Religion - Deaf and Hard of Hearing Muslims

How many deaf people are Muslim? Or would a more accurate question be, how many deaf Muslims are able to participate in Islam? The answer seems to be that participation is limited, but growing.

Community

There are quite a few deaf Muslim discussion groups:

• MSN Groups has a Deaf Muslim Group based in the United Kingdom. In the U.K., there is a deaf Muslim organization, BSL Islam.
• Muslim Deaf Buddies is another MSN group, but I was not able to verify its existence. A similar MSN group that I could not verify is the Islamic Deaf Buddies.
• Yahoo Groups has The Deaf Muslim Club.
• Deaf Muslim Club is another similar Yahoo group. At the time this article was written, it was a public group.

For deaf Muslim women in the U.K. there is the Muslim Deaf Sisters Project. In addition to being a women's group, the organization works for such objectives as the translation of the Koran into British Sign Language (BSL) and educates deaf Muslim women about their faith.

Another U.K.-based group is the Al-Mahdi Deaf Organization. It is part of the World Federation of KSMIC. The group organizes religious pilgrimages for deaf Muslims.

Accessible Mosques

Some mosques provide interpreters. At least three mosques in Cairo, Egypt had interpreters as of the year 2000. More efforts to increase accessibility for deaf Muslims can be read in the Azizah Magazine article How Inclusive of the Disabled is the Muslim Community?, originally published in December 2000. This article notes that there is a shortgage of Muslim interpreters, and makes the point that deaf Muslims need Muslim interpreters in order to get the proper understanding of their faith.

In addition, efforts to make Islam accessible to the deaf are increasing around the world. In early 2004, the Risala charity of Cairo, Egypt began offering training to deaf students after the organization discovered that deaf students could not say their prayers or read the Koran (Qur’an). Jordan already provides interpreters at mosques.

Personal Insights

Janel Muyesseroglu's web essay "The Deaf Muslim Experience: Education and Islam" has interviews with Gallaudet University students who are Muslim. Muyesseroglu's essay also describes the difficulties that deaf Muslims have in learning their faith due to either lack of access or lack of understanding. (This page was created for a Gallaudet course, EDF 730: Multicultural Foundations of Education and may disappear. It is mentioned here because of the insight it gives into the deaf Muslim community.)

Another personal insight can be found in the World Around You (Winter 2001-2002) article "Muslim in the USA: Double Pain." In this article, Gallaudet University professor Dr. Mohammad Obiedat describes being deaf and Muslim in Jordan.

For Children

The Adam's World series from Soundvision.com has an episode (episode 7), "Born to Learn," that includes a character using sign language to teach deaf Muslims about Islam. Although the program is aimed at hearing children, it may benefit deaf children too. In the Netherlands, concern that deaf children and their parents could not communicate about Islam led to the development by Effatha (Royal Effatha Guyot Group?) of Dutch signs for Islam.