The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain has launched a pro-active approach to child protection that shows some political imagination and courage.
This child protection programme is the outcome of months of consultation among Muslims worried - but often too afraid to speak out - that children are at risk of abuse in the faith-based out-of-school settings that are proliferating.
According to the document published last week, it is estimated that there are about 700 madrasas operating in Britain, teaching 100,000 children.
The Muslim Parliament believes that children in this expanding network should be entitled to the same conditions of respect and physical, sexual and emotional safety as they should expect in the state sector under the Children Act.
The Muslim Parliament is mindful that other churches' confrontations with their own histories has revealed the uniquely destructive character of clergy abuse. To be harmed by someone who commands authority in the community is frightening enough. But to be harmed by clerics perceived to be acting with the authority of their god is awesome.
The protocol urging regulation of the madrasas and positive action on child protection was drafted after consulting other faiths. Only in the last decade or so have the churches begun to take the side of children, rather than using their power, as they did in the past, to protect their own reputation. All the faiths consulted by the Muslim Parliament. including Jews, Roman Catholics and the Church of England, have been shamed by child abuse scandals and cover-ups. In these islands the Christian churches have also enjoyed proximity to the power of the state. That is not the position for the mosques.
Racism encourages a form of collective defence against disgrace. Evidence of child abuse has, therefore, been trapped between Muslims defending themselves against a hostile majority, by affirming traditional, patriarchal, power against its challengers: women and children.
The Government has invited the mosques and the madrasas to root out religious extremism. But the Muslim Parliament is delving deeper by asking them to confront child abuse that thrives under the wing of authoritarianism.
It is challenging racism, and those who use racism as their alibi, by insisting that Muslim children are entitled to the same protections as their peers in other faiths.
