The Importance of Culturally-Safe Services for Muslim Canadian Women Across the study interviews, participants consistently emphasized the importance of culturally safe, GBV-related services for Muslim women in Canada, whether in community-based or state-funded contexts. An overview is provided below with regards to the primary issues raised and in particular with respect to language, culture, gender and faith. The reader is invited to refer to earlier sections of this report that address collectivist cultural contexts for key additional points.
Language, Culture and Gender Consistent Services Interviewees from the vast majority of Muslim Canadian organizations delivering GBV-related services emphasized the importance of having such services available in multiple languages, in order to address the needs of women seeking assistance:
“We try to have as diverse of a staff as possible. Generally speaking, we see a lot of women who speak Arabic or Urdu, we’ve had Farsi speaking women, Pashto, several other languages and we’ve been able to navigate through. If we are really stumped and we don’t know the language and don’t have anyone on staff, then we reach out to volunteers to help us do the casework.”
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DISHONOURABLE VIOLENCE • ISLAMIC RELIEF CANADA