DEARBORN — The Islamic Center of America, with ACCESS’ help, organized a domestic violence awareness campaign, asking Muslims to break the stigma that haunts victims in the community by wearing purple on October 21 for Friday prayer.

Mirvat Kadouh, Ladies of the ICA chairwoman, said many women come to the mosque in need of help.

“We do as much as we can to protect them and to put them back into a safe environment,” she said. “We would call ACCESS and build that bridge with them to find out what they can do because there’s so much that we can do as a mosque.”

She said after that they reached out to ACCESS to help spread awareness in the community.

“This is an important issue that we need to discuss and resolve,” ICA Chairman Jim Safieddine said. “The more we spread awareness, the more we talk about it, the more it will take action.”

Members of the ACCESS Domestic Violence Prevention program spoke to attendees and handed out pamphlets that provided information about their resources and services, raising awareness about the issue that has alarmingly increased over the years.

Layla Elabed, the domestic violence program coordinator at ACCESS, said the program works with community leaders and community members to confront the issue of intimate partner violence and to support gender equity with the help of ACCESS’s coordinated community response team.

Elabed said her team decided to bring “Purple Hijab and Kufi day”— where women wear a purple hijab and men wear a purple kufi— to the ICA for Friday prayer. She said that way the center could take ownership of the event and spread awareness about both ACCESS’ and the center’s services for victims.

Sheikh Ibrahim Kazerooni, imam of the ICA, delivered a sermon in both Arabic and English on domestic violence after prayers.

During the sermon, he said that according to data from the Victims of Crime Act, there were 160 domestic violence victims out of 176 crime victims in the community from October 2015 to October 2016.

Judge Sam Salamey, who serves on the 19th District Court in Dearborn, said there is an increase in domestic abuse in the community that he wouldn’t call alarming, but is still significant, nonetheless.

“I would say there has been a moderate increase in domestic violence cases,” Salamey said.

He added that the court sees cases that are not restricted to Arab Americans and that domestic violence is a problem for all ethnic groups.

“I can assure you that we have not seen a larger percentage of Arab American cases as opposed to non-Arabs,” he said.

Before the sermon, The Arab American News spoke to Kazerooni about domestic violence and the immediate stigma of admitting there is such a problem. He discussed the diverse approach community members need to take in order to prevent an even worse crisis.

“Community admission and coming forward”

“No step will be successful by itself unless the society collectively accepts that there is a problem,” he said. “If we want to deny it and simply ignore it— brush it under the carpet— I don’t believe any singular institution will be able to make a concrete change.”

He said that the community is similar to other communities and is vulnerable to moral shortcomings, so he encouraged admission. 

Kazerooni said wives of abusive husbands don’t come forward for a variety of reasons like the fear of nobody supporting them, a family break-up, nowhere to go and more. He said the first step is coming forward. 

He also said all the statistics available are the “tip of the iceberg.” 

“We can get some idea when we bring all these works, academic and non-academic fieldwork, together and see the degree of the crisis,” he said.

Kazerooni said religious leaders have to hold some of the responsibility because when a woman comes forward to a religious center, some imams do not take the issue seriously.

“The religious scholar says, ‘Well, you need to go back to your husband and Insh’Allah (God willing) pray that Allah would guide him,'” he said. “This is not going to be acceptable. It’s a classic double standard. On the one hand, we stand in front of others and with pompous pontification about Islam standing for justice and we fail to deliver justice in our homes.” 

He said a “family institution” is considered a holy institution in Islam because establishing justice within it eventually leads to an ethical and moral community. 

Therefore, he said, the community must encourage social services and advocacy groups to work together with Islamic scholars— to give advice on religious sensitivity— to ensure justice is met. He also asked physicians to pay attention to signs of domestic violence and not just take it at face value if a woman comes to their office and says “I fell down the stairs” or “The door was open in my face and I got a bruise.”

“Seriously pay attention to this,” he said.

He urged anyone who witnesses domestic violence to come forward and help the victim.

“Corrective measures”

Kazerooni said he is fortunate for the resources and services ACCESS offers and that they are part of the corrective measures process.

He added that he sends families who come to the Islamic center to ACCESS if they are in need of advocacy groups or other aid.

Nagham Dabaja, a clinician for ACCESS’s victims of crime program, said that lately she’s seen more women asking for help.

“After screening, I ask them what kind of services they want,” she said. “We offer therapy, legal services, psychiatric services, employment services and we also do case management services.”

Dabaja said it’s a matter of empowering women and showing them that they can move on. She added that if they don’t have shelter, the program puts them in a domestic violence shelter with their children.

“We work really closely with the domestic violence shelter,” she said. “If the mom requests therapy, we like to include children as well, so that way they could learn what’s going on in the household and how to empower and support their mom.”

“Preventative measures”

Kazerooni said to prevent domestic violence, institutions, including religious centers, need to take leading roles. He also said if a couple comes to the center for marriage, the imam should advise them to put these issues in the contract to give the woman the right to a divorce if such injustices happen.

Another important part of the preventative step is the educational establishment. Kazerooni said there may be a need for a course before marriage at the center, where couples can learn about their rights and responsibilities.

He added that the couple must also be prepared to solve any dispute peacefully through conflict resolution.

“Here is the role of advocacy groups,” he said. “I don’t need to reinvent the wheels. I can say look, ‘We have four couples who want to get married, how about organizing a workshop at the center for them?'”

Kazerooni explained that the preventative step is the most critical because no family is prepared to come forward if domestic violence is a problem in their family.