1. The Purpose of Preparing the Guide

This Guide seeks to enhance the educators’ cognitive, educational and professional competencies, and to impart to the learners information, skills, orientations and Islamic values in the field of reproductive health and social gender so as to reinforce these values in the learners and to make them part of his behavior. The objective is to produce a Muslim citizen who is well-balanced all-round : spiritually, socially, psychologically and health-wise, which would eventually enable him to discharge the obligations of good citizenship, improve his way of living, as well as that of his family and society, and to contribute to his own development in the present and in the future.

2. The Group Targeted by the Guide 

The Guide is addressed to program and curriculum designers, textbook writers, and all those concerned with teacher training at schools and colleges that specialize in Islamic Education in pre-university formal education.

3. The Group Targeted by these Concepts

These concepts target pupils and students belonging to two age groups : 6 to 12, and 13 to 19.

4. Justifications for The Incorporation

The Guide’s cognitive and educational justifications for incorporating the concepts of reproductive health and social gender issues in the subject of Islamic Education are :   

- The fact that the principles of Sharia necessitate the preservation of the reproductive health of both individuals and groups ; 

- The close relationship between the goals of Sharia and human development, namely the safeguarding of the soul, the mind and the progeny;

- Emphasizing the fact that Sharia, whether in its original or interpretative sources, is the only source for establishing, interpreting, clarifying, and incorporating reproductive health issues, including adolescent health, in the programs of formal education ;

- Emphasizing the functional characteristic of Islamic Education in tackling all aspects of life, such as health issues, adolescent health, and social gender issues ;

- Meetings the needs of adolescents (who make up the majority of the population pyramid of most Islamic countries) through supplying them with knowledge, skills, orientations, and modes of Islamic behavior related to the concepts of reproductive health and adolescent health so as to eschew the bad impacts ensuing from the ignorance of these issues ;

- Rectifying the wrong concepts in this filed ;  

- Defining the Islamic moral criteria and Sharia rulings that pertain to the studies on human reproduction and its various applications ;

- Defining Sharia rulings and Islamic manners of behavior related to puberty, and urging abstinence ;

- Implementing the recommendations of the Cairo Population and Development Conference related to incorporating health education regarding reproductive health issues in all the phases of formal and informal education, while taking into account the sovereignty rights of each country in conformity with national laws and development priorities, and fully respecting the various religious values and cultural backgrounds of every people in accordance with the internationally recognized Human Rights ;

- Implementing the recommendations of the Meeting of the Regional Commission of the Eastern Mediterranean in its 43rd Session which was held in October 1996 and which stressed the need to supply, at the proper time, adolescents with appropriate health information on the biological aspects within the framework of Islamic rulings and values, as well as those of the conference that was convened on population and reproductive health in the Islamic World (Cairo February 1998).