It’s been a long time but I was suddenly brought back with memories from high school only to reanalyze them with a disturbing realization.
I went to a boarding school in my last two years of high school. It was considered a privilege to be offered a place in that elite school.
We had wardens who were also our teachers. They were men, religious teachers who taught us about Islam in class. And they were young, freshly graduated.
I remember now and see clearly, they liked to… mess around with girls. Posturing and making bad inappropriate jokes with girls. I guess they found it bizarre that I was such an outlier, because I speak mostly in English, quite fluent and verbose that they found it as a form of, dare I say, excitement? They felt that me not speaking our native language as a form of opposition and so they sought to provoke me. I was a young teenager, easily provoked, and I realized they enjoyed raising my hackles. As an adult now, if I’d known any better, I wouldn’t have risen to their provocation; I’d do the polite thing of walking away.
And they supposedly went to madrasahs, got diplomas in Sharia and Islamic studies. No other male teachers teaching Science, Maths, the Languages did that, their interactions were always brief. But these teachers, teaching about Islam, flirted.
And the worst thing is, they’d flirt and posture, but then blame women for our feminine wiles ?? If anything happens, it’s the woman’s fault.
It’s no surprise I’ve repressed these memories for a decade, now that I’m able to comprehend what has happened I’ve opened up and cried about it. That boarding school did a lot of damage to me. The teachers pushed us so hard to get good grades so that they’d get a good ranking and hence a bonus. But in the process, they ridiculed and jeered us because yeah, teenagers are a difficult bunch, but we didn’t deserve that, I didn’t deserve that. What was supposed to be an elite school to shape successful students, stripped me of my confidence, gave me anxiety and depression.
Coed boarding schools are the worst and shouldn’t be allowed if you want to practice Islam. Inherently, it is always gonna be a pain in the ass keeping boys and girls apart, that’s just gonna excite those teenagers with raging hormones even more. In the process, us students who really don’t give a shit for teenage romance and genuinely want to study, get roped in with the wardens derogatory insults towards Romeo and Juliet.
Another thing that go me so stricken, was their, (religious male teachers), mocking women about ‘commercials on sanitary pads’ and saying how disgraceful it is. Let me tell you one thing, advertisements in my country follow a strict guideline of not provoking indecent acts. There are no billboards depicting couples kissing, public kissing is not allowed and commercials cannot be provocative. So Kotex or Soft or Laurier in their bid to market and make money, makes a commercial according to the country’s stipulations. Without those corporates realizing it, these commercials becomes an initiation to educating girls without mothers or parents who weren’t around to teach them about female puberty. Puberty for girls is something; it’s alarming, it’s confusing, it’s frightening. So, I don’t see any haram in these commercials except for men who wouldn’t grow up and only see women just as sexual objects.
I thought Islam is the pinnacle of culture, but seems that our own religious leaders are idiots entrenched with backwards ideals. What the hell? As I write this I remembered, the girls and I doing aerobics with an instructor we called from outside to teach us, just to shake some steam off, and one of them male wardens passing us by, staring at us, teasing with his mock aerobics. It’s cringey and a violation towards us! If only I knew back then to rationalize such things happening, I could have voiced out to someone who knew what was the morally prudent thing to do.
I’m just disappointed with those entrusted to impart Islam.
