Excerpt from blog by Dr. Mariam Sheibani (November 7, 2024)
I have since lost count of the number of reports I’ve heard of sexual abuse of children in the Muslim community. Many of these occurred in religious families and networks, sometimes at the hands of religious teachers. The following are just a small sample of the cases known through criminal legal proceedings or investigations: Muhammad Saleem, who pled guilty to molesting several underage girls and a young woman (and still visits the madrasa where he abused), the well-documented abuse at the Darul Uloom Al Madania and Darul Uloom Canada resulting in several lawsuits, and FACE investigations reporting rape, sexual molestation, and assault of minors by several Imams and a Quran reciter. Most of us have also heard accounts, either first-hand disclosures or second-hand reports, of community members who were sexually violated as children in North America or while growing up in the Muslim world, that are too numerous to count.
The point is that we have a widespread problem on our hands. It is estimated that 1 in 10 children, or 7-12% of children are sexually abused before the age of 18, with more victims among girls (1 in 4, or 1 in 7) than boys (1 in 20, or 1 in 25). There is every reason to believe that our community reflects this national statistic, but we await studies of sexual violence in the Muslim community to help us better understand the dynamics of child abuse in Muslim families and institutions. {Read More}
