By Maira Butt
The US and Israel launched missile strikes against Iran at the weekend, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Iran has since retaliated with strikes against Israel and the surrounding Gulf nations, including military bases in Qatar, Bahrain and Cyprus.
Meanwhile, Pakistan and Afghanistan were embroiled in clashes along their 1,600-mile shared border.
Global events have already had repercussions on British faith communities and interfaith relations, especially since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
Hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK rose exponentially, often echoing the language of a conflict between Israel and Hamas taking place thousands of miles away.
Woolf Institute Commission on impact of global conflict in UK
In January, the Woolf Institute set up the Commission on Interfaith Relations: UK Faith Groups and Global Conflict, which “aims to identify indicators of tension and conflict, as well as examples of good practice so that everyone, religious or not, feels welcome and part of a strong, cohesive and tolerant community”.
Muhammad Ibraheem Ahmed, policy lead at the Woolf Institute, told the Religion Media Centre: “There seem to have been a lot of initiatives but none of them has looked specifically at the impact of global conflict on faith communities.
“We’re treating it as one contained question around faith relations and the question of global conflict. Are conflicts impacting faith communities in the UK? If so, how and what mechanisms exist that result in the translatability of those international politics onto UK streets or in UK communities — whether those are interfaith or intrafaith.
“I’d say that’s been missing. No one’s really done that. They either treat the communities in the UK as very separate from other countries that they’re related to abroad, or where they come from poentially.
“Or it’s just treated as a monolith — Islam in general is treated as a whole — rather than the Muslim community in the UK and how it’s impacted, for example, by conflicts that happen in Muslim countries abroad.”
The commission will also seek to understand the factors leading to conflicts that transcend specific faith communities.
For instance, the Israel-Palestine question has led to some of the largest demonstrations in history, with protests impacting almost every sphere of life from music to sports and politics to film and theatre. Millions across the world have found themselves galvanised for a cause that may not impact them personally.
“If it impacts the diaspora community more, why are certain conflicts more democratised or felt from beyond that faith community as well?” Dr Ahmed asked. “For Israel-Palestine, for example, it’s impacting people who are not just Muslim or Jewish. But why does everyone want to understand that conflict? Whereas India and Pakistan or Kashmir seems to just impact Hindus and Muslims.”
Good Faith Partnership on essential interfaith work
The Woolf Commission launch coincided with the publication of Questions of Hope and Hate: Faith and Faultlines in a Changing Britain — by the Good Faith Partnership, in partnership with Hope Not Hate — which found that while “interfaith engagement is sometimes caricatured as a superficial and largely ceremonial exercise” at a time of increased political tension, inter-religious work is “becoming an essential civic practice”.
“It is a place in which some of the most contentious issues and most profound ideological divides must be negotiated,” the report says. “Interfaith engagement had suffered from growing levels of mutual mistrust and antipathy since 7 October 2023.”
After initial positive moves, it adds, interfaith engagement had become slowly more difficult. One interviewee said the levels of trauma and mutual mistrust were so high that the current generation of leaders might never be able to retrieve a sense of open engagement. Both relationships and structures were stressed to breaking.
The Questions of Hope and Faith report found that goodwill and strong intentions to work together existed among grassroots groups. However, the structures, spaces and logistics did not marry up to the demand for them.
“The challenge is not the absence of goodwill, but the lack of resilient structures, sustained attention and a consensus around the goal of inter-faith engagement,” the report says. “Local relationships and trusted convenors can form the foundations of effective action, particularly when complemented by hopeful national narrative.
“However, if interfaith engagement is to move beyond moments of crisis management or mere optics it must be recognised as a part of democratic life that promotes social trust and gives voice to diverse faith perspectives.
“There is a need for structures and institutions that can bear the greater weight of more politicised expressions of religion.”
Interfaith and intrafaith
The Questions of Hope and Faith report found that some people had been criticised within their own communities for working with individuals from other faith traditions.
“One [interviewee] said that faith leaders were worried about appearing in photos with leaders from other traditions, even if they were prepared to engage on a private basis, ‘People are scared to be seen to be taking a position that means that they would get attacked, or to be seen with other faith leaders’,” it says.
This is why, Dr Ahmed says, the work of the Woolf Institute is crucial now “… because previous reports have treated faith communities as monolithic. The Jewish community. The Muslim community. Instead of also acknowledging the complexities within them.
“For example, how fractured is the Jewish community on Gaza? How fractured is the Muslim community? How fractured is the Sikh community on Khalistan? How fractured is the Hindu community on Indian national politics or on the Pakistan and India conflict?
“In any case, it’s not just interfaith work we’re doing, it’s a bit of a misnomer, but also intrafaith. Acknowledging the complexity within communities.”
He believes that the future of interfaith could rest on “relationships” and “honest brokers”. Part of the Woolf Institute’s work will be focused on the reason that conflicts occur and why relationships break down.
“This is part of the diagnostics of that,” he said. “We’ll only really know how to have constructive interfaith relations once we understand what those reasons for fracture actually are. Whether those are interfaith or intrafaith.”
The commission has a wide-ranging scope with key themes including young people, faith leadership, media disinformation and misinformation, diaspora and transnationalism and policy.
