(RNS) — A former Texas imam and online Quran instructor who was charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography has been sentenced to 80 years in prison, according to federal court documents.
Wisam Sharieff was sentenced on Wednesday (Jan. 28) in the Alabama Northern District Court, more than six months after he entered a guilty plea on three federal child sexual exploitation charges. He was also ordered to pay $135,000 to a fund for victims of child sexual abuse. His co-defendant, Blake Miller Barakat, was sentenced to 70 years last October.
The former high-profile imam’s arrest two years ago and details of allegations made available in court records sparked outrage for some Muslim Americans and led to conversations about how to hold alleged spiritual abusers accountable.
According to the indictment, Sharieff and Barakat, an Alabama woman he was teaching, allegedly conspired together to coerce Barakat’s child to engage in sexually explicit behavior for the purpose of producing pornography. FBI special agent Eric Salvador reported in a sworn affidavit that electronic devices and sexual toys were seized from Barakat’s residence. Officers also discovered a private chat on the Telegram messaging app in which Sharieff sent explicit videos of himself, and the messages showed that the mother sent explicit videos of her child viewing adult pornography, according to the affidavit.
Sharieff’s lawyers had asked the court for the minimum punishment in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines. In a court filing days before his sentencing, Sharieff’s wife, sister, a friend and others submitted character letters attesting to his “remorse since his arrest” and saying “that he has expressed shame, accountability, and a sincere desire to change.”
Before his arrest, Sharieff was an online Quranic instructor for the educational nonprofit AlMaghrib Institute, RNS previously reported. He was known for creating the institute’s Quran Revolution program, a popular curriculum for learning Quran recitation. His employment was terminated after the institute investigated the allegations against him.
While in FCI Talladega, a medium-security federal prison in Alabama, Sharieff wrote a children’s book about learning from mistakes. He also wrote dozens of journal entries and book reviews, according to his Prison Professors profile. In a March 2025 blog post, Sharieff attributed his conduct to pornography addiction.
However, Sameera Qureshi, a Muslim sexual health therapist, said using language surrounding behavioral addiction can be harmful in some circumstances.
“While ‘addiction’ can sometimes help describe patterns of behavior, it can never be used to soften accountability or obscure harm,” Qureshi wrote in a Wednesday Instagram post referring to Sharieff. “Especially when that harm involves the abuse of power and the violation of a child’s dignity.”
In recent years, several Muslim organizations have formed around investigating spiritual and sexual abuse. Experts have said that Muslim communities, like other religious groups, sometimes fail to recognize that sexual abuse can occur by respected spiritual leaders, which can make internal accountability elusive. And according to research by the Hurma Project, a Muslim group that aims to protect against abuse, assault and exploitation, many Muslim American congregations have not built adequate “systems of accountability for misconduct within the community.”