“Afeef said that when he started publicly discussing the allegations against Saleem on a popular Listserv, he was criticized by some who told him that he was ‘playing into the hands of Islamophobes.'” This is just as despicable as the Catholics who accused those who spoke about the priest sex abuse scandals of being anti-Catholic. It also shows how the chimera of “Islamophobia” is used to inhibit those who would speak up about problems among Muslims — blaming the Infidels is easy, but cleaning house is harder.
And Afeef agrees that “there are people who have an agenda to malign Muslims.” This is a common charge, but it is utterly baseless. The “Islamophobia”-mongers claim that there is a huge industry dedicated to maligning Muslims, but what would be the point of such a thing? Racism? Then where is the comparable “network” dedicated to maligning Hindus and others? No one would care to “malign Muslims,” or think about them at all, were it not for jihad terror and Islamic supremacism. “Islamophobia” as a concept is designed to intimidate people into not daring to think that truth, which would otherwise be blazingly obvious.
“Sex-abuse allegations against Chicago Muslim religious leader roil community,” by Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post, February 14, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Allegations of sexual abuse by the longtime president of a leading Chicago-area Islamic school have roiled the region’s Muslims and raised questions about the reporting of sexual abuse in a close-knit religious community.
The allegations that Abdullah Saleem of the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, a Chicago suburb, sexually abused an adult female school employee surfaced in December, when a leading Muslim scholar referred to them in a blog.
Elgin police confirmed Saturday that they are conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at the school, but spokesman Cmdr. Ana Lalley said she could provide no further details.
Saleem, who has been a respected Muslim leader in Chicago for decades, has not been charged with any crime….
Junaid Afeef, a lawyer and Muslim leader in Chicago, said religious and community leaders, especially among the older generation, initially had a “circle-the-wagons” response to the allegations. He said at first they largely ignored them, then chose to investigate them themselves rather than go immediately to the police….
Some Muslims also worry that public allegations against a prominent leader could compound anti-Muslim sentiment, which Muslim Americans have struggled with since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and even more so lately with the rise of the Islamic State radical group in Syria and Iraq.
Afeef said that when he started publicly discussing the allegations against Saleem on a popular Listserv, he was criticized by some who told him that he was “playing into the hands of Islamophobes.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Afeef said. “There are people who have an agenda to malign Muslims. But that’s beside the point. There is a victim here, and her safety and protection trump any bigotry that might result from reporting this.”…