Tel-Chai Nation

Here's something that the MSM most likely won't consider important. From the St. Petersburg Times (via Interested Participant and The Jawa Report):

TAMPA — The father wanted to root his boys in Islam, so he sent them to the mosque for overnight prayer.

His sons loved the mosque, just north of Kennedy Boulevard near downtown. They played inside the blue building called Masjid Omar Al Mukhtar and rode their bikes to the nearby Wendy's and KFC.

The mosque was the house of Allah, the safest place the family knew.

Then, Sunday morning, one of the boys, a 13-year-old, called his mother, begging to be brought home. He said the imam had sexually assaulted him, police said.

"I'm still dizzy about it," the father told the St. Petersburg Times. "As Muslims, we come to the house of Allah to rid ourselves of sin we commit outside the house of Allah. We do not go to the house of Allah to sin."

I wonder though if that means, they don't go there to sin against each other? I get the feeling this is one Islamist who doesn't seem to realize that the quasi-liberal elements of Islam allow that to happen.

Tampa police charged Yasser Mohamed Shahade, 35, with sexual battery. An Egyptian who arrived two months ago as the mosque's full-time imam, Shahade was held without bail at the Falkenburg Road Jail. The Sheriff's Office notified immigration officials of his arrest.

Shahade declined an interview request Thursday. He will be represented by a public defender.

The Times is not identifying the victim or his family because of the nature of the crime.

The father knows that many Muslims would have kept this matter private.

He could have quietly moved his family to another mosque and left Shahade behind.

"Some people feel that airing your dirty laundry, the shame comes on you. No. Our family does not feel shame," he said. "If we had let him go, he would've done it to somebody else."

I suppose we could give him credit for having the guts to call the authorities. And yet, he signals a serious problem with the Islamic community - its insular tactics, where they de facto keep things like these secret, making it difficult for anyone to take proper action and be informed.

Labels: Florida, islam, sexual violence, United States