Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi participated in a workshop held by the Bahrain Reproductive Health and Family Planning Association, under the title (Concepts of Reproductive Health and Sexually Transmitted Diseases), on Saturday 26/5/2007 CE.
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The workshop was held at the (Elite Suites) Hotel from nine in the morning until one-thirty in the afternoon, with the participation of a select group of religious scholars from the Shiʿi and Sunni communities, in which a presentation was given about the association, introducing its tasks and its role in society, and the nature of the concepts it adopts on reproductive health and on sexually transmitted diseases.
A group of doctors shed light on sexually transmitted diseases, the extent of their danger and the way to prevent them, after which there was dialogue on the course of the association and on the concepts of reproductive health in general.
Sayed Al-Mosawi participated together with His Eminence Shaykh ʿAdil al-Jamri, Shaykh Habib al-Jamri and Shaykh Muhammad Jaʿfar al-Jamri..
What Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi presented at the workshop was a set of observations on the vitality of the concepts put forward, which need further research and deliberation. He also drew the association's attention to the necessity of reviewing its social discourse so that it accords with the environment it deals with, and so that Western concepts on these topics are not exported without our knowing. He mentioned an example of this as found in the association's discourse, which is:
that when it is intended to mention negative effects of early marriage, for example, it is said (combating early marriage or other things)..
And when it is intended to explain the harms of alcohol and its effects, what is said after it is (reducing it)?!!
This goes back to Western taste in determining our position on concepts in advance. So why is (combating) not said of alcohol, and why is (rationalizing) not said of early marriage, for example..
He also presented a proposal concerned with all the topics of reproductive health and transmitted diseases and what pertains to them.. which is to find a solution reconciling (the harms of something) and the inability to obtain a law prohibiting it, as is the case with the premarital examination, which the president of the association mentioned..
For the premarital examination has great benefits, but the law does not prevent the marriage of two people who have been proven medically unfit to contract marriage with each other.. Likewise the Sharia does not prevent that, so it leaves the responsibility to the spouses, who are the ones to decide that..
Here it is indeed impossible to compel people, but a reconciling solution can be found, namely for the association to apply to the government to issue a law of (incentives and facilitations) for spouses who comply with the medical directive, as care and as prevention of the emergence of a genetically ill generation..
So if they refrain, the state offers them facilitations in the ministries and elsewhere.. as an encouragement for applying the medical directive.. This is practiced in countries such as Denmark in the field of associations (for everyone has the right to found a charitable social association, or whatever he wishes, without a government license, but whoever founds one with a license obtains the state's facilitations and support)..
The president of the association then indicated his appreciation for all the proposals and discussions put forward and promised to review the association's discourse so that it would be effective in society..
It should be noted that the association was founded in the year 1975 CE and works in the field of educating society in reproductive health in various ways.
