Plans by a Muslim think-tank to identify imams who fail to speak out against domestic violence in Britain are sparking warnings from the country’s main boy for imams.
“Instead, we should encourage women to seek advice from proper imams,” Yousif al-Khoei, spokesman for the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), told the Times on Friday, September 26.
The British branch of the Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) has unveiled plans to identify imams who decline to speak out against domestic violence.
The CIP international director, Irfan al-Alawi, said the imams’ names would be presented to the Home Office to strip them from government grants.
The CIP has conducted a four-month study about domestic violence among British Muslims, estimated at more than two million.
During its investigation, whose study to be published next month, the think-tank received complaints about imams who had turned a blind eye to cases of domestic violence or had refused to help the victims.
Alawi said he is seeking a legal advice before identifying the imams.
“I have to make sure that I don’t end up with a lawsuit on my hands but at the same time expose what is going on in the community.”
Cultural
Khoei, the MINAB spokesman, said a minority of Muslim imam turn a blind eye to domestic violence.
He said the problem has something to do with cultural beliefs, not religion, adding that the MINAB would tackle the problem by promoting “proper Islamic guidelines in the public arena.”
Alawi, the CIP’s international director, cites a number of reasons for failure to report domestic violence among British Muslims.
“A lot of women who are brought from foreign countries to join their spouse here, firstly they cannot speak English.
“The imam is very reluctant to have a conversation with a woman because they feel there is a barrier and the woman should not be approachable to the man.”
Sheikh Irfan Chishti, director of the Light of Islam Academy, said women usually do not speak out about abuses committed against them.
“Women don’t speak up and if they do speak up they can get battered,” said Chishti, a former member of ex-PM Tony Blair’s Preventing Extremism Together taskforce.
“Some men are brought up to believe that because they are superior therefore inadvertently or by default women are inferior and therefore submissive.”
Chishti urges Muslim leaders to encourage the younger generation to condemn and report domestic violence.
He also presses for young British Muslims to take over mosque committees.
“You will not have change in the mosque until you change the culture of the leadership.”
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