‘We want to stop kids stabbing each other’: The Birmingham mosque fighting back against violent crime
From producing an award-winning documentary to using Friday prayers to address the issue of knife crime, one mosque is setting the standard for how communities can take a stand. Jon Bloomfield reports
The hall is packed and the room buzzing. There’s lots of chatter; a few kids are charging around. The local great and the good are here: the mayor, MPs and councillors, church leaders and police chiefs, as well as ordinary men and women of all ages. Yet, it is a serious occasion.
The Bahu Trust mosque has brought 150 people together from across the local community to launch its campaign against the violence that stalks inner-city Birmingham, focusing in particular on the issues of knife crime and domestic abuse. There is no doubting the salience of the issue. A nasty mix of violent crime disfigures the lives of tens of thousands of people across urban Britain.
Over the previous four months there have been 269 stabbing incidents in Birmingham and 800 young people have been caught with knives. Domestic abuse is more hidden and takes many forms – common assault, battery, coercive behaviour – but the local police have recorded a sharp rise in reported incidents over the past two years, reaching 1,400 in 2019. Across the west midlands since 2014 the number of domestic offence reports has doubled and domestic abuse now accounts for 14 per cent of all crime. For many Asian women there is the additional uncertainty of not knowing if they will get support from within their community if they report incidents.
Three years earlier, the local police inspector Neil Kirkpatrick invited the Bahu Trust to join a community violence task force. At the first meeting he admitted that “we can’t arrest our way out of the problem”, sparking a rethink in the mosque’s approach to the big community issues. For this campaign the mosque’s community team consulted with local police, members of the community and neighbouring faith institutes, then brainstormed, wrote the scripts and produced two powerful short videos, which dramatically highlight the effects of knife crime and domestic violence.
The videos show the fallout of violent crime, how the families of those directly involved become the unseen victims, and how the mosque has to play its part. Both videos use real case examples and show the impact on perpetrators, their families and friends.
The launch was held on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the lineup was all-female. It included women with direct experience of both knife crime and domestic violence.
A huge boost came in February when Knife Crime – A Mother’s Story was awarded Best Film in the Safer Cities category at the United Nations Habitat film festival in Abu Dhabi. The festival was part of the 10th World Urban Forum, the world’s largest and most important conference on urban issues; there were thousands of entries from 37 countries.
“The key is the moment you feel someone is treading on your toes, then it should ring alarm bells,” Hina, a survivor of domestic violence, says. “You need to speak out and speak up. Otherwise, suppressing it gives mixed messages to our children; and then they’ll repeat the same vicious cycle.” Hina hopes that the videos will be shared widely in schools and on social media, as well as Asian broadcast stations like Takheer TV.
Another panellist, Shaida Bibi, the domestic violence coordinator for Birmingham City Council, says that there have been 30 domestic homicides in Birmingham since 2011, and there is often strong pressure from the family as well as the perpetrator to stay silent. At times, perpetrators use various quotes from the Quran to try to justify their abusive behaviour. She welcomes the actions of the Bahu Trust in challenging those religious-based attempts to excuse violence and coerce women, which is why both videos close with quotes from the Quran. Bibi tells me later that the Bahu Trust is among those leading the way on tackling domestic violence in the city.
Superintendent Sarah Burton, who has worked with the Bahu Trust for 12 months, tells the audience the mosque has been “bold and courageous in trying new things”, such as talking in Friday sermons about the dangers of knife crime.
Yasmin, a local member, tells me of the difficulties she faced after her arranged marriage broke up, in particular, how it affected her kids: her daughter sided with her husband while her son is now in prison for drugs. She wryly observes: “Our communities are the same as any other.” I’m reminded of the difficulties the Catholic Church has faced over the past four decades.
Three months on, Shabana, who coordinated and chaired the launch event, is pleased with the progress the campaign is making. “We are working with different members of the community in standing up against violent crime. We’ve been disseminating the video widely; organising informal women-only sessions and coffee mornings; holding workshops with other mosques; and training our imams to spot the early warning signs of domestic violence when women come to see them.”
In 1983, the Bahu Trust mosque was set up in Sparkbrook by two brothers to serve its growing Muslim population. Based on the Sufi tradition – more spiritual and less fundamentalist than some other Islamic strands – they bought the derelict William Sames piano factory, which had operated in the area since the late 19th century.
They set about transforming it into a fit place for prayer – but also community engagement. Today, the space is a vibrant hub of activity and has expanded to transform the disused church opposite. Up to 1,500 people attend Friday prayers, while more than 700 children are registered in its after-school classes, lasting from two to four hours. One wing houses Islamic Help, the trust’s charitable arm, which has grown considerably and supports 2,000 orphaned children across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Elsewhere, there are a range of community activities.
The campaigns on domestic violence and knife crime are part of a wider trend of community engagement initiated by a second generation of locally born activists. Shabana grew up in inner-city Aston and went to Birmingham University before working for Islamic Help. Emad, in his late twenties, grew up in the Balsall Heath area and has now become a policeman. He spends much of his spare time on community initiatives at the mosque. Shauket oversees education. He attended the mosque when he was younger, went off to study law in London but returned home after university. For two decades he has combined his professional job as an immigration officer with his commitment to support the community he grew up in.
Kamran is another local. He failed all his GCSEs and then started working with the mosque as an unofficial, untrained youth worker. With his genial, chubby smile and bubbly enthusiasm, he started organising activities like orienteering and football tournaments. Since then, he has been a special constable, got a degree, helped the charity’s international development and become a committed environmentalist.
Rooted in the area, this cohort of like-minded people are determined that the mosque should deal with life in today’s Britain. “The trust is happy for us to explore how to deal with these challenges and create an open space as a faith-based venue,” says Kamran.
Small but important practical changes are underway in all areas. For Shauket, all the after-school teaching staff need to speak English and know about safeguarding issues. “I’ve recruited teachers with a modern outlook.” The mosque is working with the NSPCC to train all its staff and children about safety online. The syllabus has been modified to include sections on citizenship, British history and climate change, as well as topics like the Holocaust. Shauket and his colleagues have developed their own e-learning modules that children can go through on one of the 60 computers in the mosque’s after-school facilities.
The mosque is also modernising and shifting its outlook in order to address the issues that people face in their daily lives. “We bridge the secular and religious divide,” says Shauket proudly. Kamran admits that “we’ve had to overcome some passive and ‘old school’ resistance. For a while the mosque was focused more on national and international issues rather than the local. We are helping them make that shift.” And they welcome the fact that there are similar developments evident at a number of other mosques across the city.
We don’t want to get involved in culture wars. We’re too busy dealing with the real issues on the ground: knife crime, domestic violence, youth unemployment and drugs
This cohort of second generation activists has been crucial to the opening-out to the community. Following the meeting with Inspector Kirkpatrick, the mosque set up a weekly community support surgery to help local people deal with debt, mental health, housing and other issues, with more than half of the users being non-Muslim. A foodbank followed, and they have just started a neighbourhood buddy scheme linking the young with the elderly.
The expanding education programme was already dealing with some of the child abuse and domestic violence issues. Then the community engagement team realised that it had to tackle the toughest nut: working with alienated and disaffected youths in the area. Youngsters getting involved in both drug use and the trafficking of drugs across county lines has been a growing issue, as has the rising incidence of knife crime.
These community activists defy those pundits like Douglas Murray, who see all Muslims as a monolithic bloc uninterested in playing a part in British society. Shauket talks repeatedly about pluralism and tolerance. “Humanitarianism is our key value. We teach our students to respect everyone’s background. We are non-sectarian.”
While noisy and prolonged demonstrations by some Muslims against a school’s decision to teach LGBT+ inclusive relationship clases were taking place just a mile up the road – which garnered a lot of press attention and resulted in an injunction – the trust was busy promoting its own priorities with its “faith against violence” programme. As one memeber put it: “We don’t want to get involved in culture wars. We’re too busy dealing with the real issues on the ground: knife crime, domestic violence, youth unemployment and drugs. We want to stop kids stabbing each other.”
Youth services have been one of the areas of public provision most severely hit by the reductions in public expenditure since 2010. A recent report by Barnardo’s shows that expenditure on services for young people across England had fallen by an astonishing 72 per cent between 2010-11 to 2017-18. Major cities like Birmingham have been badly affected. Since 2011, 43 youth centres and projects run by Birmingham City Council have closed down. Only 16 are still operated by the council – and their future cannot be guaranteed.
In the inner-city area around Sparkbrook, seven youth centres and projects have been closed in the past decade. Currently, there is not a single council-supported youth centre in the Sparkbrook/Hall Green constituency postcodes of B11, B12, or B13. Spending on youth services in the city has plummeted – from £6.3m in 2010-11 to £1.9m in 2018-2019. There are now just 39 full-time youth workers serving the whole city – that’s one youth worker for every 3,800 young people aged 10 to 19. In a report in 2006, the recommended ratio was one worker to 400 kids.
The effects are clear across the city. Abdul, slim, athletic and in his early twenties, has lived in Sparkbrook all his life. He came from a stable home background but was a boisterous teenager who was seen as troublesome at school and then fell into a life of petty crime “on the road”.
Abdul had always loved boxing, so when a friend told him about a boxing club, he decided to give it a go. His parents weren’t keen but he began lessons anyway, was good at it and took up the sport seriously. It was expensive but he was so good that the club waived the training fees. To save further money, instead of paying the £5 bus fare he would run the six miles over to the club in Cape Hill, and the six miles back. He was expert in the flyweight division and was so successful that he won a national boxing competition. But then he suffered a serious hand injury which put him out of action. He slipped back into his old ways – and this time he had no fear.
His friends tried to help him. For a while, he managed to get a job at Jaguar Land Rover as a forklift driver but lost the job when redundancies threatened. Now, he works as a security guard at colleges or construction sites. It’s on a zero-hours contract, which can be three hours one week, 60 the next. “There is no normal,” he says. Others suggested he go back to boxing. But then his father had a heart attack, which shook him badly and made him realise he needed to do something to get his life in order.
Older brothers ring thanking me for the changes it has brought about in their younger brother. I had a teacher call, saying how one of her pupils had come to see her to tell how he now wanted to become a pilot. I feel proud when I hear these things
He decided to get married: he discussed it with his family, and quickly got married to a girl they knew. They now have a child together. At the same time, his strong religious beliefs led him to think about how he could help other youngsters in the area. He started to help those who wanted to learn about boxing, but there was nowhere locally where they could practice. “We train in my back garden or a front room. There is no fixed routine. There are now 11 in the group aged between nine and 29 and we train wherever we can find is available.”
Kamran reached out to get him involved in the mosque. “I just knocked on his door and asked him,” he says. Abdul and his friends were suspicious of the mosque at first because – as Kamran says – “we had failed them”.
But Abdul knew knife crime was becoming a big problem in the city. “It’s so common it’s normal,” he says. “Some kids are carrying them for safety. And it gets more exposure on WhatsApp.” The mosque applied for a small grant from Active Citizens, a social leadership training programme set up by the police and crime commissioner, to run a three-month programme called Empowering Futures dealing with a whole range of issues relevant to young people’s lives. Twenty kids come to the Bahu Centre every Friday evening for two hours for the sessions, led by Abdul.
“The fact that they’re coming is important. They trust me,” he tells me. “I message all of them on Thursday evening to remind them of the session the next day.” So what has its impact been? “Older brothers ring thanking me for the changes it has brought about in their younger brother. I had a teacher call, saying how one of her pupils had come to see her to tell how he now wanted to become a pilot. I feel proud when I hear these things.”
The trust has secured another pot of police funding for the youth empowerment programme to produce a video on serious and organised crime and their experience of drug trafficking across county lines. Alongside this, there will be a programme to train the participants to become mentors to other young people in the area. Shauket is hoping to develop an e-learning module to widen the young community’s understanding of knife crime.
The trust is certainly setting an example for how community stakeholders can engage imaginatively with the most hard-to-reach youngsters in their community, but to tackle these issues across the towns and cities of Britain requires a clean break from the austerity mindset of the past decade. There’s a role for big capital expenditure – the kind of major new infrastructure projects that Prime Minister Johnson regularly talks about. However, even more important is the return of revenue budgets to public authorities so that they can fund the services crucial to daily life.
Councillor Kerry Jenkins, Birmingham City Council’s youth champion, puts it this way: “In its manifesto the Conservatives pledged £500m to build new youth centres and reopen other buildings that have fallen into disrepair. There has been little detail so far… £500m would be welcomed but it’s not enough. Youth services across the UK have lost over £1bn since 2010. And what really is the point of having shiny new buildings without the revenue budget to put qualified youth workers in them? Our youth service is well and truly on its knees. We need to invest in preventative services, delivered in local communities for all young people to access.”
West Midlands Police officially acknowledges that tackling these issues is “hugely challenging at a time when policing budgets have been reduced by 25 per cent”.
When I meet Kirkpatrick, he has just come from Friday prayers at another mosque on his patch. “I felt deeply welcomed there. I spoke for 10 minutes about violent crime and what the congregation can do about it.” Since he moved to neighbourhood policing four years ago, partnership working has been his key theme. “We can’t tackle these issues on our own.”
He’s delighted with the “faith against violence” campaign and the youth empowerment programme. “We need to continue with these new ways of working with different parts of the community. The faith-based approach opens up new angles for us,” he tells me. Kirkpatrick promotes youth diversion activities through the Active Citizens Fund but acknowledges that “this can only fund start-up costs and one-off training initiatives. We can’t do ongoing revenue.”
Abdul himself is absolutely clear what the area needs if it is to tackle problems like knife crime, drug misuse and violence. “One, the kids have nowhere to train. Make places available. Two, run more of these youth empowerment courses. Three, there needs to be more youth centres. Our people can name more prisons than they can youth centres.”
His love for the area runs deep. But, he admits: “I sometimes think about getting out, especially for my kid, maybe leaving Birmingham and going to a town like Kidderminster.” I suggest that Kidderminster isn’t perhaps the liveliest place on the planet. He quickly puts me in my place. “I’ve seen enough fights. A ‘dead town’ would be really good for me.”
Jon Bloomfield is the author of ‘Our City: Migrants and the Making of Modern Birmingham’, £18.99 (Unbound)
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