Conversion practices - LGBT+ people of colour and minority ethnic faith experiences: research report

Diverse Conversion Practices and family: Honour, dishonour, abuse and shame

We heard of diverse forms of conversion practice in our stakeholder engagement. Shakti Women's Aid informed us that there are issues of violence in some Mosques, Hindu temples and Sikh Gurdwaras. These religious institutions do not have central regulation, nor are they governed by any central body in the UK, they are often guided by individuals, and most are independent. They are their own entities (each following diverse schools of religious thought). Some of these institutions are set up following ideologies analogous with CP. This means that in some religious institutions, CP can happen in an unorganised setting, for example in a small temple or in a home setting. Similar to practices carried out in Christian denomination faith settings, these will potentially go unchallenged or encouraged.

The types of practices carried out according to stakeholders at Shakti Women’s Aid include water boarding, forced marriage, beatings, hitting, burning, ‘black magic,’ corrective rape, isolation, abduction (done under the guise of spiritual practice) and forced fasting. We heard at the Equalities Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee (EHRCJC) oral evidence sessions from a Muslim queer man who was instructed to fast as a form of CP. According to Shakti, fasting is a common practice as it is linked to faith but not clear in scripture, and a lot of these practices, such as exorcism, are not dissimilar to what happens within the Christian faith, but they are more hidden from wider public view, due to the differing structures.

The Naz and Matt Foundation made very clear that a significant issue for LGBT+ people is forced marriage as a form of conversion practice: They said that many South Asian Muslim LGBT+ people have their sexual orientation and / or gender identity suppressed - through forced marriage in a bid to suppress or conceal the true self. They made clear that it is imperative to consider this practice as by the time someone is going through a forced marriage, an individual has potentially withstood significant trauma, and at this point is at high risk of suicidality. Here the weight of dishonour is also felt.

The practices that we heard the most about from people of colour and those of minority ethnic faith involved honour.

According to the Honour Abuse Research Matrix (Harm^[56]), honour cultures are patriarchal and follow strict ideas of gender roles. Men and women have distinct roles, to be tough and dominant or demonstrate purity, modesty, and obedience. Roles are perpetuated and enforced by families and wider community to protect the families’ social image.^[57] Honour based violence is carried out in national and migrant communities “when it is perceived that sexually ‘improper’ behaviour has brought sharam”^[58] on an individual’s family or community.’^[59] Men and women are both at risk of this practice, as would be non-binary people (as evidenced in our stakeholder engagement), though Harm does not address this.

The Naz and Matt Foundation told us that many LGBT+ South Asian Muslim people have their sexual orientation and / or gender identity suppressed with the threat of bringing dishonour on their family and/ or honour based violence. We also heard from both Sarbat Sikhs and Shakti Women's Aid that fear of bringing dishonour on one’s family was significant. There is a fear of bringing dishonour on one’s family by being LGBT+, but also bringing dishonour by shaming or ruining the life of someone who one may be forced to marry, and also fear of bringing dishonour should one report a family member or religious leader for practicing conversion. And, according to both the Naz and Matt Foundation and Sarbat Sikhs, the majority of South Asian LGBT+ Muslim and Sikh people will experience CP outside of religious establishments - in the home, at the hands of family. Where there is little separation between domestic and faith settings this poses important issues for consideration.

The Harm^[60] project highlights the significance of this threat to LGBT+ people in the UK. They refer to these honour-based practices (in this case, CP) as “homonegative ‘honour’ based victimisation” - they state that LGBT+ people are reportedly at risk of “victimization from their immediate and extended family members in South Asian diasporic populations.”^[61] Within this piece of work, they outline the potential figures and scale of this problem in the UK for LGBT+ people;

“Honour abuse has been reported across many South Asian populations, both domestically (in countries of origin) and internationally, including diasporic communities in England […] As sources indicate the average number of ‘honour’ killings, solely for Pakistan, may be more than 10,000 per year, it is perhaps unsurprising that LGBT people are openly reported to be at risk of victimization from their immediate and extended family members in South Asian diasporic populations. These crimes are officially acknowledged by the United Nations […]”^[62]

“LGBT persons often reveal exposure to physical and sexual violence, extended periods of detention, medical abuse, threat of execution and honour killing”.^[63]

When speaking with us, Asma discussed honour and how, sometimes others (outwith the immediate family unit) in a community can feel compelled to act on someone’s behalf to ‘fix’ the problem of someone being LGBT+. This suggests, as we had heard from Sarbat Sikhs, that there is often not one perpetrator but perhaps many actors contributing to the suppression of someone’s identity, using shame, negativity, and potentially, threat. Asma described the power of the “continued threat of violence,” stating that honour abuse as a form of CP is often couched in manipulation - a way of controlling people with fear from early childhood. Asma explained that the impact of this is that thoughts and beliefs become embedded and become hard to overcome.

Asma exemplified this by discussing forced marriage and honour. They stated that a ‘forced marriage’ may not seem forced if a woman has been told repeatedly, form a young age, that this is the norm. Asma feels that some honour-based practices, including forced marriage as a form of CP, are “eroding people’s right to choose” when they are young through subtle practices extended over a long period of time. They say that this means that by the time an individual reaches adulthood they are not being ‘forced’ to do something because they have already been indoctrinated into this way of thinking. This is very important to consider when considering coercion and consent with regards to conversion practices.

It is important to also consider that, for some people, practices are not ‘subtle;’

“[P]eople I knew were marrying women even though they were gay - or they were killing themselves…I feared for my life. I felt I could be killed… I would be disowned, kicked out of the house and forced to marry a woman, definitely" [...]

this interviewee disclosed that once the news of his homosexuality spread to his wider community, he was warned that he would be punished for dishonouring both his family and his culture; he was threatened with the humiliation of being violated by an electric hand drill”.^[64]

Harm's^[65] findings “indicate that extensive work needs to be undertaken to improve awareness of the difficulties faced by South Asian LGBT [people] at risk of ‘honour’ abuse and violence in the UK.” There are considerable potential issues to consider in terms of reporting CP. Harm also found that few LGBT+ people reported incidents to the police, people were reluctant to report honour based abuse, this may be similar to issues in reporting conversion practices. When participants provided opinions on this to the Harm research team, they focussed on a need for more awareness of LGBT+ issues in places of worship, “fear of damaging family reputations and/or being outed within their community [...] lack of police resources to make reporters safe, perceived lack of support, trust or racism from the police. [...]”.^[66]