Urgent need for religious literacy training for public services

Lives are at risk unless frontline public service staff have a more nuanced understand of religion, says the Highbury-based religious literacy think tank Lapido Media, which is preparing to launch a series of informal courses on the politics and sociology of religion, directed by Dr Sean Oliver-Dee, an adviser to the government’s Social Cohesion unit.

Research shows that too many girls remain locked into the abusive ‘honour’ system of some religious networks through the culture blindness of the authorities.

The tragic case of 20-year old Kurdish girl Banaz Mahmod, murdered in an honour killing orchestrated by her father and uncle, despite four times contacting the police to warn them they meant to kill her, indicates shockingly inadequate training in religious literacy, says the charity.

The case was highlighted yesterday by The Times of London who learned that the police officer whose blunders were criticised had escaped disciplinary proceedings. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) had dropped all charges against her, it reported.

‘Religion gives culture its tenacious hold on communities. This sort of tragedy has been going on in UK for decades now, and will go on happening unless society in general is better equipped to recognize it ’, says Dr Jenny Taylor, founder director of Lapido Media.

‘Integration will demand a far more root and branch approach by mainstream society to understanding that cultural practices have their origins in religious belief’, she added.

The Times reports today that the police officer to whom a bleeding and distressed Mahmod appealed for help, dismissed her as a melodramatic drunk. Instead of investigating the young woman’s allegations, PC Angela Cornes tried to charge her with criminal damage for breaking a window during her escape. Three weeks later, the girl was raped, tortured and strangled at her South London home.

Some girls are luckier. In 1994-year old Hannah Shah (an assumed name) ran away from her father - the imam of a northern mill town - who had raped and beaten her for years as ‘punishment’ for her ‘disobedience’.

Her story is told in a new book – called Forbidden - to be published by Rider in March next year.

Hannah was returned to her father by her social worker, a Pakistani who was specially provided for her by her school out of – ironically - ‘cultural sensitivity’.

Hannah then escaped an arranged marriage and is still on the run, 14 years later, after renewed threats to her life from her brothers last year. Her story was told to the Independent’s Dominic Lawson at the launch of Lapido Media in December.

Said Taylor: ‘Honour killings are sanctioned by the Qur’an, according to a literalist reading. It is not easy for us to point to someone’s holy scripture and say this, but unless we understand the way religious literalism works out in some communities, especially in light of the tap of inter-continental marriage which cannot be turned off, we’ll never get to the root of the problems and girls will continue to die.’

More banal incidents illustrate the depth of public service ignorance in Britain about the realities of multiculturalism that pose bureaucratic dilemmas that range from the merely bizarre to the deadly.

In Bletchley last month, Milton Keynes Social Services fostered out three Afghan teenage boys - with a family of dog-owners. The Ormrods had to approach a mission society to find a Pashtu-speaker who could explain why the boys kept kicking the dog, a Jack Russell terrier.

Dogs are haram – forbidden – in Islam, after Mohammed is reliably reported to have said that dogs, women and asses ‘annulled prayer’ (Bukhari vol. 4:540).

Lapido Media will be launching its first four-week informal course on the politics and sociology of Islam in March next year.

Course director Dr Sean Oliver-Dee, a Research Fellow of the London School of Theology, has a doctorate in Islamic governance, and wrote his MA thesis on Islam and citizenship.

He taught history in India for three years, and is an adviser to the Government’s Preventing Violent Extremism Division in the Department for Local Government and Communities. He has also advised the Counter Terrorism Department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

To register your interest in attending an informal course on the politics and sociology of religion, click here.