decisions.
The idea of personal freedom means that regardless of abundant education and publicity rigorously depicting the horrors of their actions, the individual is still free to do as they wish regardless of how it affects them and the society they live in. A lack of accountability accompanies this value leading to irresponsible behaviour, leading to insecure relationships, the spreading of STI’s and babies being born to children.
Problems relating to teenagers are the tip of the western secular society’s iceberg. However instead of considering their own issues, the western governments, politicians, and media have taken it upon themselves to be saviours of Muslims, calling for us to change (or rather distort) our deen and to come to the “light” of their values of freedom. Last month, UK minister Jim Fitzpatrick accused the segregation of men and women at Islamic weddings as a sign of increasing radicalisation amongst Muslims in Britain.
This August, Sayeda Versi, the Conservative Party representative for Community Cohesion attacked the issue of polygamy in the Muslim community in the UK.
As the ummah of the Prophet (saw) who have been ordered to protect our deen at all times and spread the dawah of Islam we should not allow these attacks to shame us into the changing and reforming of our deen. We need to make the carriers of backward ideas such as “freedom” think first about their values and way of life and present Islam as having real solutions for the misery sown within societies by the Western liberal system.
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