Question Posted Saturday February 4 2012, 12:09 am
Hi Amanda
I just turned 22 years old very devoted Muslim. I am married with a wonderful husband. He works in IT and I am a stay at home mom who is on the internet much too often. I was raised in Jordan. We went to a very good school and Quran school. I learned to memorize most of the Quran at a young age. This is the first time I am opening up about this and REALLY need your advice/
My parents sent me to this Quran boarding school for girls for 3 months out of the year every year since I was very little (I was the only one accepted out of my family. my brothers and sisters leaned from the Mosque). I learned a lot. You see I lost my father when I was young (12 years) and the man who headed and taught the school and his wife where very helpful in helping me heal in ways no one ever did!! I loved my father, he was the greatest man I ever knew. I have 2 brothers and 1 sister all younger than me.
But Abu, the school mater, that trained me—he and I were very close, even sexually in that school. It sounds strange but we kept it secret. He was a very kind man who really knew how to teach well –whatever. His wife was the one who gave me birth control pills to save my family and myself the shame. She said she did it for other girls to. I am very grateful to her for being a mentor and confidant. We kept our sexual relationship till until my family moved to the UK. But this is a shameful thing in my past I don’t talk to people about it but now I have to because it is killing me inside. If my parents found out I would be dead DEAD. I learned ALOT about my body and sex and i am grateful to have learned these things from Abu. it was an amazing sexual experiuence over all. When I got married I lied to my husband like many of the girls I know to say I was a virgin. Otherwise I would never get married. The strange thing is that it has not bothered me or haunted me like I hear on Oprah and others who had these experiences. I do not have ill feelings toward this man and his wife. They are people I still respect because of how ethical and kind they have treated my family through out the years. They paid for all my education and my brothers and sisters as well. They provided meals for us when my mother did not have enough, etc. When we see them as a family we just pretend this stuff never happened. I never bring it up and he or his wife never do. . I asked around if anyone else had my experience and no one would talk about it. It is a very shameful thing for a Muslim Arab girl to talk about these things!! But my aunt, who is about my age, opened up to me and told me she had similar experiences with this man. She is also married now with three children and wants to leave the past in the past. She begged me not to tell anyone about him and to just leave things as they are since we both went through it and we turned out “OK”.
Her daughter, Cameron, my niece she is now in Jordan with my family and they are sending her to the same school to learn the Quran. Abu is still teaching there. My sister said it is best to not talk about it and let her experiernece life and sex and everything else like we did. My friends tell me to expose this man. It would be devastating to our family to bring this news out about what he did with me and the other girls because of the shame factor. I would never bring that kind of shame on him, my family or my religion. I respect him. Am I weird and crazy?? But I don’t know what to do because now Cameron is there and my family did not think twice about sending her to that school because it has such a good reputation. My American friends tell me to make my sister take Cameron out of that school as soon as yestersay. I feel so mistrable because of what they tell me I am wicked. But my experience was good over all at that school. But they make me feel horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am depressed about this. I really want Cameron to learn from this very good school and Abu, but I don’t know what to do!! Please help me from going crazy…I don’t know what to do..i need help to think about this.
PLEASE respond to jjordan2011@mail.com
If you're not feeling any negative effects from your past, there's no reason to start. It takes many women years of therapy to get to a point where they're able to cope with experiences like yours. Don't start feeling guilty because of what you have done, because there's no reason.
That said, what your school master did was unethical. He was in a position of authority over young girls, and used his position to manipulate them into sexual relationships. Even if it is not against the law, it's still wrong for him to have done. This is where you face some obligations.
Your niece is in a situation where she may be exposed to the same sort of pressure that you were. Your aunt knows about it, but because of shameful feelings she won't protect her daughter. All of me wants to say that you should expose the man and have him locked away, but you do have your family to worry about as well.
I think the best advice I could possibly give you is to warn your niece yourself. In an age-appropriate way, tell her about her rights and how she may be pressured to go against her beliefs, but how she can always talk to you if there's anything going on. Warn her about his past. You don't have to be specific about what went on, but let her know that he's not to be trusted in certain ways. It's not perfect, but it's at least enough to save her from his influence. [ NinjaNeer's advice column | Ask NinjaNeer A Question ]
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