YNOT – Certain American Christian groups are well-known for their abhorence of anything resembling adult entertainment. Vociferous, often bitterly vituperative outcry from Christian faith-based groups like Morality in Media, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association and others is legend. Most are all too willing to lay the blame for many of society’s ills at the feet of pornography, primarily because the industry, once hidden in back alleys and under beds, has become extremely visible in the Internet Age.

Add another religious community to the list of porn castigators: American Muslims. Although American Muslims stop short of insisting explicit adult content is ruining the world at large, religious and lay leaders increasingly voice concern that porn is harming their community.

“Although estimates are highly speculative, some sociologists and anti-pornography activists say up to 25 percent of men in America are consumers of pornography, mostly via the Internet,” according to The Muslim Link. “As a business, the gross revenue of the pornography industry is close to $25 billion annually — more than sports like football and baseball…. Dr. Jennifer Johnson, a social scientist at the University of Virginia, said the industry is ‘geared to promote addiction.’”

A survey of Imams (Muslim religious leaders) conducted by the paper revealed American Muslims are no less tempted by pornography than anyone else in the larger society. In fact, “most” of the Imams who responded to the survey indicated that although the concept of “porn addiction” may be vague and the presumed mechanism for acquisition is not easily defined, the syndrome increasingly is a topic in Muslim marriage counseling sessions.

“Anytime a man spends eight to nine hours looking at porn and less than fifteen minutes with his family, I would say that it is a very serious problem in our community,” Imam Hassan Amin told the paper.

Lay leaders in the Muslim community propose that conquering the male affinity for sexually graphic material may require more than a spiritual approach.

“We really need more professional, practicing Muslims in the fields of counseling and psychology, so the link between Islam, science and sociology can be made to benefit the people,” said Jose Acevedo, a youth counselor and co-founder of NOMAD Camps (an outdoor program for Muslim youth). “Too often our Imams have a limited knowledge base on how to treat such addictions, [while] professionals lack the spiritual guidance to complete their counseling holistically.”

Community, too, was identified as a way of dealing with the problem of porn addiction.

“Most people who are addicted to this or who partake in it lead otherwise ‘normal’ lives,” said Adam Kareem, a youth activist and head of the Muslim Inter-Scholastic Tournament. “But the first thing they need to understand is that they’re not alone.”

Evidently they’re not alone, if the founder of Purify Your Gaze, an online treatment program for pornography addiction, is to be believed. The anonymous, five-week program, aimed specifically at Muslim men, launched Dec. 6. More than 35,000 people viewed the site within the first week of its launch, founder and certified life coach Zeyad Ramadan, 24, said. Although the program’s lectures are free to view, his fee-based individual counseling program reached its 25-30-person capacity quickly. Most of Ramadan’s clients tell him they are frequent churchgoers and prayer leaders, he said.

Ramadan called pornography addiction the Muslim community’s “‘elephant in the room’ — a huge problem few are willing to discuss,” The Muslim Link reported.