Assisting the Muslim and non-Muslim communities of KW

Muslim Social Services

An Imam’s Guide to Deal with Domestic Violence: Abdul Malik Mujahid

While in Muslim countries, the role of a Masjid’s Imam may be mostly to lead prayers and teach, in the United States and in other Western countries, it has expanded substantially.

These Imams do not only lead prayers, deliver sermons, officiate marriages, perform funeral ceremonies, and provide religious and spiritual guidance like other clergy. They also offer family counseling and mediation for parents and married couples.

We need help of American Imams in handling the curse of domestic violence. It is increasing in our community and here are some of the immediate causes of this.

There is a lot of pressure on Muslims in America.

While we thank God that no attack like that of 9/11 has recurred, anti-Islamic opinion has been consistently rising in the last six years in the United States. Today, a majority of our neighbors think very negatively of Islam and Muslims [1] and 22 percent don’t even want a Muslim as their neighbor. Thirty-nine percent of respondents of a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll said they favored requiring Muslims, including U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID.

Due to this pressure and widespread Islamophobia, Muslim wages in America have consequently gone down by 10% according to the University of Illinois and Columbia University. Seventy-six percent of all young Arab-Americans surveyed in July 2007 by Zogby International say they have been personally discriminated against.

This explains why Muslim social service providers are finding higher levels of domestic violence and divorce in the community. And a Yale University mental health survey has determined that 50 percent of all Arab-Americans surveyed were found to have clinical symptoms of depression.

While these statistics call for a higher level of social services in the Muslim community, few institutions are actually providing that. This is why there is greater pressure on Imams to deal with issues like discrimination, domestic violence and parenting, although most of them have no training in these matters.

While there is no replacement for proper training in these crucial areas, all Imams must learn the basics of domestic violence and how to deal with it. With that in mind, we are providing the following tips for Imams:

                                                                                                                                                           

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