Muslim clerics declared victory last week in Niger after the government agreed to withdraw a course on sexual and reproductive health from the school syllabus. Islamic organizations and leaders denounced the classes as against Muslim values. Niger has the world’s highest fertility rate and 30 percent of girls are married by the age of 15. The country reports that average of around eight children per woman.
By age 18, 77 percent of girls are married in Niger which is predominantly Muslim.
The course, “Training on sexual and reproductive health of adolescents and young people for responsible behaviour,” was introduced in September in conjunction with the United Nations. It taught that people could decide if and when they had romantic relations or marriage. That outraged many clerics.
World health officials denounced the decision and noted that 73 percent of adolescent girls are still illiterate in Niger because they are forced into marriages. The spokesman for Islamic groups, Sambo Ousman, rejected such arguments as teaching “wrong” lessons and said that the decision to end the program affirmed that “the good running of education must involve Muslims.” He added that “Islamic associations do not in any way accept . . . the total lack of morality by undermining our values without exception, the confusion between freedom and licentiousness and the legalization of fornication and homosexuality.”
Not one Dime of my money, to feed them!!!!
Whatever you other humans do, dont send free food to this Niger place. They need to try to make it on their own and if their own notions of ten kids to a female hold any water I would be surprised.
Americans don’t watch children starve. We should work with them where possible.
Oh, then never mind.
Then it’s only second most.
hmmm, Pogo, it’s your comments that are the most inane. If you agree that they’re inane, why do you make them?
Niger please!
bettykath, I agree.
Most inane comments every.
“Small amounts of philosophy bring us to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.” Francis Bacon
It is apparent to me, a man who rejects organized religion but has a deep faith in God, that many atheists walk around angry w/ large chips on their shoulder. Pity. They are glass half empty people.
What a gyp, huh?
Geez, then what happened to you?
“The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.”
— Abu Ala Al-Ma’arri (Arabian Philosopher, 973–1058 CE)
In 2013, an al-Qaeda group beheaded a statue of the man in Syria, proving the wisdom of his words.
mespo – “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Albert Einstein
ever charged
I can just hear it now.
“Fornicator! Halt! Seize them!” “No no I was was only helping him with a stuck zipper! Really Sir, please don’t arrest me!”
Annie – in all the time it was on the books in Arizona, no one was every charged.
Whoa, we’d have to build more prisons. Some fornocator’s prisons and some gay folk’s prisons. Plus we’d need the Morality Police, and some laws defining what is misdemeanor to felony.
Squeeky:
what do you think of my limerick on the Reagan/Obama round 3 thread?