By Marco Tosatti
Vatican Insider
November 5, 2011
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| Muslims pray in a mosque in London |
Islamic schools in Britain, known as "madrasas" are faced with more than 400 allegations of sexual abuse over the past three years, according to a survey performed by the BBC, but only a very small number of these led to a successful formal legal inquiry. The situation brought about the need for a statute to formally regulate the activities of these schools, which greet approximately 250 thousand Muslim children every day for lessons on the Koran. The situation is so serious that the President of the Commission of Mosques and National Council of Imams stated that he would address the issue as a matter of urgency.
A problem within the problem is the behaviour of the communities and families of children that are victims of the abuse. Very often, families were strongly pressured not to file claims to the Courts, or even to lodge protests or formal complaints at schools. And according to a judge the numbers only represent the tip of the iceberg of a problem that is in fact much greater.
A BBC radio program, "File on 4" asked more than two hundred local representatives in England, Scotland and Wales how many cases of physical or sexual abuse were reported to them or had come to light over the past three years. One a hundred and ninety of them agreed to provide information, bringing to light a total of 421 cases of physical abuse, but only ten of these incidents found their way to the Courts and only two ended with an indictment. The various Councils also revealed that there were thirty additional Islamic schools in the complaints, complaints that led to four judicial inquiries, but only to one indictment.
The responsible party in that case, was Mohammed Hanif Khanm, an Imam from Stoke-on-Trent who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in March this year, for raping a twelve years old boy and sexually molesting a fifteen year old boy. Local authorities stated that pressure from the Islamic community forced the families to withdraw the complaints. In a case of physical abuse in Lambeth, two staff members of a mosque were accused of assaulting children with pencils and a telephone cable. However, the victims later refused to pursue the complaint and to seek justice.
In Lancashire, police said that six year old children stated they had been punched in the back, slapped, kicked, and pulled by their hair. In many cases students said that they were hit with sticks or other objects. And what is more worrying is that the number of violent assaults, sexual or otherwise, seems to be growing steadily. It is an element that is determined thanks to the local authorities, which provided data by dividing them by year. In 2009, there were 89 complaints of abuse; in 2010 they had doubled, reaching up to 178 cases, and the first nine months of this year they reached already 146 cases, meaning that the forecast by the end of 2011 will be nearly two hundred cases.
The Muslim population in Britain is about two and a half million people, and more than half of them are under 25 years of age. The number of "madrasas" is growing rapidly, precisely due to this strong young population, and children will spend about ten hours a week, learning to recite the Koran in Arabic, traditional Arabic that is.
These figures, which have really shocked public opinion, led Mohammad Shahid Raza, President of the National Committee for Mosques and Imams, created by the Islamic organizations to raise the standard of services provided by religious institutions, to state that he will address the issue with urgency. "These figures are very, very disturbing," he said, "There is no justification for punishment of that kind within our mosques or schools. I do not know how widespread this unacceptable practice is, but it is our responsibility to ensure that those who lead the mosques may understand that we live in a civilized society, and that this is unacceptable in any form."
The president stated that he wanted to deal with this problem through self-regulation, but there are requests for action by the government. A leading Muslim figure in the country, Ghayusuddin Siddiqui, said there are numerous unregulated organizations that open madrasas in the United Kingdom, mostly in mosques, but also in garages, abandoned pubs or private houses. And abuse is also common. "We are destroying the lives of youths," he told BBC "We must put in place a system that ensures that these gatherings involve just teaching, with no sexual or physical abuse." According to Nazir Afzal, Chief Public Prosecutor for the Crown of North-Western Britain, the figures provided by the British broadcaster "are grossly underestimated." "We have a duty to ensure that people have the confidence to make complaints. If there is one victim, there will be others, and so it is essential for victims to come forward, that the parents support them and that whoever is in charge of criminal justice takes such incidents seriously."
Physical punishment is legal in a religious environment, but only if it does not exceed a "reasonable punishment." An official report, published last year, called for the legal ban on such practice, but the request was not followed by any action. Sir Roger Singleton, author of the report, after the new findings stated, "We are not faced with isolated cases. And I am concerned about the fact that there no sufficient legal inquiries into these complaints."
It is evident that it is not an isolated problem, or a problem limited solely to the UK, also through the statement made several times by Shaista Gohir, Executive Director of the Muslim Women's Network of Great Britain, who condemned through the Guardian, "The hypocrisy of abuse against children in many Muslim countries." Shaista writes, "Some Muslims like to condemn the immorality of the West - alcoholism, nudity, premarital sex and homosexuality, all cited as examples. But Muslims do not have a monopoly on morality. In the West, marriage with children and sex with children is illegal. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many Muslim countries." Gohir mentions the case of the "Bacha Bazi" in Afghanistan, boys from poor families, forced to wear women's clothes and to dance at parties before being sexually abused. In a country that not only condemns, but punishes homosexuality between adults "men who sodomize kids are not considered homosexuals or paedophiles. And this phenomenon is not limited to Afghanistan: homosexual pederasty is also common in neighboring Pakistan." And she ends by stating, "I wonder how Muslims can remain silent when faced with the sexual abuse of children."
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