Redemption

This would be me my latest poem. On sexual abuse.
Background: Last week, police in Pakistan discovered some 400 video recordings of over 280 children being forced to have sex in Punjab – by 25 men. According to HuffPost, “Villagers in the central Punjabi village of Husain Khan Wala told Reuters that a prominent family there has for years forced children to perform sex acts on video. The footage was sold or used to blackmail their impoverished families.” Some of […]
Apologies, readers, that this was lost in my drafts somewhere! Here’s another response to the series on sexual abuse. This is the account of a male reader who shares the impact of his now 40-year-old brother’s abuse on both the brother and the family. God grant all involved innocent parties peace and strength. What a burden and pain to carry for so long . . . 9. What I’m pasting […]
Just to clarify: the title of this post is referring not to survivers of sexual abuse but to those who hear about sexual abuse. The following are some things *not* to say when you learn that a Qur’an teacher, an imam, or other religious community leader is sexually abusing people. The post below is specifically in response to the recent sexual abuse by the Chicago imam, who — let’s all […]
I recently saw this letter in a listserv and would like to share it here (I have permission) for more publicity. Please send an email to Samar.kaukab@gmail.com with your name (and institution, if you’d like) as soon as possible for your signature to be included in the petition. The letter calls for the signatures of “scholars,” but all are invited. I’m pasting the email/letter. Please direct any queries to the […]
As I’ve said in previous blog posts, when I raised this reality of sexual abuse by Qur’an teachers in the Muslim community on my old blog, many people responded by sharing their own experiences or at least something they’d seen. I’ve shared some of those responses in the last entries, and some are here.
Continuing the responses to a post I wrote previously on my Qur’an teacher sexually abusing girls. The responses below came in the form of comments or short messages, not in the form of email. So I’m sharing them in one post here. Most of these were posted as comments on the old blog when I first raised this issue of sexual abuse in Muslim communities. (If you think this means […]
3. Another blog reader who emailed me in response to my post on how my Qur’an teacher sexually abused girls in my elementary school. Pasting verbatim what she shared with me (and allowed me to post it on my blog) – a reminder from her to our communities: never, EVER blame the person who’s being or has been abused! It’s never their fault. Never. (I’m collecting stories of sexual abuse […]
2. Below, I share a response from someone who read that sexual abuse by a Qur’an teacher post of mine and allowed me to share their experience as well. I shared another individual’s story in another blog post before this – it can be read here.
I’d first like to thank people for the immense support in response to the sexual abuse post I wrote a couple of weeks ago on how my Qur’an teacher sexually abused girls in my elementary school. I honestly didn’t expect the kind of support the post received, so I think just by at least willing to hear/read something like this and then openly condemn the culprit (in my case, the […]