{"id":74102,"date":"2016-09-13T11:21:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T11:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=a1a6c32375863c9a6601b9cca9bc750d"},"modified":"2016-09-13T11:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T11:21:27","slug":"speech-understanding-our-differences-the-importance-of-inter-faith-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=74102","title":{"rendered":"Speech: Understanding our differences: the importance of inter-faith dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Good afternoon everyone, shalom aleichem.<\/p>\n

They say you should open a speech with a joke.<\/p>\n

How about this?<\/p>\n

Did you hear the one about the Muslim politician in a room full of Rabbis?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still working on the punch line\u2026<\/p>\n

Seriously though, thank you all for inviting me today.<\/p>\n

Thank you for welcoming me into this famous synagogue.<\/p>\n

And thank you, Chief Rabbi, for that wonderful and very kind introduction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often I agree with Gordon Brown.<\/p>\n

But he was absolutely right when he described you as \u201ca great pastor, a great thinker and a great humanitarian\u201d.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m delighted that the UK has such a distinguished individual as Chief Rabbi.<\/p>\n

Of course there are some people who say that Ephraim and I should not get along.<\/p>\n

That our different beliefs make us natural enemies.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s nonsense.<\/p>\n

I can look past the fact that he supports Tottenham\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one big similarity I\u2019ve found between Jews and Muslims.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that all our parents are anxiously waiting for us to get proper jobs!<\/p>\n

So let me congratulate Ephraim on the news that his son Danny has found gainful employment as senior rabbi of Mizrachi in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a parent myself, I know how it fills you with pride when your children excel in any field.<\/p>\n

\n

Not long after Nigeria won its independence, the country found itself divided by deep-rooted ethnic and religious tensions.<\/p>\n

In that time, the country\u2019s first president, the Christian Nnamdi Azikiwe met with the premier of the Northern Nigeria region, a Muslim named Ahmadu Bello.<\/p>\n

They talked about the need to bring their communities together.<\/p>\n

To bridge the divide between them.<\/p>\n

And Azikiwe ended the meeting by saying \u201cLet us now forget our differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which Bello replied, \u201cNo \u2013 let us now understand our differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

For me, that\u2019s the key to making communities work in the diverse, multi-cultural country that is 21st century Britain.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no point pretending we\u2019re all the same.<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

There are more than 60 million of us in these islands.<\/p>\n

We come from many different places, we worship different gods.<\/p>\n

Some of us even vote for different political parties!<\/p>\n

Our diversity can be a great strength, bringing many different views and experiences and outlooks to the table.<\/p>\n

It can be used to create great things, whether in art, culture, business, politics, or in your local community.<\/p>\n

If we try to ignore that then we all suffer.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t tell you to forget that you\u2019re Jewish any more than you can tell me to forget that I\u2019m a Muslim.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s who we are, it\u2019s a part of our life.<\/p>\n

Trying to ignore that, trying to impose a one-size-fits-all vision of society, will not end well.<\/p>\n

It will foster resentment and legitimise intolerance.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re going to live with each other, work with each other and tolerate each other, we have to understand each other.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why strong, positive inter-faith dialogue is absolutely vital.<\/p>\n

But it needs to be about more than the Chief Rabbi talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury.<\/p>\n

It needs to be more than Jeremy Lawrence, the senior Rabbi here at Finchley, talking to Imam Maulana Oussama Sahmoui at the North Finchley Mosque.<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m speaking to Rabbis as we look ahead to Yamim Noraim.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I\u2019m speaking at a reception to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.<\/p>\n

But it needs more than that, too.<\/p>\n

Interfaith dialogue needs to happen at all levels of society.<\/p>\n

It needs the ordinary members of your synagogues, the congregation from the local church, the people who attend the mosques and temples and gurdwaras.<\/p>\n

All of us need to come together and see just how much common ground we share.<\/p>\n

As rabbis, I think you\u2019re in a great position to make that happen.<\/p>\n

You are teachers, counsellors, leaders who can share the importance of dialogue and help to bring it about.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t worry.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not just going to stand here, and issue some kind of order, and expect you to get on with mobilising your flock. We all have a role to play.<\/p>\n

I want to make sure government is playing its part.<\/p>\n

Five years ago we started a programme called Near Neighbours.<\/p>\n

It helps people set up and run small projects that bring different faith groups together to break down barriers.<\/p>\n

And it has been an incredible success.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen Jewish, Muslim and Christian organisations in, for example, Leeds working together to set up a caf\u00e9 where people of all faiths and none can get to know each other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen the Nottingham Liberal Synagogue partnering with a local Muslim organisation to provide hot meals to vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen the Board of Deputies\u2019 Rabbi Levy using Twitter to bring together girls from Jewish, Muslim and Christian faith schools so they can learn computer coding.<\/p>\n

Altogether we\u2019ve seen more than a thousand small projects up and down the country.<\/p>\n

And between them they\u2019ve helped a million people engage with their communities.<\/p>\n

Projects like this help to build understanding between different groups.<\/p>\n

And that makes them particularly important in the current climate.<\/p>\n

We were all horrified by the spike in reported hate crime that followed the EU referendum.<\/p>\n

The figures have now fallen back down.<\/p>\n

But there are still far too many people facing threats, intimidation and even outright violence simply because of who they are.<\/p>\n

And much of that hatred is directed towards Jews.<\/p>\n

Last weekend I was saddened, but not surprised, when Yad Vashem\u2019s Professor Yehuda Bauer said that if he were a British Jew he would feel concerned about the anti-Semitism that exists in this country.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard similar concerns from too many people.<\/p>\n

And of course, the Jewish community knows all too well the corrosive effect of prejudice and intolerance.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said before, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka.<\/p>\n

Indiscriminate killing is simply where hatred, if it\u2019s left unchecked, reaches its tragic conclusion.<\/p>\n

The Shoah began with nothing more than words.<\/p>\n

Then came the insults, the boycotts, discrimination.<\/p>\n

The noxious weed of anti-Semitism crept insidiously into everyday life, until the stage was set for violence, oppression and finally murder on a scale unprecedented before or since.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s so crucial that extremism, racism and violence is stopped in its tracks.<\/p>\n

As a government, we\u2019re maintaining strong legislation against racially and religiously motivated crime.<\/p>\n

Our new Hate Crime Action Plan<\/a> will make it easier to identify, report and record hate crime, and will provide new support for victims.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve provided well over \u00a313 million for improved security measures at Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres.<\/p>\n

But the freedom to live and worship behind walls and under guard is no freedom at all.<\/p>\n

Yes, we must do all we can to tackle the criminal manifestation of anti-Semitism and other religious bigotry.<\/p>\n

But we also have to deal with the underlying attitudes that fuel it.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why programmes like the Near Neighbours projects I talked about earlier are so important.<\/p>\n

Setting up a soup kitchen or teaching some girls to code might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n

I know it will take much more than a pop-up caf\u00e9 in Leeds to unwind decades, even centuries, of misunderstanding, disagreement and hatred.<\/p>\n

But the small size of these projects I think is their strength.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not vast, faceless, disconnected programmes in which government tells people in distant cities and towns what to think.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re local.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re community-based.<\/p>\n

They build friendships across ethnic and religious divides, creating the trust that\u2019s so important in resolving local issues, overcoming suspicion and defeating intolerance.<\/p>\n

I spent the weekend scouring my bookshelves for some Talmudic wisdom I could cite to sum up my case.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it turns out I\u2019m a very poor theological scholar!<\/p>\n

And my Hebrew\u2019s even worse than my Punjabi!<\/p>\n

So instead I turned to a canon I\u2019m more familiar with.<\/p>\n

Where a wise old man says: \u201cSome believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yes, that was Gandalf in the film of the Hobbit\u2026<\/p>\n

However, the wizard makes an excellent point.<\/p>\n

We can fight terrorists with bombs and bullets.<\/p>\n

But the rising tide of intolerance, racism and bigotry won\u2019t be defeated on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

We will banish intolerance from this country only by changing minds.<\/p>\n

By spreading understanding.<\/p>\n

By talking to each other and realising that we might look different and sound different and believe different things, but that we are all human.<\/p>\n

That we don\u2019t just LIVE in the same community, we ARE the same community.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s come together.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s stand up to intolerance, together.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s build a stronger, better Britain, together.<\/p>\n

Not by ignoring our differences, but by understanding them.<\/p>\n

By appreciating them.<\/p>\n

By getting to know each other as people rather than as labels.<\/p>\n

After all, it\u2019s easy to hate a nameless, faceless enemy.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s much harder to hate a familiar, friendly neighbour.<\/p>\n

Shanah tova.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid tells the Chief Rabbi\u2019s Conference about the need for people of all faiths to work together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}