When a newly arrived migrant seeks asylum on grounds that going home would mean facing religous persecution, how can the host country test the sincerity of that claim? That is a hard question, especially if the migrant has only recently converted to a different faith. It’s also a very topical one, given the reports that hundreds of newcomers in Germany and the Netherlands have switched from Islam to Christianity. If they come from countries where apostasy from Islam incurs terrible consequences, even the death penalty, then they can make a strong case that their safety depends on finding a new home. So how can authorities tell if they have had a real change of heart or are simply looking for a new way to buttress their case?
Why religious persecution can be hard to test
by Erasmus
The Economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/06/asylum-and-religious-knowledge
WHEN a newly arrived migrant seeks asylum on grounds that going home would mean facing religous persecution, how can the host country test the sincerity of that claim? That is a hard question, especially if the migrant has only recently converted to a different faith. It’s also a very topical one, given the reports that hundreds of newcomers in Germany and the Netherlands have switched from Islam to Christianity. If they come from countries where apostasy from Islam incurs terrible consequences, even the death penalty, then they can make a strong case that their safety depends on finding a new home. So how can authorities tell if they have had a real change of heart or are simply looking for a new way to buttress their case?
According to a report co-authored by some British parliamentarians and published this month, interviewers in Britain often challenge self-described Christian applicants by giving them general-knowledge tests. These are relatively hard ones: How many books are there in the Bible? Can you list the ten commandments? Can you name the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ?
There are people with university degrees in religious studies who might stumble over those questions. But the parliamentarians’ point was not merely that the asylum-seekers were asked too much; it was more that the questioners knew too little and took the simple option of subjecting the applicants to a quiz (the sort one could devise after a quick internet search) instead of probing their feelings in a more searching way. As the report suggested, setting the candidates brain-teasing questions might be too easy a procedure, because such knowledge can be learned by rote. It takes more skill and experience to ascertain whether somebody sincerely professes a religion, whether the affiliation is recent or long-term. Similar issues have arisen in Australia, where a federal court found that a Chinese Catholic woman had been asked unreasonably hard questions, for example the name of Moses’s sister. (It’s Miriam.) In 2014, a report on European practices found that applicants in Belgium were tested on Catholic doctrine—even if they were Protestant; candidates in Finland were given rather heavy theological questions like “explain the Trinity”, while in Britain the tests were on the church calendar and “how to cook turkey”.
That highlights a broader point about the role of faith in Western societies, where it is often said that basic religious literacy is vanishing. An art-history teacher can no longer tell pupils about the religious themes in the Sistine Chapel with any confidence that they have heard of Adam and Eve; teachers of literature may have difficulty presenting the works of Dante or Milton. The decline is steep and continuing. Surveys in the 1990s found that at least two-thirds of people in Britain knew that Easter marked the resurrection of Jesus Christ; by 2004 slightly less than half did. As portrayed in the report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Freedom, the people employed by the Home Office to interview asylum-seekers are typical of society as whole: not very knowledgeable about spiritual matters, and therefore inclined to use rather heavy-handed methods.
Interviews about this sensitive matter are a cultural minefield. In one case mentioned by the report, an Ahmadi Muslim, following a creed which is considered heretical by many followers of Islam, felt uncomfortable because his words were translated from Urdu by an interpreter, apparently a mainstream Muslim, who was clearly unsympathetic. In another case, an Iranian Christian was challenged to name the last book of the Bible and gave the correct answer of Revelation, using a Farsi word. But the interpreter did not know how to translate that term and the application was rejected.
Every so often, a religious-persecution case involving humble folk goes far beyond the junior bureaucrats who first handle them and reaches the highest judicial authorities. A few days ago, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave a favourable verdict to a Guinean woman of Muslim background who said she had been attacked by male family members in her homeland for marrying a Christian, but was rebuffed in her claim for asylum in France. The court said that although her case has yet to be finally adjudicated in the French system, her rights would clearly be violated if she were sent back. In the past the ECHR has told France that Pakistani Ahmadi Muslims should be able to claim fear of persecution as ground for asylum.
Most cases don’t reach that lofty level. And they need to be handled by people with a good understanding of what makes believers in various religions tick; especially, you might think, in a country like Britain where the electorate has apparently signalled its desire to “take control” of immigration.