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.”
@ Annie – That is the effectiveness of conservative propaganda against atheists/non-religious and the revisionist history that so dominates our current so called news outlets – and likely the Iranian news flow as well.
Bill W – the news media is run by atheists so I do not see why you are complaining about their ‘revisionist history’?
Atheist fanatics the world over wish to rule the world and bring death and destruction to humans in the name of communism.
No need to conflate them, they’re simply variations of the same song.
If true that ‘no freedom loving person agrees with Communism,’ one would have to conclude that socialists hate freedom.
And one would be right.
What are these Muslim values that are being protected in Niger? Life is precious and that life begins at conception and ENDS at birth? Is it that women are nothing but birthing machines? Religious fanatics the world over wish to rule the world and bring death and destruction to humans in the name of god. Not one more $ to any theocracy and end all relgious privilege in this country. It is time for a change.
And Pogo,
We know you’re trying to conflate European socialism with Communism.
They are still Communists, despite the patina of Capitalism Pogo. No freedom loving person agrees with Communism.
Bill, yet we see so many on the right who are not even fundies themselves side with and identify with the Religious Right. I bet those females in Iran who marched in the streets in favor of the overthrow of the Shah never pictured themselves so subjugated 30 years into the future.
Annie – maybe those women who marched in the streets to help overthrow the Shah would have been better off staying at home.
One negative effect of wide availability of birth control is that high achieving women have fewer babies and underachieving women have more. Average intelligence levels decline.
The fundamentalist religion in China that is taking away freedom and liberty and controlling bedroom behavior is …atheism.
SWM, using that poor dead woman as an incubator was beyond ghoulish.
Are we ever surprised when religion attempts to control all aspects of bedroom behavior? It’s not as bad in the USA…..yet – but the fundies here are certainly trying hard to take away our freedoms/liberties here.
SWM, I’m fairly certain Pogo here is all on board for the personhood of a zygote.Annie. I don’t think that man in Ft worth was too happy about what happened to his wife.
Annie – my mother would happily had 12 children but my father died when she was pregnant with the 6th. I grew up around big families. With 6 we were on the small end of the people we knew. One family had 20 children.
For someone with a masters in nursing you know little about the history of contraception. Someday you might want to read up on it.
Worldwide, nothing has been as effective in reducing fertility as the education of females.
/pedantic alert/
Actually, the women are still fertile, they just now know what to do about it. How to control the output of their fertility.
Agreed education is the key not only for women but for men as well.
SWM, I’m fairly certain Pogo here is all on board for the personhood of a zygote.
Pogo,
Because when women become educated, their eyes are opened to the possibility that they can be more than simply baby machines and domestic servants.
Annie, Yep, We have a few personhood amendments on the ballot here this November.
Islam is a medieval barbarian political ideology disguised as a religion, so no surprise here.
It would be far more effective to focus on female literacy than a ‘Reproductive Health Course’.
Worldwide, nothing has been as effective in reducing fertility as the education of females.
Heck, teach them to read the Quran.
Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant, churning out future jihadists. Another reason to keep religion out of public schools, to never have a state religion, to reject a male dominated misogynistic society and to place the utmost of respect for the right to CHOOSE marriage and children or career first. Women in our modern societies are hearing disparaging comments by traditionalists over their choices. Niger is a country in which there are none to little choice for women.
Sandra Fluke is on her way!!