Islamset - Religion and Sensual Pleasures

It would be useful to state here that religion has a well-known, universally agreed stand on sensual pleasure, which does not approve either total indulgence or total prohibition. All religions allow certain kinds of such enjoyment that are known in religious language as permissible, and censor others that are designated as forbidden.

No divine scripture received by any of the prophets and messengers absolutely prohibits sensual pleasures or permits their unrestrained indulgence. Total prohibition is contrary to basic human nature. This basic human nature comprises, inter alia, desires and urges that have to be satisfied in various sensual ways. Total permissiveness, however, changes man from a rational, highly honoured being into a dumb creature that sinks to a level lower than that of animals, which hanker after the satisfaction of their instinctive desires and simply do what pleases them and avoid what does them harm.

Since the modes, of transmission of the AIDS infection and other sexually transmitted diseases, mostly revolve around human pleasures and the types of behaviour within which man seeks these pleasures, it is important to study the effect of religious observance and the adherence to the behavioural values instituted by religion and the moral values it recommends on man's attitude to sensual pleasures and how they are to be gratified. Such a study can be of immense value for the programmes devoted to the control of the AIDS epideimic arid other sexually transmitted diseases.

It requires first of all the identification of which sensual pleasures are permissible and which are not, in order to ensure that by following religious teachings people would effectively steer away from behaviour patterns through which this individually and collectively devastating epidemic can spread.

The gist of religious teachings in this regard is that religion encourages and advocates marriage and prohibits all other alternatives for sexual enjoyment. Religions also prescribe the preservation of the human rational faculties and prohibit the use of all kinds of substances, such as drugs and narcotics, that may impair them, regardless of the manner in which these substances are taken or administered. They also urge public cleanliness and promote public health to a degree that protects human beings from risks of infection by destructive diseases, the most dangerous of which, in this day and age, are sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS in particular

The Role of Religion and Ethics in prevention and control of AIDS