the benefits of such acts. Allah subhana wa ta'ala said: "Help one another in righteousness and piety; and do not help one another in sinning and transgression." (5:2) The community I came from grew out of our adherence to the straight path and out of our encouragement of each other in loving Allah and His message. Islam did not grow out of compromising our ways to the society at large , yet people seem to have forgotten this. Third, it is well known that rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did not put a divider between the men and women at the masjid. In fact he merely placed children to divide the two sections. And, in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, 'Aisha radi Allahu anhu was allowed to watch the Abyssinians do their war dance. However, the Prophet was concealing her from them and it was by his approval of what she was doing because the look was in the absence of lust. However, we need to take this aspect of Islam in context . We cannot pick and choose which sunnah to apply and which ones not to. There were prerequisites to such circumstances. For instance, men and women dressed differently to the masjid. Children in schools were not encouraged to run after boys and girls to get a kiss as is today. Child rearing methods emphasized HAYAH (sense of shame) that brought up nearly pure men and women during that time. And to be blunt about the matter, in