Unfortunately, sexual

nelle2nelle — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:52:01 -0500

Unfortunately, sexual assault all too often shows when there is either anarchy, or a group of people are seriously devalued in the eyes of others.

It's ok to do this, they aren't really civilised human beings, we have license to do what we damn well please and no one will care.

It's unconscionable that the administrators did not report this incident. They are not trained investigators, nor are they trained rape/sexual assault counselors.

nelle

North American Muslim women being targeted for sexual attacks

lainad — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:06:15 -0500

It is believed that because of religious and cultural beliefs, Muslim women are less likely to report sexual assaults, but are also targets because of their hesitancy in reporting them. But what role do authorities play?

It all happened with the shooting of a fifteen year old. While the cases are unrelated, the death of Jordan Manners at a Toronto-area high school in May has led to an investigation of the schools administratorsâ€™ role â€“ or lack of -in an alleged sexual assault that happened last October.

A fourteen year old female Muslim student reported to a teacher that she was forced to perform oral sex on two male students. The teachers reported the assault to administrators, who decided that there was not enough evidence to pursue the complaint and never reported it to the police. The students who were accused of the assault remain enrolled at the school and the female student was never offered any counseling.

Last Wednesday, the three school administrators were suspended with pay after an investigation about the schoolâ€™s conditions was held and the allegations were brought up. After the shooting of Manners, a teacher was interviewed by the Toronto Star about the conditions that may have led to the studentâ€™s death. In Sunday's Star an article about the sexual assault case and the cultural beliefs that allegedly led to the attack, revealed that there was at least one other case of a sexual assault on a female Muslim student at the school:

But there have been other incidents at other schools, which were reported to police and dealt with, said the education official who did not want to be named because of an ongoing police probe into the allegations.

Others with community contacts said cultural beliefs were being exploited in these attacks.

Nasreen Karim, an assistant manager at the Muslim Welfare Home in Whitby, said sexual assaults are embarrassing for immigrants from Pakistan and India because of their cultural ethos, not their religion.

"I have a daughter. It would be embarrassing for parents," said Karim, who is from Pakistan. "They don't want to report, because they feel embarrassed. That's our culture. It's a virgin woman who goes to marriage."

Eman Ahmed, a community worker who also works for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said there are many cases where Muslim women are sexually assaulted but afraid to come forward.

"I have heard of this," Ahmed said. "It would not surprise me that they're not coming forward."

In this post 9/11 world, are the perpetrators of sexual crimes against Muslim women in North America using the political and social climate of heightened racial tensions to justify their behavior? Is this another mechanism to terrorize Muslims on North American soil, or because there has been more public awareness about the Muslim community and their cultural beliefs, perpetrators of these assaults are using percived cultural norms among Muslim women to take advantage of the avoidance to report sexual attacks? According to reports, this is not an isolated case, as other Toronto-area Muslims girls are being targeted.

As mentioned in the Star article, many women irregardless of cultural background do not report assaults for a myriad of reasons, but in the case at C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate, the lack of inaction on the part of the administrators to report the alleged attacks to authorities should be questioned as to whether there was any racial bias involved on their part. Hopefully in the future there will be regulations put in place by school officials to ensure that all alledged attacks are reported to the authorites.

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Unfortunately, sexual

North American Muslim women being targeted for sexual attacks