The elders of the Chicago Muslim community tried to protect a Hifz (Qur'an memoriization) school they had contributed to build for their children by not reporting the allegation a 23-year-old-girl had brought against its 75-year-old founder, a graduate of Darul Uloom Deoband, the seat of orthodox Sunni school in North India. The school that offers courses for boys and girls in religious studies was paid by Muslims from all over the country. They tried to avoid the issue and advised people not to leak it to the media. But months later when the two leading newspapers of the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post published articles giving details of the accusation, the reaction of some of the elders as well as community members appeared even more irresponsible. "It's a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims and Jewish and Christian Islamophobes have published this information to defame Islam so that the Hifz school can be closed down."
What conspiracy and what closing down?
If they had any concern to the book they refer to as their source of guidance they should have at least known that the Qur'an asks its believers to stand for justice even if it is against oneself. "O ye who believe! stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." (4:135)
The right course of action should have been the following:
1. Encourage the victim to report to law enforcement agencies.
2. The board of directors of the school should have instituted an inquiry to look into the matter.
3. The accused should have been suspended until the completion of the inquiry.
4. All those who knew about the incident in the school and did not report it to the board of directors should have been suspended too for not reporting it.
5. Students should have been informed about this incident.
6. An orientation session for the students and the staff should have been organized to ensure that they knew their rights if their dignity was violated by any staff.
7. The accused should have been restricted in his dealings with the student and staff of the school.
But what was done was different.
1. Instead, a private arbitration committee was formed to mediate between the victim and the alleged perpetrator.
2. The recommendation was given to cover up the matter if the accused did not resume his religious activities such as giving sermons or speaking in public.
3. The family and friends encouraged the accused to return to India.
4. Stories were circulated by those close to the accused that the girl had apologized and the religious leader was gracious to forgive her.
5. The arbitrary committee arranged a meeting between the accused and the family of the victim and elicited a confession.
6. The accused promised not to give the Friday sermon or talks anywhere for two years.
7. The accused later denied the charges and retracted his statement.
8. The accused called a meeting of his advisory council and appointed his sons and grandson as in-charge of various position in schools.
9. The accused paid thousands of dollars to attorneys to defend the accused.
Obviously, every norm of justice, both secular and Islamic, was violated by those who swear by Islam. They refused to empathize with the victim. Some of them believed her but tried to persuade her not to report the case to the police. They tried to act as a court and judge and arbitrator. They argued that their community would be defamed and their religious institutions would come under close scrutiny and Islam would become a target of Islamophones once again.
They did not bother to give any respect to the victim or her family or their feelings. They did not bother to refer to the norms of justice as taught by their holy book and lived by their Prophet. They forgot the teachings of the Prophet who is reported to have told one of his companions that "even if her daughter was involved in an act of theft, he would have punished her." They did not realize that ultimately it is to God Almighty they have to respond for their deeds.
Who knows how many women, men and children have gone through or have been going through the pains of being molested by someone religious they trusted? In Southern California, the community leadership advised a religious leader accused of molesting a girl to leave the country. This leader was involved in a similar case earlier and the leadership forced the girl to withdraw the case. He is still giving religious sermons and claiming his innocence. They say that a person should not be held guilty unless proven otherwise. Well, the community leadership did not give the victim an opportunity to state her case in a court of law. They shut her up under the false assumptions that the image of Islam would be badly impacted by that.
In another state, an Imam was sent back to the country of his origin once a man filed charges against him for sexual molestation. In another incident, a widow refused to file charges against an Imam who had allegedly raped her in a mosque where she had gone to seek religious advise to raise her two daughters. The woman did not want anyone else in the community to know about it out of shame when she wanted some advice on how to deal with this trauma.. These and many similar cases are out there and yet the community leadership has been persistently refusing to take appropriate action. Rather, it is defending its action by encouraging the people not to report it to the police.
In general, there are no religiously defined policies for these situations that our community has established from its own resources. It is generally assumed that holy men are incapable of doing these acts of sexual molestation as they are men of God. Our community does not want to face the reality that Muslims too commit acts of sexual abuse. They too are vulnerable to every vice that human beings have ever indulged in.
The religious clergy involved in these acts finds itself protected. It repeats a few verses of the Qur'an and a few statements of the Prophet in a mesmerizing manner to convince an already captive audience to hide its sins against God and crimes against humanity.
It is true that not everyone in the clergy is involved in these acts. Yet the absence of any defined policies and the despotic and dictatorial way in which most Islamic institutions are run raise doubts about the character of many.
The community leadership must act with responsibility if they are serious in their commitment to Islam and preserving it for their future generation. The protection of children as well as men and women is part of the social obligation that the leadership contracts with the community once it assumes that position. It cannot act in an irresponsible or arrogant manner by protecting the accused and denying victims the rights to seek justice to their grievances and injustices inflicted upon.
There are some measures that the Chicago community as well as the Muslim community in general must take if it really wants to effectively handle the situation..
Steps the Chicago Community should take:
1. Ensure that the victim and her family are provided full protection and access to legal help.
2. The accused should not be given any religious podium by any religious institution for ever.
3. The school that the community helped build should be taken away from his family and a group of Islamic academics from Chicago should be given the responsibility to run it.
4. The matter should be left to the court.
5. Even if the accused accepts his crime and apologizes, he should not be religiously rehabilitated in the community.
6 Sensitivity training should be given to the staff and students as well as board members.
7. Trained councilors should be hired to deal with this situation.
The steps the Muslim Community in general should take:
1. General policy guidelines should be created to deal with these situations.
2. Employees of the Islamic institutions should be given orientation on this policy.
3. Students should be given orientation about such policies.
4. Any violation of law should be reported to the police.
5. Muslim institutions should not be considered the property of a family or ethnicity if those institutions are built by Muslim resources.
6. Rules of khalwa (privacy) should be elaborated and the community should be educated about them.
Let us hope that someone in the community listens to the cries of the victims and do what is recommended and often mandated by the Qur'an.
(Dr Aslam Abdullah is the editor of the Muslim Observer, published from Detroit, as well as director of the Islamic Society of Nevada)
