Religion Watch
Volume 37 No. 3
The issue of spiritual abuse by Muslim leaders is being tackled by ground initiatives and organizations, similarly to what has been taking place in other religious traditions, writes journalist and novelist Hanan Sulaiman in Ahram Online (January 6). Some Sufi spiritual leaders in particular are being targeted by groups confronting spiritual and sexual abuse in Muslim environments, according to Sulaiman. “Sufi sheikhs would be found taking advantage of their followers, especially women, exploiting them financially and/or physically to the extent of sexual relationships.” She writes that these sheikhs would play with abused disciples’ fears about their salvation in order to keep them under control.
Sulaiman lists a number of initiatives against spiritual abuse, noting that they are all based in the West, despite the existence of abuse in Muslim-majority countries. These include the Hurma Project, founded by Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Chair of Islamic Studies at Huron University College in London, Canada, and Facing Abuse in Community Environments (FACE), which was formed in 2017 and is based in Texas. This organization wants to create a framework by which to address the leadership accountability gap within the U.S. and Canada. “Culturally, Arab Muslims tend to deny wrong-doings related to the practice of faith,” Sulaiman writes. More activist work is thus being done behind closed doors than in public. Sulaiman notes that the lack of any such initiative in Egypt is what drove her to write a novel on the topic, The Shepherd (available only in Arabic).
(Websites of initiatives confronting spiritual abuse among Muslims, with each providing various resources: Hurma Project, https://hurmaproject.com; In Shaykh’s Clothing, https://inshaykhsclothing.com; FACE, https://www.facetogether.org)
https://www.religionwatch.com/spiritual-abuse-developing-as-issue-in-muslim-circles/
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Jan 28, 2022
CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/28/2022 (Bhakti Marga, Swami Vishwananda, Podcast, Germany, Islamic Marriage Laws, Conspiracy Theories)
Bhakti Marga, Swami Vishwananda, Podcast, Germany, Islamic Marriage Laws, Conspiracy Theories
Torial: Just Love: Bhakti Marga's Guru and His Secret
Washington Post: For the sake of a visa, I was forced into marriage in Arizona — at age 15
"The Bhakti Marga sect has its headquarters in the Taunus, and its guru, Swami Vishwananda, is worshiped as a god. But again and again dropouts report abuse of power in the ashram - and sexualised violence. This podcast investigates the allegations.
The Bhakti Marga sect has its headquarters in Springen / Heidenrod, a rural area in the Taunus. Her guru Swami Vishwananda is worshiped as God by his followers. What he promises is unconditional love - Just Love. But for many years, dropouts have repeatedly reported manipulation, brainwashing, abuse of power - and sexualized violence that Vishwananda did to them. These warnings are not taken seriously - and the Hindu-Christian faith community continues to grow rapidly, worldwide. In August 2021, Bhakti Marga bought the "Seepark", an old conference hotel, in Kirchheim, Hesse. The communities of Heidenrod and Kirchheim are happy about the ashram operation. Also because the international guests who visit the two German ashrams to be blessed by the guru, flush money into the community coffers. In six episodes, Marlene Halser and Stefan Bücheler investigate the allegations, talk to those affected and ask those responsible why the warnings are not taken seriously. Also they ask: who is this guru, who is Vishwananda? And how did a small religious community become a huge, international company?
A six-part documentary podcast by Hauseins and Hessischer Rundfunk."
Washington Post: For the sake of a visa, I was forced into marriage in Arizona — at age 15
" ... Soon everyone started hugging and saying "mubarak" — congratulations. My heart sank. I realized I had just been forced into a marriage proposal, or "rishta" — a prelude to a "nikah," or Muslim wedding — to a man who needed to stay in the United States when his visa expired. He was seven years older than me. I'd never met him.
The nikah, a religious contract, is not legally recognized under U.S. marriage law. But Arizona's marriage law and loopholes in U.S. immigration law meant my family still had avenues by which they could exploit and force me — a U.S. citizen and a minor — into marriage.
Marriage before age 18 is legal in 44 of 50 states, according to Unchained at Last, an organization working to end child marriage in the United States. In states with no age minimum, children as young as 10 have been forced into marriage. At the time of my engagement, the legal age of consent to marry in Arizona was 15. (Now it's 16 with parental permission or legal emancipation.)"
" ... How do people come to believe in conspiracy theories? It's a question Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor Dolores Albarracín has been thinking about for decades.
"I grew up in Argentina in the '70s, during the Dirty War that eventually led to the disappearance of 30,000 Argentines. The climate within the dictatorship was such that you couldn't really speak, and for a family that was politically involved such as mine, you were instructed to not say anything," recalls Albarracín. "That piqued my interest in secrecy, and in how people make inferences about events that have presumably been covered up, particularly when there is no evidence."
As a social psychologist and communication scholar who studies attitudes, persuasion, and behavior, Albarracín has researched what happens when fringe ideas become consequential for society. "That's what we're seeing with conspiracy theories today," she says. "Nobody can deny now that these are wildly impactful and really problematic."
In a new book, "Creating conspiracy beliefs: How our thoughts are shaped," Albarracín and co-authors Man-pui Sally Chan and Kathleen Hall Jamieson of Penn and Julia Albarracín of Western Illinois University drill down into the phenomenon. Analyzing empirical research conducted on real-world examples of false plots—the alleged sex-trafficking ring Democrats ran out of a pizza parlor, the so-called deep state that undermined Donald Trump's presidency—the team pinpoints two factors that have driven recent widespread conspiracy theories: the conservative media and societal fear and anxiety."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.
Jan 21, 2022
CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/21/2022 (Sisters of the Valley, Islam, Sikhism, Religious Research, Canada, Psychedelics, Shamanism, South Africa, Russia, Religious Freedom, Legal)
Sisters of the Valley, Islam, Sikhism, Religious Research, Canada, Psychedelics, Shamanism, South Africa, Russia, Religious Freedom, Legal
Rolling Stone: Our Ladies of the Perpetual High
"In the middle of California's Central Valley, in a modest milky-blue home on one acre of farmland, lives a small group of nuns. They wear habits and abide by a set of vows, but as the door opens, it's clear that the Sisters of the Valley, as they're known, aren't living in a traditional convent. Because as the scent wafts out, it's unambiguous: It's the earthy, pungent smell of weed.
When we visit, five women live in the home: Sister Kate, 62; Sister Sophia, 49; Sister Quinn, 25; and at the moment, Sister Luna and Sister Camilla, both 34, who are visiting from Mexico. Sister Kass, 29, lives off the property with her two children and her partner, Brother Rudy, the collective's crop manager. On this sunny day, the Sisters of the Valley home is flooded with golden beams of light; a cream-colored piano stands against the wall with an ashtray and joint placed on top. Sister Kate picks it up, lights it, and thoughtfully inhales as she sits down to play "America the Beautiful." She's using a piano-learning app filled with Christian songs and national anthems — the two genres of music she dislikes the most. But there is an underlying motive: "The Christian kids nearby have contests, so if I do a lot of practicing in a month, then I can beat them," she says with a raspy laugh. "There is some gratification in beating the Christian kids."
The Sisters of the Valley are not a religious organization, but an enclave of self-proclaimed sisters who are in the business of spreading spirituality and selling healing cannabidiol products. "Look, the average age of a new Catholic nun in America is 78," says Sister Kate, founder of the sect, which has 22 sisters and eight brothers worldwide. "Christianity is dying all around us. What are people going to do? They need spirituality in their life; we need it for meaning. We are very spiritual beings walking a physical path, and so for that reason we will find ways to connect. And we are just one example of that."
Their property is a peaceful setting, with ashtrays everywhere. There's a craft yurt, vegetable beds of kale and spinach, a trailer where Sister Quinn resides, and tall potted cannabis plants, which were cultivated in a shed and planted outside in preparation for the upcoming full-moon harvest. (All of these are hemp, from which they extract CBD, but they also grow marijuana for personal use.) A secondary home on the property, known as the abbey, is used for medicine-making. The scent of their lavender salve consumes this space. The walls are lined with photos of nuns and female religious figures, some with joints, some without. Sister Sophia smiles as she stirs a pot on the stove, heating up their CBD topical salve before packaging it into jars. When it comes to their products, it is always referred to as medicine, not cannabis, and all steps from planting, to trimming, to packaging are scheduled around the moon cycle."
"When Ushpreet Singh arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, in late 2020, he was dismayed to find that the town of 33,000 people did not have a gurdwara — a place of worship for Sikhs like him.
At the time, there were about a dozen Sikh families in Whitehorse and a makeshift Sikh committee, but no meeting place.
So Singh set about trying to establish one himself.
"I asked where all the paperwork was and when I saw it, the total donation was $6,000 in 20 years," the 23-year-old tells Global News.
"It was not enough to establish a temple, it was not enough for anything. I was really upset; this money couldn't help us. And no one wanted to help."
One year and one monumental fundraising campaign later, Whitehorse is now home to a gurdwara for a Sikh community that now numbers between 300 and 400 people.
Singh is one of many new immigrants fuelling religious growth among minority groups in Canada.
As Christian religiosity falls to unprecedented levels (just 68 per cent reported a religious affiliation in Canada in 2019, according to new StatCan data), minority religions such as Sikhism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism continue to thrive, fuelled by immigration.
In fact, by 2036, StatCan predicts that the number of people affiliated with non-Christian religions could almost double.
The Sunday Times: Inside the weird world of extreme wellness retreats
"Nine years ago I stayed at Kalari Kovilakom, a wellness retreat in Kerala, India. This was no ordinary wellness retreat. Instead of fluffy robes and champagne-drinking in the hot tub, my phone was whisked away on arrival, I was obliged to wear white pajamas the entire time, and I had to rise in the darkness, like a monk, to do yoga before dawn. Then there was the ghee. Clarified butter was poured over and into every one of my orifices daily. My many treatments included having a 50cm "hat" made of lino attached to my head, and then melted ghee was slowly poured down it. There were enemas with, you guessed it, ghee.
My fellow guests were a veritable united nations of health-seekers, including an exiled politician from Egypt and a group of Canadian millionaires. The Egyptian minister had been there for months and must have been 90 per cent ghee. I was there for more than two weeks, and while I left feeling calm and happy, I could never shake the suspicion that I was also re-enacting an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.
Welcome to the world of extreme wellness, which is the subject of the hot new TV series Nine Perfect Strangers. Based on the bestselling novel by Liane Moriarty, the setting is the fictional Australian health retreat Tranquillum House. There are nine guests — clients, victims, fools, prisoners, call them what you think best describes the attendees at a wellness retreat where, on arrival, all phones are removed, luggage is swept for snacks and booze, and the doors are locked. There is also a crucial plot twist that involves the mind-bending delivery of what is known as a therapeutic (read, huge) dose of the psychedelic compound LSD. If LSD and imprisonment sounds like a ludicrous literary conceit, then you have clearly never succumbed to the joy and pain of extreme wellness."
"Russia has used increasingly strict legislation on "foreign agents'' (a term which has connotations of spying) and "undesirable organisations" to curtail, complicate, or prohibit the activities of organizations which promote human rights and monitor their violation, including that of freedom of religion and belief. This "indirectly affects the people human rights defenders stand up for '', says Aleksandr Verkhovsky of the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis (branded a "foreign agent"). The Justice Ministry and prosecutors are seeking through the courts to close down the Memorial Human Rights Centre (also branded a "foreign agent"), partly for its monitoring of criminal prosecutions of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Courts in Moscow are considering whether to liquidate two organizations belonging to Memorial, one of Russia's longest-established human rights movements – with one lawsuit partially based on Memorial's support for freedom of religion and belief.
On 23 December, Moscow City Court began considering the Justice Ministry's and city prosecutors' request to close down the Memorial Human Rights Centre, on the grounds both of alleged violations of the law on "foreign agents" and of "justification of the activities of terrorist and extremist organisations", including Jehovah's Witnesses.
Meanwhile, judges at Russia's Supreme Court have completed their examination of the General Prosecutor's Office's case against the International Memorial. Both sides are due to make their arguments to the court on 28 December."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.
Jan 15, 2022
CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/15-16/2022 (Cognitive Dissonance, Islam, Spiritual Abuse, UFO, Twelve Tribes)
Cognitive Dissonance, Islam, Spiritual Abuse, UFO, Twelve Tribes
"A little more than 60 years ago, Leon Festinger published A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957). Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance has been one of the most influential theories in social psychology. It has generated hundreds and hundreds of studies, from which much has been learned about the determinants of attitudes and beliefs, the internalization of values, the consequences of decisions, the effects of disagreement among persons, and other important psychological processes. This introductory chapter presents an introduction to cognitive dissonance theory, followed by an overview of current perspectives and research on the theory. It provides a brief description on research paradigms in dissonance research and alternative accounts of dissonance phenomena."
"Spiritual abuse is certainly a topic that needs further attention from leaders and followers of different Islamic schools of thought, topped by scholars.Religious cults are not breaking news. What's new is ground initiatives, organisations, and activism on several levels that advocate against and confront Muslim spiritual leaders' misuse of their power, or their "spiritual abuse."
In cases reported or witnessed, and usually handled outside of the legal system, Sufi sheikhs would be found taking advantage of their followers, especially women, exploiting them financially and/or physically to the extent of sexual relationships. They would also gain various benefits from their service and networks through games of manipulation, downplaying reality and threatening of displeasing Allah and His allies -- the sheikh being one of them --and so one's relationship with His Creator would be affected in case of disobedience. Islam has no immunity from any human.
Misguided, narcissist Sufi sheikhs would always ask to be given the benefit of the doubt and tell followers not to follow the sins of others. These groups would eventually lead their followers to cut off ties with the outside world and with any voice of reason in the name of sincerity, companionship, and faith. Thus, they remain hostage to the notions their sheikhs feed them, which means these groups transform into a cult where followers would face bullying and threats if they try to break away.
Muslim community activism has been astounding in this field. For the past decade, Muslims have been raising awareness against communities of cults, engaging surviving victims, encouraging them to come forward to tell their stories anonymously and overcome feelings of fear and shame, offering support, and finally, holding those who violated the trust accountable for their wrong-doings doings. Examples of this activism are "In Sheikh's Clothing," "Hurma Project," "Face," and "Heart."
It is notable that Muslim activism against spiritual abuse originated in the West, despite the phenomenon's existence in Muslim-majority countries. Yet, no similar organised civil activism can be noticed on the ground in any Arab country, for instance. Culturally, Arab Muslims tend to deny wrong-doings related to the practice of faith. There could be some working groups or even individuals who do not wish to formally announce their activism, either because they prefer to work secretly and not state publicly that such abuse exists, out of fear that it will be used by Islamophobes, or they fear the repercussions if their names are known to be active in this sphere they will be branded as conspirators against Islam."
"For those younger readers who won't remember his work, von Däniken wrote the cult non-fiction book of all cult non-fiction books. His 1968 Chariots of the Gods – subtitled, "Was God An Astronaut?" – was a fixture on every 1970s bookshelf and its argument was propounded in any number of dope-clouded student common-rooms. That argument, as the subtitle indicates, was that aliens visited our planet in the distant past, and that all sorts of archaeological oddities from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the mysterious Nazca Lines in Peru are testament to their presence.
And this spry Swiss gentleman, to whom I speak a few months before his 87th birthday, in no way resiles from that conviction. He believes that aliens mated with ancient humans and tampered with our genomes, gave us various technological and scientific leg-ups, and then left Earth with the promise to return; which, he thinks, half a century of UFO sightings indicates is a promise they made good on. He says the folk memory of these aliens – with their fiery ships descending from the heavens – is encoded in the ancient texts of religions all over the world, from the book of Ezekiel to the Mahabharata and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
We're talking because von Däniken's work is credited with having inspired the new Marvel movie The Eternals – or, at least, the 1970s comic books by Marvel's Jack "King" Kirby on which it was based. That story has as its premise that a team of superpowered aliens came to earth in 5,000BC, as part of an extraterrestrial mission to guide the development of intelligent life on the planet – which is essentially the von Däniken thesis. There's no doubt that Kirby was influenced by Chariots of the Gods, but its author has never, in turn, heard of him. "The Eternals? It's a book?" says von Däniken. "I didn't know about that, but I'm happy to hear about it."
The ideas that inspired Kirby, says von Däniken, germinated in him as the son of devout Catholic Swiss parents in a Jesuit boarding school. Crammed with Latin and Greek and immersed in the Bible, he became intrigued as to whether other religious texts shared the same myths."
New York Times: Colorado Wildfire Inquiry Focuses on Christian Sect
" ... Investigators looking into the cause of a colossal wildfire in Colorado that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people are focusing on a property owned by a Christian fundamentalist sect, after witnesses reported seeing a structure on fire there moments before the blaze spread with astonishing speed across drought-stricken suburbs.
Sheriff Joe Pelle of Boulder County said at a news briefing on Monday that the property owned by Twelve Tribes, which was founded in Tennessee in the 1970s, had become a target of the probe after investigators ruled out the possibility that downed power lines might have sparked the fire.
Still, Sheriff Pelle warned against jumping to conclusions regarding the fire's origins, emphasizing that the investigation was in its early stages and that it could take weeks or even months to determine the exact cause. He said investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Forest Service were assisting his department's probe.
"We're going to take our time and be methodical because the stakes are huge," Sheriff Pelle said.
The efforts to determine what caused the fire are adding to the challenges that authorities are facing in Colorado, after heavy snowfall over the weekend blanketed the suburban areas that had been torched by the Marshall fire. About 35,000 people were forced to evacuate the area last week, and many families remain in shelters after more than 900 homes were destroyed.
Authorities are still searching for two people missing in the blaze, which figured among the most destructive in Colorado history. A severe multiyear drought nurtured the brittle-dry conditions that allowed the fire to sweep through residential areas.
Discussion of the Twelve Tribes property emerged on social media on Thursday, around the time the Marshall fire began spreading, when video of a structure on fire there started circulating. By Sunday, officials confirmed that the fire began on private property at the Boulder County intersection of Marshall Road and Highway 93, which is owned by Twelve Tribes. Sheriff Pelle confirmed on Monday that investigators were examining the site in addition to adjacent areas.
Several witnesses who live nearby said they had alerted the authorities about the fire at the site before hurricane-force winds spread flames around Boulder County. Anne Michaels, a kindergarten teacher who lives in the area, said she was driving by the property on Thursday while talking to her mother on her mobile phone when she noticed something was wrong."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Please forward articles that you think we should add to cultintervention@gmail.com.
Jan 7, 2022
Confronting spiritual abuse in Islam
Ahram
January 6, 2022
Spiritual abuse is certainly a topic that needs further attention from leaders and followers of different Islamic schools of thought, topped by scholars.
Religious cults are not breaking news. What's new is ground initiatives, organisations, and activism on several levels that advocate against and confront Muslim spiritual leaders' misuse of their power, or their "spiritual abuse."
In cases reported or witnessed, and usually handled outside of the legal system, Sufi sheikhs would be found taking advantage of their followers, especially women, exploiting them financially and/or physically to the extent of sexual relationships. They would also gain various benefits from their service and networks through games of manipulation downplaying reality and threatening of displeasing Allah and His allies -- the sheikh being one of them --and so one's relationship with His Creator would be affected in case of disobedience. Islam has no immunity from any human.
Misguided, narcissist Sufi sheikhs would always ask to be given benefit of the doubt and tell followers not to follow the sins of others. These groups would eventually lead their followers to cut off ties with the outside world and with any voice of reason in the name of sincerity, companionship, and faith. Thus, they remain hostage to the notions their sheikhs feed them, which means these groups transform into a cult where followers would face bullying and threats if they try to break away.
Muslim community activism has been astounding in this field. For the past decade, Muslims have been raising awareness against communities of cults, engaging surviving victims, encouraging them to come forward to tell their stories anonymously and overcome feelings of fear and shame, offering support, and finally, holding those who violated the trust accountable for their wrong-doings doings. Examples of this activism are "In Sheikh's Clothing," "Hurma Project," "Face," and "Heart."
It is notable that Muslim activism against spiritual abuse originated in the West, despite the phenomenon's existence in Muslim-majority countries. Yet, no similar organised civil activism can be noticed on the ground in any Arab country, for instance. Culturally, Arab Muslims tend to deny wrong-doings related to the practice of faith. There could be some working groups or even individuals who do not wish to formally announce their activism, either because they prefer to work secretly and not state publicly that such abuse exists, out of fear that it will be used by Islamophobes, or they fear the repercussions if their names are known to be active in this sphere they will be branded as conspirators against Islam.
"In Sheikh's Clothing" emerged publicly seven years after its founder started his activism. More work is done behind closed doors than in public.
Silencing victims, protecting perpetrators, and blaming victims imply that the abuse someone suffered is their own fault, accusing women, for example, of causing fitna, or sedition. Then the victim feels betrayed by Islamic scholars and the Muslim community after they fail to provide adequate support and they could possibly renounce their faith.
"If we pretend that we have a utopia, we will only be in denial about what actually happens," Ingrid Mattson, founder of "Hurma Project" said in a conference, "The cover-up in such cases is worse than the crime itself."
Prevention is better than cure. Activists compile a list of precautions one should take in these communities to protect oneself against manipulation. They also put a code of conduct and ethical policies for Muslim leadership, train institutions on how to address spiritual abuse effectively and educate individuals on recognising spiritual abuse and coach them on cult exit and recovery. A code of conduct does not mean abuse would not occur, but that it is actionable and violators will be held accountable. It also protects religious figures from baseless allegations. Prophet Muhammad advised "Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or an oppressed." His Companions told him "It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?" The prophet replied "By preventing him from oppressing others."
Red flags that ring alarm bells against a sheikh who betrays his spiritual honesty include granting favours for a follower, such as giving her extra time, special invitations and exceptions, disclosing personal issues, discouraging her from seeking help elsewhere, and sharing a secret together. In addition, a red flag is when a woman's instinct tells her something is wrong.
Some activist groups, such as "Face," would even go the extra mile and expose abusers whose patterns of behaviour suggest "criminal thinking" and not just human weakness. They would start with investigating reported cases to prove the alleged violations. "When people say Islam supports victims dropping standards of evidence, they are assuming their approach is the maslaha (interest) without accounting for the fact that they may be the ones creating a greater harm that they are not aware of," one activist said.
If no practical steps were taken to stop the abuse in the concerned organisation, uncovering the issue to alert others to be careful of certain sheikhs would be the solution to socially hold them accountable. Firing them without exposing their misconduct might lead to new circles of abuse elsewhere. Exposing the abusers would entail publishing their names, photos, and documented violations while protecting the victims' identities.
Spiritual abuse is certainly a topic that needs further attention from leaders and followers of different Islamic schools of thought, topped by scholars. These initiatives need to be replicated in other countries and connected universally.
Unfortunately, there is none in Egypt despite the fact that abuses of spiritual power exist which drove me to write my first novel about the topic, The Shepherd.
*The writer is a journalist and novelist. Her debut novel The Shepherd was published in 2021 in Arabic.
https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/454742.aspx
Feb 17, 2021
French assembly passes bill ensuring 'French values,' banning polygamy, forced marriage
CBC News
The Associated Press
February 16, 2021
French lawmakers overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday a bill that would strengthen oversight of mosques, schools and sports clubs to safeguard France from radical Islamists and ensure respect for French values — one of President Emmanuel Macron's landmark projects.
The vote in the lower house was the first critical hurdle for the legislation that has been long in the making after two weeks of intense debate. The bill passed 347 to 151 with 65 abstentions.
The wide-ranging bill that covers most aspects of French life has been hotly contested by some Muslims, lawmakers and others who fear the state is intruding on essential freedoms and pointing a finger at Islam, the nation's No. 2 religion. But it breezed through a chamber in which Macron's centrist party has a majority.
The legislation gained added urgency after a teacher was beheaded in October followed by a deadly attack on a basilica in Nice.
The bill known as Art. 18 is known as the "Paty law," named after Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded outside his school west of Paris.
The legislation makes it a crime to endanger the life of a person by providing details of their private life and location. Paty was slain after information about his school was posted in a video.
The bill bolsters other French efforts to fight extremism, mainly security-based.
Suspicions of a hidden agenda
Detractors say the measures are already covered in current laws and voice suspicions the bill has a hidden agenda by a government looking to entice right-wing voters ahead of presidential elections next year.
Just days before Tuesday's vote, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin — the bill's main sponsor — accused far-right leader Marine le Pen during nationally televised debate of being "soft" on radical Islam and that she needed to take vitamins.
The remark intended to underscore that the ruling party is tougher than the far-right in tackling radical Islamists. But Le Pen has criticized the bill as too weak and has offered what she called her own, tougher counter-proposal.
Le Pen, who has declared her candidacy for the 2022 election, lost in a 2017 run-off against Macron.
The bill — which mentions neither Muslims nor Islam by name — is backed by those who see the need to contain what the government says is an encroaching fundamentalism subverting French values, notably the nation's foundational value of secularism and gender equality.
Representatives of religions consulted
The planned law "supporting respect for the principles of the Republic" is dubbed the "separatism" bill, a term used by Macron to refer to radicals who would create a "counter society" in France.
Top representatives of all religions were consulted as the text was being written. The government's leading Muslim conduit, the French Council for the Muslim Faith, gave its backing.
Ghaleb Bencheikh, head of the Foundation for Islam of France, a secular body seeking a progressive Islam, said in a recent interview that the planned law was "unjust but necessary" to fight radicalization.
Among other things, the 51-article bill would ban virginity certificates and crack down on polygamy and forced marriage, practices not formally attached to a religion. Critics say these provisions are already covered in existing laws.
Among key measures is ensuring that children attend regular school starting at age three, a way to target home schools where ideology is taught.
Other measures include training all public employees in secularism. Anyone who threatens a public employee risks a prison sentence. In another reference to Paty, the slain teacher, the bill obligates the bosses of a public employee who has been threatened to take action if the employee agrees.
Bill adjusts law on separation of church and state
The bill introduces mechanisms to guarantee that mosques and associations that run them are not under the sway of foreign interests or homegrown Salafists with a rigourous interpretation of Islam.
Associations are to sign a charter of respect for French values and pay back state funds if they cross the line.
To accommodate changes, the bill adjusts France's 1905 law guaranteeing separation of church and state.
Some Muslims said they sensed a climate of suspicion.
"There's confusion ... A Muslim is a Muslim and that's all," said Bahri Ayari, a taxi driver, after worshipping at mid-day prayers at the Grand Mosque of Paris.
"We talk about radicals, about I don't know what. A Muslim is a Muslim and that's all."
As for convicted radicals, he said, their crimes "get put on the back of Islam. That's not what a Muslim is."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/france-bill-french-values-1.5915668
Jan 21, 2020
'A long time coming': These Muslims are bringing sex abuse by sheikhs out of the shadows
Aysha Khan
Religion News Service
January 15, 2020
(RNS) — For Sidrah Ahmad-Chan, the moment felt surreal.
Listening to a Muslim psychologist speaking about patterns of abuse while on stage at the American Islamic College on Saturday (Jan. 11), she pulled up Twitter.
“First panel discussion and I am already reeling,” typed Ahmad-Chan, a Toronto-based researcher studying gender-based violence and Islamophobia, who was one of about 100 other attendees at the newly launched Hurma Project’s first conference. Started by prominent Canadian Islamic scholar Ingrid Mattson, the three-day research conference was the first to focus entirely on abuse in Muslim spaces.
“We are actually having conversations on spiritual abuse and sexual abuse in our community,” Ahmad-Chan wrote. “It's actually happening. Been a long time coming.”
Over the past two to three years, scholars and advocates say, North American Muslims have risen up in an unprecedented movement to openly confront sexual and spiritual abuse perpetrated by Muslim religious leaders.
“I’m definitely seeing an increase in people willing to talk about these issues,” said Phoenix-based certified sexual health educator Angelica Lindsey-Ali, who founded the Village Auntie Movement two years ago and has worked with victims of Muslim religious leaders accused of sexual abuse. “The unfortunate part is that it isn’t necessarily by choice. In some cases, I think the recognition of the rampant spiritual abuse in the community has forced them to have to talk about these issues.”
The conference comes in the wake of several explosive scandals impugning well-respected Islamic teachers, including Bayyinah Institute founder and superstar preacher Nouman Ali Khan, who was caught in a sexting scandal and accused of luring women into sexual relationships disguised as secret marriages; Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Swiss Islamic scholar and author who is currently awaiting trial over charges of raping multiple women who accused him at the height of the global #MeToo movement; and Usama Canon, whose organization Ta’leef Collective published a statement saying the founder “deeply betrayed the sanctity of the position of spiritual teacher" through "verbal abuse and abuse of authority," as well as actions of a "more serious nature."
“The rise of these celebrity sheikhs is a fairly recent development, just in the past few years,” said UNC Chapel Hill professor Juliane Hammer, who attended the Hurma Project conference and whose new book examines Muslim activism against domestic violence. “And with that rise comes the possibility of this kind of exposure. Because every person, especially men, in positions of such power is prone to abuse.”
Advocates also attribute the new movement to a number of other developments: the growing sensitivity to women’s leadership and access in Muslim spaces; the explosion of sex abuse scandals and crises in a number of other faith traditions, which showed that Muslims are not unique in struggling to stamp out the problem; increased social and political visibility of Muslims; and the broader #MeToo movement, which empowered survivors to share their stories and offered a roadmap for accountability.
“The #MeToo movement was definitely a catalyst and gave a roadmap and a sense of urgency to people who were sitting on a secret,” Lindsey-Ali said. “But the reality is that now is just the time that Allah is finally bringing to light the fact that there are abusers in the community. Allah is the Reckoner.”
Most new initiatives are approaching the issue of sexual abuse by wrapping it into a broader category of “spiritual abuse,” which encompasses all abuses of religious authority by faith leaders. That includes physical abuse, fraud and embezzlement and initiation of secret, temporary or child marriages and also hints at the damage such abuse can inflict on a victim’s own relationship with their faith.
Zahra Ayubi, a Dartmouth professor researching gender and Islamic ethics, cautioned that use of the phrase “spiritual abuse” as a euphemistic catch-all term may minimize the damage of sexual violence and confuse the vulnerable communities it aims to protect.
Others see it as a critical strategic move.
“Calling it spiritual in order to get people to talk about it can also be a very intentional strategy,” Hammer observed. “If they walk in and say, ‘I want to talk about sexual abuse by religious authority figures,’ people want to shut down the conversation. So advocates are looking at where the community is and what will allow them to talk about it.”
Ten years ago, the Chicago-based non-profit Heart Women and Girls was the only national initiative openly discussing sexual violence in Muslim spaces. Public health advocate Nadiah Mohajir founded the organization 10 years ago to offer sexual and reproductive health programming to local Muslims, making the argument that a lack of sex education enables sexual abuse.
In 2015, Mohajir became a leading voice on effectively dealing with sexual abuse in Muslim communities when a prominent Chicago-area imam, Mohammed Abdullah Saleem, was charged with committing sexual assault and battery against minors at the Islamic school he had founded. Despite vocal backlash against the accusers by the conservative cleric's supporters, Mohajir and other local scholars, lawyers and therapists urged victims to speak up and worked with other local schools to develop stronger policies to protect their students.
Mohajir’s team is no longer alone in its uphill battle.
Two years ago, Facing Abuse in Community Environments (Face) launched and began publishing reports investigating incidents of sexual abuse in U.S. mosques and naming alleged perpetrators. In Shaykh’s Clothing sprung up three years ago to document incidents of spiritual abuse and offer resources addressing the root causes of the problem. Lindsey-Ali’s Village Auntie Movement takes a traditional African approach in teaching Muslim women about their “sacred sexuality” and their rights in the marital bed. Muslim poet-turned-rapper Mona Haydar’s 2017 song “Dog” calls out the “sheikhs in my DM / begging me to shake it on my cam in the PM.”
Two weeks ago in Chicago, at the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America’s annual conference, Muslim leaders held a panel on “breaking the taboo” of sexual and domestic abuse. Maryland’s Family and Youth Initiative has published a toolkit on spiritual abuse. The Peaceful Families Project will soon host a training session for imams and Muslim chaplains on preventing and responding to domestic violence. And this week in London, the women’s group Hawaa Empowerment will host a discussion on sexual abuse in Muslim communities.
“What’s happening right now is different from before,” Ayubi confirmed. “Prior to this, the main paradigm with regard to sexual abuse, and what people like to call spiritual abuse, was one of silence. That’s going to change with these new initiatives.”
That silence, Ayubi said, was in large part due to Muslims’ unwillingness to unearth the skeletons in their closet while already facing heightened scrutiny and surveillance due to anti-Muslim sentiment. Some Muslim leaders have therefore prioritized ensuring victims’ silence, she argued, whether by guilting them out of speaking out or pursuing legal action, pushing them to handle incidents through informal mechanisms like arbitration, or even requesting male relatives help convince victims to remain quiet and avoid embarrassment for the family.
That fear persists despite data showing that levels of sexual abuse by Muslim leaders are not extraordinary. A survey last year by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that 8% of U.S. Muslims say they personally know someone who has experienced unwanted sexual advances from faith leaders – about the same as the general public and other major faith groups. (Muslims are about as likely as other faith groups to have reported the incident to community leaders, but are the only group more likely to have reported the incident to law enforcement, per polling.)
Now, activists are increasingly “calling out the fallacy in crying Islamophobia,” Ayubi said.
“Stamping out abusers will always help clean up the image of the community,” she noted. “The stereotype that Muslim women are oppressed is already out there. Rejecting the abusers from our communities would actually show that sexual abuse is not tolerated by Muslims and that women are, in fact, heard and valued and have an important leadership role within our communities.”
That’s the model championed by Face, the Texas-based non-profit created by Muslim community organizer Alia Salem to work toward exposure, accountability and consequences for those who abuse their authority.
“Our goal is to be a mechanism to help victims, to be a place where vulnerable people can go in the first place,” Salem told RNS. “Because there are no other mechanisms to interrupt the process of abuse, someone might get fired, but nothing stops them from getting hired at another place.”
Salem was watching the film “Spotlight” when she received a message from a Muslim mother seeking help in dealing with the Texas imam she claimed had groomed her daughter for sex. The imam allegedly requested sexually explicit images from and later had intercourse with the young woman in a motel, all while promising to consider her for marriage.
“I realized there was nobody to help,” Salem said. “There was literally nobody to do anything that would have any long lasting, sustained impact. … I thought, ‘Holy crap, this is happening. And we have to do something about it, because nobody else is going to. We have a moral obligation.’”
Salem’s training in organization development soon kicked in. She launched Face, spent a year thoroughly investigating the imam’s misconduct, then published a bombshell report that documented the results. A judge soon ruled that Imam Zia ul-Haque Sheikh was guilty of sexual exploitation, clergy malpractice and grooming, winning the victim a landmark $2.5 million judgment.
A second 11-month investigation by the group accused Phoenix-based imam Moataz Moftah of sexual battery, child abuse, misappropriation of charitable zakat funds and falsely presenting himself as single in order to pursue female congregants while in fact having two concurrent concealed marriages.
Salem attributes the success of Face's evidence-based methods to the increasingly “robust” willingness of American Muslim leaders and community members to support such work in the past two years, as well as the #MeToo movement and the shock at prominent leaders’ recent falls from grace.
“We've gotten a lot of pushback, that we're exposing the community to more harm, et cetera,” Salem said. “But even if people don't like our methodology, the positives outweigh the negatives because they're like, ‘Well, we don't want something like Face to exist, so let's create something else.’ And that’s what our goal is anyways.”
The Hurma Project is one of the most prominent developments in the movement. Rooted in a distinctly scholarly, religiously based approach, its founder, Ingrid Mattson, is well-known globally as the first woman, first convert and first North-American born president of the Islamic Society of North America.
The project, Mattson explained, “was established to uphold the sacred inviolability of each person who enters Muslim spaces” from abuse or exploitation by anyone holding or invoking religious knowledge or authority. She pointed to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad describing an individual’s physical body, property and honor as having the same hurma, or sacred inviolability, from exploitation, abuse, mutilation and harm, as the holy city of Mecca.
Advocates agree the conference was a crucial step in naming the problem. But many say there is a long way to go. One attendee told RNS that conference moderators failed to include content warnings in its proceedings, even when presenters detailed graphic sexual violence, and instead suggested there was a blanket warning for sensitive content throughout the conference.
“Certain harms wouldn't have happened if it was led by survivors, and if the voices of actual survivors carried more authority in this space,” the attendee, who asked not to be named, said.
Attendees also expressed concerns that both the conference and the movement’s efforts are focused narrowly on protecting a so-called “ideal victim.” A woman who is attacked by her boyfriend, for instance, may not be received warmly by a Muslim shelter, said Hammer. A victim who drinks, uses drugs, does not wear hijab or is LGBTQ may be dismissed when reporting abuse by Muslim leaders, advocates worried.
“Yes, we may be at a watershed moment,” the attendee said. “But it also seems like the only kind of violence that the community is dedicated to stopping is if you're abused when you’re sitting in a Quran class and following all the quote-unquote Islamic rules.”
Still, all the advocates RNS spoke to emphasized, anything is better than nothing.
“Right now there cannot be too many cooks in the kitchen,” Salem said. “We need cooks, period. If we can all take on different pieces of it, then maybe we can finally deal with it.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that scholar Tariq Ramadan has been convicted on multiple charges of rape. In fact, he is currently awaiting trial for those charges. RNS regrets the error.
https://religionnews.com/2020/01/15/a-long-time-coming-these-muslims-are-bringing-sex-abuse-by-sheikhs-out-of-the-shadows/
Religion News Service
January 15, 2020
(RNS) — For Sidrah Ahmad-Chan, the moment felt surreal.
Listening to a Muslim psychologist speaking about patterns of abuse while on stage at the American Islamic College on Saturday (Jan. 11), she pulled up Twitter.
“First panel discussion and I am already reeling,” typed Ahmad-Chan, a Toronto-based researcher studying gender-based violence and Islamophobia, who was one of about 100 other attendees at the newly launched Hurma Project’s first conference. Started by prominent Canadian Islamic scholar Ingrid Mattson, the three-day research conference was the first to focus entirely on abuse in Muslim spaces.
“We are actually having conversations on spiritual abuse and sexual abuse in our community,” Ahmad-Chan wrote. “It's actually happening. Been a long time coming.”
Over the past two to three years, scholars and advocates say, North American Muslims have risen up in an unprecedented movement to openly confront sexual and spiritual abuse perpetrated by Muslim religious leaders.
“I’m definitely seeing an increase in people willing to talk about these issues,” said Phoenix-based certified sexual health educator Angelica Lindsey-Ali, who founded the Village Auntie Movement two years ago and has worked with victims of Muslim religious leaders accused of sexual abuse. “The unfortunate part is that it isn’t necessarily by choice. In some cases, I think the recognition of the rampant spiritual abuse in the community has forced them to have to talk about these issues.”
The conference comes in the wake of several explosive scandals impugning well-respected Islamic teachers, including Bayyinah Institute founder and superstar preacher Nouman Ali Khan, who was caught in a sexting scandal and accused of luring women into sexual relationships disguised as secret marriages; Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Swiss Islamic scholar and author who is currently awaiting trial over charges of raping multiple women who accused him at the height of the global #MeToo movement; and Usama Canon, whose organization Ta’leef Collective published a statement saying the founder “deeply betrayed the sanctity of the position of spiritual teacher" through "verbal abuse and abuse of authority," as well as actions of a "more serious nature."
“The rise of these celebrity sheikhs is a fairly recent development, just in the past few years,” said UNC Chapel Hill professor Juliane Hammer, who attended the Hurma Project conference and whose new book examines Muslim activism against domestic violence. “And with that rise comes the possibility of this kind of exposure. Because every person, especially men, in positions of such power is prone to abuse.”
Advocates also attribute the new movement to a number of other developments: the growing sensitivity to women’s leadership and access in Muslim spaces; the explosion of sex abuse scandals and crises in a number of other faith traditions, which showed that Muslims are not unique in struggling to stamp out the problem; increased social and political visibility of Muslims; and the broader #MeToo movement, which empowered survivors to share their stories and offered a roadmap for accountability.
“The #MeToo movement was definitely a catalyst and gave a roadmap and a sense of urgency to people who were sitting on a secret,” Lindsey-Ali said. “But the reality is that now is just the time that Allah is finally bringing to light the fact that there are abusers in the community. Allah is the Reckoner.”
Most new initiatives are approaching the issue of sexual abuse by wrapping it into a broader category of “spiritual abuse,” which encompasses all abuses of religious authority by faith leaders. That includes physical abuse, fraud and embezzlement and initiation of secret, temporary or child marriages and also hints at the damage such abuse can inflict on a victim’s own relationship with their faith.
Zahra Ayubi, a Dartmouth professor researching gender and Islamic ethics, cautioned that use of the phrase “spiritual abuse” as a euphemistic catch-all term may minimize the damage of sexual violence and confuse the vulnerable communities it aims to protect.
Others see it as a critical strategic move.
“Calling it spiritual in order to get people to talk about it can also be a very intentional strategy,” Hammer observed. “If they walk in and say, ‘I want to talk about sexual abuse by religious authority figures,’ people want to shut down the conversation. So advocates are looking at where the community is and what will allow them to talk about it.”
Ten years ago, the Chicago-based non-profit Heart Women and Girls was the only national initiative openly discussing sexual violence in Muslim spaces. Public health advocate Nadiah Mohajir founded the organization 10 years ago to offer sexual and reproductive health programming to local Muslims, making the argument that a lack of sex education enables sexual abuse.
In 2015, Mohajir became a leading voice on effectively dealing with sexual abuse in Muslim communities when a prominent Chicago-area imam, Mohammed Abdullah Saleem, was charged with committing sexual assault and battery against minors at the Islamic school he had founded. Despite vocal backlash against the accusers by the conservative cleric's supporters, Mohajir and other local scholars, lawyers and therapists urged victims to speak up and worked with other local schools to develop stronger policies to protect their students.
Mohajir’s team is no longer alone in its uphill battle.
Two years ago, Facing Abuse in Community Environments (Face) launched and began publishing reports investigating incidents of sexual abuse in U.S. mosques and naming alleged perpetrators. In Shaykh’s Clothing sprung up three years ago to document incidents of spiritual abuse and offer resources addressing the root causes of the problem. Lindsey-Ali’s Village Auntie Movement takes a traditional African approach in teaching Muslim women about their “sacred sexuality” and their rights in the marital bed. Muslim poet-turned-rapper Mona Haydar’s 2017 song “Dog” calls out the “sheikhs in my DM / begging me to shake it on my cam in the PM.”
Two weeks ago in Chicago, at the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America’s annual conference, Muslim leaders held a panel on “breaking the taboo” of sexual and domestic abuse. Maryland’s Family and Youth Initiative has published a toolkit on spiritual abuse. The Peaceful Families Project will soon host a training session for imams and Muslim chaplains on preventing and responding to domestic violence. And this week in London, the women’s group Hawaa Empowerment will host a discussion on sexual abuse in Muslim communities.
“What’s happening right now is different from before,” Ayubi confirmed. “Prior to this, the main paradigm with regard to sexual abuse, and what people like to call spiritual abuse, was one of silence. That’s going to change with these new initiatives.”
That silence, Ayubi said, was in large part due to Muslims’ unwillingness to unearth the skeletons in their closet while already facing heightened scrutiny and surveillance due to anti-Muslim sentiment. Some Muslim leaders have therefore prioritized ensuring victims’ silence, she argued, whether by guilting them out of speaking out or pursuing legal action, pushing them to handle incidents through informal mechanisms like arbitration, or even requesting male relatives help convince victims to remain quiet and avoid embarrassment for the family.
That fear persists despite data showing that levels of sexual abuse by Muslim leaders are not extraordinary. A survey last year by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that 8% of U.S. Muslims say they personally know someone who has experienced unwanted sexual advances from faith leaders – about the same as the general public and other major faith groups. (Muslims are about as likely as other faith groups to have reported the incident to community leaders, but are the only group more likely to have reported the incident to law enforcement, per polling.)
Now, activists are increasingly “calling out the fallacy in crying Islamophobia,” Ayubi said.
“Stamping out abusers will always help clean up the image of the community,” she noted. “The stereotype that Muslim women are oppressed is already out there. Rejecting the abusers from our communities would actually show that sexual abuse is not tolerated by Muslims and that women are, in fact, heard and valued and have an important leadership role within our communities.”
That’s the model championed by Face, the Texas-based non-profit created by Muslim community organizer Alia Salem to work toward exposure, accountability and consequences for those who abuse their authority.
“Our goal is to be a mechanism to help victims, to be a place where vulnerable people can go in the first place,” Salem told RNS. “Because there are no other mechanisms to interrupt the process of abuse, someone might get fired, but nothing stops them from getting hired at another place.”
Salem was watching the film “Spotlight” when she received a message from a Muslim mother seeking help in dealing with the Texas imam she claimed had groomed her daughter for sex. The imam allegedly requested sexually explicit images from and later had intercourse with the young woman in a motel, all while promising to consider her for marriage.
“I realized there was nobody to help,” Salem said. “There was literally nobody to do anything that would have any long lasting, sustained impact. … I thought, ‘Holy crap, this is happening. And we have to do something about it, because nobody else is going to. We have a moral obligation.’”
Salem’s training in organization development soon kicked in. She launched Face, spent a year thoroughly investigating the imam’s misconduct, then published a bombshell report that documented the results. A judge soon ruled that Imam Zia ul-Haque Sheikh was guilty of sexual exploitation, clergy malpractice and grooming, winning the victim a landmark $2.5 million judgment.
A second 11-month investigation by the group accused Phoenix-based imam Moataz Moftah of sexual battery, child abuse, misappropriation of charitable zakat funds and falsely presenting himself as single in order to pursue female congregants while in fact having two concurrent concealed marriages.
Salem attributes the success of Face's evidence-based methods to the increasingly “robust” willingness of American Muslim leaders and community members to support such work in the past two years, as well as the #MeToo movement and the shock at prominent leaders’ recent falls from grace.
“We've gotten a lot of pushback, that we're exposing the community to more harm, et cetera,” Salem said. “But even if people don't like our methodology, the positives outweigh the negatives because they're like, ‘Well, we don't want something like Face to exist, so let's create something else.’ And that’s what our goal is anyways.”
The Hurma Project is one of the most prominent developments in the movement. Rooted in a distinctly scholarly, religiously based approach, its founder, Ingrid Mattson, is well-known globally as the first woman, first convert and first North-American born president of the Islamic Society of North America.
The project, Mattson explained, “was established to uphold the sacred inviolability of each person who enters Muslim spaces” from abuse or exploitation by anyone holding or invoking religious knowledge or authority. She pointed to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad describing an individual’s physical body, property and honor as having the same hurma, or sacred inviolability, from exploitation, abuse, mutilation and harm, as the holy city of Mecca.
Advocates agree the conference was a crucial step in naming the problem. But many say there is a long way to go. One attendee told RNS that conference moderators failed to include content warnings in its proceedings, even when presenters detailed graphic sexual violence, and instead suggested there was a blanket warning for sensitive content throughout the conference.
“Certain harms wouldn't have happened if it was led by survivors, and if the voices of actual survivors carried more authority in this space,” the attendee, who asked not to be named, said.
Attendees also expressed concerns that both the conference and the movement’s efforts are focused narrowly on protecting a so-called “ideal victim.” A woman who is attacked by her boyfriend, for instance, may not be received warmly by a Muslim shelter, said Hammer. A victim who drinks, uses drugs, does not wear hijab or is LGBTQ may be dismissed when reporting abuse by Muslim leaders, advocates worried.
“Yes, we may be at a watershed moment,” the attendee said. “But it also seems like the only kind of violence that the community is dedicated to stopping is if you're abused when you’re sitting in a Quran class and following all the quote-unquote Islamic rules.”
Still, all the advocates RNS spoke to emphasized, anything is better than nothing.
“Right now there cannot be too many cooks in the kitchen,” Salem said. “We need cooks, period. If we can all take on different pieces of it, then maybe we can finally deal with it.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that scholar Tariq Ramadan has been convicted on multiple charges of rape. In fact, he is currently awaiting trial for those charges. RNS regrets the error.
https://religionnews.com/2020/01/15/a-long-time-coming-these-muslims-are-bringing-sex-abuse-by-sheikhs-out-of-the-shadows/
Feb 9, 2019
Cult-like ‘Quranic school’ exposed in Tunisia
Iman Zayat
Arab Weekly
February 10, 2019
Whether the Regueb institution is a jihadist camp or some sort of a religious cult, we need more than condemnation. We need action.
A fierce debate has taken hold in Tunisia, pitting two rival camps against each other: defenders of human rights and Islamists, both so-called moderates and fundamentalists.
The debate was set in motion by a television programme titled “Four Truths,” presented by Tunisian journalist Hamza Belloumi on the privately owned Elhiwar Ettounsi channel. The episode featured controversial issues that have been in the news, such as illegal poaching by Qatari hunters and widespread corruption within Tunisia’s vehicle inspection services.
The last segment, however, shocked viewers. It detailed an investigative report into a bizarre “Quranic” school in the rural central Tunisian town of Regueb, where dozens of children were being housed and indoctrinated with extremist ideas.
The report — confirmed by an official investigation — said 42 children aged 10-18 and 27 adults between the ages of 18-35 lived at the premises in conditions that were grossly unsafe and unsanitary. There they were taught religious precepts by figures who were unqualified, unlicensed and often abusive.
The horror only begins there. When not being inculcated with extremist ideas, the children were subjected to forced labour on construction and farm sites, reports said. Many were found to have contracted asthma, scabies and lice because of the horrific conditions. At least nine children reportedly suffered sexual abuse at the institution, where they were supposed to be learning about Islam and its spiritual values.
The scandal drew fierce outcry throughout the country, with most assailing the institution and the state for failing to protect the children. However, some Islamists lashed out at Belloumi, accusing him of being a “snitch” by alerting “secular authorities” to the illicit activity.
Amid this war of words, the most important question was left unanswered: Why was the state unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society?
We must obviously condemn and hold to account those who were involved and complicit in running this so-called Quranic school. Even more, there is a need to crack down on all institutions of this nature that may be operating under the radar.
We must also put to rest absurd claims advanced by some Islamists that the institution was nothing more than a legitimate Quranic school and that the journalist was a “snitch” by exposing its abuses.
First, we should note that Quranic schools, or madrasas, as per definition, are outlawed in Tunisia. Only katateeb (traditional schools) legally operate under the supervision of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The difference between these two types of “schools” is night and day. While madrasas teach Islamic theology and religious law, katateeb teach Quranic recitation and certain basic Islamic rituals to children.
Most Tunisians do not understand this distinction, which is why Islamists have tried to frame the institution in Regueb as a “Quranic school.” By doing so, they hope to legitimise it in the minds of Tunisians who naturally respect the Quran and Islam. Ironically, by referring to the school as a “madrasa,” its defenders are effectively conceding that it is, by nature, illegal.
With this clarified, let us examine what was really happening in Regueb. Should this so-called school be characterised as a cult, led by a demented guru, or a jihadist training camp where children and young people were being prepped to conduct terror attacks? Or was it some combination?
The so-called Quranic school, led by self-styled imam Farouk Zribi, bears many of the hallmarks of a cult. It is in a remote area, far from public scrutiny. Its members — many underage — are isolated and indoctrinated with extremist beliefs while being subjected to severe exploitation and abuse. The parents of the children caught up in this nightmare have staunchly defended its leader.
If this is indeed a cult, like the one led by David Koresh in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, how should we rid the country of it and potentially connected institutions? Is there really a difference between Eastern and Western cults?
To combat the problem, Tunisia must enact pointed legislation that prohibits extremist religious centres from operating under the guise of civic associations, as well as work to expose individuals, political parties or financiers that support such activities. Tunisia should work to improve the quality of its education system and counter efforts to infiltrate it by those with an agenda.
However, if the so-called Quranic school in Regueb is not a cult, it can only be described as a jihadist training camp. While this may shock many in Tunisia, it is time we come to terms with the existence of such radical elements, especially after the terror attacks that have taken place since the 2010-11 uprising.
If one of these institutions exists, it is likely there are others. Jihadists almost always operate in coordination, meaning that structures affiliated with the Regueb camp could be lurking throughout the country. Tunisian authorities, therefore, should be vigilant in getting to the bottom of who is behind this institution and whether there are affiliates.
Ultimately, whether the Regueb institution is a jihadist camp or some sort of a religious cult, we need more than condemnation. We need action. We need to actively work to protect children from such dangerous environments and provide care and rehabilitation to those rescued from them.
If Belloumi is, as some Islamists say, “a snitch to the secular authorities,” we should all join him in exposing the radical threats facing our country.
As a journalist, Belloumi simply did his job: He investigated and reported on the dire situation in Regueb in a professional and ethical manner. He and his partners at “Four Truths” deserve credit for daring to speak out about what others have long feared to.
https://thearabweekly.com/cult-quranic-school-exposed-tunisia
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