Muslim offers ideas on avoiding sexual abuse

Saliha Malik, 52, favors billowy skirts and loose-fitting pants.

But she does not don these items to conceal a weight problem. The mother of 8-year-old twins is partial to less-fitting clothing in observance of purdah, the concealing style of clothing common among Muslim women.

She also believes her style helps her command and maintain the respect of men.

When Malik speaks before Sharon residents in the town's public library on Saturday during the symposium ''Sexual Abuse: In Search of Solutions," which she organized, she will tell those attending that eschewing the more ''alluring" Western style of dress and establishing more boundaries between men and women is one possible answer.

''I imagine they won't agree with me, but I want to tell them anyway," she said.

Malik, along with her husband, Amer, helps run the New England branch of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, which serves Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and parts of Maine. Though she lives in Providence, she drives regularly to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community House in Sharon, the branch's headquarters.

Ahmadiyya, which advocates peace through Islam, boasts a membership of 200 million Muslims worldwide.

Unlike followers of mainstream Islam, Ahmadiyya Muslims believe Ahmad, a self-proclaimed prophet who founded the sect in 1889, is the messiah promised by the prophet Mohammed, said Imam Shamshad, a religious leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which has its headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.

In New England, there are about 200 members, 63 of whom are women, Malik said.

Normally, those members meet for prayers or hold interfaith discussions about spirituality, but lately the group has tried to branch out by becoming more involved in social issues, she said.

Recently, Malik organized a symposium about drug addiction. Only 30 people showed up, she said, but she hopes to attract more attendants on Saturday.

''We've always tried to link with the community," Malik said. ''Elsewhere in the world, we are very much in the forefront of social services. But we're quite a small group here, so we just do the best we can."

Malik acknowledges it is controversial to suggest that a root of sexual abuse may be the woman's style of clothing or a society that encourages dating.

Born in England and raised as a Christian, Malik, who abandoned her birth name, Carol, when she converted to Islam in 1987, said she believes she is in a position to draw comparisons.

''In the West, we raise our children to make them . . . the object of attraction. We raise our girls to make them be picked up, to be asked for a date," she said. ''We tell the children you have to look pretty and sexy, and they are trained to follow the fashion and to make yourself alluring. It is there we are failing. I don't think we see what we're doing."

Fellow panelists -- Sharon police Officer Harriet Reichert and Josie Sperry, an outreach coordinator for New Hope, an Attleboro-based center for victims of sexual and domestic violence and child abuse -- plan a more traditional presentation.

''I'll just be kind of cut and dry. I'll be talking about the steps police take," Reichert said. ''I'm not going to offer any opinions."

Reichert said she wished more people took advantage of services for those sexually abused or battered.

''If people are interested in the information, they're leery about coming out and getting it," she said. ''It's a taboo subject."

In 2002, there were two reports of rape in Sharon, according to state statistics.

Police said they did not have more current figures.

As for Malik's topic, Reichert said she had no comment.

''It's a heavy question," she said. ''It'll be great to explore it."

While Sperry said she does not agree with Malik's position, she is curious about the presentation and the debate it is likely to spark.

''That take might be interesting to people," she said. ''My take is different. It's not the style of dress or the behaviors. There is something [wrong with sexual assailants] that they need to take power and control over people by humiliating them through what is supposed to be an intimate act."

Malik said her interest in raising the issue also grew out of her frustration with the media representation of Muslim women, whom she feels are portrayed as suffering victims of purdah.

''I hear constantly in the news the negative perspective of observing purdah," she said. ''I found it to be extraordinarily positive. We feel it is the one way women can walk freely. We see it as a means of emancipation."

Her daughter is forbidden from wearing shorts, but so is her son, she said. Both are taught to be modest.

''Your shape is not revealed," she said. ''This way you're establishing that you're not inviting the wrong approach."

A teacher of the Alexander Technique, a method for releasing muscular tension, Malik met her husband, a native of Pakistan, during a student's graduation. Their courtship was cerebral, intellectual, Malik said.

''None of this flirtatious business," she said.