Envisioning Survivor-Centered Anti-Violence Spiritual Care

Abstract

Of all the violence I continue to survive, spiritual abuse from my family broke me the most. And of all the spiritual violence I continue to survive, the interpersonal dynamics of political violence cause me the greatest psychosocial injury. In this deeply personal reflection, I offer a glimpse into my experiences of spiritual violence as a Muslim survivor of gender-based violence and my preliminary visions of what survivor-centered spiritual care can look like.
I draw on my decade-long experience advocating for women’s and girls’ rights in various settings: non-profit, government, grassroots organizing, research, and political movement; and on various issues: child/forced marriage, domestic and gender-based violence (GBV), and human trafficking. I further illustrate my analysis with ethnographic interviews I conducted in Brooklyn, NYC of Bangladeshi Muslim marriage practices and the development of participants’ decision-making capacity over time.1 Almost all the participants are people I grew up with and my relationships with them illuminate the communal dimension of spiritual violence.2 I end the article reflecting on my limited experiences with chaplaincy and how it has both further exacerbated the violence I experience and offered me unprecedented pathways to healing.