Church & Mosque: Who Needs Us?!

This East Midlands regional event came about when an imam and a priest met each other on a train from London to the East Midlands. The imam (Dr Musharraf Hussain, Chair of the Forum) was reading a book written by the priest (Revd Dr Andrew Wingate] and borrowed from me. Talking about the Christian Muslim Forum's recent 'Spiritual Guidance' event they had a vision for a meeting between religious and community leaders in the East Midlands. Six months later, and with a generous grant from the Baptist Union and the support of the Christian Muslim Forum, the event took place on 14 October 2008 at St Philip's Church and Centre, Leicester.

Archdeacon Paul Hackwood opened on 'Faith and Civil Society', introducing the phrase 'social capital' (strong relationships between individuals/groups in communities). Three things create 'capital': bonds (close relationships between individuals, e.g. in a mosque or church); bridges (between different groups, e.g. churches and mosques) and links (with those in positions of power and influence, e.g. police or council). His story from Bradford was of the church that fell down but rebuilt with a multicultural community centre with donations from the local Muslim community. It became a local powerhouse of social capital as the trustees for the community centre included Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, bringing bridging into the heart of the Church. He described how the local authority wanted to use an image of the church in its publicity material but was concerned the cross outside the church would cause offence to Muslims. The community bridges were so strong that Muslim community leaders wrote saying that they would be offended if the cross was removed.

Musharraf Hussain told us that the mosque's message of loving God and building a strong relationship with God, could create a warm, loving community. Drawing on the example of Muhammad's mosque in Madinah he said that the mosque was a place for Christian-Muslim dialogue and for social mixing. Without community contact the mosque could be a place of 'over-bonding' and extremism. The mosque is also a vehicle for social change, it binds people around a common faith and a shared vision for society, as well as an alternative spiritual culture. Mosques (and churches) need to be challenging, and not withdraw from secular society. One of the comments in response was that as religious people we need to recognise that secularism is the way people think about reality.

Our scripture sessions focused on being neighbourly and a community. Imam Sohayb Peerbhai reflected on verses urging the believers to 'be kind and good to parents, orphans, wayfarers' (Surah 4, An-Nisa). He also quoted the prophetic tradition (hadith) 'be kind to guests, do not give any difficulty to your neighbour'. In Islam, respecting the rights of neighbours is an obligation, in fact non-Muslims are to be treated preferentially in a Muslim area because they are different. 'Why are so many rights given to a neighbour? To build a harmonious Muslim society.'

Revd Dr Alan Race spoke on the account of Jesus feeding the 5000 in chapter 6 of John's Gospel. He said that feeding people in groups was the formation of a community, God binding people together through food. The young boy's barley loaves were the food of the poor and that, as is often the case, children are people of no status. The miracle transformed poverty into a community of justice, plenty and gifts freely given. He urged us not to be mesmerised by miracle but recognise what God has done, can do. The twelve baskets left over showed that there was enough for the whole world.

We had two talks on engaging young people from Revd Jonnie Parkin and Saeeda Ahmed. Jonnie spoke on Generation Y who generally shared an interesting blend of 'spiritual' and individualistic characteristics. Despite being less overtly religious and without a grounding in the stories of faith there is an openness to story-telling (common to Christians and Muslims) and making connections between pop culture and faith. Saeeda described her experience of being a council youth worker doing outreach work with young Muslim women but being told that she could talk to them about anything except religion. This raised her awareness that spiritual gaps were being filled by other things. This led to her being part of a group of young Muslims who regularly texted reminders to each other of the early morning prayer times and texting prayers to each other at times of need (you can 'text' prayers to us on the Discussion Board or on our Facebook site). She said that mosques in Bradford (churches too) do not have a problem getting young people inside, but young people only go to religious leaders for help on religious issues, but not life issues.

Discussion Snippets

• Dialogue or conversion?: many Christians and Muslims are not used to the idea of dialogue and still need to resolve how this relates to the missionary aspects of both faiths, it is possible to be involved in both dialogue and missionary activity. Sometimes those who are involved in dialogue are perceived as betraying the faith
• Isolation: where there is no dialogue communities can become increasingly isolated
• Vocabulary: people found the ideas of 'bonding' and 'bridging' useful
• State schools: faith communities could be more involved in the good work that goes on
• The 'Other': 'the more we get closer to the heart of our faith the more we understand each other
• Identity: the importance of a positive identity for everyone whether ethnic, religious or based on citizenship and combinations of all three
• Language: the importance of being able to engage with our faith in our preferred languages and the lack of linguistic barriers in our communities
• This event: hold in another location (e.g. Nottingham) and not so close to Ramadan

Julian Bond