Inside London’s radical cult-like religious group linked to murder

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, we're exploring the David Bowie archive, which houses an astonishing number of The Late Singer's items quite literally at your fingertips. I think the main thing that comes through is just that he was a massively well-rounded and intellectually ravenous person. there are these massive to-do lists that you can find that are filled with like stacks of books he wanted to read, exhibitions he wanted to visit, all these different influences that he was drawing from.

0:46But first, London is a multicultural city with an array of faiths and religions. If you walk down the street in Brixton, Peckham, Tottenham or even Holborn, you might spot preachers draped in purple and gold robes, reciting fiery scripture from the Bible. They're from the Israel United in Christ religious organisation or the IUIC, which is thought to be the largest Hebrew Israelite group in the world. But this faith group is shrouded in controversy and is actually banned in France. The IUIC has been accused of radicalism and even being a cult or hate group. Journalist and editor Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff began investigating this church after discovering that an innocent black woman named Joy Morgan was murdered by a fellow member of this radical religious group in 2019.

1:40Joy joined IUIC and became increasingly radicalised and isolated from her family and friends. Later, she disappeared without a trace and was murdered at the age of Just 20 by a man named Shofael Israel. Joy's story is the subject of The Missing Sister, a new six-part investigative podcast and also The Standards' special report this week. And Charlie joins me now. Charlie, can you tell us more about this religious organisation, the IUIC? Israel United in Christ is a religious organisation who fall under the banner of the Hebrew Israelites. You could call them a religious movement that evolved in the United States in the late 19th century out of the period of enslavement.

2:28They essentially believe that black people and some groups also believe that Native American people and Hispanic people are descended from an ancient Israelite tribe and that they are the true Jewish people of the Bible. Israel United in Christ decided to open up a camp here in the UK roughly around 2012. Some of IUIC's practices have led them to be labelled as anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, anti-white and various other prejudices because they quite explicitly in their preaching talk negatively about these groups. It's been argued that they used quite extreme language towards these different groups we have to remember that the Hebrew Israelites were born out of a period of extreme suffering for African Americans for black people the world over and you can see that sort of through line from like how they present through the world and what they say and some of their arguably more hateful beliefs and that sort of font, that well of extreme suffering.

3:38And it's also worth saying that unlike white supremacist groups in the US, as an example, the Hebrew Israelites do not hold any kind of particular power or influence and therefore I don't think should be looked at in quite the same way. This is very much a fringe group. They do not reflect or represent the vast majority of black people. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about the impact they have specifically on the black community. Because as my reporting has exposed, there have been some examples of black people who've gone into IUIC and had extremely negative experiences. I want to make clear that it's a very nuanced conversation that we need to have around IUIC.

4:32So when and why did Joy find her way to this church?

5:02well. I had a really interesting conversation about the nature of cults and who joins them and why. Oftentimes, there's an instability in someone's life that leads them to seek out a new form of community. And then if they're unlucky, they wind up becoming part of one of these organisations. With Joy, it does seem to perhaps be a reaction to what was going on in other parts of her life. But obviously, and very sadly, she is no longer here, so we can't ask her. In your article, you speak to several ex-members, one of whom you gave the pseudonym James. Why was he drawn to the IUIC? He had some really bad experiences with Christian Church, and he was looking for a place where he would find community, where he might feel safe, but also where he did kind of turn some of that anger towards the Christian Church outward, I think it's fair to say.

5:51One of the many other things that IUIC does or says is that they don't like the Christian Church, They don't think any other interpretation of the Bible is valid apart from their own, which I should say isn't unique to them. I think that's the case for the vast majority of religions and why I think that there is an extremely fine line between what we would regard as a kind of quote-unquote acceptable religion and something that we might define as a cult. I think it's very blurry. He found it to be an extreme youth, a sort of anistic space. He found it to be a space where they practice forms of rituals, humiliation.

6:29And yeah, he had a lot of recovering to do after he left and a lot of people to apologise to as well because of his behaviour during his time within the church. Tell me more about who Joy was and what you considered when making this podcast. I was really against the idea of the podcast being kind of considered to be a true crime podcast because I think for me that's become synonymous with such a fallacious and awful way of like handling some of the darkest moments in people's life and my friends sort of made the point that like oftentimes in one of the reasons why true crime gets fatigued so much is oftentimes like women especially they become almost the but noting the stories about themselves, their humanity becomes like secondary to, it's very much Joy's story and it's very much about honouring her.

7:21It's also about the church and it's also about the kind of systemic issues that we see with young black people not being protected, a lack of accountability that institutions can have, conversations about faith and identity and what it all means. I want people to remember that Joy was a real person who is extremely loved. I try and sort of retime the moments of what people who loved her told me about her and see her like a full human rather than simply a victim. I was rereading an interview that I did with Agnes, Joy's best friend, yesterday. Agnes was talking about how Joy really, really hated bullies.

8:01I just thought that was such an interesting tidbit. So Agnes is a bit more conflict-averse and when they're in school together, that Joy would always be the one that they thought she needed support. She couldn't have a conversation with someone about what they were doing. They're saying she would be the one to go and have that conversation. She wasn't afraid of people and afraid of having those difficult conversations. I thought she was a complex person and there were parts of her that I didn't see or didn't understand. She really was fictated on studying. She was brilliantly intelligent. I got the impression maybe for Magnus that there was maybe just a few walls there as well, like a few things that she couldn't quite reach Joy on.

8:34It was just really interesting and sort of reading that back and reminding myself who this young woman was. And obviously because she was so intelligent, not denying her agency. Obviously, she went into the space. She was murdered by this horrible, horrible man, Shofar El Israel, who was convicted of her murder in 2019. But Joy thought very deeply about everything that she did. And by all accounts, for most of her time within RUSC, she was very happy there. Finally, what do you want people to take away from this story? I want them to see the sort of bigger picture around some of these faith groups and where they can lead people to and the harm they cause.

9:15And I want people to question their consumption of true crime a little bit as well and question whether or not there's things that we can do as a society that do better by the victims. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, an insight into the life and mind of David Bowie like you've never seen him before. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back.

10:05That was Just Dance by none other than David Bowie, widely considered to be one of the greatest music artists of all time. And now you can get up close with some of his iconic costumes, instruments and more at a new centre in Stratford, all for free. More than 90 ,000 objects from the late Starman Singers Archive are on show at the V &A East Storehouse, including Bowie's first ever instrument, a saxophone, Jim Henson designed life-size puppets of Bowie's many personas for a music video that was never released and one of his final Ziggy Stardust ensembles never before seen in the UK. And here's a sneak peek inside the collection.

10:46So we've got a song list here that Bowie wrote himself which was used for the album where he's listed all the different songs, which ones he thinks should be prioritised, which ones he likes less. We also have a recording schedule for the Ziggy Stardust album for Trident Studios. So a day-by-day list of what they're recording and where, what time. And then we have a lovely selection of badges. So within the collection, we have hundreds of items of merchandise. Some of it's official. Some of it is bootleg. So Bowie was interested in all forms of his image and the usage of his music and his projects in the public sphere.

11:31And it shows Bowie's sort of interest in the fans as well. And he loved to see how they were using their own creativity to reinterpret his work. Joining us now is the Standards Commissioning Editor and Culture Writer, Vicky Jessup. Vicky, why do you think the V &A East has decided to set up this centre? I was talking to the curators for the event and they were saying that they ran an event when Bowie was alive back in 2013 that kind of exhibited some of his artwork, his professional memorabilia, his props, his costumes, that kind of thing. They already had the relationship there and then after Bowie died in 2017, the estate reached out.

12:07V &A got this massive collection of Bowie items just from all across his professional career, 90 ,000 items. It's taken them years to catalogue it properly. And I guess what's the best way of putting those items on display? Well, maybe it's letting the public decide which of those items they would like to see. So the V &A East storehouse opened earlier this year. It opened in May. And the whole premise of the storehouse of the building is that the public can come and wander around the V &A's massive collection. They can book a time slot and an item that they would like to see close up and the curators will pull the item for them and they can basically have some time with it up close, which is a really cool idea.

12:42And I think it works quite well for Bowie because again, his collection is so massive. So many of the items that are in the collection are so iconic. You can't really do justice to them all. So maybe just give it to the public. So what's on show at this storehouse? A lot of those items are in storage, but in the centre itself, there is a kind of mini exhibition which shows a curated selection of things that people can just come and look at. Again, you have to book the time slot to go in. But yeah, once you have and you're waiting for your item, item to arrive perhaps you can just go and wander essentially you can go in and see stuff like Bowie's life on Mars suit his Union Jack Alexander McQueen coat the glass globe that he used in labyrinths a lot of his personal notes some of those sections are divided according to themes so you can see a theme on kind of his creative processes he was a prolific artist he loved to paint there's a self-portrait there on his kind of unfinished projects which we'll talk a little about later his love of jungle and drum and bass he collaborated a lot with the artist Goldie the exhibition will change over the season so every time you go back you'll probably see something different.

13:45Were there any exhibits which you found particularly impressive or thought-provoking? We saw an old guitar from Bowie's Ziggy Days it's quite scuffed it has all these travel stickers on you open the case the varnish again is scuffed like this was clearly a very well used guitar one of the strings is broken. The guitar had never been put on show before so when the curators brought it up for us and we couldn't touch it we saw one of his kimono that he used as Ziggy Stardust and some platform heels. He had a favourite shop that he went to in New York called Pelican that he bought a lot of his heels from.

14:18These like big like clunky wooden clogs essentially and those again really scuffed like really loved. It kind of feels like he's just taken them off and he's gone away somewhere and he might come back and pick them up at any moment. It's been in the news, but it was still really interesting to see as part of his unfinished projects, this musical that he had an idea for that was never realised. So it was called The Spectator and he was planning to write something about the life and times of a, well, his real life petty thief in 18th century London called Jack Shepard. He had all these handwritten post-it notes that were up on his wall of his office.

14:51and because only he and his team had the key to the office no one knew this existed until afterwards when they came in and cleared the post-it notes and those post-it notes then went to the V &A so they've put up the notes like how they would have been in his office and yeah it's just fascinating to look through and see his handwriting as well like his thought process is kind of laid out. There's an installation called the Library of Connections which traces Bowie's impact on popular culture. In what ways does his legacy still live on to this day? Bowie was quite a pioneer when it comes to the kind of whole aesthetic of being a pop star and the campness of it and the showmanship of it the glam rock elements can be seen like on chapel rome for instance and especially i think the way that people tour and put on productions these days so bowie did this very maligned tour back in the day called the glass spider tour it was very theatrical it was like these elaborate stage installations involved him wearing all of these multiple costumes doing like poetry readings and stuff like that and this was an era when going to a gig basically meant a musician going on stage with their guitar and the microphone and just like doing their thing and then leaving again and he made it into this like massive like camp rock opera extravaganza and he was really a pillory read for it in the press people thought it was like crass they thought it was over the top they thought it was unnecessary and now you go to any major show by like Lady Gaga or Sabrina Carpenter or whatever and they will be channeling the same kind of aesthetic.

16:21He was kind of a pioneer of that I would say.

16:28And that's The Standard. For all the latest news head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. we'll be back here tomorrow at 5pm we'll see you then