Naima B. Robert – What Are The Traditional Ways in Which Sexuality Was Taught

What are the traditional ways in which sexuality was was taught to

young people, the next generation within families? What have you

seen in cultures around the world?

So I'll start with with my own culture with African American

culture, I think, so I wasn't born and raised Muslim, I accepted

Islam at the age of 23. And what I've noticed, and African American

Muslim,

you know, general culture, is that we tend to be very conservative in

terms of how we teach about *. And that's because we have

received a filtered down and colonized version of Islam.

That has been delivered to us, not from European colonialism, but

from Arab colonialism. And from South Asian influence, because

when these people came into America, they were coming, they

were shielding their Islam. And so they had to really sort of almost

hide it in some cases, right. And then they're delivering it.

They're filtering it to these African American people in a way

to say you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that, because

we don't want to, we don't want anybody to really look at us or

notice that. So this is haram. This is haram this, these things

are not haram, but we just don't want to draw attention. So you

have at some African American communities that are extremely

conservative, ultra conservative, we don't want to talk about it,

babies just come, we don't need to, we don't need to say anything,

we don't need to prepare our children for it for marriage.

Conversely, in West Africa, you have a completely different

approach a completely different approach. So you have learning

about womanhood and femininity starting from a very young age.

You have young girls and young boys learning about their role

within the family, but also learning how to nurture those

innate gifts that they have physically, and innate roles that

they will take on within the culture. So you have the concept

of John Gay, for example, which comes from Senegal, which is the

Senegalese art of elegance, and seductive confidence, right? Men

can be young gay men and women can be John Gay, if a woman is gay,

they call her drunk mama. So you'll have women who are very

full bodied, I will be considered younger, my right a woman who in

America would be considered plus size or fat, right? rolls on her

neck sick risks. She is a woman who is almost like the embodiment

of sexiness, the embodiment of womanhood, she can be a very

spiritual woman, and also be the assemble of sexiness at the same

time. It's like a cognitive dissonance when you're raised in a

very conservative household. You have in West Africa, where young

girls are given specific instruction on how to prepare for

marriage long before they get married. This is this is a part of

the culture and these are Islamic culture. So in Senegal, where my

spiritual community is, is 99% Muslim, but you have people who

talk openly about *, who talk openly about the importance of

pleasing your partner who speak openly about the importance of

fulfilling the rights of your spouse, not just the right of the

husband, but the right of the wife also. So when people say, well,

Muslims don't like to talk about *, I always say but which

Muslims, right? Which Muslims don't like to talk about *. So

when it comes to African Americans, I always say we need to

look for where our culture comes from. Because even if you talk

about let's talk about India, right, India has a rich history, a

rich history of era tautology, erotic literature, research into

pleasure. But what happened? The Victorian era, you had the

colonial empire, right? Arabs, same thing. Arabs invented

iridology. But all of these things have been watered down through

colonial influence. So I think it's important for us to to take

our Islam with us, but go back and look at how to how to our

ancestors, how do they traditionally learn about what to

do when you get married? Because you know, now you have Muslims who

get married, and they'll reach out and they'll say, auntie, I've been

married for six months, my husband and I have not been able to have

*. I don't have imagined listeners, there's no problem. We

just don't know what to do. Oh, wow. And we're afraid to ask. Hmm,

so it's, it's it's troubling because like you said, That's not

from our deen. But traditionally, we've got I think we've gotten so

far away from our traditional cultures, feeling that the more

Muslims the more religious we are, the further we have to get away

from our cultures. And that's just not true.

It's panela I think that that is such an interesting we've had

another guest as well who spoke about you know, the the influence

of the Victorians and just the colonial influence on our

attitudes towards you know, what really is * positive approach in

Islam, right, where * is not bad. It's not dirty. It's not

shameful. It's encouraged encouraged to have lots of it, and

have lots of women as well.

A lot of wives have even more and more children. And you know, it's

like it's all good, right?

So it's interesting for those of us now, because we were going into

the next generation, because we've had the, you know, the boomers did

their thing. We've got, you know, Gen X, like me, maybe you that are

millennials, I think that they are no longer connected to whatever

culture their parents came from. And what they would have taken is

whatever their parents didn't tell them, but they went out and

research for themselves. So the millennials, and then the Gen z's,

their influences our pop culture, what's happening out in the world,

which is almost a shame, because if they decide to start

practicing, and cutting out those influences, now there's a void,

because you know what I'm saying, like there isn't an Islamic

version of what they would have received out there in the world.

So hopefully, conversations like this will, will spark, you know,

more conversations, you know, more work out there in the world work

like that, you know, what you're doing and what Brother Habiba kind

is doing and you know, what everybody who we're talking to on

this series is doing, so that we have,

we have our own way of approaching almost everything in life. And all

we want is to be able to access it so that we can live that

holistically Islamic lifestyle, including in the bedroom.

And that's I think that's why I focus, I focus very heavily on Gen

Z, and my work, I'm Gen X, I'm 46. So the majority of the people who

follow me are young enough to be my my children, like I could be

their mother. But I realized that there's a void, because I know

what my friends who have children in their 20s having told them, I

don't have children in my 20s my children are young, but I know

what my nieces and nephews don't know. So I want to be I want to

stand in to fill in that gap. Because you're right. Once they

once they say, okay, you know, I really want to lean into my Deen

more. But I still need to know all of these things about life. I want

to be able to show them. Well listen, I'm Muslim. And let me

tell you what you can do. Let me let me help you to fill those

voids that you have because which what you said is absolutely

correct. We've gotten so far away, which is why I focus a lot on

reclaiming those cultures and taking what's good from our past

and merging it with the President.