SPECIAL ASPECTS OF GIRLS' EDUCATION

In the majority of cases, parents find great difficulty in rearing their daughters; what are the special aspects of this nurturing?

We need to understand that a girl is as much a human being as a male or a son, and it is essential that we nurture her humanness in a way which does not oppress her spirit, and which does not make her feel that her conduct is always suspect, or that she must always defend her behavior every moment or in every situation-as if she were besieged by others' observations.

Traditionally, nurturing has rested on the principle that the girl represents either [collective] vice or [collective] virtue, and that she is to be protected from the males, and that we must put her in a closed box to which only the father and the brother have the key. Whenever someone commits lewd acts, Islam views that as an individual flaw; when the girl commits a lewd act, it is her own blemish. The family does partake of this fault. When a boy commits a lewd act, it is the boy who is blemished, not the family-for the breach is his alone, not the family's.

We must, therefore, raise the girl to know that she is a person with her own wants and desires in life, and there is a path for her which God has designed, one that unfolds as she observes the limits of her spirit, body, mind, and conduct-exactly the same way we must raise the boy.

Sayyed : Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah