Muslim scholar who’s a convicted child sex offender
helps oversee Islamic boarding school in Illinois
by Robert Herguth, Chicago Sun Times, January 26, 2024 (thanks to Thomas):
After he was convicted in 2016 of molesting a girl and sexually abusing a young woman, Mohammad Saleem was told by a judge that he’s no longer allowed “at or in the Institute of Islamic Education.”
That’s the religious boarding school in Elgin that the Muslim scholar founded years earlier. He was running the school when he committed the crimes that now require him to register as a child sex offender for the rest of his life — with his name, photo and address in an online database maintained by Illinois State Police.
But Saleem still helps supervise the school. And though Illinois law bars child sex offenders from living within 500 feet of a school, Elgin police records show his current residence is “well within” that distance.
In August, the Institute of Islamic Education posted on its Facebook page that the school is “under the eminent supervision and wise guidance of Hadhrat Maulana Mohammed Abdullah Saleem Sahib.”
That’s a reference to Saleem, according to his son Sulaiman Saleem, the current president of the coeducational Elgin school for children of middle school and high school age, many of them boarders.
In July 2022, another Facebook post showed photos of Mohammad Saleem seated inside the mosque adjacent to the school for a graduation ceremony. One photo showed diplomas.
The Illinois State Board of Education lists Mohammad Saleem as the school’s administrator. Sulaiman Saleem says that’s because the agency “did not update their list.” He says his father “doesn’t have any position” with the school.
But Sulaiman Saleem says his 84-year-old father still helps oversee school matters.
He says he does so without violating conditions of his court case that say he can’t be in the school.
“‘Supervise’ does not mean ‘present,’ ” the younger Saleem said. “He’s the founder, so he’s giving suggestions, advice. He doesn’t have to be in the school for that purpose. He can do it over the phone.
“Supervision doesn’t mean physically supervising. It’s guidance, in a sense, because he has so much experience. He’s been following the law. There’s nothing in the law that says he can’t supervise something.”
Asked what Mohammad Saleem does for the school, his son says, “Like, for instance, the education, the material that we learn. We have so many books. The Quran has so many explanations.”…
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Islamic tradition records that Muhammad consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) Aisha when she was nine, and the resultant fact that child marriage is accepted in wide swaths of the Islamic world.
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).
Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became all right, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old. Nowadays in the West there are elaborate efforts to deny all this. An Islamic scholar/apologist named Joshua Little has constructed an elaborate argument from close study of the chains of transmitters (isnads) of various traditions about Aisha, claiming that those traditions, despite appearing in Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection Muslims consider most reliable, are actually inauthentic. Little’s argument, however, is absurd and self-contradictory. He acknowledges that the hadiths are late and unreliable from a historical standpoint, and even admits that the chains of transmitters, like the stories themselves, were freely forged. Then he bases his whole argument for the traditions being inauthentic even on Islamic grounds on the basis of the isnads that he just admitted could be forged.
Little also denounces people he calls “Islamophobes” for making much of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha. He ignores the primary reason why anyone cares about this: not because, as he claims, “Islamophobes” contend that Muhammad’s example forces Muslims to condone child marriage, but because all too many Islamic authorities do condone child marriage. In April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam, [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.
Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in January 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.
“Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this” — Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria
“There is no minimum marriage age for either men or women in Islamic law. The law in many countries permits girls to marry only from the age of 18. This is arbitrary legislation, not Islamic law.” — Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, Iraqi expert on Islamic law
There is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” — Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council
“Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.” — Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology
Likewise the influential website Islamonline.com in December 2010 justified child marriage by invoking not only Muhammad’s example, but the Qur’an as well:
The Noble Qur’an has also mentioned the waiting period [i.e. for a divorced wife to remarry] for the wife who has not yet menstruated, saying: “And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women, if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated” [Qur’an 65:4]. Since this is not negated later, we can take from this verse that it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with a prepubescent girl. The Qur’an is not like the books of jurisprudence which mention what the implications of things are, even if they are prohibited. It is true that the prophet entered into a marriage contract with A’isha when she was six years old, however he did not have sex with her until she was nine years old, according to al-Bukhari.
Other countries make Muhammad’s example the basis of their laws regarding the legal marriageable age for girls. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: “Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed.” According to Amir Taheri in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (pp. 90-91), Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl “a divine blessing,” and advised the faithful to give their own daughters away accordingly: “Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house.” When he took power in Iran, he lowered the legal marriageable age of girls to nine, in accord with Muhammad’s example.
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