American Muslim Society “Global Deaf Muslims” (GDM) struggles for raising awareness of the problems such people face. For Deaf Muslims, accessing Islamic information has always been a challenge. Information about Islam is seldom available in sign language making it difficult to educate Deaf Muslims about Islam and for individuals to conduct their own research.
“Every time I came to the mosque, I just sat there and stared at the person speaking, as I couldn’t understand a word,” says Nashiru Abdulai, who was born in Ghana and lives in the United States, became deaf as a child because of an illness.
About 55 million Muslims all over the world face the same problem, so Mr.Abdulai became an activist and now he is the president of the Global Deaf Muslim organisation (GDM) created in 2005. The lack of accessible materials and the systematic exclusion of Deaf Muslims from Masjids and Islamic organizations was identified by GDM as a growing problem that they needed to address.
The GDM has branches in california, Virginia, Minnesota, Illinois and Texas, as well as in Canada and Ghana. They also raised USD 480,000 for interpreting the Holy Qur’an to the American Sign Language.
