Lack of Relationships in AIS-R

 

By: Hilma Bjork

Edited by: Abbi Jeffers, Qayla Yusri and Trinity Blakely

 

 

300 years ago, young adults would be starting families and fulfilling the duties of parents. Biologically, any female human who has started their menstrual cycle is capable of developing families. Throughout the hundreds of years relationships have changed drastically. Now a days, people are only starting to date in their early teens and with all the birth control pills and “protection”, having children isn’t something that teenagers are doing on a regular basis.

 

According to a published article in Time magazine, people are getting married on average, at the age of 27 for women and 30 for men, which means that getting pregnant isn’t usually something that happens until they are married and in their late 20’s.

 

The United States of America seems to be one of the countries where there are a lot of teens dating. According to a website dedicated to giving factual statistics, over 60% of American teenagers said that in 2014 they had been or were in a relationship. Abbi Jeffers, an American student believes that “It’s most likely because of the environment they grow up in.”

 

Being a student myself at AIS-R, I observe that Islam is why most people at AIS-R assume that students don’t date very often. Because of their parents and the way that they were raised, they would call it “haram” which means sinful/forbidden. This is because AIS-R is in a Muslim country, Saudi Arabia.

 

One of the laws Saudi Arabia has, is that nobody who has gone through or is going through puberty is allowed to show any sign of affection for anyone else that is not within their close family. “Body contact is not allowed with one who is not allowed to [be] look[ed] at (in most religious muslim families with high morals, men aren’t allowed to look at a woman without a hijab unless you are the husband, or immediate family), and every kind of touching of the body to any part of the other one’s body is haram and one must refrain from this; unless it’s from on top of the clothing and it is without the intention of lust.” - one of the rules related to socializing, quoted from the website Al-Islam.org, a website that lists the translated rules and ethics taken from the Qur’an.

 

Mrs. Mathy, the middle school counselor responded to what makes our school so different to other schools and said that since AIS-R is in a Muslim country, the laws and rules of Islam are somewhat transferred into our school which means that girls and boys aren’t allowed to show any signs of affection (unless it’s a friendly hug). This is because of Saudi’s own rules against men and women showing affection towards each other (holding hands, kissing, hugging for extended periods of time etc.) Because our school has a lot of Muslim students in it, the school needs to respect their culture and religion and have to prohibit and limit what girls and boys can do while dating.

 

An eighth grade student, who doesn’t date because she qualifies herself as a

very religious Muslim said that: “Since it’s a family rule that we are not allowed

to date, my parents have told me that, you would gain God's respect [if you don’t 

date.]".”

 

According to a survey that was given to all 8th grade students in AIS-R, only 42.6%

said that they have been in a relationship. That is 20% less than average american

schools. When I asked Ellie Kim (a student who has been in multiple relationships),

about who is dating, she replied with “[Students date] people in their group because

they consider them self similar to each other. People do like to hangout with

someone that [they] can understand.”

 

As Saudi Arabia is being influenced by other countries, cultures and religions, men and women are starting to be introduced to a more lenient nature and attitude towards the idea of young romance and dating.