CHRISTIANS have an obligation “to follow the instance of Jesus, who, throughout the Bible, focuses his love and care on probably the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society”, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, has said.
She was writing in The Daily Telegraph on Monday in response to comments from senior political figures — including two former Home Secretaries, Suella Braverman and Dame Priti Patel — who’ve questioned the involvement of churches and members of the clergy within the asylum process.
The subject got here to the fore after it was reported that the suspect in last week’s alkali attack in Clapham, south-west London, submitted that he had converted to Christianity before his asylum claim was approved (News, 2 February). The suspect, Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, is an Afghan national who’s believed to have arrived illegally within the UK in 2016 and to have received support from church communities for his application to settle within the country.
Mrs Braverman, who was Home Secretary from September 2022 until November 2023, wrote an article for a similar newspaper over the weekend with the headline “Too many churches are facilitating bogus asylum claims. This must stop”.
She accused “churches across the country [of] facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims”, and suggested that migrants saw “churches as a one-stop shop to bolster their asylum case”.
She wrote: “Attend Mass once every week for just a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date within the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of the clergy that you just’re now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain persecution if removed to your Islamic country of origin.”
Dr Francis-Dehqani, who was born in Iran and whose family took refugee within the UK within the 1980, dismissed the concept of clerics’ providing “some kind of magic ticket” for asylum-seekers in the course of the process: “The notion that an individual could also be fast-tracked through the asylum system, aided and abetted by the Church, is solely inaccurate. Home Office guidance says ‘ultimately, evidence even from a senior church member shouldn’t be determinative’.”
She continued: “It is the role of the Home Office, not of churches, to evaluate and vet these claims. I arrived on this country myself as a refugee from Iran. . . I actually have a way of the true trauma that many asylum seekers have experienced.”
In 2021, the Church of England received criticism when a convert to Christianity detonated a bomb outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Remembrance Sunday (News, 17 November 2021). Emad Jamil Al Swealmeen, who died within the explosion, had undertaken the Alpha course at Liverpool Cathedral, where he was confirmed in 2017. It later emerged he was not a Syrian refugee, as he had claimed, and that he had made several unsuccessful asylum applications. He had been taken into the house of a neighborhood Christian couple he had met through church life and was amongst lots of of asylum-seekers to be baptised in Liverpool.
About 40 of the 300 migrants currently residing on the barge the Bibby Stockholm in Dorset are reported to be Christians. Six of its residents were reportedly baptised at Weymouth Baptist Church on Sunday.
An elder of the church told Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “There’s no reason we’d doubt these asylum-seekers from their occupation of religion. Obviously we want to be sure that they imagine in Jesus . . . and so they want to begin a recent life within the church.”
Mr Ezedi’s faith and church connections have yet to be substantiated. He is currently on the run after last week’s attack. Reports suggest that he had already had two asylum claims turned down within the Newcastle area. His Christian adherence has also been doubted. A Newcastle shopkeeper told The Sunday Times that Ezedi appeared still to behave as a Muslim; he would buy halal meat and said that he planned to return to Afghanistan to search out a bride.
The priest who apparently vouched for Mr Ezedi in his official application has not been identified or come forward. The Roman Catholic diocese of Hexham & Newcastle has confirmed, nevertheless, that Mr Ezedi “visited our diocesan Justice and Peace Refugee Project, a charitable enterprise which assists a big selection of people that come to us in need”.
An official statement on its diocesan website said: “After checking local parish records and central records, and after consulting with clergy, we’ve got no indication that Abdul Ezedi was received into the Catholic faith on this diocese, or that a Catholic priest of this diocese gave him a reference.
“We have no idea which Christian church received him nor which Christian minister gave him a reference. We keep the victims in our prayers and hope that justice is finished soon.”
In the early hours of Monday, a 22-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assisting the alleged attacker and was bailed. A reward of £20,000 has been offered by the Metropolitan Police for any information that will result in the arrest of Mr Ezedi. Members of the general public have been advised to not approach him.
