Spiritual Abuse as Fiduciary Breach: Reimagining Islamic Legal Futures of Accountability

Spiritual abuse has emerged as a critical term within recent Muslim discourse, yet it is most often framed as an ethical wrong. While such framing foregrounds survivor experience, it also individualizes abuse and sidesteps Islamic law—an authoritative discursive tradition through which many Muslim communities conceptualize harm. In minority contexts, appeals to institutional accountability remain necessary but insufficient: mechanisms of accountability cannot meaningfully confront practices activists deem abusive if some of those practices are simultaneously justified within prevailing legal interpretations. Avoiding Islamic law leaves this normative architecture intact. This paper argues that struggles over Islamic law are ultimately struggles over the futures of accountability. Drawing on classical legal theory, I propose conceptualizing spiritual abuse as a fiduciary breach of communally delegated religious authority. Reframing spiritual harm juridically relocates accountability within the tradition itself, demonstrating that the question of care is inseparable from how the law imagines its own future.