‘The first time I wasn’t allowed in a mosque was here in Wales’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our chief reporter talks with Shereen Williams, originally from Singapore and now chief executive of the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales
ONE of Wales’ most prominent female Muslims has told of her surprise at discovering the conservative nature of some mosques since moving here from Singapore 15 years ago.
Shereen Williams, who became chief executive of the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission in early 2019 and was awarded an MBE for her community work, has spent years helping women from ethnic communities who face issues in their lives like forced marriages.
In the Martin Shipton Meets podcast she said: “A lot of the things that go on here in families... honour is used as a control mechanism. It wasn’t something I was used to – I wasn’t brought up with it.
“The circles I moved in [after getting involved in community work in south Wales] I found there was a lot of religious conservatism. We were practising Muslims, but there were issues like hand-shaking [between women and men – frowned on by some conservative Muslims] and gender interactions that were never an issue when I was growing up, or on my radar.
“Even a simple issue like access to mosques: the first time I wasn’t allowed in a mosque was here in Wales – because of my gender.
“I was so shocked. I remember thinking, ‘Where have I moved to? What kind of backward place is this?’
“When you think about it, it’s a little bit weird, because you’re moving from the east to the west, yet there is a building in the city that won’t let me in simply because I am a woman.
“I come from a country where... I remember when I went back to Singapore after a few years here, I went to a mosque with my husband because there was an event. I kept walking round the building trying to find the women’s entrance.
“This lovely, elderly gentleman stopped me and said in Malay, ‘What are you looking for? Why are you walking around in circles?’
“I said I was looking for the women’s entrance. And he said, ‘There’s only one entrance. That’s the entrance where everyone is going in and out from.’
“And I thought how much being here had changed how I perceive certain things.
“I had to learn about things like honour, coercive control after moving in and interacting with Muslim families here, and spending a lot of time volunteering with the Henna Foundation where we helped Muslim families dealing with the impact of such behaviour.”
Asked how extensive such behaviour was in Wales, Ms Williams said: “My perspective is coming from somebody who ends up having to deal with it on a regular basis, so I might have quite a warped view of the community.
“The optimist in me is hoping it’s a minority, but the pessimist in me – because you deal with case work all the time, and that’s all you see for sometimes months on end everywhere.
“So I’m not sure I can give a very balanced view on whether it’s prevalent or whether it’s going to be a small minority.”
Asked how entrenched such behaviour was, and how easy it could be to change people’s way of behaving, Ms Williams said: “About 10 or 15 years ago, when I first got involved in this work, a lot of the justification that was used to impose control on women in some of these communities and some of the families we know, they used culture as the control mechanism.
“It’s now morphed into using religion – well, the misuse of religion and religious laws as a way of controlling that behaviour now.
“So I think it’s changed quite a lot in terms of the justification used by men – and sometimes women – to control other people.
“They use Islam as the excuse, and I think Islam is practised in lots of different ways across the world, I’m sure this doesn’t sit well with the ethos of the faith.
“I’m not on about changing it. I don’t really know if we can change people. We can help support victims out of those situations, but I’m not really sure whether it’s human nature, that people will just find another reason to justify that sort of behaviour.
“It’s morphed from culture to religion. I’m not sure what the next justification is going to be.”
Ms Williams said that for some people, breaking free meant saying goodbye to everything they’d known growing up: “Your family members, your community, your networks, and having to start afresh somewhere else.
“It gets lonely. I’m a migrant to Wales. All my family are in Singapore. I’ve got what I would consider quite a rich life over here in terms of the experiences I have, the social networks. It still gets lonely for me sometimes.
“I’m thinking if you’ve got to uproot yourself to somewhere else so you’re safe, and you’ve got to cut everyone out... it’s really quite hard.”
Asked her opinion of the burka and the niqab, Ms Williams said: “As a feminist, I would defend a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants to wear, but I would also say that we live in a very complex world right now.
“There’s lots of sensitivities everywhere.
“I can imagine how some people would find not being able to see somebody’s face quite intimidating or quite scary.
“I wouldn’t wear it on the basis that I wouldn’t feel safe wearing it. I did it as an experiment some years ago for a TV show and someone threatened to shoot me.
“I empathise with the women who choose to wear it and have to go through that trauma every day because of people shouting at you. But again, whether you agree or disagree with it, it’s a personal choice.”