The facts in this case are just as distasteful as they are in similar cases. A man in his fifties. A ten-year-old girl. For him, she is just a source of momentary pleasure. For her, however, it’s a series of traumatic experiences that will haunt her for a lifetime and deform her existence in myriad ways. We can be grateful that in this case, the perpetrator has been caught and will be prosecuted, but that can never erase what he did. And there is another aspect of this case that makes it even more disturbing than other instances of this kind of behavior: what this man did had the sanction of his religion, which means we will see many, many more such cases.
New York’s PIX11 reported Thursday that “a religious leader is accused of repeatedly groping a 10-year-old girl in a Queens mosque, and police suspect there may be more victims, authorities said Thursday.” The “religious leader” in question is one Tajul Islam, who is 55 years old, that is, five and a half times older than his victim. Islam was “arrested for allegedly sexually abusing the girl multiple times inside the Masjid Bilal mosque at 121-03 Sutphin Blvd. in Jamaica from April 21 to April 27.”
The betrayal of trust was thoroughgoing: Islam is “accused of touching the girl’s chest and inner thighs on four separate occasions.” According to the NYPD, the girl herself reported the incident, and she should be applauded for her courage. Now Islam has been “charged with sexual abuse, forcible touching, and endangering the welfare of a child,” and the cops “believe there may be more victims.”
That would not be surprising in the least. Tajul Islam, after all, is a Muslim cleric. He knows very well that Islamic tradition records that Muhammad, whom the Qur’an recommends as a model for emulation in all matters (33:21) consummated his marriage with (i.e., raped) a young girl named Aisha when she was nine. As a result, child marriage and the sexualization of children are taken for granted in wide swaths of the Islamic world.
Islamic tradition states that “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).
Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old, just one year younger than Tajul Islam is today. Because of his exalted status as the model for all Muslim behavior, his example is still used to this day to justify exactly the kind of abuse of children in which Tajul Islam is accused of engaging.
In Jan. 2025, the Associated Press reported that Iraq’s parliament “passed three divisive laws Tuesday, including amendments to the country’s personal status law that opponents say would in effect legalize child marriage.” Supporters of these measures included “Shiite lawmakers” who said that they would “align the law with Islamic principles and reduce Western influence on Iraqi culture.” Oh, and victimize untold numbers of young girls.
In April 2011, Bangladesh tried to pass a law banning child marriage, only for another Muslim cleric, the Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini, to declare that those trying to pass such a law 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.
Many other authorities agree with the Shi’ite lawmakers in Iraq and Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini in Bangladesh. Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-‘Ubeidi, an Iraqi expert on Islamic law, said in April 2008: “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.”
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Ishaq Akintola, professor of Islamic Eschatology and Director of Muslim Rights Concern, Nigeria, said in March 2016: “Islam has no age barrier in marriage and Muslims have no apology for those who refuse to accept this.” Turkey’s directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) said in Jan. 2018 that under Islamic law, girls as young as nine can marry.
Statements of this kind can be found from all over the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent Muslim cleric and member of the country’s highest religious council, has said that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.” Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology agrees, stating flatly: “Islam does not forbid marriage of young children.”
And so why shouldn’t Tajul Islam cast a searching eye over his Queens congregation and scan the ranks of little girls for one he considered to be an appropriate sexual partner? By his lights, he had done nothing wrong. American authorities have yet even to come close to examining the implications of that fact.
