Abstract
Justice for the marginalized is the animating impulse of Islamic Liberation Theology, which not only centers those on the periphery but recognizes the shifting nature of the margins. The #MeToo Movement has been the locus of one such contemporary margin: the sexually abused. In focusing on the development of #MeToo amongst North American Muslim communities, this thesis examines how sexual and spiritual harm are addressed by critically engaging both the hegemonic contours of the #MeToo Movement and internal Islamic legal traditions. It argues that while Muslim #MeToo discourse often diverges from liberal feminist frameworks, it often replicates their individualizing tendencies and avoids substantive Islamic legal engagement. This study further interrogates how the presumption of innocence, one of the most contested principles emerging from #MeToo debates, is interpreted and operationalized in Islamic law, and considers how it might be both reimagined within the tradition and mobilized as a resource for activists seeking justice without marginalizing survivors. Through critical textual analysis and the framework of Islamic Liberation Theology, the project analyzes how classical conflations of rape and harassment with zinā (consensual extra-marital sex) continue to produce structural harm. It concludes by introducing spiritual abuse as an emergent category that exposes the limitations of atomistic and ethics-only approaches to Islamic law. Drawing on uṣūl al-fiqh (Islamic legal theory), the thesis proposes a constructive legal framework for addressing spiritual abuse, advancing a methodological intervention that centers the marginalized while remaining grounded in the interpretive tools and epistemologies of the Islamic tradition.