This past weekend, KARAMAH’s Executive Director Aisha Rahman trained imams and leaders at the Peaceful Families Project and United Muslim Relief National Imam Training Workshop: “Preventing and Responding to Domestic Violence.”
The two-day training helped a room of a dozen imams and community leaders address the intersections between domestic violence and family issues within Muslim communities. KARAMAH’s portion of the training focused on legal issues that imams need to be cognizant of and consider as they are advising their congregations. Ms. Rahman began by presenting an overarching legal framework and process for everyday issues faced by Muslim congregations, such as marriage, divorce, and immigration.
Citing a Peaceful Families Project statistic which found that about 94% of Muslims polled in New York relied on their imams as community leaders and spiritual counselors, Ms. Rahman stressed the importance for imams to offer congregants beneficial spiritual advice in such issues while being aware of the legal implications of their advice. Imams in our communities nationwide are first responders, more often than not, in DV and other family crisis situations. Their advice and their input has serious consequences that can seriously impact the safety and legal rights of their congregants.
KARAMAH recognizes that mosques around the country need to work more on investing in their imams. Unfortunately, Muslim communities have not devoted resources to professional development trainings and adequate job descriptions for their imams – this unfortunately has left imams fending for themselves in situations that they neither could have anticipated nor are equipped to handle. During the training, Ms. Rahman discussed several examples of cases KARAMAH has handled in which imams were implicated in or held liable in court cases because they had: not kept copies of marriage contracts of ceremonies they had officiated, signed affidavits based on faulty information and were accused of perjury, officiated second marriages when bigamy is a crime in their jurisdiction, or had failed to report sexual abuse against a minor. These are serious issues and American Muslim communities, both boards of directors of mosques and imams, need to work together to address these issues immediately first and foremost for the rights and safety of their congregants but also to shield their communities from legal liability.
By organizing educational trainings for community leaders and imams to help bridge gaps between spirituality and American law, KARAMAH hopes to strengthen community-based services to American Muslims throughout the country. For more information about this training and future trainings, visit our website at www.karamah.org
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