Since one day in June of 2016, when I decided to go meet some Muslims at an iftar in Denver, up through today, five years after my conversion, I have been answering concerns by well-intentioned friends about how women are treated in Islam.
It is not as though the modern secular west is exemplary in its treatment of women. But neither does the west claim to base its standards specifically on revelation from God.
Be that as it may, I now find myself at a loss to defend American Islam against the accusation that it treats women as second class. The near total silence of the community in the last seven months with respect to the allegations of gender discrimination and tolerance of sexual misconduct, among other ills, that have been made against CAIR is striking, and cannot serve the best interests of the Muslim community.
And it sells the faith short.
A very good friend and mentor of mine, who is no less concerned than I am with this matter–for we discuss it often—said something very revealing when I asked him what it would take to get a rough balance of sisters and brothers on the Shura of the Islamic Center of Boulder. He said: “Hopefully the Shura brothers will see the need for that.”
Reflecting on that remark, I am reminded that rights in society are not simply conceded by the more privileged to the erstwhile less privileged once the former come to see the wisdom of it on their own. Rights are demanded by the aspiring group. It is really only when rights are demanded that the erstwhile privileged come to their senses.
If this is correct, Shura brothers will not see the need for a rough gender balance on the board without a little prodding, so to speak.
When I got involved in the effort to bring some accountability to CAIR, I naively expected quicker progress.
My first several emails were to local Muslims with whom I had worked to establish a Colorado chapter of CAIR. I was urging them to join me in calling on CAIR-National to agree to an independent and credible investigation of allegations brought against it by former employees and board members. Many of those allegations were included in Leila Fadel’s expose published by Muslim-friendly NPR on April 15 of this past year (Civil Rights Org CAIR Accused Of Ignoring Alleged Misconduct : NPR.)
When that approach seemed to stall, I began to expand my mailing list, which eventually grew to include all of you. The list includes mostly people associated with CAIR, but also many local Muslims, some media folks, and some Muslim community leaders I do not know.
Many of my posts have focused on the sexual exploits of one popular chapter executive and the failure of CAIR-National to hold him accountable, or to reach out to his victims. I have devoted a few posts to defending a former employee turned whistleblower whom CAIR decided to sue for defamation and violations of a non-disclosure agreement.
Coming in the aftermath of the NPR article, this was poor judgement on the part of CAIR, as I believe time will tell.
The information this whistleblower has made public is not the sort of information CAIR has a right to expect to remain confidential. The things she has revealed are not “trade secrets” which non-disclosure agreements were intended to protect, information which a competing organization could utilize to its advantage. It is evidence of wrongdoing, pure and simple.
Granted, the information the whistleblower has revealed may very likely be used by real Islamophobes to disparage Muslims. Although very little of what I have written is previously undisclosed information, Islamophobes are free to repeat and twist it as well.
Have the whistleblower and others, including myself, done wrong by publicizing this evidence of wrongdoing by CAIR?
Or has CAIR done wrong by supposing it can avoid its day of reckoning by counting on the complacency of the community and intimidating any other would-be whistleblowers with its current lawsuit, funded of course by unsuspecting donors?
What does the Qur’an say about the prospects of keeping evidence of wrongdoing hidden from Allah? Are the whistleblower, myself, and others needlessly sowing division and busying ourselves with strictly private matters of fellow Muslims at our own moral peril? Or does the fact that these matters involve victims, including the whistleblower herself, put them in a different category, that of injustices?
Now I have learned that this is not the first scandal to hit the American Muslim community. Apparently, a number of Muslim leaders have felt entitled to acquire secret wives, for instance. I read about one such recent case, and the intervention by several other Muslim leaders in an attempt to hold this person to account.
In fact, I have written privately to one of those leaders who got involved in that effort, urging him to involve himself in this controversy with CAIR. If you can imagine, I did not write to him just once.
Here is one of those letters:
Assalaamu Alaykum Brother________,
Muslims need no convincing that an addiction to alcohol severely compromises one’s potential. Without rehearsing, a Muslim or anyone else could list numerous ways this is true.
But a Muslim alcoholic might feel doubly ashamed, insofar as Muslims are supposed to refrain from alcohol in the first place. This would be true even if that Muslim had no family members to despair for him, or whom he neglected, or anyone in particular who was a victim of his addiction.
In that case, our hypothetical alcoholic Muslim would, for the most part, only be harming himself.
Now, suppose a Muslim, who has some influence in the community, is made aware of an injustice but cannot find his or her way to confront it.
Unlike our hypothetical Muslim with an alcohol problem, we could not say that the complacency of the second Muslim was “victimless”, because injustice is never a victimless transgression.
On the Last Day, do we have any reason to think our second Muslim will fare any better than the first? Is it not conceivable, insofar as we cannot know what Allah will do, that the second will actually fare worse?
Many American Muslim leaders are aware that allegations of impropriety have been made against CAIR by individuals purporting to be the victims. The leader who has done nothing about these allegations or chosen not to learn more about them may have persuaded himself that he is not putting himself in any jeopardy by ignoring this issue.
But in this he may be mistaken.
Salaam,
Todd Buchanan
Of course, it is not only Muslim leaders who are called to address injustice. As you might remember, everyone who calls himself or herself a Muslim is under the same obligation. Life on earth is conditioned and unfree. But in coming to fear Allah we free ourselves of petty fears, like our fear of what our friends might say when we call out injustice.
Perhaps this blog was mistitled. Perhaps I should have titled it, “The Heroic Obligations of Being a Muslim”.
Reform CAIR 