Bury Park Partners

On 10 February 2009 a dozen Christians and Muslims met at Luton Central Mosque to explore what it means to be neighbours. The Christian group was made up of Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, and United Reformed while the Muslims were mainly Sunni with one Shi'a (the High Sheriff of Bedfordshire).

 

We began with an introduction by Dr Musharraf Hussain OBE, Chair of the Christian Muslim Forum. He encouraged us to be fully committed to inter faith understanding by saying that far from being about compromise and negotiation it was a way of understanding ourselves better and deepening our own faith. He also told us that the Qur'an teaches Muslims not to discriminate and gave the example of Muhammad as someone who always engaged, rather than disengaged. Muhammad also taught his followers to co-operate wherever they saw piety. Julian Bond followed with a short summary of the Forum's work over the last three years and Musharraf gave an overview of our Spiritual Guidance events. Read about these events here: 2006, 2007, 2008 and view pictures of our events in our Gallery.

 

We continued with dialogue in small groups and heard interesting stories from each other.  Tanvir told us how at school the Muslims were expected to join in with hymn singing in daily worship and that although the singing and the poetry appealed to him he was offended by descriptions of Jesus as 'the Son of God'. Moving on twenty years or so he is now able to explore better the areas of disagreement while having strong relationships with friends of other faiths. The Vicar of All Saints, Revd Richard Franklin, was able to share how a couple of years ago, with Eid and Christmas very close together, his church had welcomed the imam from the Central Mosque and they had shared readings about Mary and the birth of Jesus from the Bible and the Qur'an. A few days later a group from the church visited the mosque to deliver Eid greetings personally.

 

We had a brief introduction to the Central Mosque, Luton's oldest mosque and with the largest congregation. The mosque has a track record of receiving Christian visitors and of being invited to Christian organisations to talk about Islam. This was followed by presentations on Luton Council of Faiths and Churches Together in Luton. These both raised the question of how dialogue and contact between both faiths could be increased. Another story that we heard was of a Muslim woman visiting a church and saying to the priest, 'I heard your bell and knew this was a place of prayer'. We also learned about the churches' Good Friday walk of witness which includes carrying of a cross, the route passes the Central Mosque. Musharraf told us how in Nottingham he and his congregation greet the Christian procession when it passes his mosque and there is a time of prayer together led by him and the local priest.

 

The final part of our time together looked at what might happen next, these are some of the suggestions: