Navigating Adolescence - Dr. Altaf Husain | Reframing the Gender Question
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. To start off my topic, and indeed this is the culmination in many ways of an effort that was created and developed to call the gender collection. Dr. Zara Khan will talk much more about that and indeed she'll reference it in her presentation. We are facing times right now that are unprecedented indeed for Muslims not only here in America but around the world. This question of identity, specifically gender identity, masculinity, feminism, all of these are not some things that have not been addressed in prior times. However, the pace at which these topics are now affecting our youngest of children is indeed concerning and what should be done indeed about it. In addition to that, I'm addressing the topic about adolescence. So, I will begin with talking about who am I, where am I, if you why am I here, and the idea of navigating adolescence and reference both the tweens, the teens, and also parents. So just by a show of hands, how many of our attendees are between 10 and 13 years of age, actual age, not what you feel in your heart? I'm going to see some uncles and aunties raising their hands like mashallah. Okay, a few of you guys. Thank you so much. Welcome, mashallah. I think you might be the only two, mashallah. Or there's another one. How many of you guys are currently in college or college years if you're homeschooled in college, sorry, high school years? Like somewhere between 13 and 17, 18 if you will. How many of you guys? The rest of you don't vote for anything. That's why we're in the condition we're in. How many of you are in college? And some of you never voted. So, I don't know where the rest of that population is because a lot of the ages look mashallah very young, but you didn't raise your hand. So I will assume that predominantly we have high school and college
age with I will call them supporting adults and allies, mashallah. Fitrah is something that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam introduced us to, and it is by far one of the most powerful concepts within our religion. It directly addressed this concept of original sin as was presented in Christianity, if you will, so that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam was basically turning that concept on its head. Every child born, as you recall from the saying of the Prophet peace be upon him, every child born is born in a pure state, in a pure state. And indeed it is his or her parents and then what we now call in social sciences socialization processes that ultimately guide the child into any other path. But that pure state is a God-inclining state. That pure state is a taqwatic or God-consciousness-filled state. That pure state, if you indeed nurture it, is one that will ultimately incline towards understanding, respecting, and loving Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as his or her creator and indeed turn in obedience, with love and obedience towards him. The challenge for us is we are not without guidance as a community. There is absolutely no one that can say there is an issue coming up about which Islam, at least the current and contemporary scholars, do not have something to say about it. In fact, we are working hard and there are ulama councils around the world that are working hard to maintain and keep pace with all of the new issues emerging, but it is not that our religion is somehow putting out adherence without guidance. The growth and the development, the growth and the development of young children
and adolescents ultimately cannot be on autopilot. And this is one of the critiques that I have in studying this population is that I think for too long we have maintained a sort of an autopilot kind of an approach, that indeed children are being raised in a Muslim household so they must, inshallah they will turn out okay. We live by the masjid, we take them to the masjid, so they are being touched by Islam and somehow they will just be fine. Also a rude awakening clearly has occurred whereby just the sheer amount of information being given to children at very, very young ages, sometimes without the presence of parents and guardians who are Muslims, and by that I mean whether in nursery schools, in nursery programs, in preschools, in wherever, whereby we are not there to help our children even internalize or listen to and make sense of what is being presented to them. And it is just by chance that, alhamdulillah, many of them are coming out well, but there are clearly issues arising from the fact that we don't have necessarily a grasp on this age group. There are cultural and social forces also that are really bent on ensuring that there is a particular angle, if you will, a particular healthy, quote unquote healthy, developmental social project that is being presented, that if you don't subscribe to it, if you don't subscribe to that project, if you will, that somehow you are the one out of line and you are the one out of sync. So what are some examples of that? Just this summer I was made aware of the fact that in the cartoon, which I didn't grow up on and I became familiar
with later when we had kids, Arthur, for example. Arthur was amazing with DW and the whole gang and everything was just going along fine and then all of a sudden somebody had to get married in the story. And in that storyline, the person to whom they are getting married, this is the insidious way to introduce this sort of idea that every child can just make sense of things, is that the person that was being married, no one really knew who the spouse was going to be. And so the amazing way to show this was the kids are all comfortable with whatever happens. So in this case, it was the example that this shopkeeper would be marrying, if you will, someone who is actually another man. So the man was going to be marrying a man. Now in this case, Muslim scholars have talked about this and we won't go into that, but supporting the rights of others to do as they will in a land like the United States is something that we will not fight, meaning we will support their right to do whatever they want. But how do children make sense of this? How do children ultimately make sense of what's going on and should they be introduced to such topics without any attempt by the Muslim community? And when I close, I'll talk about this, what are some things we need to do to be involved in dealing with some of these social forces. Doing nothing is not an option. Doing nothing is not an option. In fact, we will be held responsible, we will be held responsible for every child that has to deal with these situations by themselves, whether a young girl or a young boy, because we as a community, in terms of a fard kifaya, we as a community did not take this seriously and we did nothing about it. Who is involved? Young teenagers or tweens, the teens, and of course the parents. In Islam, we are not
against exploration. We are not against the exploration of the questions of who am I and indeed why am I here. If we look back at our tradition, Ibrahim alayhis salaam discovered his Lord through that type of questioning, through that type of questioning, and he was able to, and that conversation is so beautifully chronicled, because he was inclined from a fitratik, he's hanif, he's inclined from a fitratik, if you will, approach to always be looking for God. But if you have so many forces telling you that God doesn't matter, that you can succeed in life without any kind of attachment to God or religion or to houses of worship, if you have attacks on houses of worship, if you have attacks on clergy, if you have attacks on the holy books, ultimately the child is left to think that maybe my exploration of who I am and why am I here doesn't have to be connected to anything with religion, because apparently that hasn't helped anybody. And that's a false narrative and we have to fight against it and indeed talk about it. So let's talk about first the parents, and then we'll come and spend most of our time on the adolescents. My wife and I, alhamdulillah, we're raising four children, 17, 13, 8, and 5. There are three boys and one girl. The girl is the 8-year-old. We understand clearly that there are challenges to all of their upbringing because everything that we're trying to tell them, they may come in contact with those and others in the cultural and social forces that may tell them otherwise. What is our bottom line? How do we do parenting? What are the styles of parenting? So briefly, and I don't know how many of you by show of hands attended Sheikh Yasser Biligis' workshop last night on parenting. If you just raise your hands. I think I know what it is. I think
I do too much fundraising, so you're afraid if you raise your hand, you're going to end up giving money. So there will be no fundraising today. It's just myself, Dr. Jonathan Brown, Dr. Zara Khan presenting some of our thoughts, which you can agree or disagree with. There was no fundraising, so relax. Take it easy. So how many people attended Sheikh Yasser's lecture? A couple people here, a few more here. All right. So some of this he mentioned, but I'll go slightly more into detail, and then we'll talk about why this is connected to the adolescent upbringing. So in terms of the two major factors that are involved in upbringing, and we talk about gender and gender identity, exploration, all of these things, we're talking about heavily being compassionate. We're talking about much of our energies as parents being focused on being compassionate. We're talking about following the prophetic model about whom we don't have much in terms of written documents or the narrations about his fatherhood, but we understand how he dealt with his grandchildren, and other young children. So compassion begins to be the first, if you will, factor. The second is discipline. So what I want you to mentally do, and we're not going to graph things out, but think about this. So think about compassion being on the Y axis, and then discipline and control being on the X axis. Wherever high compassion and high discipline are there in a balanced way, high compassion and high discipline in a balanced way, we're talking about authoritative parenting style. We're talking about a parenting style that understands that there will be hiccups. There will be times when the children will not listen, will not obey, will talk back, will whatever, but always there will be a sense of authority that we the parents
are trying to do what's best for you. So work with us. When you don't do well, the sound like it went off? Okay. If you think about this, authoritative parenting in that first quadrant of the highest on compassion, highest on discipline, is the exact opposite on the other side. If you think about very high on discipline, but very low on compassion, and then very on the other side, high on discipline and low on compassion in terms of a negative way, you have discipline, if you will, occurring, but you have parents who are fighting their children, authoritarian parenting style, where no discussion occurs. You do, I say, and that's it. You have a style on the other side, high compassion and negative, if you will, in terms of disciplining, where parents are actually very minimal on discipline, very minimal on discipline on the x-axis, and that's permissive parenting style. That's when the parents are actually afraid of the children, and they're doing fearful parenting, which is basically, you know, what can I give you to get you to do what I want you to do, right? And I'm going through this for a reason. When we come back to adolescence, you'll see what I mean. There is the helicopter parenting style, away from this grid, whereby the children just literally feel that they're hovered over and they cannot breathe. Everything is being watched at all time. If you think about the common day example of the drone, right, the helicopter is the old school term. It's basically drone parenting, where you can't move at all, and the drone is always there. Now, when we grew up, and some of you may relate to this, we actually had drones. They were just called chapals, ship-ship, or slippers, and those traveled the house, mashallah, really well, and the wet ones were the worst. I don't know if anybody
dealt with that. The last one is free-range parenting. Free-range parenting is basically where the parents say, you know, alhamdulillah, God blessed us with children, and then that's it. That's it. And the community ends up dealing with the consequences of that all the way from, and thankfully it hasn't happened yet, children literally running across the stage, onto the stage, taking selfies on the stage while the person is speaking, and the parents are just happy that this is going on, right? This is free-range. It's a great organic way of raising kids, but on a farm and not in the middle of civilization, right? So there has to be some discipline, some compassion. Why do I begin there, and what's critical about this? This is important, because as we talk about gender roles, we're going to come to a point where we're going to be looking at each other and saying, well, what is the example of the gender that we're trying to, who is an example of the gender that we're trying to promote? Now the easiest of those answers is what? For the boys and the men, the greatest of examples for the gender in terms of being a man, and Dr. Jack will talk more about this, being a man is whom? Really, I'm trying to make me proud for Adams, the guests are here. Who is the man that's the example for the boys and men in terms of good sort of masculine behavior? The Prophet, peace be upon him, right? And for the sisters, we usually refer to the Ummahat al-Mu'mineen, the mothers of the believers. There is no shortage, there is no shortage of descriptions of healthy, masculine, and feminine behavior. There's no shortage, if you will, of examples of how the Prophet, peace be upon him, not only spoke to young boys and young girls all the way into their early adulthood, if you will, but also how he interacted with them, how he dealt with them, how he corrected them.
And indeed, there is no absolute, we understand there's absolutely no discrimination between the genders in terms of equity and spirituality. And the Quran is replete with examples in terms of how a young girl and a young boy, a man and a woman, an elderly man, elderly woman can approach Allah and their acts of worship are treated exactly the same in terms of reward and even, and you hear me often talk about this, especially when we're talking about fundraising, we say even the sadaqah that is given by the women and the men, in Arabic, those of the men who give in sadaqah, those of the women who give in sadaqah, indeed for them is a reward that is multiplied. So what is it that we're talking about when we talk about the youth and indeed the adolescents and what should we know about them when we talk about gender identity and development? First and foremost, it's important to understand that it's a very fluid, fluid age group, very fluid age group. And it's hard to know and understand from an American sort of Western point of view, why adolescents became so highly associated with rebellion, with rebellion, as opposed to a time to flourish and to develop and to have positive and healthy development. And so we look at studies and that's what I'll do inshallah, I'll present a couple of different studies that sort of track the youth in terms of a longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies as opposed to cross-sectional studies, cross-sectional study is, for example, if we had a survey here of let's say five questions, we just administered the survey on the screen and we asked each of you guys to answer those five questions, we close the survey and then we look at it and say, what did they say for question one, two, three, four and five? It's a cross-section. It literally happened for
an instant. We know nothing before you got into this room. We will know nothing about after you leave this room and it just moves on. Longitudinal studies, on the other hand, require a lot more patience, a lot more patience whereby you say, you know what, I'll take this group, I'll ask them this question before this mini-conference, these five questions. Then we'll have the mini-conference, which is an intervention, and then we'll ask them another set of questions after the conference and then we'll see how the response has changed. Then we'll wait two years or three years or five years and gather the exact same group again and then ask them the same questions and so on and so forth. So if you're familiar with the work of Yaqeen, we do a doubt survey. It's almost an annual survey. That is a cross-sectional survey. We don't gather the same people. We're hoping to get a certain sample size, a certain number of people responding, and then we move on. The studies that I will talk about are longitudinal studies, which means they are patiently looking and examining what is going on in the lives of these youth and indeed how best they are ultimately responding to these questions over a number of years. One of the studies done at UCLA tracked 700 children from early toddlerhood, if you will, not asking them questions but just paying attention to who they were, who were at risk. And I can't go through all of the challenges they were facing, but they were at risk for a number of reasons in terms of positive development. So the study wanted to see what ultimately would appear to be significant. What is the most significant thing in the life of these youth as they go through? And they followed these youth, 700 of them, not for one year, not for five years. Dr. Warner followed the
youth for 40 years. See the patience of this? So we're going to need some of you to go to college, to become researchers like Dr. Zara, Dr. Brown, and others, and then be specialized in topics and then dedicate your life to the study of that question. In this case, she was really trying to say, what will be significant after 40 years of watching and, if you will, listening and learning from these children? Believe it or not, believe it or not, two factors appeared significant, and these are very connected to our approach as Muslims in trying to talk about, if you will, how do we raise these children in an environment that is moving so fast and so out of control? The two main factors that appeared significant for these— well, let me ask you, what do you think was one of the most that was associated with their positive development over these 40 years? Someone raised their hand. We're all teachers, so we're going to be asking questions. Yes? Relationship with their families. Okay. All right. Anyone else? Right. Good. So the word is connection, being connected to either family members or others in their lives who ultimately came up, came through for them and helped them out. Connections matter. Attachment parenting, one of the styles, talks about connections, and this idea and the Prophet, peace be upon him, subhanAllah, when you look at the little things that we think are little that he did with children, he was known to hold and to embrace and to hug and to kiss his grandchildren all the time. All the time. Ali radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhu and Fatima radiyaAllahu ta'ala anha
obviously inherited these behaviors and watched them and they displayed similar. Why is that critical? Touch for the young children at an early age from loving guardians and parents is something that starts to develop a level of trust, a level of trust that all is well. Even to the orphan who may not have guardians, and he was an orphan as you recall, who never saw his father, his mother passed away by the tender age of six, even to the orphan to show the love, he said, he said for the one, and this is a cultural thing where you comb the, where you brush your hand through the hair of a child, basically kind of going like this as a gesture of love, gesture of love. I'm married, mashallah, with four kids. If I visit my mother it still happens, so don't think it's all that strange. He said to the one who does that to a child and who is an orphan by putting your hand through their hair, sort of showing a gesture of love for every single strand of hair that your hand touches, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will reward. To show you how much, you know, healthy embracing and kissing and holding of our children was critical. So connection in the lives of these children who were at risk at birth and then through 40 years emerged as the one of the most significant factors. What was the second significant, and I only talk about two of them that Dr. Warner had mentioned, what was the second one you think as a guess? I mean you may not know it, you may know it. The sisters answered one question, so let's ask the brothers to help. What's another factor that emerged that was helpful for positive? Yes. Finances, it does start with an F. I'm a very compassionate teacher. The word I'm looking at,
faith. Faith. Believe it or not, spiritual sort of connecting with some higher deity, if you will, and some level of connection to faith emerged as the second strongest predictor of a positive development. And so here's a culture saying run away from religion, in fact abandon God, and remember in the 80s, you know, is God alive and all kinds of, you know, these headlines that were there, when we're saying in fact do the exact opposite. In fact not only introduce the children at an early age to who is their Lord and who is the Prophet peace upon him and what is the Quran and on and on and on, then create in them positive associations with the religion in early life. And there's a recent Harvard study talked about this, that people who go on to have very positive development, developmental outcomes, they have had a very positive relationship with religion and ultimately for us that would be God. In what environment are we talking about this? So in other studies, recent data has shown that one out of five children will likely suffer a major depressive episode before even leaving high school. And we were intending to do a disclaimer, it didn't happen, so forgive us and I will do that disclaimer now. So we want to assure you that if anything we are talking about, anything the other presenters will talk about, triggers something in you, that within Adams itself in our system here, there is access to counseling and they will facilitate inshallah access to counseling so that you are not having to work on this on your own. Our own Imam Syed Omer is available to debrief
and to discuss these things, so please don't think that somehow it's a one-way street, definitely make notes of things that may be questions for you and things that you may yourself be exploring. But this is what the data is showing us and this is not only the case that people who are not Muslims are experiencing this. One out of five children are likely, it's a study, so just saying likely, not an exact science, likely to experience a major depressive episode before leaving high school. And some of that is connected to, again, who am I, unresolved issues about who am I, where am I going, why am I here, and some of that could then be connected back to this idea of gender and even orientation. Another one out of six, another one out of six youth in the Youth Risk Survey have actually attempted to, in fact, to be a part of the youth risk survey have attempted to end their life within the past year. One out of six. If life is moving so fast, if we as a community, it's a critique, it's not an allegation, it's a critique, are on autopilot on the most part in terms of how our children are being raised, and then the data are showing us what they need from the first study I talked about. What they need is connection, what they need is spirituality and faith, and then on the other hand, you're hearing about these depressive episodes, the likelihood of it, and then even potentially to the extreme of trying to end one's own life. How does this happen, and why does this happen, and as I start to close, I'll wrap this up because I want to give our other speakers time as well. Brain development is among the major concerns of developmental psychologists, social workers, and others who
are focused on adolescence, because this is the time when the brain is most undergoing, undergoing the most change, which is this idea of early teens and teens and so forth. In fact, I'm not a disclaimer, a preface to this is that whatever we did know about when adolescence starts is literally having to be thrown out the window because of how much steroids and other chemicals have been introduced into our foods that have triggered the early onset of puberty in children that was never seen before prior to this last decade and two decades. So whatever we thought would happen at 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11, 12, 13, and on and on, whether it was Piaget or Erickson or any of the other developmental psychologists, some of that is having to be reconsidered in light of the fact that these changes are occurring so fast, but it's also altering the thinking of young children in terms of that hormonal development, but also societal forces. So the chemicals and the steroids and stuff are affecting who they are, how they're developing physically, and then psychologically they have the impact of culture and society on them. So what are the things they go through? Among the things that adolescents have a hard time with is perspective taking. They are often one-sided in their thinking, not every adolescent, it's just the case. It's just how they then they grow out of it, most of them, and then ultimately if they don't grow out of it, they end up becoming dictators who are head of countries who only have one perspective. So we want to pray for people who grow healthily out of this inshallah. On top of that, they're consumed with self. It's literally this word selfie wasn't
invented with the camera because it could take this picture this way. It was always there. Every youth throughout history has been concerned about oneself, consumed with who am I, where am I going, what do I look like, how do I look, comparison if you will with others. It's also a time of loss. As you come through, you've had perhaps a lot of family and friends and others kind of watching who you are, watching who you are, watching who you are, and you're excited about everything about who you are. Suddenly you're spending more time alone, wanting to spend more time alone, but you're also feeling the loss of that thriving sort of childhood that you had if you were blessed with it. It's also a time of struggling with identity, the questions that I mentioned. While this is going on, while all of this is happening, what we're finding out is that the reality is that while the brain is under development, there are societal cultural forces literally attacking and hitting hard at that vulnerable age group. Magazines, websites, blogs, all kinds of marketing forces that are there. One of the students in my class did a study about how young girls, for example, who develop ultimately eating disorders or are overly concerned with their physical shape, partially it comes from an industry that is destined to create in them at least schizophrenia, if not complete loss of self-esteem, if they don't fit a certain shape or size or look as is being prescribed by those marketing forces. So while that brain is under development, who is there for them? Who is there for them? So I'm raising more questions than potentially giving answers in a setting like this, but this is what we need to have. This is what
needs to be done. We need to be talking about these questions and looking at this. They're also more prone to emotional outbursts because of, again, that development they're going through. They're also more prone to misread emotional cues, which is why, by the way, and I said I have a 17 year old, I have a 13 year old, and I'm sure I was a teenager, others are teens now and raising teens. Sometimes it's a strange reaction between parents when we say something to them and how they ultimately react to us. And they read anger when there is no anger present because they misread those cues. They misread it as controlling. So if we're going to be having a compassionate environment in which they're able to explore who they are and some of these questions about gender and other things, have we done the homework from the very beginning to introduce them to a very healthy concept of gender and a healthy concept within Islam of both genders, not just the male, but also the female, and to do it equally and equitably? So in closing, we've tried to raise some questions and ultimately we want to be sure that we are giving at least some guidance and some guidance and some advices. If young children are in a society where everything is always open to questioning and seemingly done in a vacuum where no guidance is provided, they will have, they will develop a lot of trauma. Alhamdulillah, we are not a people who are left without guidance. So how do we use that guidance and what can we do? Number one, it is urgent. It is a matter of urgency for us to develop curricula or curriculum that can be shared with parents so that this conversation about gender and socialization and roles, healthy gender roles, understanding and
appreciation of those begins at the earliest of ages. In our home, for example, as I mentioned with three girls and one boy, it is not at all, not a day goes by that I don't have to watch my language when I speak to the children and not just say, hey boys or hey guys. And if I forget, if I forget, my eight-year-old, mashallah, tabarakallah, will fold her hands and then I'm almost in time out, right? Because she gets it, she gets it. If we're doing activities, I have to be careful about what I'm promoting as being the in thing to do and making sure that she and they are both being raised in a way that is healthy but also indeed enjoyable for them. At home, and I've mentioned this before and I don't say this just lightly, because of different obligations with the community and other things, what can I do at home to help the family? I do the laundry, I do the ironing. Typically that is not known to be gender roles in terms of males. So when my daughter sees me doing that and my sons see me doing that, I've already contributed to a healthy understanding of not my thinking or my views but how the Prophet, peace be upon him, conducted himself in the life of his family. You follow what I'm saying? So you're starting to make it go full circle. So that curriculum, inshallah, inshallah, is something that needs to be developed. Some of this is being developed through resources and Dr. Zahra will talk more about that within the Yaqeen family. But a lot more will have to be done so that we don't leave the children, especially boys, to just say as long as they play basketball and eat pizza and don't hurt anyone, inshallah they'll be okay. That's our approach to raising boys, whereas the girls and the young women were talking about halaqat and training and discipline and telling them all the teachings of Islam and then supposedly doing that so that they can be great wives and mothers,
forgetting that they could never be a wife or a mother and still be a beautiful human being, but how would they understand their roles and how would men understand their roles if they never saw us talking about these particular expectations of them. Rites of passage camps. In the African American community this was a big deal. It has subsided to a great extent and is being revived now. Rites of passage literally at every level of their upbringing, where every aspect is celebrated and sometimes we make fun of cultures like in the Desi, Indo-Pakistani, South Asian culture for example, there's such a thing as bismillah, which is when the kids just first start reading the Quran. There's such a thing as ameen, as a function to have it. Of course hifz and memorization is valued. Salah parties are emerging, hijab parties are emerging, beard parties are emerging, when the first hair emerges on the cheek, right? Not prior. These things should be celebrated because what it's doing is allowing them to connect back to the religion and say these are natural, expected parts of your upbringing and we want you to enjoy them. We want to celebrate them, not let you just sort of be out there in a vacuum when your religion is under attack. So I'll close there by saying that a lot of questions are there, but we are not a people without guidance. We must understand and value adolescent development, the impact of culture and society on the brain development. And so we cannot have children being raised in an environment where their self-esteem has been hit hard, not just from this whole radicalization and terrorism and extremism, but indeed separating people from their faith during their upbringing. We must reintroduce religion back into that and of course heavy emphasis on gender and on socialization in terms of roles. And then lastly,
every masjid, an Islamic center, must be investing in this actively so that no young people who are getting ready to be married can be married without going through some classes, even premarital counseling particularly, but classes that help them if they haven't already understood what will be the best role that they can play as a husband and a wife and then as a father and a mother, so that they can raise children inshallah who then ultimately have the best of health and physical and psychological health in this roles. So inshallah I'll stop there.
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