Academics, Community Activists, Muslim Leadership, Limits, and Collaboration: A Case Study

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Nancy A. Khalil

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How can community organizations and academics work together to acknowledge, analyze, and intervene to mitigate matters of injustice and violence in relation to sexual abuse? What role should academics play beyond documenting and analyzing instances and trends if they are interested in decolonizing scholarship and the academy? Facing Abuse in Community Environments (FACE) and Nancy A. Khalil, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, co-produced a case study that is both public scholarship and community engagement, as well as an example of partnership between academics and activists. Based on an instance of sexual abuse disclosure, the case study is designed as a resource and pedagogical tool for best practices in community response to instances of sexual assault disclosures in US mosque communities. The case study also contributes to Dr. Khalil’s scholarship on the profession of imams, becoming an example of articulated public engagement that can benefit both scholarship and community interests, demonstrating that those two are never mutually exclusive. This chapter summarizes the construction of the case study as an instance to think through how academics and community workers together can respond to concerns around sexual abuse, and also demonstrates how such work is critical in pursuit of decolonial interests.