Ingrid Mattson – Preventing Sexual Abuse 52nd Annual Convention
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
My name is Janan Mohajer,
and I'm here to be your moderator for
this panel, preventing sexual violence in my community.
I wanted to get started by just doing
a quick introduction
and also doing some housekeeping before I introduce
all of our speakers.
It was the Chicago poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, who
said we are each other's business,
we are each other's harvest, we are each
other's magnitude and bond. And I always think
of this quote because when dealing with issues
as sensitive and as crucial as such violence
in our community,
I think it's important to remember that we
are all gracious with one another
and that this conversation is a beginning to
hopefully many productive conversations
in the community
with regards to this issue. And I invite
you to join in that in the Q
and A and I hope that many positive
conversations will come out of,
this first discussion.
I do also wanna say,
it is important for us to remember that
this is a brave space and a safe
space.
And what I mean by that is it's
important for us to ask questions very honestly
and openly,
but also remember that,
the conversation that we are about to have
will have a lot of details and will
have information
in connection to sexual assault and sexual violence,
which may be a trigger to some of
us who may be survivors in the room.
And if any point you feel triggered, please
remember that self care is extremely important.
If you need to step out of the
room, please remember that you should take care
of yourself, and if you need to speak
to a licensed professional afterwards, please do come
up to me,
and we will make sure that we give
you the resources that you need in order
to be connected to those professionals.
Due to the sensitivity of this topic, we
will not be doing questions out loud. You
will notice that there are note cards on
your chairs, so I would request that you,
write out your question at any point and
we have a couple of volunteers in the
room who are floating Aliyah's batch over there
with more note cards,
and she will collect your questions and bring
them up to us for the Q and
A portion
of this session.
In order to save time,
and also to think about housekeeping, I wanted
to let you know that this is being
this session is being videotaped, so just to
keep that in mind if that is something
you are,
concerned about
and, we will go hopefully until time. Our
speakers
and it's only being taped from this point
of view so we are the ones being
taped, you will not be taped.
If you
would like to ask questions privately, please come
up to us afterwards as well,
and
we are here for you as resources. There's
also resources placed on this table
to my right.
Alright.
So I will start off by introducing,
all of our speakers.
We will go in the order of introduction
and then,
do question and answer at the very end.
Nadia Mohajer, who is our first speaker, is
the co founder and executive director of Heart
Women and Girls, a nationally recognized
non non profit that works to promote sexual
health education in faith based communities.
In just 5 years, she has led the
organization to provide health education programming to over
2,000 Muslim women and girls in Chicago in
the area as well as in Southern California,
New Jersey, Boston, and Michigan.
Breaking many cultural barriers and raising awareness about
important issues such as sexual and reproductive health,
sexual violence, and media literacy.
As one of their founding board members. So
this is a cause that is both very
personal and very important to me as a,
advocate as well.
After Naya we will have doctor Ingrid Madsen
who
is a personal teacher to both me and
my husband
so I'm very grateful for her presence here
today. She was educated in Canada and the
United States earning a PhD from the University
of Chicago in 1999.
From 1998 to 2012, she was a professor
of Islamic Studies at Harper Seminary in Connecticut
where she developed and directed the first
accredited graduate program for Muslim Chaplains in America
and served as the director of the McDonough
Center for Study of Islam and Christian Muslim
Relations.
From 2001 to 2 to 2010,
doctor Mattson served as vice president and then
president of the Islamic Society of North America
and she needs no introduction to you,
but thank you Doctor. Netzant for being here.
And finally, last but not the least, Attorney
Asaf Farooqi has been very active in various
community organizations for the past decade
since earning his,
law degree and being a student law student
interning at Care Chicago.
As an attorney, he focuses his practice on
family law, estate planning, and probate litigation and
works primarily in the Chicago Muslim community.
He has represented clients in every aspect of
family law including
divorce, legal separation, child custody, child visitation, child
support,
and orders of protection.
As an attorney who works largely within the
Muslim community, mister Farooqi regularly deals with issues
of sexual abuse, sexual violence within marriages,
domestic violence, and child
abuse issues presently occurring
presently occurring in the Muslim community and has
worked with families
going through these serious issues.
With that, I give you the speakers. Thank
you very much.
Thank
you everyone,
for attending this session. My name is Nadia
Mohadjur. I am co founder and executive director
of Hard Women and Girls, and I wanted
to just start off by thanking ITSA and
CIBC for allowing me to speak alongside such
accomplished
and dynamic speakers.
So I begin today with reflections of a
dear friend of mine,
who was sexually who was sexually assaulted as
a 12 year old,
girl and faced much backlash when she came
forward to her Muslim community.
So she says, what makes us unsafe
is the illusion of safety that we have
created with our silence.
The silencing
of our survivors,
the silence of those who should know better,
and the silence of that we have created
around perpetrators.
The silence, at its very essence,
is the absence of compassion and justice.
Without compassion, there is no justice, and without
justice, there is no compassion.
So today, I'm here to talk a little
bit about how we can disable the silence,
how we can begin to start creating safer
communities,
and how ultimately we can begin to work
towards preventing sexual violence.
I also wanna acknowledge that we're here today
because of a recent sexual abuse case in
Chicago that generated local and national awareness on
this issue.
While I'm not here to discuss the details
of this case, I do wanna acknowledge that
we're here, that we wouldn't be here if
it wasn't for the bravery, and courage of
these survivors.
So before I continue, I wanted to cover
some basics.
Let's just talk about some definitions.
All unwanted
non consensual acts, whether we're talking about harassment,
abuse, or assault, is considered sexual violence.
The keyword here is nonconsensual,
which means that one of the 2 parties
involved has not agreed
to what is happening,
and in fact, is being forced to,
partake in the in what's happening.
So it's important for us to realize that
sexual violence,
is not just limited to
*. It's actually a wide range of offenses
went from,
something like showing someone explicit photos to molestation
and groping
to, * or attempted *. And it's really
important to remember that none of these should
be minimized. They're all considered crimes
and they can have a devastating impact on
survivors.
So now that we know about what sexual
violence is, let's talk a little bit about
what it's
not. First, one thing that I want to
talk about is that sexual violence is not
about the *. It's rather about the power
and control that abuser
wants to exert over his or her victim.
Another common mistake that's made in the Muslim
community in particular is to talk about sexual
violence as a crime in the same context
as zina or fornication and adultery.
And one thing that I want I want
to make that decision because zina and when
we're talking about zina and and fornication and
adultery,
those are also considered crimes in Islam, but
they involve consent to their sin, but they're
consent. They involve consent. Sexual violence does not
involve
consent. Once again, it means that there's, one
of the parties that is in involved
has not agreed to what is happening. So
So I think that's a really important dis
decision that we need to make.
So how prevalent is sexual violence? So
according to the * Abuse * National Network,
1 in 6 women 1 in 6 women
are victims of sexual abuse in her lifetime.
The CDC, Centers For Disease Control, actually estimates
that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in
6 boys are victims before the age of
18.
So, I'm gonna repeat that again. 1 is
4 girls and 1 is 6 boys. We
have no reason to believe that these numbers
are any different in the Muslim community.
Another thing that's interesting is that sexual assault
in this country are one is one of
the most underreported
crimes
in the United States of America. So, more
than 68%
never make it to the authorities.
So, in in the work that I do
at Heart Women and Girls, the central question
that we work with is what does it
mean to support victims so that they begin
to feel empowered and to seek justice?
As we know, the legal process, I'm going
to talk about that a little, can be
exhausting, can be re traumatizing, and is extremely
long, and there are many barriers that victims
face when,
trying to come forward in their communities.
So, our entire focus is supporting those survivors
and creating a community around them where they
feel empowered, they feel like they have the
resources,
and they want to go and seek justice.
So, in this work,
there are a number of lessons that we
have learned in the past.
I wanna focus on 3 of them. So
first is,
there's a greater likelihood of under reporting in
the Muslim community in particular.
There are some unique challenges that Muslim survivors
in particular face
and the victim blaming in particular is laced
with religious language.
So to talk about my first point under
reporting,
as we know, I mentioned,
more than 7 nearly 70% of cases do
not make it to the authorities.
There are research studies that show that communities
of color,
these these statistics are actually higher. This is
no different from the Muslim community. In our
work alone, we think we estimate that to
be more than 80 80 to 85%
of cases do not go to the authorities.
So that raises an important question.
What is going on with these survivors that
they're not reporting but rather having to suffer
in the silence that I talked about earlier.
So,
as we know, the barriers to reporting sexual
violence are cross cultural.
It's actually inherently,
physically, emotionally, and socially difficult to be a
survivor of sexual,
violence.
The experience is such a great violation of
one's emotional and social and physical,
safety.
Some of the
barriers that most survivors face are the first
one is
the victim may love or respect the perpetrator.
And this is not uncommon
given that 80 to 90 percent of perpetrators
are actually
people that the victim may know. So it
could be a friend, a relative, a parent,
a cousin.
And so
the the struggle is that they love this
person, they respect this person, and they struggle
with sending them to the cops or having
them arrested.
The other barrier may be that the victim
actually fears the perpetrator,
either because they fear further harm to themselves
or they fear
of harm to their loved ones.
And the perpetrator may have made certain threats
to them.
And finally, the victim may think that no
one will believe them, and this is especially
the case if we're talking about a child
or if we're talking about a person that
has,
a very,
very well known,
position of authority in the community.
So that that's those are some of the,
challenges that many survivors across cultural,
across cultures face. But we have some unique
challenges that we've learned about in our work
at Heart Women and Girls that Muslim survivors
in particular face, which I wanted to talk
about a little. So there's the stigma and
shame that peep- that survivors feel,
in the Muslim community in particular because of
the emphasis that we put on privacy and
modesty,
oftentimes that's conflated
with being assumed that it's immodest to speak
about these issues in an open way. And
so, a lot of women feel shameful coming
forward and talking about something that was so
private and so intimate,
even if it was forced upon them.
Another thing that they feel is shame. They
feel like they they could have somehow prevented
it. Now, I'm gonna talk about that a
little bit more when we get,
deeper into this discussion. They might also feel
self doubt. Did this even happen?
Especially when we're talking about a perpetrator that
is a religious authority,
who, is a person who outwardly is very,
very,
practicing
and religious.
They almost question how could somebody of such
moral character
do such a grave crime, and so it's
almost as if they're doubting themselves and thinking
that perhaps they imagine this.
There's also a guilt they feel of exposing
the institution or imam that did such good
in the community. Almost as if they they
fear that it's a sin, that they're that
it's gonna be a sin to expose such
such a person or such an institution.
And finally, there's a fear of community or
social consequences.
So in the close knit community that we
live in, in the Muslim world,
oftentimes
there's some serious repercussions that they're fearing. They're
fearing, you know, splitting the community in half,
splitting a family in half, possibly never getting
married.
These are very real concerns that Muslim survivors
face,
and I wanted to touch base in particular
about victim blaming.
I talked about this before, and I'm going
to go in a little bit more detail.
Victim blaming is when-
the definition is when the victim of a
crime or any wrongful act is held entirely
or partially responsible for the harm that occurred.
So victim blaming, again, is cross cultural. We
live in a country, in a society where
this is rampant and oftentimes victims, especially of
sexual violence, are blamed for the situation
that occurred.
So why was she dressed that way? Or
maybe she shouldn't have been out that late
at night.
The impact of victim blame is huge. It
further traumatizes and devastates the survivors,
it obstructs the healing process, and it also
pressures survivors and others around them, perhaps, from
not coming forward.
So, one of the- a lot of the
work that we do in supporting survivors is
focused on the following question: How can we
actively
work to create safe spaces
for survivors and their families so that more
survivors come and ultimately report?
Victim blaming in the Muslim community,
I I referred to this earlier, in particularly
in conservative religious communities,
takes upon a specific,
special religious shaming. So I talked a little
bit about how, oftentimes, it's talked about in
the same context
of zina and adultery.
It's often when we also talk about prevention
of sexual violence, we talk about it using,
guidelines of lowering 1 case
and, separation of gender, and certain external,
dress codes.
But I want to talk- emphasize how,
you know, while those values are something that
are honorable and we should,
you know, uphold in our communities,
it's really not preventative in nature.
And we know this because of the ramp
it's, how rampant sexual violence is in many
conservative Muslim communities
where gender is,
like, generally separated, where women are fully clothed.
So,
this leaves the community with many more questions
that I'm working with all of you. So,
I don't have all the answers, but these
are the questions that I'm thinking about.
With the majority of sexual assault and abuse
cases never making it to the authorities, how
do we, as a community, hold perpetrators accountable?
And how do we then create safer spaces
that disable the silence to encourage survivors to
report?
Because ultimately, if we don't
disable the silence and create these safer communities,
we can never
achieve that goal of preventing sexual violence in
the community.
So I'd like to end today with sharing
5 things each and every one of you
can do to begin,
start to start creating these safer,
spaces.
You don't have to be a social worker,
you don't have to be a policeman, you
don't have to be a lawyer, you just
have to care about this issue and want
to stop it in our communities. So So
the first thing you can do, and there's
a handout here that summarizes all of that.
Know know sexual violence 101. Know your definitions.
Know what it means to be a mandated
reporter. Know what constitutes as child abuse.
Many don't know what sexual violence is and
they think it's limited to * and often
all other offenses are minimized and ignored.
Talk to your kids at every level, in
the house, at your mus- at your mosques,
at- at- in your community spaces, and do
it in a way that's free of blame
and shame, that's age appropriate.
We have another parent guide there that's really
fantastic if you want to have some tips
on how to do that. But our children
need to have the tools and the language
to be able to tell us what is
happening, if something's happening, God forbid.
Know the resources in your community.
Know your hotlines. Know the crisis centers. Know
what your churches and your your mosques, and
your synagogues have to offer.
In the event that somebody comes to you
and tells you this happened to me, you
need to know where to send them.
Be mindful of your tone and your body
language at all times,
especially when you're in a public space.
The sexual violence is so,
rampant
that when you're in a public space, you're
almost always in the presence of another survivor.
So be careful of of how you speak,
whether your language is laced with victim blaming,
and etcetera.
That being said, if they come forward to
you, believe them and and direct them to
the right resources that they need. Finally, if
you hear victim blaming, shift the conversation.
So if you hear a conversation going in
the wrong direction where somebody's asking, well why
was she dressed that way?' why was she
alone in a pan?' why didn't she come
forward sooner?'
Shift the conversation to ask questions about the
person who actually
committed the crimes.
And with that, I think I'm gonna end,
and I'm gonna hand it over to Doctor.
Madsen. Thank you.
For the excellent work that they've done and
for all of those,
in Chicago who have worked on this recent
case,
who have in the face of
some really,
bewildering,
criticism
have gone forth and supported
and advocated for the survivors of sexual violence
and have continued with their excellent work and
very critical work of advocacy.
They're they're performing a,
what is it, Fartkafaya collective obligation
on on behalf of all of us and
we all need to take this information and
knowledge,
and best practices forward.
I grew up in a Roman Catholic community,
and there was,
sexual violence that was in our institutions.
I'll talk a little bit about that more
in a minute. We had, pedophiles
who were among our teachers and clergy,
and
one of the things that, I've heard some
Muslims
say
in this kind of trying
to externalize,
you know, the to to the viewing that
sexual violence somehow can be controlled,
these external mechanisms
is saying well in Islam,
we have, you know, we have rules about
Khairua,
about, privacy between men and women and we
have hijab and we have all these things
that protect,
Muslims.
But that's not the case
because ever since I've been in a position
of public leadership
I've heard from,
women who were, sexually violated by brothers,
by uncles,
by grandfathers,
these are their makrams.
I've heard from young men who were sexually
assaulted by their teachers, their male teachers.
So,
again,
it also is not the case that because,
the perpetrator in my community in particular was
a priest that sexual chastity has anything to
do with
it. It's not about sexuality,
it's about control.
Perpetrators are attracted to professions
where they have access
to people who they could victimize.
This is why you tend to see among
coaches
of of young people's sports teams,
you know, it's in the Boy Scouts, it's
in so we don't say that, well, the
Boy Scouts are no good, there should be
no organized sports. It's that
people who are are are perpetrators,
who are predators,
look for opportunities
where they can
have access
to,
young people
who they can victimize.
So it's really important for us to understand
that this is a human problem,
you know, this is a human problem,
and as Muslims we need to understand that
very clearly,
that the solution for it is not more
hijab
or, you know, enforcing
headwa regulations.
That's that those aren't the solutions for sexual
violence.
I can't tell you how many young people
have come to me who told me that
they were recently married
and it was
now,
upon in their 1st year of marriage when
they were first engaged in consensual sexual activity
that suddenly
came all of these images and memories came
flooding back of sexual violence that they experienced
as a child
through their religious studies teacher, their Hafid,
their relative.
These things happen and it's they've ruined lives
So we need to understand the nature of
this.
The most important thing to prevent sexual violence
is to expose it
because perpetrators
flourish
in secrecy.
They use every means of
intimidation
in order to operate with impunity.
It's because of their status
in the community,
or in the family,
or in their social circle that they believe
they will never be found out.
It is because they are so devious, it's
because they
convince their victims
that if they expose
what's happened
that they will be shamed, that their family
will be shamed, that their community will be
shamed.
So exposing the perpetrators
is in fact
the real solution
to stopping this. That is the best prevention.
And and in fact,
in Islamic Sharia, the higher someone is in
a position of public trust and authority,
they're the ones who if they violate
will severely punish.
The more authority and responsibility
you have,
the more severe your punishment
if you violate that.
And just to finish up because I want
you to,
you know, to understand
what does that say? 5 minutes. Okay.
I've got new glasses, so
review them.
You know, we think about,
it's very disturbing for us because we think
well can we trust anyone,
you know.
And of course,
I think back to yesterday in our,
one of our talks,
I mentioned the story of, Joseph, I mean,
I'm Yusuf.
And just think about this,
you know, who could you trust more
to take care of your son than his
brothers?
Who, I mean, in in terms of natural
law
and ties,
you know, who could you trust more
than those
people
to take care of him?
Yet, they
threw him in a well.
And Allah
says, verily, Sha'aban
is an enemy, a clear enemy to mankind.
Chetan can,
you know, tries to sow evil everywhere.
So we need systems, we need oversight, and
I think I was thinking about it today,
I was reflecting about it today because the
story of Joseph,
one of the main themes is the hidden
reality
and
the true reality.
The outside and the inside, the exterior
world and so much of of the story
of Joseph
seems to say one thing but there's an
inner truth.
The brothers come with the shirt and say,
See? Here's proof. He died.
Look at the blood
on the shirt. Yet this is this evidence
is lying. It's it's the Quran says lying
blood, right?
So, and it goes on again and again
and again, there's so many,
beautiful
parts of the story that talk about the
difference between
what's hidden and what's real,
and by burying him in the well
they thought they hid the truth,
they hid the reality and it was not
until they were able to recognize the use
of in the full light of who he
was
that they were now in a state worthy
of repentance and they asked for repentance.
So we need to make things clear, we
need to make the truth clear.
And I'm gonna tell you something I've never
talked about in public but just because I
want you to understand,
especially for those of you who are survivors
here,
that that I I do sympathize and I
understand
with what you're going through.
In my community when I was 10 years
old, there was,
the priest in our community was a *.
He abused both girls and boys.
Now, I'm very fortunate that he never laid
a hand on me,
but
I was in a situation
once where I had to witness my best
friend being sexually assaulted
by this priest.
I won't share with you the details, but
I can tell you that I remember until
this day
the temperature of that room,
the feel of the bench
underneath my seat as I sat
and had to watch this,
how the room
smelled,
every detail of it until now I can
remember.
When
I told someone about this
and then a few of us
told,
we were called by our teachers
to stand in front of the classroom
and
repent and apologize
for slandering
such a great, holy person.
No adult believed us
and eventually that priest was moved to a
different area.
Now I forgot about that for many many
years
until I got married and I had children
and,
you know, there are other things that trigger
it, a certain kind of room that I
can walk in
that will make me remember exactly how I
felt in that room.
When one of the
young men who I went to school with,
I saw him about 10 years ago and
he said,
he said, Ingrid, did you hear that father
so and so was finally arrested
and he's in jail in Kentucky?
It was extraordinary to me how I felt
the sense of relief.
I didn't even feel that I I didn't
realize that I felt
concerned, but suddenly I felt a little bit
like the world was a little safer.
And then when he told me a few
years
later, Ingrid, he died in jail.
Go look at the news.
The this the the relief
that I just felt flowing from my body
was tremendous
and
I
never knew that it was- I was still
carrying it with me.
And I wasn't even
the direct victim of his assault, but but
of course it was violent
putting me in a position where I would
have to watch this assault
especially at such a young age.
So
it really showed me how it put those
people, those teachers in our community,
all of them were good people, they were
moral people, they cared about us,
but
they were in denial.
They were in denial.
They did not want to believe it because
the consequences of believing what would happen
would just shatter so much of their world
view,
and it would require from them action that
they just didn't know that they could take.
The cover up, as we say, was so
worse than the crime.
I remember when it happened, I was shocked
that it happened but I wasn't
I was not unaware that such things went
on in the world. Somehow I I knew
that maybe because my father was a criminal,
defense lawyer.
Somehow I I was aware that such things
happened in the world,
so of course I was shocked that it
was this person, but it wasn't
completely out of
what I knew could happen in reality but
what killed me,
what killed me was the cover up
and that cover up that went on for
years years.
We cannot
do that,
any longer.
It is not a way
to protect our community.
It is not a way
to keep the, you know, image of Islam.
Everyone knows
that these things happen in human society,
and the best way to show that Islam
stands up for justice and value and the
dignity of men and women
is for us to be
very,
straightforward
and in supporting,
those
who have suffered this violence
and in a clear message that this is
not acceptable. There are repentances
with Allah
but we demand justice. Thank you.
Salaam.
1st, I wanna start off by thanking the
Council of Islamic Organizations,
for inviting me to come speak about really,
important topic.
And I'm humbled to share the stage with
you seeing panelists today,
and
happy to be here, but at the same
time, instead in that, this is something that
we all must do. And I'm also happy
to see so many people coming to attend
this session. It shows that the community is
becoming more aware
and more passionate
about addressing this issue.
I'm here to speak about a couple things.
The first to talk about what
the council of the Solid Organization of Greater
Chicago has done
in addressing
these
this violence that's within our community and also
talking about
what's the way forward from here.
So starting with the council,
for those of you who don't know, the
council has a lot of organizations, Greater Chicago,
it's a
umbrella organization
of scores of muslim institutions,
advocacy groups, masjids, schools,
all operating in the Chicagoland area.
Their
role is to work to coordinate between the
organizations to help unify the community, to provide
active responses. They have many different layers.
And
partly
as a result of understanding the importance of
this issue and partly
in a reactive sense,
in understanding
the recent issues that have arisen within the
Chicagoland area,
specifically,
in Elgin.
The council has taken a number of steps
in attempting to address it, and it's taken
a essentially a holistic
approach.
Field council is not an advocacy group in
of itself,
there are advocacy groups that are part of
the council. So while the council's
primary focus and concern is that of the
survivor
and survivor's family
and the council has attempted to support organizations
in doing that, the council also has to
look beyond just the survivor and the family
and look at certain other areas of the
community which are also affected
by this issue.
With respect to the survivor and the family,
the council has taken a role of supporting
those organizations,
those groups who are on the ground
doing the good work. And
the reality is, is that this is the
type of approach that organizations like the council
or organizations like our masjids have to learn
to take.
In the past, as I've seen very much,
an organization that's not trained
to work in a certain area will often
take on a task that it should not
be taking on.
When they're talking about dealing with survivors, assisting
survivors and their families, This is something that
requires a specialized training. It requires
advocacy groups. It requires groups like,
Heart Women.
These are important groups to have, so what
the council has done is try to support
those groups in their individual work. The other
thing the council has, work to do is
work with the imams and scholars in our
community, help train them, help provide them the
tool. And the reason for that is the
Muslim community
has a a bit of uniqueness to it,
in that whenever we have a problem,
not just theological,
but social,
legal,
within the family, whatever it may be, and
even criminal.
The first thing that often most of us
do is go to our imam and go
to our scholar. And these individuals, they're not
trained as lawyers. They're not trained as social
workers. So when you bring these issues to
them, they try to do the best with
it, but it's not always
the appropriate thing to do. So what the
council is attempting to do and working with
the Imams and the scholars, is that they
are bringing the experts who work in these
areas and helping train the Imams, train the
scholars. When somebody comes to you, when someone's
a survivor
of this type of violence and abuse,
this is how you should deal with the
situation.
This is how you should direct that person.
And it's an essential task because, really, our
community will never stop,
going to the imams first whenever these problems
arise.
The other concern for the council is the
institutions themselves, and understanding
how the institutions
are first
liable in a situation where someone within that
institution
is committing these acts of violence.
And they're liable, not just in the legal
sense, but also in the moral sense that
they have a responsibility
for any of us who go to that
institution to feel safe, to know that we
will not have
our person violated
by going there.
And
in that vein, one thing the council has
produced,
which is
a quite a, accomplishment and all of you
have a handout,
that I placed on your chairs. If you
don't have it, we do have more copies
in the front. If you open up that
handout,
it is basically a snapshot
of the Council of Islamic Organizations
manual
on sexual,
on dealing with sexual abuse and harassment.
It's sort of a comprehensive guide that the
council has put together
to for schools, for institutions,
for
anyone who wants to use this manual
to help direct
how to deal with this when survivors
come forward, when these allegations are made, what
should be done? It is quite comprehensive. I
have had the opportunity to review it, and
I will say it's quite comprehensive.
One thing that our institutions lack sometimes
is a sense of professionalism, a sense of,
working at its highest capacity from a legal
sense, from a from a business sense. One
thing that we often get as lawyers working
in the community is employment issues that arise
in Muslim institutions. We have a habit of
doing things very ad hoc. We 5 of
us get together, we open a board, we
open up a masjid, we never really think
about what are the actual steps and parameters
we have to contemplate along the way. Now
we've grown to a point that we can't
just set up shop and
operate a building and expect that nothing bad
will happen. We have to take things in
a very formalistic manner, a very legal manner,
And that's what this manual is. It is
an attempt
to work with the institutions so that they
now have this guide, which they can rely
upon and use in order to make sure
that what they do within the institution
both protects
the survivors
and also addresses and roots out the oppressors
who commit these acts of violence.
And then as the council's general mission is,
is to address the community at large, to
have seminars, to have talks, to join in
general movements,
about sexual violence and against sexual violence, and
the council has done that as well. So
I'm not gonna be able to in 12
minutes, obviously, obviously go through that manual, but
I do encourage all of you to read
that handout, especially
the section in the middle which kind of
goes piece by piece. And if you want
a copy of that manual, if you want
to take that manual back to your individual
community, then contact the council and they'll be
happy to share that with you. It's a
very important tool moving forward.
The other thing I wanted to sort of
address, and I think the other panelists have
addressed this in part, is
what do we do now as a community?
And
really,
when you're looking at this issue of sexual
violence,
we have to address it at 3 different
levels.
We have to address it as a community
level.
And
as a community,
we have a very nasty habit.
We have a nasty habit that we do
not want to admit that there are faults
and flaws within the Muslim community.
We have this desire
that because we are Muslim, we are immune
to the social ills which
promulgate society generally around us. Now I see
this as a lawyer.
Unfortunately,
when you're working as a lawyer, people generally
only come to you when something has gone
wrong or something has gone out. And
I can tell you
in my work, working in that sort of
underbelly of our community,
Muslims
get divorced
just as much and just as nasty as
non Muslims.
Muslims commit crimes
just as much
as non Muslims.
Muslims are victims of this type of violence
just as much as non muslims, and muslims
are perpetrators
of this type of violence just as much
as non Muslims.
In my practice, when my partner wants to
start taking in DUIs, driving under the influence,
I I joked with him. I was like,
we work with Muslims, weire not going to
get any clients.
The reality is that we have a lot
of Muslim DUI clients. So itis not just
by the merit of being Muslim that we
become immune to these social ills. We are
affected just as much as any other community.
So we cannot address it. We cannot deny
that it exists because when we deny as
a community that these problems exist, then we,
by default,
attempt to silence a survivor without even knowing
that we are silencing a survivor.
And just to protect our image as a
community,
we have to be realistic. We have to
address the fact that these are problems within
our community. And if we are not honest
with each other and honest with ourselves
that we are just as susceptible to these
problems, then we will never have the collective
will to address these problems. We will never
have the collective desire to address these problems.
We will remain indifferent. We will think these
are scattered and isolated incidents. 1 in Buffalo
about a decade ago and 1 in Elgin
recently. That was it. It's not it.
It absolutely is not it. And as an
attorney
working in family law, I can tell you
sexual exists within the family. It exists between
husband and wife.
It exists between
parent and child. It exists between relatives in
our community.
And I've seen it on a continuous basis,
And we cannot deny that it exists as
a community.
And as a family,
we have to make it easier. We cannot
turn around and say, well, the reason why
you were assaulted
was because you were
on that date with that boy. Because you
were in that room with that man. You
chose to go work there. Whatever kind of
victim blaming that we have created
within our cultural context,
we cannot do that. It doesn't matter if
an action that was done by the victim
may be considered wrong morally, theologically,
or within your own precepts.
That's not important because there is no wrong
act that ever justifies
sexual violence.
There will never be a wrong act that
justifies sexual violence. So within your family,
you need to make sure
that you don't create that
situation.
And perhaps the most important
is that we do have to address these
legally. Because if we don't, if we let
the oppressor walk free,
he will move to a different community. He
will move somewhere else. If he just try
to cover it up and act like it's
not there, he will go and victimize someone
in a different area.
So we do have to make it easy
for the survivor. It will never be easy
for a survivor of sexual violence to come
forward and share that experience. That will always
be a brave experience. But as a community,
as families, as individuals,
we have to make it as easy as
possible because that is the only way the
survivors will come forward. And then we can
proceed legally,
survivors will come forward.
And then we can proceed legally to punish
these individuals
and make sure they stop using our community
as a feeding ground.
As far as I'm concerned,
and I'll close on this,
I have no problem with our community having
a
negative image or a negative reflection
because we expose
these issues. The reputation of our community comes
second to the safety of our mothers, of
our sisters, and of our daughters. Thank you
so much.
Thank you so much. We will now take
questions. As I mentioned earlier, we will have
written questions for this session, so if you
have a question please raise your hand and
Alia or another volunteer will grab it from
you.
Also, as a matter of housekeeping, we would
love to hear feedback from you on this
session. There are key feedback
cards that you will find either on your
seat if there is someone on your seat
there as well. You're passing those out as
well.
You can also give us feedback on the
ISNET app.
So please take a few minutes on on
either of those, either the app electronically or
on the pink card, to give us feedback
on the session.
So while we get started with the questions,
I actually have a question for the panelist
and the moderator.
All 4 of you referenced the creation of
safe spaces within our community and within our
institutions
in order to create a space where survivors
can come forward.
What are some,
characteristics of that safe space? What does that
look like either on an institutional level or
at a familial level? What does that mean
to create a safe space?
And unfortunately, we do not have a mic
at the table, so if you could speak
up and project that would be appreciated.
So a lot of our work is actually
centered around creating these safe spaces and I
think,
for me, the hallmark of that safe space
is to have open open conversations
on * and sexuality and sexual abuse in
a way that is free of blame and
shame,
and is a way that
empowers the individual to think about their own
values and their own, you
know,
beliefs
and and feel like they're not being judged
for some of the beliefs or value systems
they have
to allow for diversity of opinions and then,
talk about
these issues in a way that does not,
sort of, cloud it with, shame.
I think that's one of the biggest mistakes
that we make is just talk about sexuality
in a way that encourages
feeling ashamed about it.
I think,
addressing the same question about safe spaces, I
think one thing that I like about the
council's,
manual that they created for institutions was they
had a
a really long protocol
of as an institution,
when these allegations are made, when a survivor
comes forward, what do you do?
How do you deal with that? How do
you talk to that person?
How do you refer that person to,
the survivor to institutions
or to, advocacy groups that can help them.
But at the same time, how do you
deal with the individual who is the oppressor?
Who who who commits the violence? How do
we deal with that? So I think one
of the nice things about that manual is
that it gives the institutions a practical guide
to
starting on that road of making those safe
spaces within institutions that really aren't necessarily geared
towards, an
community
broadly on a whole.
Thank you.
So a couple of other questions. Doctor Maxim,
we'd love your opinion on this one.
When a victim of sexual violence tells someone
about the incident, what is the responsibility of
the person in life of Islamic teachings?
Are they supposed to report before getting confirmation?
Should they be quiet so the community does
not get a bad name?
Well,
first of all,
I mean, it's interesting when people say Islamic
teachings. They're trying to kind of,
segregate
law and morality in
to one side.
There are laws,
first of all, there are laws about reporting.
And this is part of the,
part of the information
that the council's,
what is it, guidelines, whatever
manual
is is giving.
And that's really important to know. It's it's
important to know, 1st and foremost, if you're
a mandated
reporter.
There are some people who are required to
report, and if you don't, then you violation
of the law.
You're part of the cover up by not
reporting it.
I mean, Islamically, we all have the obligation
to enjoin the good and forbid the bad.
In fact, that's why
communities are founded.
Allah says We enjoin the good and we
forbid the bad. We We all have a
responsibility
to,
prevent, to stop things that are harmful.
Now
this is all within the context of,
you know, if you're not a mandated reporter,
if someone speaks to you in in a
situation of confidentiality,
then it's a question of how do you
work with the survivor
to be able to to go through a
process
of
of,
reporting on that person.
So it's it's it's important that we understand
that as well. And this is why we
just need to have
we need to have clearer and more visible
people in our community,
resource people,
so that we know who to contact.
People who have,
who are licensed in social work and counseling,
who know,
about
how to how to deal with the survivor,
what the law is.
If you, you know,
if there is nowhere
in the
there's no office, there's no posters,
there's no training, there's no education,
then people won't know where where to go.
We've received a couple of questions on the
question of marital *.
The question here, a couple of them have
and forgive me for the language, in Islam,
a woman is to submit to her husband.
The husband has a right over his wife.
So what is sexual abuse on a wife?
I'm sorry if this is inappropriate.
Also, another question asking, how do you support
a victim of domestic violence that included
marital *?
Well,
I think one thing that we all have
to understand
is that
the law
of the country we live in, of the
state we live in, requires
consent even within a marriage.
So if your spouse
is not consenting,
that is considered sexual violence.
That is considered a crime in this country,
and it can be prosecuted. And
they will prosecute you if she chooses to
have the courage to come forward. And I
will tell you, it's very hard
to have the courage to come forward, especially
once you have kids, especially
with the way our community is. But if
you want to know legally
what your obligation is or or whether it
exists, it most certainly does exist. This is
a and as far as Muslims go,
as far as I know, we follow the
laws of the land in which we live.
And this is part of the law of
this land. This is a crime in this
country. You do have to have consent within
a marriage, and it's part of
the I'm not a scholar this month, but
I will say from my understanding,
it is part of the marital issue of
being good to your spouse, being good to
each other.
There's no good in each other when you're
committing acts. That is nothing that is there's
there's foulness in that. So to me, Islamically,
legally,
sexual violence can exist within a beverage, and
it does need to be addressed.
You know, I'd I'd like to hear what
doctor Matson has to say, but just to
piggyback
off of that, I do wanna say that
in this country in particular,
there's a lot of conversation recently about consent.
And I think in our community, in the
Muslim community, we have a tendency not to
teach consent.
It's not something we teach young people because
they shouldn't be in a situation that they
should be consented to anyway. Right? So we
don't teach it to young people and we
don't talk about it in the context of
marriage either because, again, the whole sexual rights
thing,
comes up. And so I think that the
the the whole point of consent,
really needs to be fleshed out,
and and taught in our communities. How to
honor consent, how to give consent, how to
honor consent.
Let me just say
if anyone thinks that, that in Islam, it's
permitted
for a man to * his wife, they
have a very,
serious misunderstanding with them.
There is no,
it is absolutely forbidden for any person to
take upon themselves to commit an act of
violence on another person,
out of the claim that they,
are seeking their right.
This requires a very long conversation, but let
me just put it this way.
And it's very unfortunate the way much
many,
sort of, kind of traditional
or popular
manuals that Islam are written because they're completely
misguided,
the way this is portrayed.
But if we just look at sort of
the the traditional
discussion of of rights and duties within the
marriage,
would you agree that in traditional Islamic jurisprudence
that a woman has the right to,
support by her husband.
Support food, shelter, most people agree.
So if he doesn't give me my food
and support support, can I take a gun
and put it to his head and tell
him give me your money?
Can I take a,
a piece of metal and say I'm gonna
smash you over the head if you don't
give me me my money?
You see, it's a it's a it's a
confusion about rights.
When we talk about rights within the marriage,
we're talking about
a relationship
of consent
that each partner will give to the other
in a loving
relationship and a relationship of
of and Rahma, of love and mercy,
what they need to feel healthy and bold.
It is not
about a battle
for
bodies and resources.
That is an awful marriage is. So anyone
who thinks that that's the case is seriously
mistaken, and if someone is being
violated,
by their spouse, they need to seek,
support and,
to have that stopped.
Unfortunately, we are at time for this session
so we won't be able to go through
the rest of the questions. I urge you
again to please give us feedback either on
the ISNA app or, through the pin form.
Thank you so much for being here and
for being part of this conversation. We are
here as resources for you and there are
also resources on the table to my right.
Does that all of our hands sound okay?