Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, has a blog posting today that has opened my eyes a bit further, apparently some Islamic clerics are also into the sexual abuse of children …
An Imam and his friends gang raped a girl in Narshingdi, Bangladesh just two days ago. It is quite common that Imams or Muslims priests rape. For rape, they prefer children to grown-ups.
“Ah”, you might say, “This is just one isolated case, all the other clerics are not like that”. Actually no …
An imam has been arrested on the charge of raping a fourth-grade student in Munshiganj. March 2012
An Imam raped an 8-year-old female madrasa student in Pirojpur. January 2012
14-year-old girl was gangraped and then killed by Imams in Shariatput under Islamic sharia law. February 2011
An Imam raped a 10-year-old girl in Chittagong. November 2010
An Imam raped and made a teen pregnant in Faridpur. July 2009.
“Oh, but that is just Bangladesh, so it is only there, right?” … nope …
An Imam raped his daughter’s 15-year-old friend in Nigeria.
An Imam was arrested for raping children in Afghanistan.
And of course all the Muslims are in a complete uproar about all this? Nope, instead it is all kept as quiet as possible and swept under the carpet, a reaction that appears to be almost universal among religious folks.
I was once, in the distant past, a member of a church myself as a teen (don’t panic, I’m better now, I managed to eventually think my way out of it all). There they also had an incident of child abuse that involved the Sunday school teacher, a married guy, abusing two of the girls in the Sunday school. There was an attempt to sweep it all under the carpet, the pastor (a clueless gobshite) wanted to have him simply removed and everything hushed up, but luckily a sensible judge issued a court order forcing the pastor to reveal what had happened. Thinking back, it was a very understandable and sensible move, I can envisage the judge thinking to himself that if this has been going on then what else was still hidden? Also, people had a right to know that the environment that they believed was safe was no such thing.
When it all came out, did people begin to question their beliefs? Nope, it was dismissed as one bad egg.
So what exactly would it take to shake people up? A few years later the pastor whom I refer to as a clueless gobshite (that is a factual statement), abandoned his family and ran off with somebody elses wife, so did that do it? Nope, the church simply carried on, and found a new pastor. Meanwhile the old pastor went independent and to this day promotes himself on Facebook with postings that read …
Just finished a great tour preaching around UK and EU.
God is moving and in these last days it is so important to preach with power. Having not done a tour for a while I am surprised how many churches are in a mess with poor leadership
“in a mess with poor leadership”, Oh bugger, I just broke my irony meter.
So why this criticism? Well because there is a religious claim here that when you let God into your life, he will look after you and enable you to be a better person. However, when examined, this claim turns out not to be true, all it really does is create a platform for abusive individuals to prey upon the unwary, there is no evidence of an supernatural intervention in human lives. Are all clerics like this? No of course not, most humans, with or without beliefs, are decent individuals, what I am saying is that individuals who are clerics should not be deemed decent honourable individuals on the sole basis that they embrace irrational religious beliefs, and when caught, their daft beliefs should not be deemed to be a get-out-of-jail free card.
It turns out that Child abuse is not just a Catholic thing, all other clerics, including Islamic ones, are just as much a risk, so be extremely skeptical when faced with such individuals.