NEW YORK (NY)
Newsweek
Oct. 21, 2019
By Mohammed-Al-Hilli
Child abuse revelations have rocked the Catholic church in the last generation, leading to lasting damage to how the Church is viewed worldwide and even shaking the faith of some believers.
Some speculate that a similar scandal is brewing in Shia Islam, with abusers exposed to be using egregious misrepresentations of religious law to facilitate their attacks.
The limelight has been shone on this in a recent BBC documentary, provocatively titled “Undercover with the Clerics.” Girls as young as 13 were essentially pimped out by Iraqi men who claimed religious legitimacy. Specifically, the men stated they were followers of Grand Ayatollah Syed Sistani, despite the fact that the cleric has condemned their actions as abhorrent not only to Islam’s values but to Iraqi law and human rights.
Those human rights have come on in leaps and bounds in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam and his dictatorship in 2003.
Civil society has gone from being all but non-existent to becoming one of the more vibrant examples of life in the region. Iraq’s constitution guarantees that at least a quarter of the country’s members of parliament are women (a slightly higher percentage than in the current U.S. House of Representatives.)
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