hey, nakia, your 7th link, while interesting enough to read all the way through :-) does not actually have a cute clothing option in it.

hypatia.

‘Childhood’ is, of course, one of those human concepts concotted in the global North and presented to the world as a Universal. The one universal about childhood is that it involves biological changes unique to human beings under 18. But there is no ‘childhood is…’, except c/o Disney.

James, A. and Prout, A. [Ed.] (1997) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Second Edition (London: Routledge: Falmer)

Wasalaam

TMA

> Where does one find clothes that allow little girls to be both active and protects them from being sexualized before their time?

Resale shops? My dear wife hunts and gathers great stuff at the shops around here. Some pink frilly for when our daughter's a fairy princess, some stained denim for the rest of the time.

I couldn't believe it the other day when my daughter's six-year-old friend was wearing a bra (or something like it)—that her grandma had found at a resale shop. The girl loves it. I supposed kids have a natural instinct to mimic the adults in their lives. So maybe it's harmless. But the risque stuff girls wear—that's just encouraging pedophiles, it seems to me.

To learn more about childhood, try The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff.

And one more thing—it's really weird how American men call women girls. When I say girl, I mean GIRL. When it comes to teens, though, I don't know what to say. Young woman? Teenage girl? I suppose adolescence is at least as culturally contrived as childhood.

hakim

Yakoub, Must you be so sociological and condescending.This is not academia nor some conference on the social construction of psycho-sexual and psycho-social development.

We Muslims on here all live in the North and as such, this article though not universal, which is what Nakia mentioned in her article, is applicable only in certain cultural contexts and not applicable to all.

Seriously, you have interesting postings on MWU! but you write down to people, though not intentional. You assume that people are well not as informed as you on matters pertaining to the social sciences.

Nakia’s article deals with children in America, “youth” in America is defined as anyone under the age of 25 in many activist circles who deal specifically with concerns and issues of young people.

It seems that in America, children are sheltered from the realities of the world. But young girls in America are faced with the demanding norms and standards of the Beauty Industry from an early age, with celebrities like Hilary Duff (singer/actress), Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, Aly & AJ (pop singers), Britney Spears, and Jessica Simpson.

The messages given to me on the networks and cable channels is one of young sexualized “blonde” females. All these women celebrities are barely legal and well they are all white. I know Americans don’t like to talk about race, especially many European Americans seem less prevalent and comfortable to do so than their ethnic minority counterparts in America, who grow up being outside the “norm.”

Young girls are sold Bratz dolls, which show pouty lipped dolls with oversized heads and small body frames dressed in overdone and exaggerated make-up and jewelry accessories with revealing clothing.

When girls go through the secondary sex changes, when they notice some of their classmates being early bloomers and they still are flat-chested, this may lead to ackward feelings of inadequacy.

Popular culture and society’s acceptance of the messages sent out by popular culture inform young girls of many things, mainly what is socially acceptable and what is deemed mandated for them.

These messages do go against what some Muslims consider socially acceptable for proper sexually pious women.

Hence why in some countries like Syria, you have hijabed Barbie dolls.

I believe that, while culture does have a great deal to do with the moral 

and intellectual tasks assigned to childhood, that there are definite 

boundaries to childhood and adulthood. I may always be my mama's baby

,but I am an adult, in nearly every definition of the word. When I

was eight, however, there were a great many physical, intellectual, and

moral acheivements that would have been beyond me at that stage, that I can

now accomplish easily. Childhood may be a construct to some extent, but

so are marriage, gender, race, religion, species identity, and any number of

things that we don't merely dismiss as being constructed.

About resale shops: they can be a hit or miss, not all offer children's 

clothing, and they don't offer things that may be in style now, which can be

a big thing with many kids. What I offered is a way to be au courant 

without looking like Britney Spears.  

And an imam that I knew once called Kecia Ali "that white girl". I repiled 

that I had no idea that Dr. Ali was prepubescent, and marveled that we 

had a child prodigy Islamic scholar on our hands. He was not amused.

But I was.

Hypatia: Fixed the link. Sorry about that! 

‘Islam is a social construction,....‘Gustavo

WHAT?????

Center, let me explain. We have a number of liberal arts academics on this site from Laury to Omar to Yakoub. Just this week alone, last Sunday we had nine planets in the solar system, now we have eight with Pluto being defrocked from the planetary club and being labeled a "dwarf planet" with Xena, Ceres, and Charon (formally classified as a moon of Pluto).

Prior to the 7th century, there were two Ibrahimic religions, after the 7th century, poof, three with two now having competing claims of being "the final revelation" (Christianity and Islam).

The story of Christ as the "final sacrificial lamb" that "cleanses humanity of our sins" is an appealing and attractive myth. The divinity of Christ links man with God, God as "Heavenly Father" and caring patriarch and protector.

Muslims would find this unthinkable, Islam came along and had debunk such thinking and theology, by claiming it was "corrupted and misguided" and that "God does not have partners or beget children." Muslims, then turned around and claimed "Muhammad is the best creation" (the Muslim equivalent of deifying Muhammad in the same manner as Christians did Christ) though we Muslims don't like to acknowledge this.

Muslims also have their foundational myths.

Ultimately, the Ibrahimic religions are identical, all three refer to the unitarian oneness of God, rewards and the promise of an afterlife, they provide absolute truth where science, both physical and social science, provide only relative truths, and they mention that man is bestowed with dignity.

The difference between the outward veneers of Christianity and Islam are superficial, they are political and cultural. To me life is nothing but allusion, there is nothing "real" about it, this is confirmed both by science as a Western civilizational construct and religions like Buddhism.

What we deem "real" it is "real" in our minds, including my adult decision to be a Muslim.

But like Nakia mentioned, we humans label things and definitions change and vary from time and place. Childhood as it is understood in America is going to be different from childhood in Yemen or Darfur. However, as a species of mammals, childhood is merely a linguistic name for a phenomenon that has basis in observeable reality. See, remember the fate of Pluto.

Though Pluto no longer is a planet, that does not negate that Pluto is still a spherical icy object in orbit with our sun.

This is where science differs from spirituality. Science does not concern itself with the question of the existence of the Divine. Science is not equipped with this task, human spirituality is better equipped with this task. But human spirituality will come with a variety of answers and probbing questions. There will be no agreement and what we cannot fully understand or comprehend.

Everything is a social construction, this is what's in vogue in the field of the Western construct of the study of society, sociology.

I have my undergraduate in sociology, I'm not sure if I would want to continue my studies in this field though. But there is some basis and reality to childhood. Mammals, including humans, invest time in the rearing of their children for the purpose of continued species survival. Sorry for sounding so Darwanian, but it's true.

Islam is a social construction, being Muslim is a social construction. Praying in reference to the qibla is a social construction. Pilgrimage to a geographical site deemed sacred space like the Ka'aba and the Masjid al-Haram is a social construction. What is innate or natural about this?

But would we dismiss the created reality that we humans engage in pertaining to Islam?

I don't know how to take your comment Yakoub, it seemed quite dismissive of this debate.

Nakia's reason for writing this was because it was spawned from a private conversation with a mother who has a daughter. This young girl feels ackward in her skin. This is a common feeling among young women barely a decade old in the United States and I'm sure in your native UK Yakoub.

Nakia is writing from her perspective, which is biased and she is proposing no universal applicable theory on the concept of the social construction of "childhood."

What I try to do with both my personal blog and with the articles I submit, is to bring the focus of American Muslims on our own backyards. Not to be isolationist in the least, but we can’t build an indigenous expression of faith if we’re forever focused on what’s going on it lands that we may have a tenuous link with, at best. It’s good and proper to work to end the war in Iraq, and send money for the orphans in Afghanistan, but if parts of one’s own city are indistinguishable from downtown Baghdad, it’s folly to not be concerned. (BTW, the Philadelphia neighborhood that my father grew up in does resemble a war zone, with the many collasped and abandoned buildings, and shootings are distressingly commonplace, so it’s not much of an exaggeration.)
Back to the topic at hand: If anybody has info on fair trade/organic clothing, give me a heads up, the selection is rather slim.

Gustavo:

‘gul howa allahu ahad…..lam yalid wa lam youlad….’ is far from being social construction…if anything, it is ‘the limit’ on social construction’

Well Islam requires one ingredient that human knowledge cannot explain: the power of faith.

I agree with center (gasp) that the shahada is not necessarilt social, but I don’t think that Gustavo meant that the theological parts are social consstructions, but that the myriad of interpretations and practices with Islamic labels are social constructions. Sound right to you, Gustavo?

Anyway, Center, how is tawhid a limit on social constructions? I often hear how tawhid is the source for so much, but how can this be? How does tawhid directly influence people other than knowing that there is only one God and that one God is all-knowing and so on? By itself, one can’t get that; one has to read the Quran for tawhid to have effect. However, if people use tawhid as a backing for interpretations, especially conservative ones, which cannot wholly originate in tawhid, then I think that’s a problem. for example: how do you get the khimar from the shahda without adding in the hadith about covering all except the face, hands with some narrations adding the feet (which some people think has a poor chain of narration [sanad].) So, tawhid is the indisputable basis for faith, yet some people use it to support thier interpretation, hoping that people will be afraid to question their interpretation out of fear of looking like they are challanging tawhid. Odious, odious, but that’s not what we’re trying to do here, are we?

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.

Well I accept Islam by faith, which means I cannot prove the existence of God with the use of science.

However, the ways in which we live our lives as Muslims, what schools of thought we employ, how we arrange our homes when visitors come by, how we pray (with arms clutched under the nipples or left resting on our sides), etc. is a social construction.

Now as a Muslim, I believe the Tawhid of Huwa Allah is not a social construction, but one could use my line of thought and reasoning to say this also applies to the belief of the Divine in accordance with the Islamic paradigm.

OmarG,
ibadat and muamalat make up islam per Malki school.

Ibadat Salafis say (?) are beyond conjecture.

muamalat are open to social construction within the locus of ibadat. wa-allaho a3lam

Sounds good to me…

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.