Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: Towards Awareness and Accountability – A Conversation

This roundtable brings together several academic contributors to the open-access volume, Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: Towards Awareness and Accountablity (svmcproject.org), launched in December 2024. Panelists discuss their contributions to the volume ranging from how sexual violence invokes specific gendered and racialized assumptions about Islam that threaten how Muslim advocates respond to these issues in their own communities; a critical rereading of Surat Yusuf in the Qur’an in light of the MeToo movement; a critique of the exclusive focus on bodily autonomy countered by a relational sexual ethic; reflections on Muslim chaplains’ responsibility in working with SV survivors; and a methodological and ethical reflection on scholars working with community advocates that highlights questions of hierarchy, leadership, and decolonization of methods. Together, the panelists invite attendees from all fields of religious studies to a necessary conversation that breaks the pervasive silence around sexual violence, in and beyond Muslim contexts.