Religion and Gender Journal: Call for Manuscripts for Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence
by Sarah-Jane Page	on November 23, 2019
Shiloh Project Research Day Report
by Johanna Stiebert	on April 10, 2019
ANNOUNCEMENT: Routledge Focus Book Series on 'Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible'
by Shiloh Project	on January 3, 2019
UN 16 Days of Activism – Day 15: Mathew Guest
by Mathew Guest	on December 9, 2018
UN 16 Days of Activism – Day 13: Fatima Pir Allian
by Johanna Stiebert	on December 7, 2018
The Shiloh Project in Ghana
by Johanna Stiebert	on November 6, 2018
Religion and Gender Journal
Call for Manuscripts for Special Issue on Religion, Gender and Violence
The journal Religion and Gender invites article proposals for a special issue on Religion, Gender and Violence. The relationship between religion and violence is highly contested and has come under considerable scrutiny by scholars of religion. Less understood is the relationship between gender, religion and violence and this special issue aims to contribute to understandings of the ways in which religion intersects with institutional, familial and public gendered violence as explored through current research via an interdisciplinary lens.
With the current roll out of public inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse across Ireland, England and Wales, Scotland, Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is clear that at a global level, it is religious organizations that have had the most widespread and highest levels of abuse against children with characteristically poor institutional responses to victims and their families. Public inquires have clearly established that religious organizations made strategic decisions to limit reputational damage at the cost of child safety and the implications of this for religious institutions is yet to be fully understood.
Violence against women and children in domestic settings where religion is a significant factor has also been the subject of ongoing and recent research indicating that there are specific issues at play for women and children in experiencing and reporting abuse and how it is managed by faith traditions. In important public debates on the status of gender diversity and difference, for example the marriage equality issue, there have been forceful responses to vulnerable cohorts from religious leaders, in social media and religious publications.
At the same time, there has been an important counter discourse articulated by religious groups around building religious and social capital that contributes to a pluralist understanding of the value of multi-religious societies and gender diversity. These discourses, most often articulated by more liberal religious groups but also increasingly by mainstream faith traditions, utilize the language of social justice and theological interpretation to construct narratives of gender inclusion and equity. This brings faith traditions into conflict within themselves over the framing of gender relations for the new century.
For this special issue, we invite manuscripts that address this convergence from a variety of perspectives on the function and meaning of gender, religion and violence and its counter-discourses.
The editors are particularly interested in receiving manuscripts that showcase empirical research that address, but are not limited to, the following areas and/or questions:
o What role does gendered violence play in mainstream religious groups re maintenance of the faith tradition?
o How are the impacts and experiences of gendered violence managed by religious organisations with regard to pastoral care and processes of remediation?
o Who are the victims of gendered violence in religious organisations?
o In what ways can feminist theory and theology contribute to and expand understandings of religion, gender and violence?
o What role does non-religion and/or secularity play in relation to responding to and managing the disclosure of violence in religious organisations.
o How well do public inquiries address gendered religious violence and what are the impacts on religious organisations with respect to particular case studies?
Submissions should be between 5000 and 8000 words in length (including abstract, footnotes and references). See Brill's page for further information on submitting an article https://brill.com/view/journals/rag/rag-overview.xml Affiliation and email address should be supplied in the first submission. In order to guarantee a blind review process, all submissions should be anonymized with the name of and references to the author removed from the text. We are happy to receive inquiries about prospective submissions.
Please send all queries to the special issues editors:
Kathleen McPhillips, University of Newcastle, Australia
Email: Kathleen.mcphillips@newcastle.edu.au
Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Email: s.page1@aston.ac.uk
15 January 2020: Abstract Submission
15 August 2020: Full manuscript submission
Mmapula Kebaneilwe (University of Botswana) is a womanist biblical scholar and project partner for an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant entitled 'Resisting Gender-Based Violence and Injustice ThroughActivism with Bible Texts and Images'.
Her recent research visit brought her to Yorkshire, where both the project's principal investigator (Johanna Stiebert, University of Leeds) and co-investigator (Katie Edwards, University of Sheffield) are based. All three, together with co-lead of the Shiloh Project Caroline Blyth (University of Auckland), who is spending part of her sabbatical at the University of Leeds, organized a research day at the University of Leeds.
The aim of the day was to bring together a diverse group of researchers and practitioners who all engage with some aspect of confronting, understanding and reducing the prevalence of gender-based and/or sexual violence. All share experience of working on or with victims and survivors of gender-based violence; all share a commitment to and drive for facilitating information, practical help or healing; all are open to opportunities for effective collaboration and networking between academic and public sectors.
The Shiloh Project is a collaboration of scholars and activists and was launched in early 2017. It seeks to explore and promote ways for better understanding the dynamics and intersections between religion, the Bible, gender-based violence and rape culture. This is in acknowledgement that matters of religion and faith have diverse and profound impact on human interactions the world over – including when it comes to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. Such impact was amply borne out by all participants in the research day on 25 March 2019, which was attended by 20 active participants. The research day was co-sponsored by the AHRC and the Centre for Religion and Public Life. It represents one of several Shiloh Project initiatives.
Here is a quick summary of participants and organizations. Each participant, or participant pair, gave a summary and introduction to their work and expertise.
Angela Connor and Esther Nield represented the Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) team of the Hazlehurst Centre in West Yorkshire. Angela is the Hazlehurst Centre manager and Esther works in the Centre as a crisis worker. SARC provides acute service (for up to seven days post incident). The SARC is commissioned by the National Health Service (NHS) and Police to provide forensic healthcare, alongside free support and practical help to anyone in West Yorkshire who has experienced sexual violence or abuse. The majority of victims (around 80%) are referred by the Police. The majority are white women under the age of forty but the service is available to anyone, for no charge, irrespective of age, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or immigration status. The Centre strives to become more accessible to diverse demographics and nurses take pride in providing sensitive expert care.
Misbah Ali (Legal Assistance and Senior Development Worker) and Michelle O'Neill (Senior Capacity Builder and Recovery Worker) together represented Staying Put, a charity providing gender-sensitive services for men and women in the wider Bradford area of Yorkshire who experience abuse from a family member or intimate partner in a domestic setting. The charity attends to about 1200 to 1400 users per year. They work with situations in the area of domestic violence, intimate partner violence and forced marriage and assist in reducing victimization, preventing domestic homicide and facilitating domestic safety and security. The organization fulfills diverse services – including providing information about female genital mutilation (FGM), conducting family interventions, issuing legal advice, evidence gathering, support for attending court, as well as practical and emotional support. Their Freedom Programme operates in several languages (Urdu, English and Polish). Misbah and Michelle reported on the relative frequency of 'spiritual abuse' – that is, abuse attributed to possession, witchcraft and djinns, for instance. The told the group that they come across such matters more and more often but do not always feel adequately trained to address some religious justifications of violence.
Ziona Handler is the Manchester keyworker for Jewish Women's Aid (JWA), working for and with victims of abuse in Jewish communities across all of the North of England. JWA is a registered charity and Ziona is emphatic that Jewish communities are as affected as other communities when it comes to the spectrum of domestic violence, which encompasses physical, sexual, psychological, economic, spiritual and cultural abuse. In terms of recognizing and addressing such abuse and supporting victims, many of the strategies detailed by representatives of Staying Put resonated with Ziona. But she also pointed out that some matters are bespoke to Jewish communities and best supported by a Jewish practitioner. (The SARC representatives mentioned that they had never, knowingly, assisted a Jewish victim of sexual assault, in spite of West Yorkshire having a sizable Jewish community. This might indicate that Jewish women have preference for groups such as JWA.) Ziona reported that the average period of suffering prior to reporting is a shocking 11.5 years in Jewish communities. JWA offers a variety of core services – including a helpline, client support, counseling, therapy, the Dina Project (a response to #MeToo), children's therapy and an educational outreach programme that visits schools, synagogues and universities. JWA has launched a Safer Dating campaign in universities and training to address Lad Culture. The charity also has a toilet door campaign (placing stickers bearing information about accessing help from JWA on toilet doors) and provides input and training for non-Jewish groups working with victims of domestic and sexual abuse.
Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris is a former congregational rabbi and university chaplain and is now Principal of Leo Baeck College, a rabbinical seminary and centre for training of teachers in Jewish education. Leo Baeck College represents primarily members of Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism and the institution also trains and ordains women and members of the Jewish LGBT+community. Deborah facilitates training from JWA and stresses that even in progressive communities – where the expectation might be that topics such as 'consent' are widely discussed and understood – such training remains essential. Deborah pointed out that low-level microagressions persist – often very publicly – and that biblical and rabbinic texts, which continue to be plumbed and interpreted, have the potential to propel abusive ideas and actions. In a tradition with ancient roots, where ancient texts continue to be given authority, the possibility of internalizing damaging attitudes is considerable. But, as Deborah pointed out, Jewish tradition also offers tremendous scope for critical thinking, debate and resistance. In response to a question from Angela Connor about Jewish attitudes to emergency contraception, Deborah was able to demonstrate this versatility, with recourse to a range of Jewish texts reflecting multiple viewpoints.
Sam Ross is a WRoCAH (White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities) funded PhD candidate in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (University of Leeds). His provisional thesis title is 'Queering the Ketuvim: Queer Readings of Representations of Pain and Trauma in Biblical Hebrew Poetry'. Sam has particular interest in trauma research – not least, because the LGBTQ community is particularly vulnerable to discrimination, abuse and prejudice. Sam is using the Bible both because of its persistent influence in faith and secular contexts and because it offers stories that address pain and trauma head-on. His plan is to fuse biblical criticism and autoethnography to explore queer individual suffering (through the book of Job), and queer communal suffering (through the book of Lamentations). Sam also highlighted the particular vulnerability of the trans community and the abusiveness of the so-called 'trans debate' in targeting trans persons as aggressors and predators when they are, in actuality, far more often victims of violence, including sexual violence. Representatives from Staying Put confirmed Sam's point by stating that even professionals are sometimes abusive towards trans persons, citing instances where trans women have been denied access to women's refuges, with no offer of any alternative help, even when they were at acute risk.
David Smith is Victims Services Commissioning and Third Sector Adviser at the West Yorkshire's Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner. David has worked in third sector and local government for several decades and has expertise in the area of strategy, planning and policy development. That is, he has expertise in making actions effective. David's role is to commission support services around domestic abuse and sexual violence. These are usually funded at (increasingly cash-strapped) local and regional levels. David's work is focused on policy and he has an informed interest also in the language of his subject – such as the language of the victim's code and witness charter. He agrees that the terminology around sexual violence – of 'victims', 'perpetrators' and 'complainants' –is problematic. He is supportive of the position statement being more inclusive now in its language of violence against men. Male victims, he stresses, are a significant part of the agenda – something which should not take away from the very serious issues facing women and girls. David's policy-focused perspective was a fascinating one.
Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds) is Director of the Centre for Religion and Public Life and an academic working in the areas of religion and public life, gender and sexuality, especially in contemporary Christian contexts of countries in southern and eastern Africa (predominantly, Zambia and Kenya). He is about to embark on a project working closely and collaboratively with Ugandan LGBT refugees in Kenya through using story telling and life stories as a tool for creative and liberating self-expression as well as a research strategy. As Adriaan points out, violence is central in the lives of LGBT people, as well as in the lives of refugees. This violence, moreover, is multi-dimensional and can include religious violence, political violence and police violence.
Sarah-Jane Page (Aston University) is a sociologist of religion. She researches, among other topics, attitudes and practices around sexuality and how these are negotiated in relation to religious tradition. She spoke about two current projects. The first – in the very early stages – examines the Church of England inquiry into child sex abuse. She is focused especially on how organizational and institutional structures serve to enable abuse, as well as in the hierarchies and class dimensions at work in this. Her second project is ethnographic and partly funded by the British Academy. This project looks at varieties of activism, ranging from silent prayer to displays of graphic imagery, outside of abortion clinics. She is especially interested in the reactions and responses to these forms of activism, both from religious and secular sources.
Gordon Lynch (University of Kent) has conducted long-term research and public engagement activities on the history of UK child migration programmes. These programmes, responsible for sending some 100,000 children to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe, resulted in extensive and sustained abuse, which only came to light much later. He has also served as expert witness under instruction to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Gordon's work has served to raisepublic awareness about historic abuse. He has, for instance,contributed to and organized museum exhibitions, musical performances, and TrueTube films, alongside his many academic publications. Gordon highlighted the dysfunctional relationships between government offices and organizations, including the competing interests, fragmentations and difficulties in terms of challenging groups involved in the networks facilitating migration at the various stages. All of these enabled the abuse to go on for very many years. Moreover, regarding organizations overseen by the Catholic Church, monitoring was minimal,due to assumed 'bonds of trust'. Gordon asked what it is about religious organizations that exempted them from scrutiny. What permitted the religious exceptionalism that saw the suspension of so many otherwise widely adopted recommendations? When the usual recommendation was to advise that children be adopted, fostered, or raised in small-scale residential units, why were exceptions made by national policy makers to permit religious institutions to run large, understaffed orphanages where abuse was able to thrive?
Sema Khan represented Barnardo's, a long-established charity that protects and supports above all vulnerable children and young people, as well as parents and carers. She is based in Bradford where Barnardo's has a family support and a child sexual exploitation (CSE) team. Semareports that more children on the autistic spectrum and more boys and young men are seeking help to address emotional needs, including the help of recovery groups following sexual exploitation. Sema explained, too, that Barnardo's is less pronouncedly Christian in focus than it has been historically. It has a diverse staff and works for a diverse community, including many Syrian refugees and asylum seekers.
Saima Afzal has worked in all of research, consultancy, local government and community development, particularly in matters to do with religion, gender and South Asian communities of Lancashire and Yorkshire. She is an elected councillor for Blackburn. Saima has conducted research on child sexual exploitation in South Asian communities of the UK, on sexuality in Islam, and on police stop and search powers against minority ethnic communities. Saima has founded her own community interest group called SASRIGHTS CIC (see also Saima Afzal Solutions). She works as a freelance criminologist and has served as expert witness for cases involving domestic abuse, forced marriage and so-called "honour"-based killing. She has received an MBE for her services to policing and community relations.
Bob Balfour is founder of Survivors West Yorkshire(SWY), formerly called One In Four (North). SWY is action-oriented and works in supporting survivors of sexual abuse. Prominently included in this support are male survivors of sexual abuse. Bob was also instrumental in the creation of Ben's Place, a West Yorkshire support service for male survivors of sexual abuse, named after Ben, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who took his own life soon after his twenty-third birthday. The mission of Ben's Place is to deliver specialist support and advice to adult male survivors (i.e. aged 16+) who are ready to disclose experiences of sexual crimes committed against them and who want to access support to explore options for understanding and integrating what was done to them. SWY and Ben's Place work in partnership with Rape Crisis and challenge the silencing and alienation of survivors. One of Bob's campaigns is 'Challenge the Silence' and he has written for 'A View From Inside the Box'. Bob has been vigorous in his resistance to denial. He has not only founded support groups and actions, he has published on the topic, devised practical strategies for post-traumatic growth, collaborated with universities as 'expert by experience' and in the role of Teacher at Liverpool (paid for by the NHS), and is currently supervising four Clinical Psychology students.
Jo Sadgrove has considerable expertise in the area of faith-based international development – both as an academic researcher and a practitioner. She works part-time as research and learning advisor to the United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), an Anglican mission agency engaging in community development and theological education around the world. Jo discussed the imperialist echoes and tendencies of some of the work of USPG but also the ways that being part of such an organization can give access to networks and opportunities for making a difference. Jo's particular interests are in intersections of religion and health and in Christianity and sexuality in cross-cultural perspectives. Jo talked about workshops she has conducted with perpetrators of gender-based violence, which bring men together to talk about being men and about violence in their lives. She sees great value in working with perpetrators as well as victims of gender-based violence.
Jo has direct experience of We Will Speak Out, a global coalition of churches and Christian NGO's challenging prevailing patterns of violence.
After presentations from all participants, we had an open discussion to begin to explore ways of collaboration and support. During the coffee and lunch breaks already, representatives from different institutions and organizations had begun to chat in small groups and exchange information, advice, and ask questions.
The following arose in discussion:
There is little available in the way of accessible, succinct and helpful information on the topic of spiritual abuse. More discussion and more research on the topic are required. This would be invaluable for a range of practitioners encountering perpetrators and victims of gender-based violence. (Representatives of Staying Put reported that a defense of spiritual abuse – blaming demons, possession, djinns, or witchcraft for inciting violence, including sexual abuse – comes out with some regularity in one-on-one conversations with both perpetrators and victims.)
More emphasis on prevention is necessary. Often crisis support is the preserve of highly trained effective individuals. But more expertise needs to be invested in recognizing the signs before the tipping point.
Not infrequently – and this is sometimes due to the sheer strain on service providers (something that received repeated mention) – professionals become part of the problem for already vulnerable groups. Sometimes, for instance, there will be insistence (by social welfare or by NGO or charity staff) that service users take a particular training course, with the threat that otherwise their children will be removed. The effect of this can be to alienate already vulnerable people and to deter them from continuing to seek professional help.
Practitioners welcomed the opportunity to meet others working in related areas. They would very much like more work between groups. SARC, for instance, would appreciate information about JWA, to make bespoke help available in their networks targeting vulnerable people in the community at risk of sexual violence.
There was acknowledgement that communities are diverse and that multi-faceted expertise is needed (e.g. from all of police, social services, consultants, charities, etc.) to address gender-based and sexual violence. Again, better communication between different groups is recognized as important.
There was an expression of need for more religious and cultural literacy – and for academics who could providethis in accessible ways.
Practical micro-level and macro-level strategies are required to address the structural problems that facilitate much of the violence on the ground.
David Smith mentioned that he is often looking for research pieces towards capacity building. He recommends that we all register with and join Blue Light Services, to let emergency services know what we can provide.
There was widespread acknowledgement that religious leaders are often obstructive when it comes to addressing domestic situations of violence and abuse. More needs to be done to train religious leaders in gender-sensitive strategies, as well as in encouraging them to facilitate professional advice for their community members – as opposed to attempting to handle delicate and complex matters themselves when they lack the necessary training and expertise.
The Sex and Relationships Education curriculum, to be rolled out September 2020, is likely to lead to a deluge of referrals. Help will be needed urgently to manage these.
Some practitioners predict a backlash to the extent of safeguarding training – a backlash that will include alsotheological and ethical questions. Again, collaboration between practitioners and researchers will be important in addressing these.
All in all, it was a stimulating, thought-provoking and fruitful day. We will take the conversations forward in our ongoing work in Project Shiloh. This was just the start of the conversation, and we hope to sustain it through ongoing collaborations.
We are delighted to announce our new Routledge Focus book series 'Rape Culture, Religion, and the Bible', edited by The Shiloh Project co-directors Caroline Blyth, Katie Edwards and Johanna Stiebert.
Titles are peer-reviewed, short form publications between 20,000-50,000 words, published within 12 weeks of submission.
If you would like to discuss a potential proposal, contact the series editors at shiloh@sheffield.ac.uk
Look out for exciting titles coming later this year!
On the penultimate day of the UN 16 Days of Activism, we speak to Professor Mathew Guest.
Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?
I am a professor in the sociology of religion at Durham University, and have been on the teaching staff there for the past 14 years. Working in a department of Theology and Religion has meant I have several colleagues whose work engages with issues of ethical significance, but my own research has for the most part remained fairly dispassionate, focusing on a range of institutional contexts that frame religious identities within contemporary western cultures, especially families, congregations and universities. This changed in 2013 when I co-wrote (with my colleagues Sonya Sharma and Robert Song) a report on gender imbalance within departments of Theology and Religious Studies in UK universities. Researching the experience of women working as academics or as students within my own discipline opened my eyes to how embedded gendered disadvantage is within the academy. It's one thing to appreciate this on an intellectual level; it's quite another to hear the stories first hand. The report mapped patterns of disengagement by gender among students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, tracing experiences of alienation to structural problems that continue to inform the professional lives of women in Theology and Religious Studies as they progress from early career fellowships, to being a full-time lecturer, through to more senior appointments. It's the work I'm most proud of, and has had real impact on challenging practices that disadvantage women in my subject area, although there's a lot more work to be done.
It was listening to women's testimonies about their experiences that led me to get involved in a campaign against gendered violence. Alongside my academic work, in recent years I have become more engaged in activist networks, driven chiefly by my convictions as a Quaker and a pacifist. A couple of years ago I became involved in the establishment of Tyne and Wear Citizens, an alliance of organizations in the north east affiliated with the national organisation Citizens UK. We use broad-based community organizing to identify challenges facing local residents and pool our resources to exert influence on those in power in order to bring about positive change. Two of our most vibrant and committed organizational members are Newcastle Central Mosque and the Islamic Diversity Centre, based in multi-cultural Fenham, in the west end of Newcastle. Religious-based hate crime is a serious problem in the north east, often targeted at Muslims or others presumed to be Muslims but who are simply dark skinned or cover their heads in public. This highlights how colour prejudice is a big part of the problem. Another major dimension is misogyny, as this is largely gender-based violence. In researching religious-based hate crime in the north east region, we learnt that many of its victims were Muslim women, especially those wearing the hijab or niqab, a common act of assault being the forceful removal of the face veil, although others had also been physically hit, spat upon and verbally abused, often on public transport. Whether driven by the cowardice of racist men too afraid to confront male Muslims, or by a perverse sense of entitlement to have dominion over women's appearance, the experiences we heard about were unsettling and abhorrent. Unfortunately, they are not uncommon, and recent comments by public figures like Boris Johnson, presenting the veil as a dubious cultural oddity, risk validating existing prejudice and ignorance. In response, we launched a campaign to get hate crime addressed more seriously, particularly on public transport, where many incidents take place.
The testimonies I heard from Muslim women were truly shocking, recounting acts of disrespect, verbal abuse and physical violence. In some cases victims were too afraid to go to the police; in others, their reports were dismissed. Some felt supported by the authorities, but our campaign group felt too little was being done to address acts of religious-based hate on the region's buses and on the Metro network. So we arranged a meeting with representatives of the region's main transport companies, and they too were faced with the testimonies of the Muslim sisters who had experienced some of the abuse we hoped they would want to address. They spoke with passion and conviction, and it was inspiring to see these two women – who I can now call friends – tell their stories to a row of white men in suits in a city centre boardroom. They spoke truth to power, and were visibly empowered as a consequence.
We were asking these representatives of the transport companies to work with us in devising a hate crime policy for the region, and they agreed. I believe the testimonies of the Muslim sisters were too powerful to ignore. That's not to say our corporate colleagues didn't need a little more encouragement, and so we organized a public demonstration – a celebration of our diverse Tyne and Wear community – in order to raise awareness of hate crime and demystify the hijab for those unfamiliar with Muslim traditions and what they signify. This demo took place on 13th October. Entitled 'Reclaim the Metro', around 160 of us gathered at the Grey's Monument in central Newcastle and listened again to the testimonies of our Muslim friends. In solidarity, we then all boarded the Metro and took a trip to Whitley Bay, where we enjoyed together a fine British tradition: fish and chips on the seafront. We also deployed an activist tradition very much at the heart of the Citizens method: we invited the media and got the event covered on BBC Look North. We also informed our colleagues from the public transport companies that the media would be covering the event, and that we could tell a story about how wonderful it is that they have responded to our concerns with a change in policy, or we could tell a story about how awful it is that they hadn't. Their charter on hate crime on public transport – clarifying reporting processes, committing to training staff, and to working further with voluntary groups to tackle this urgent issue – was published just before the demo.
How do you think the Shiloh Project's work on religion and rape culture can add to and enrich discussion and action on the topic of gender activism today? Is there more we can do? What else should we post?
Given my work with the local Muslim community, as well as current research I am undertaking about the experiences of Muslim students, I would really like to see more work done on engaging British Muslim women. Their voices often go unheard and their experiences are often grossly misunderstood. Unfortunately, secular feminist commentators do not always help, and the common equation of the hijab with gendered oppression is symptomatic of how certain women's voices are often privileged over others. Let's hear more from the testimonies of Muslim women.
In the year ahead, how will you contribute to advancing the aims and goals of The Shiloh Project?
Well the hate crime campaign still has a lot of work to do. Our success in securing a hate crime charter does not solve the problem, although it was a pragmatic step towards creating safer public spaces in the region. We at Tyne and Wear Citizens need to ensure that the hate crime charter is adhered to and translates into practical solutions, like improved training for bus drivers, publicity to inform the public on what is religion-based hate crime and why it is not acceptable, and a system of accountability that joins up public transport providers with local police so that all incidents are properly followed up. I know that my fellow citizens at Newcastle Central Mosque and the Islamic Diversity Centre will be at the heart of this, and hope that Muslim women will feel safer and more secure in their communities as a result of the campaign.
Today's activist is Fatima Pir Allian, spokesperson for Bangsamoro women in Mindanao (the Philippines).
(For information about the long struggle for peace and the establishment of human rights in Mindanao, see here. The roots of the conflict lie in large part in the discrimination against the minority Muslim and indigenous population of Mindanao.)
Tell us about yourself! Who are you and what do you do?
I am Fatima Pir Tillah Allian but friends and family call me by my nick-name: Shalom. In 2005, after a stint as a college instructor at the Mass Communications Department of the Western Mindanao State University in Zamboanga City, the Philippines, I joined the development world as an NGO worker.
I belong to and represent a group of women called Nisa Ul Haqq fi Bangsamoro ('Women for Justice in the Bangsamoro'). Our work and mission is:
1. To provide a venue for Bangsamoro women for a progressive interpretation of Islamic teachings on gender, women's rights, peace and development.
2. To influence decision-makers in policy development towards more spaces for women in law,religion, culture, and institutions.
3. To provide technical assistance to network members and their communities on issues related to the network's advocacies.
4. To link the Muslim women of Mindanao through the network to other like-minded women's organizations and to the rest of the Muslim ummah.
5. To understand and document the condition and position of Muslim women in Mindanao and other areas in the Philippines.
Since 2012 we have been working with, consulting and documenting narratives and recommendations from a number of women, men and youth community leaders on peace process related issues between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
One of the important parts of the agreement is to document narratives and recommendations of the Bangsamoro people as part of the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission's (TJRC) output (2015). Nisa Ul Haqq fi Bangsamoro was part of the team that documented the historical injustices, legitimate grievances and marginalizations of the Bangsamoro people, such as through land dispossession and human rights violations. But we are also focused on the ways forward in terms of healing and reconciliation.
In addition, we also respond to emergency situations by providing gender-sensitive humanitarian assistance to both human-induced and natural disasters. In whatever ways we can, we respond to the needs of women, including needs that arise from gender-based injustice and violence.
Personally, my hope is to continue contributing to the work Nisa is doing. I am committed, too, to strengthening our advocacies in responding to the needs of the community. Empowering the marginalized is not an easy task. The need to continue the engagement with the marginalized, the invisible members of the community, who are disproportionately female, is pivotal in ensuring thatthey, too have a platform and are heard. Utilizing a lens that is sensitive to both gender and the advancement of peace in the process of policy formulation with decision makers, serves moreeffectively to address the lived realities of marginalized groups, whether they consist of women, men, youth, the elderly, persons with disabilities, or any disadvantaged groups in our society. Responding to the needs of the community, means that the community is consulted and part of the process as we do our planning. That is one way to empower communities. People sometimes think that we know what they need but actually we always need to be ready to learn from them. The communities serve as our classroom. There is so much to learn and we appreciate the exchanges and the kinds of connections we form. Communication, exchange, a willingness to learn from all – that is how I hope to advance the aims and goals of the Shiloh Project.
In late October we, Katie and Johanna, travelled to Accra. We were going there to participate in a collaborative project funded by WUN (the Worldwide Universities Network). This project is led by Rev. Dr. George Ossom-Batsa, of the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana (UG). Alongside us three, the project also includes Shiloh's third co-lead, Caroline Blyth, who will take the lead in compiling and editing a special issue on religion and gender-based violence (GBV) for the journal The Bible and Critical Theory (BCT).
Our project has the title 'An Intersectional Exploration of Religion and Gender-Based Violence: A Case Study of Accra in Global Context'. The idea for the project grew out of the Shiloh Project.
Just looking out the car window on the way from the airport to our hotel, the prominent presence of religion in public spaces was very striking. Huge billboards depict Christian preachers and advertise crusades and prayer meetings, or promise prosperity and blessings, or proclaim the imminent return of Jesus. Religious leaders on these billboards take up the kind of space reserved in our own context only for mega-celebrities.
Over the days we would see some publicity also about leaders and revered figures in the Muslim and African Traditional Religions communities – but a dazzling array of Christian churches certainly predominate over other religious communities. We would see all kinds of products sold using Bible verses and allusions to God's will and endorsement. Be it gear boxes, drains, beauty products or foods – God is all around in public and commercial spheres.
The central part of our visit was a day-long conference followed by a day of workshops to investigate our topic from a range of perspectives. The conference day was opened on 30 October by the Provost of UG's College of Humanities, Professor Samuel Agyei-Mensah.
The keynote speaker was Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo who, until recently, directed UG's Institute of African Studies. She is also founder of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy and winner of the Feminist Activism Award. A sociologist by training, Prof. Ampofo has a long and strong record of challenging GBV, including through her advisory role in the process of passing the Domestic Violence Act and criminalizing marital rape (2007), and her extensive empirical work on masculinities in a range of African contexts. Her work on African masculinities resists both what she aptly calls the 'Western gaze' and the disproportionate emphasis on South Africa – to the exclusion of other African contexts.
Prof Ampofo was a hard act to follow – but Katie's and my joint presentation was next on the conference programme. We introduced the Shiloh Project and spoke on rape culture manifestations in the Bible (Johanna) and on the application of religious iconography in popular culture (Katie).
The next co-presentation was by George Ossom-Batsa and Dr. Nicoletta Gatti, both biblical scholars from UG's Department for the Study of Religions. Their presentation focused on the Hebrew Bible book of Job alongside prosperity preaching by Ghanaian Pentecostal churches. The paper demonstrated on the one hand, how in the prosperity gospel poverty has come to signify absence of blessing and, on the other, how poverty (and therefore such preaching) disproportionately harms women who are far more likely than men to be impoverished. One distressing statistic cited was that the estimated average hourly wage for women in Ghana is only 57% that of men.
The next two presentations moved away from biblical studies. First Dr. Rabiatu D. Ammah (of UG) explored the Qur'anic verse 4:34, sometimes described as 'the verse of abuse' or the verse that condones wife beating. Dr. Ammah describes herself as a scholar-activist and her paper covered a range of interpretations of the verse and infused this with her qualitative research consisting of in-depth interviews with 15 local imams, three of whom openly acknowledged having beaten their wives. Her conclusion was, however, that there is none the less no prima facie or Qur'an endorsed case for GBV in Islam.
The final presentation of the day was by Dr. Yaw Sakordie Agyemang (University of Cape Coast) and explored GBV in the context of the indigenous beliefs of the Asante people. Again, research was centred on empirical research, this time constituting 16 focus group discussions guided by two questions: How do women and men experience violence? And, how does gender inequality affect violence? The paper offered insight into all sorts of forms of ritual violence, ranging from female genital mutilation, to the harvesting of body parts for ritual purposes, and rites surrounding both apotropaic and polluting qualities of menstrual blood.
Whereas the first day focused on academic presentations, the second day gave the floor to practitioners, before we all separated into groups to discuss practical strategies to confront, address and eliminate GBV.
The first practitioner to present was Dr. Angela Aboagye Dwamena, Executive Director of The Ark Foundation. The name of the Foundation already reveals its foundation in religious principles. It is not, however, named after Noah's Ark but after the Ark of the Covenant, alluding to God as a refuge and strength. The presenter has a background in law and has for over 25 years defended the human rights of Ghanaian women and girls, and sometimes also boys, particularly with regard to GBV. The Foundation focuses on advocacy, community-based education, law reform and services provision. Dr. Dwamena was vocal as to the constraints of the Foundation. For instance, the first shelter for battered women was opened in 1999 but 17 years later it had to be closed, due to lack of funds. A campaign is in progress to reopen and keep open the Ark Shelter (see www.arksheltercampaign.org).
Next up, was a representative from the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice. The Commission conducts research into social justice matters and offers protection on a range of human rights matters, including concerning sexual orientation and gender identity. In Ghana, the law, which has remained unchanged since 1960, designates a number of sexual acts 'unnatural carnal knowledge'. These acts include 'sodomy' and oral sex. Ghana's LGBT community is particularly vocal in resisting this law. The matter of LGBT rights was seized on in the discussion that followed the first two presentations and members from both Christian and Muslim communities expressed horror at homosexual orientation and acts, comparing them to the sin of murder, to bestiality and pedophilia. Also clearly articulated was that LGBT persons regularly do not receive justice – including in matters that have nothing to do with matters sexual (e.g. when they report crimes of property). The vulnerability to GBV of the LGBT community is likely to be considerable. It was very clear to us both that the conversation around LGBT rights in a setting like that of the conference and workshop, dominated as it was by religious leaders and practitioners, was a particularly difficult and unreceptive one. There was not really a sense that dialogue was possible.
Three practitioners from the Muslim community presented next. First to present was Sheikh Yacoub Abban, the General Secretary of Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama, an organization that conducts marriage guidance counseling alongside other dispute settling activities (e.g. concerning inheritance). The organization has only men on its board but the perception by members of the Muslim community in attendance was that it was very supportive of women's cases. The Sheikh reported a growing number of GBV cases brought before the organization by women. Whereas in 2016 cases (in Accra alone) by 96 men and 264 women were brought to the organization, by 2017 the numbers were 75 men and 384 women. Thus far in 2018, the number of women's cases already stands at 407. The Sheikh reported that while men's cases do not reflect physical violence, instead reporting wives' 'recalcitrance' or wives who pressed for divorce in cases where husbands did not want divorce, the cases brought by women are often very disturbing and distressing. The presentation included anonymous examples of severe emotional torture, physical maltreatment and of marital rape. While the Sheikh did not deny the possibility that some men are also enduring physical violence perpetrated by women he confirmed that cases reflect that women are disproportionately victims of violence and that this violence shows no sign of abating.
Next up was Dr, Nas iba Taahir, Educational Consultant and Psychologist of the Montessori Foundation of Ghana. She disclosed that she herself is a victim of long-term marital GBV and reported, too, on her work in the capacity as a school psychologist. Both her accounts of counseling victims of physical violence in domestic settings and her own story of a six-year trial, exclusion from her religious community and of stigmatization were harrowing.
The final presenter from the Muslim community was Hajia Maliki, a marriage guidance counselor with 15 years experience. She reported that marriages in the Muslim community of Ghana very often deteriorate quickly and end in acrimonious divorce. Unlike in Christian communities, she reported, pre-marital guidance counseling was not a requirement and nor was mandatory post-marital counseling.
The final practitioner to present was the most affecting. This was Superintendent Alice Awarikaro, Regional Coordinator for the Accra Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit. Charged with domestic violence and child abuse issues, the Superintendent had seen many awful violent crimes close-up. In 2017, her unit dealt with 4,511 cases (about one third of total cases country-wide) and, as she stressed, far more cases have gone unreported. Victims of violence, including sexual violence, were male, female, young and old. Again, however, violent crimes against women and girls far outnumber those perpetrated against men and boys. Also, perpetrators were far more likely to be male than female. She showed graphic images of terrible abuse and outlined efforts to address GBV, including sensitization programmes, capacity building, proactive and reactive measures.
With particular relevance to our project, the Superintendent reported that in her experience religious leaders and religious beliefs play an obstructive role. Advice from religious leaders is often detrimental, delaying the reporting of crime, or adding to failure to report (e.g. on account of instilling stigma with regard, for instance, to divorce). She urged that counselors and advisors be properly trained professionals and advocated the following: creating safe spaces for those reporting GBV, not judging or condemning those who report GBV, education across the sectors, and encouraging reporting and following through with the legal process so that more perpetrators are brought to court and more victims protected.
Following group discussions and then a plenary session that pooled key points from discussions, we collectively determined that the conference and workshops had done much to explain what GBV is and to begin to plumb the complexity of its causes and effects. We determined that we would endeavour to apply for more funding to harness the energy of the event and to achieve more concrete results through user-led and research-underpinned activities and resources.
With the funds left in the budget from WUN we will produce and disseminate a leaflet that: 1) defines GBV; 2) supports intervening bystanders, with a section setting out what to do and where to turn (in Accra) if you suspect someone is a victim of GBV; 3) details victim support and legal rights for those who are themselves victims of GBV; 4) contains a section that specifies the rights and services of members of the LGBT community in Ghana.
While in Accra we also had opportunity to interview theologian and activist Prof. Mercy Amba Oduyoye. Mercy Oduyoye recently turned 85. She is a pioneer for African women and remains as active as ever – both in her Talitha Qumi Institute, based at the Trinity Theological Seminary in Accra and through the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, which she founded in 1989. Well before this already she initiated women's rights initiatives, campaigning for women's inclusion and against women's economic deprivation and vulnerability to other inequalities, including GBV.
We also taught classes both at the Trinity Theological Seminary and at UG, which was a lively experience.
Lastly, no travelling in Ghana should be complete without visiting the coastal fortresses that facilitated the Portuguese-, Dutch- and British-administered slave trade. We visited both Castle Osu and Elmina and saw the awful dungeons where slaves were crammed together in tight, dark stone surroundings before being herded into ships bound for the Americas. While African slaves sat in fear and terror below, the European slave administrators sexually abused those whom they selected, dined while looking out at the sparkling ocean, and prayed in their chapels. Here, too, as everywhere in the streets of Accra today, biblical verses were prominently displayed – mere metres from where massive atrocities took place.
White Rose Collaboration Fund Project Update
by Katie Edwards	on October 21, 2018
On Wednesday 10th October members of our White Rose Collaboration Fund Project met for an update.
The White Rose Collaboration Fund is designed to support emerging collaborative activities across the three White Rose universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Our project focuses on using religious imagery in popular culture to explore and challenge everyday sexism, sexual harassment and abuse together with secondary school students.
In consultation with secondary schools from all three White Rose regions and Fearless Futures, a third-sector organization offering gender equality training for school-age girls, the network will conduct three pilot workshops with secondary school students (girls and boys) to investigate interactions with religious imagery in popular culture and the ways in which these representations shape understandings of gender, sex and sexualities.
Members of the White Rose universities involved in the project include Professor Vanita Sundaram (University of York), Professor Johanna Stiebert (University of Leeds), Dr Katie Edwards (University of Sheffield), Dr Meredith Warren (University of Sheffield), Dr Valerie Hobbs (University of Sheffield), Dr Jasjit Singh (Unversity of Leeds), Dr Caroline Starkey (University of Leeds), Sofia Rehman (University of Leeds), Dr Sarah Olive (University of York) an Emma Piercy (University of York).
As usual, the meeting buzzed with energy, ideas and enthusiasm. We're very much looking forward to working with our partners Fearless Futures and the local schools. We'll update again after our training!
'Feminism and Trauma Theology' project
by Katie Cross	on June 15, 2018
To live in 2018 is to live in a 'moment' for feminist issues. Late last year, the #MeToo movement, originally founded by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, became a viral hashtag when co-opted for use following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal. Through #MeToo, women from various industries, careers, perspectives and social backgrounds began to share their stories of trauma relating to sexual harassment or assault.
What has happened since has been unprecedented. The realisation that we do not live in an equal, post-feminist society has become inescapable. Slowly, it is being realised (albeit not without some resistance) that violence against women is, tragically, a far more pervasive and ordinary occurrence than ever understood.
The #MeToo hashtag is not the only social movement in which women's trauma is being voiced. Say Her Name seeks to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-black violence in the United States. There are ongoing protests by Sisters Uncut, who protest the cutting of services for women and gender-variant domestic violence victims in the UK.
Recently, the Repeal the 8th Campaign has taken place in Ireland, and we have heard stories of suffering related to oppressive reproductive legislation. Movements such as the Dahlia Project seek to care for women who have experienced female genital mutilation (FGM). Everyday Sexism is an intersectional online project, documenting experiences of sexism, harassment and assault.
In these movements, and in this wider moment, there is a turning point. The normalisation of systemic violence against women is being denounced. Those who have committed violent acts are being exposed and shamed in public view. In ways big and small, in politics and in pop culture, the violence women have experienced as a result of power imbalances is being acknowledged. Now, more than ever, a new story is beginning to take shape – one in which women's experiences of trauma are being articulated in their own voices, and in their own time.
It is because we are on the opening pages of this new story that Karen O'Donnell of Durham University and I (Katie Cross, University of Aberdeen) find it so important to give voice to the many varied experiences of suffering that women face. As such, we are in the process of putting together an edited volume on feminism and trauma theology. The area of trauma theology highlights the ways in which studies in trauma have impacted and reshaped the central questions of the Christian faith. Some notable works in this area include those by Shelly Rambo, Serene Jones, Stephanie Arel, Musa W.Dube and Jennifer Beste.
Notably, all of these thinkers have either been informed by feminist theology, or are overtly feminist in their approaches to the study of trauma. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the issues surrounding trauma are similar to, and intimately connected with, feminist issues – those concerning power in both individual and societal contexts, control over the body and bodily integrity, and the narration of experience as liberative. Even so, trauma theology remains a small and underrepresented area.
We hope that our collection will provide a space in which to voice women's experiences of suffering, abuse, and trauma from the perspectives of feminism and theology, and that it will speak to the new and unfolding context we find ourselves in.
If you are interested in contributing to the volume and being a part of this project, you can find information about our call for contributions on our website: https://feminismtraumatheologies.wordpress.com. The deadline for abstracts (of 250 words) is 7th September 2018, and these should be emailed to feminismtraumatheologies@gmail.com. Karen and I are also happy to answer any questions or queries about potential pieces of writing. We look forward to hearing from you!
Dr Katie Cross is a newly-appointed teaching fellow in Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen. Her doctoral work examined trauma and suffering through the lens of the Sunday Assembly's 'godless congregations' in London and Edinburgh.
You can find her on Twitter at @drkatiecross.
Interview with Saima Afzal: Founder of SAS RIGHTS
by Johanna Stiebert	on May 15, 2018
Today in our occasional series on lesser-known organizations working to combat gender-based violence and rape culture we speak to Saima Afzal (MBE). Saima leads on training and research through her initiative called 'Saima Afzal Solutions' and has founded a Community Interest Company (CIC) related to this called SAS RIGHTS.
Before we turn to Saima's many achievements in the arena of activism, let us congratulate her on her recent political victory in the Blackburn with Darwen (Lancashire) council district in the May local UK elections! Although Blackburn has one of the largest Asian populations of any council district, it has taken Saima multiple tries on the ballot and numerous battles both within and outside of the Blackburn Asian community to win. But Saima does not shy away from a fight
Saima was born in Pakistan and moved to the UK with her parents when she was 4 years old. She is the eldest of 11 children, 9 girls and 2 boys. Saima was victim to a forced 'marriage' (banned under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014). She refuses to recognize the union, because she never said 'yes'. She declares she has never had a husband, only an abuser and that she will only ever marry for love, as is her right under all of Sharia, UK law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Saima has come up against many challenges, prejudices and barriers and this has fuelled her commitment to campaign for the rights of those who are oppressed and stigmatized by persistent social injustices in today's UK.
Saima has worked extensively in community development for the past 15 years – particularly in relation to religion, gender and South Asian cultures of the UK. She has led projects to confront and challenge both domestic abuse and forced marriage, and has conducted research in the areas of drug and substance misuse, child sexual exploitation in South Asian communities, sexuality in Islam, childcare support and provision for South Asian women, and (mis)use of stop and search powers by police officers against members of minority communities – to name but a few.
Saima served for over 10 years as an Independent member of the Lancashire Police Authority. Her key contribution in this role focused on effective engagement with minority communities and the issues that affect them, such as: hate crime, use of stop and search powers, forced marriage, 'honour'-based violence (more about the inverted commas in a moment!), and female genital mutilation, among others. In the course of this Saima developed a concept she calls 'Parallel Engagement' (to resist what she considers a dominant model of 'Hierarchical Engagement') and taught this to police officers. Saima also served as an Executive Board Member for the Association of Police Authorities in the capacity of national lead for Equality, Diversity & Human Rights (2007–12).
Between 2012–14 Saima served as an Assistant Commissioner for Policing in Lancashire, leading on the key portfolio area of supporting victims of crime. In 2015 Saima was appointed by the West Yorkshire Police Commission to lead on the Victims & BAME (= British English Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) Project. Additionally, Saima is recognized as a national safeguarding/public protection expert adviser on the National Crime Agency database, with specialization in dealing with cases involving forced marriages, 'honour'-based abuse, trafficking, child sexual exploitation and other safeguarding crimes affecting BAME communities. She has served as an expert witness in court and spoken on such topics in numerous public media outlets.
Saima is an active human rights campaigner, seeking protection, as well as platforms of opportunity for members of marginalized communities. Saima was recognized for her prolific and dedicated work when she received the MBE for her Services to Policing and Community Relations in the Queen's Birthday Honours list (June 2010).
'Honour'-Based Abuse (HBA) and Community Coercion Control (CCC)
Honour-Based Abuse (HBA) or Honour Based Violence (HBV) is defined as a crime or an incident, which has, or which may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of a family or community.
Honour is an abstract concept and refers to an individual's or group's perceived quality of worthiness and respectability affecting both social standing and self-evaluation of an individual or institution such as a family, school, regiment or even nation. Certain groups – in both antiquity and modernity – are sometimes designated as honour cultures (or, sometimes, honour-shame cultures), because group or kin identity is particularly strongly developed and manifests in distinctive ways.
Saima is uncomfortable with the associations of the designations 'honour' or 'honour killing', which sometimes have a restrictive conception in view. Some media examples, for instance, tend to imply that HBA is pretty much entirely an 'Asian problem'. Saima believes the situation is more nuanced and that all kinds of communities – including but not only Asian ones – exert damaging coercion and control. The model she has developed is called a model of Community Coercion Control (CCC) [see below, too]. In this model 'community' can refer to different and diverse set-ups in a case-by-case way. It emphasizes that coercive control (including as exerted by religious communities) encompasses a wide range of acts and behaviours designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent, such as by isolating them from sources of support, or exploiting their resources and capacities, or by regulating their everyday behaviours, and thereby depriving them of the capacity for independence, or resistance, or escape. In its most severe forms coercive behaviour involves acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation used to harm, punish or frighten. Occasionally, CCC transpires in murder. Identifying and understanding the various patterns and mechanisms of CCC is the first step, according to Saima, for facilitating help and support for vulnerable persons. Intervention and facilitating help and support are other important dimensions of Saima's work.
As ever, please help us to promote SAS and SAS RIGHTS. Saima has self-funded very many of her initiatives. She endeavours to attract funding to develop SAS and SAS RIGHTS and to pay for the expenses of volunteers who offer their energy and support. Towards obtaining such funding, Saima offers training, workshops, bespoke research and report writing, participation in relevant research grants, as well as consultancy, in a range of areas relevant to the Shiloh Project. You can find out more, or contact Saima, on:
saimaafzal@sasolutions.info
www.sasolutions.info
Twitter: @saimaafzalmbe
Interview with Saima Afzal.
Tell us about your NGO and your own role!
I founded and now lead 'Saima Afzal Solutions' (SAS, active since 2011) and Community Interest Company (CIC) 'SAS RIGHTS' (since 2016). A CIC offers me more flexibility for the many different things I want to do to improve life for vulnerable and marginalized people in UK communities. Very often these vulnerable and marginalized people I support are women, often women from UK South Asian communities. This is because as a British woman of Pakistani heritage myself and as someone who lived and escaped from a forced 'marriage' and who continues to live in and now represents in local government a Lancashire community with a large South Asian contingent, such work just keeps finding me. Also, this work is not 'just a job' but my vocation and my life. When I see inequality in any form – be it Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia… – I want to find ways to confront, resist and detoxify it.
My work for SAS is aimed at offering training (e.g to address religio-cultural and belief-based conflicts and public protection situations), subject matter expert advice, peer review, academic research and leading seminars, or lectures. Through the CIC I can diversify the work I undertake with SAS to include also such activities as peer mentoring, community engagement aimed at confidence and resilience building, collaboration with likeminded organizations and the development of materials to inform and raise awareness about matters central to SAS.
The Shiloh Project explores the intersections between, on the one hand, rape culture, and, on the other, religion. On some of our subsidiary projects we work together with third-sector organizations (including NGO's and FBO's). We also want to raise awareness and address and resist rape culture manifestations and gender-based violence directly. We're interested to hear your answers to the following:
How do you see religion having impact on the setting where you are working – and how do you perceive that impact? Tell us about some of your encounters.
Religion and its manifold ways of exerting impact are everywhere in the settings I tend to work in!
Many of the vulnerable and marginalized persons I deal with are from Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh communities, as well as from Catholics of the Roma and Traveler communities. Religion infuses virtually all the manifold situations I encounter in the course of my work – including those involving violence, abuse and microaggressions. Sometimes it is hard to identify or explain precisely how – but religion is wrapped up with it. I don't reject 'religion'. My own parents are devout and I consider myself spiritual. I have seen religion create or contribute to problems and I've seen it be part of the solution.
I have a personal passion that drives my work in its various capacities, not least due to my own experience of forced 'marriage', rape and being denied equality of human rights.
From what I have seen, religious mantras, or distorted and ill-interpreted variants of them, are widely utilized as a vehicle to control people – women in particular Still today, despite the changes in the law of 1991, when rape within marriage was criminalized on the statute books, many women from religious backgrounds, including some Christian and Muslim ones, believe it is their husbands' right to demand sex as part of their conjugal 'rights' enshrined in the contract of marriage. The notion of consent in each sexual encounter is often not considered, due to an assumption that consent is conferred once and for all in the marriage ceremony.
Religious mantras also often serve the agendas of those who disseminate them. Some that have damaging outworkings for women are used by men to retain and legitimate male control and female inequality. When these are in the name of Islam they do Islam an injustice and also provide fodder for far-right groups to fuel Islamophobic and therewith yet more toxic agendas. Too often I am trapped between toxic representatives of both the Muslim and of the right-wing extremist communities. I am blamed for being 'deficiently Muslim' and exposing Muslim communities to charges of misogyny and inequality (which do sometimes hold legitimacy) and on the other, I am charged with feeding Islamophobic discourse (which is never my purpose). Shining a critical light on how Islam is interpreted and subverted does not mean a rejection of Islam. It means using Islam for justice and good not for oppression and injustice.
I often work within predominantly British Asian Muslim communities with strong orthodox values relating to the roles of men and women. These roles are, in my experience, too often restrictively binary, as well as prescriptive, with particularly damaging consequences for women's freedoms but also for the freedoms of men who do not conform to orthodox norms. Non-adherence to the allocated roles often attracts reprisals, and harsh punishments are enacted on both men and women for any perceived deviation from religious and other cultural norms.
The work I do often involves a clash between religious values and human rights. Matters of equality or of safeguarding legislative standards that are expected to be adhered to in the UK sometimes come into tension with certain values held by religio-cultural communities. This can be sensitive and tricky territory.
Crimes relating to forced marriage (FM), rape, female genital mutilation (FGM) or 'honour' based abuse (HBA) are actually not rare in the UK and I have often been involved in them as an adviser in policing and safeguarding contexts. Increasingly, too, issues such as South Asian gang activity and grooming and child sexual exploitation are emerging in the wider public domain. Religion, being so intricately entwined in British Asian communities and cultures, is always a presence. Sometimes it is drawn on to provide perpetrators with justification for their actions. Sometimes it removes and sometimes it instills inhibitors for the facilitation of crimes against vulnerable persons. It's complicated. Religion fills many roles in these various situations.
I seek to educate women, men and young people across communities, to highlight the particular issues that affect or maybe disadvantage them and to ensure that appropriate support is made available.
Often I am viewed as a trouble-maker, or as unnecessarily antagonistic by faith leaders and influencers. But in my defense, I am not opposed to 'religion' or 'faith'. I only challenge individuals when their words or actions threaten or violate others' safety or rights to equality and human dignity.
The sensitive and often controversial nature of my work, whereby I, for example, seek to support women in sexually abusive and exploitative marriages in challenging claims to conjugal 'rights' that violate their bodies and humanity, often gets me into conflicts with members of their family or more extended community. My work in the area of prevention, education and empowerment has been viewed as 'corruptive', even heretical, or as 'inciting divorce' and family disharmony, including by some faith or community leaders. This comes with the territory.
I often have to conduct my work discreetly or when a crisis situation has arisen. Statutory institutions are often afraid to tread heavily on what are considered 'religious sensitivities' and there is resistance to and fear of offending faith and community leaders. As a woman of colour, raised in a British Asian, Muslim majority community, I am both inside and on the edge of the communities I represent and that can be an advantage, or disadvantage – and religiously loaded, too.
The private or hidden nature of some of the crimes I work with sometimes results in a denial of their existence and as such funds and resources can be hard to come by. These would, however, allow me to undertake invaluable, even life-saving, research, as well as to provide consistent and sustained engagement with women, men and children to explain the rights that religion can offer regarding gender-based violence and abuse.
The current HBA definition [see above!], in my view, is restrictive and also creates unconscious bias that the issues mentioned, such as FM or rape in marriage, are exclusively a South Asian and/or minority community phenomenon. I have developed an alternative model entitled 'Community Coercion and Control'. This model seeks to be more nuanced and to facilitate more practitioner flexibility. It can be applied to any set of values and beliefs, across faith, nationality and ethnicity spectrums and as such helps remove the association bias that may have become unwittingly embedded within the current statutory definitions.
I use my CCC model in the reports that I am required to produce when assisting police forces in prosecuting cases that involve religious and/or cultural dynamics.
How do you understand 'rape culture' and do you think it can be resisted or detoxified? How does the term apply to the setting where you are working?
Rape culture operates wherever sex is used as a means to oppress and coerce. It is also about contexts where rape is not called by its name, or where sexual violence and exploitation are otherwise trivialized or not resisted. Rape culture is not only about rape itself (though I know that rape is not rare and happens also in my own community) but also about the many things that create an environment where sexually oppressive attitudes thrive and go unchallenged.
Religious communities, too, need to be detoxified. In these communities, sexual rights and varieties of expression, what is legal and what is not, need to be explained and discussed. But this can only occur when all individuals are empowered and given a voice and after community-based punishments and reprisals (which may be coercive and hard to pinpoint) are removed.
Misogyny, for instance, needs to be tackled at the lower levels of microaggression and not just in situations of crisis when the damage has been done. Crisis doesn't just happen. It is often preceded by many far less visible or invasive factors, including the systemic factors that breed in settings where inequality and alienation are rife. Effective and open communication, hearing from and listening to all members of the community, nurturing empathy and long-term education are important for tackling misogyny – which feeds rape culture.
How does your project encounter or address gender-based violence and inequality?
In a number of ways, some of which I have already touched on. Often this begins with opening networks of communication, or doing research in affected communities. This might be with children in social care, for example, or in families or communities where crime cases have taken place and which the National Crime Agency sometimes refers to me.
My work through SAS and SAS RIGHTS seeks to address gender-based violence, abuse and inequality, including the complex things that give rise to them, by taking part in research, through engagement, education and awareness-raising projects. Detoxifying religion is part of this, too, as are empowerment of individuals and the creation of opportunities.
In relation to individual cases, my work seeks to, in partnership with the relevant statutory organization, facilitate civil protection or, in crisis and criminal cases, the prosecution of offenders.
How could those interested find out more about your CIC? How can people contribute and where will their money go?
I welcome hearing from individuals and representatives of likeminded organizations. SAS and its community-based arm SAS RIGHTS are there both for training or taking initiative in activism and for collaboration with those who share our ideals.
My email is saimaafzal@sasolutions.info and my Twitter handle, @saimaafzalmbe. You can also consult or refer others to the SAS website: www.sasolutions.info
SAS and SAS RIGHTS is how I channel my experience and expertise. As with other CIC's all profits go towards social betterment and benefiting vulnerable persons and communities. This includes a range of things, such as the production of films and other resources that raise awareness, running workshops for vulnerable persons to develop empowerment or recognize and realize opportunities, or peer mentoring.
What kinds of posts would you like to see on The Shiloh Project blog and what kinds of resources that come into our orbit would be of value to you?
I'd like to see more about research days or conferences, so persons with different expertise who care about the intersections of religion and rape culture can form networks or collaborate and share strategies and opportunities for research and project funding opportunities.
I'd also like to see the findings of such events publicized on the Shiloh Project blog.
A regular newsletter would be great, as well as posting about international opportunities for collaboration and exchanges.
Thank you, Saima!
DEADLINE EXTENSION- call for papers
by Emma Nagouse	on March 19, 2018
Many of our members (including our conference organising team) have been on strike over the last month as part of the UCU (University and College Union) industrial action over USS pensions. Over 60 universities in the UK are involved. Members of UCU continue to be on action short of a strike.
We are extending the call for papers deadline for our Religion and Rape Culture conference to 5pm March 29th.
See updated call for papers:
We are thrilled to announce our keynote speakers will be Professor Cheryl Exum and
Professor Rhiannon Graybill.
The Shiloh Project is a joint initiative set up by staff from the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds and Auckland (NZ) researching religion and rape culture. We are proud to announce a one day interdisciplinary conference exploring and showcasing research into the phenomenon of rape culture, both throughout history and within contemporary societies across the globe. In particular, we aim to investigate the complex and at times contentious relationships that exist between rape culture and religion, considering the various ways religion can both participate in and contest rape culture discourses and practices.
We are also interested in the multiple social identities that invariably intersect with rape culture, including gender, disabilities, sexuality, race and class. The Shiloh Project specialises in the field of Biblical Studies, but we also strongly encourage proposals relating to rape culture alongside other religious traditions, and issues relating to rape culture more broadly.
This conference is open to researchers at any level of study, and from any discipline. We invite submissions of abstracts no more than 300 words long and a short bio no later than 5pm March 29th. Please indicate whether your submission is for a poster or a presentation. We particularly welcome abstracts on the following topics:
Gender violence and the Bible
Gender, class and rape culture
Visual representations of biblical gender violence
Representations of rape culture in the media and popular culture
Teaching traumatic texts
Methods of reading for resistance and/or liberation
Sexual violence in schools and Higher Education
Religion, rape culture and the gothic/horror genre
Spiritualities and transphobia
Familial relations and the Bible
For more information, or to submit an abstract, email shiloh@sheffield.ac.uk
@ProjShiloh
This event is supported by AHRC and WRoCAH.
Writing and Reading to Survive in a Time of Trauma
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Graphic Artwork on Sexual Violence in the Bible by Pia Alize
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