With millions of women experiencing forced displacement, attention is needed toward migrant women’s lived experiences. Religion is an understudied but central component of coping for many migrant women. Through the use of qualitative and quantitative methods, an exploratory study was conducted with 36 forced migrant Shia Muslim women residing in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country of first asylum. Using the brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality and drawing from feminist theory, intersectionality, and the ecological framework, we describe women’s experience with religion and spirituality across a variety of domains. Open-ended semistructured interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Participants were highly religious across all domains measured. Key themes emerged related to how religion helps women manage stress, including: (1) trusting God to solve problems and (2) relying on prayer and other religious practices to cope. Despite these strengths, women also described major challenges to religious practice, where the third identified theme emphasized that fear and persecution limit religious practice. This article builds understanding of forced migrant women’s experiences, with implications for social work practice and immigration policy. Service organizations can recognize and support religious coping, particularly among religious minority refugee women. Additionally, practitioners and policy makers can promote religious tolerance and understanding within diverse host communities.

Refugee families experience uncertainty and stress when residing in countries of first asylum, such as Malaysia, and may benefit from supportive parenting interventions. In the greater Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia area we piloted an eight‐week parenting program with 79 Rohingya and Afghan mothers in nine separate groups. Participants were randomized to an intervention group or a waitlist control group and those in each arm completed a 3‐month follow‐up assessment. Program content addressed positive discipline, strengthening family relationships, adapting to a new environment, and improving health and emotional well‐being. Measures assessed included child intensity and parenting self‐efficacy from the Child Adjustment and Parent Efficacy Scale; positive parenting, inconsistent discipline, and poor supervision from the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire‐Short Form; family intimacy and family conflict from the Family Functioning Scale, and emotional well‐being from the Refugee Health Screening‐15. Participating in the intervention led to beneficial changes in child intensity, parenting self‐efficacy, family intimacy, family conflict, and emotional distress for the treatment group, and all changes except for emotional distress were maintained over time. However, the intervention did not lead to changes in positive parenting, inconsistent discipline, or poor supervision in the treatment group. Findings point to the potential benefits of parenting programs for refugee communities in transitory settings and contribute to the limited body of literature examining such programs.