The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester
Established to develop the cultural and social ties between the Muslim and Jewish communities of Greater Manchester
11 March 2020
Attending university has significant benefits for students beyond their academic studies. For many, it will be their first opportunity to spend much time with people from other cultural and faith backgrounds.
The University of Salford prides itself on the pastoral care it provides its students. A key part of this is the Faith Centre which houses the offices of the University’s chaplains as well as providing facilities for students. For example, there is a fully kosher kitchen with separate meat and dairy cooking facilities.
On 11 March 2020 the Muslim chaplain, Imam Rashid Musa invited the Forum’s Co-chairs, Mohammed Amin and Cllr Heather Fletcher, to explain to the University’s students why the Forum was created. To teach the students how engaging in such community service also helps the volunteer, he specifically asked the co-chairs to share how helping the Forum had benefited them personally.
Both presentations were recorded for the Forum’s website.
Amin began by outlining the differences between Britain’s Jewish and Muslim communities covering matters such as:
He then went on to explain how the Forum was designed, and why it had an explicit focus on relations between Muslims and Jews (and the wider community) entirely within Greater Manchester.
Regarding personal benefit, he shared how involvement with the Forum had led to many new friends and had also led to him making many connections with the Jewish community’s national leaders.
Amin has also made his PowerPoint slides available for download.
Cllr Heather Fletcher talked about the 118 events that the Forum has put on since it was formed in 2005. She explained how media organisations writing stories about our events has given our work a much wider reach beyond the people who attend our events. One of our picnics even had a big write-up in a national tabloid newspaper!
Regarding personal benefit, Heather explained that the Forum had provided her first experience of serving on a committee, chairing meetings and organising community events. This had been an important factor in her getting involved with electoral politics. Like Amin, Heather also emphasised how the Forum had led made her new friends and had taken her to many interesting places (at her own expense!)
Heather's presentation can be heard below.
Heather referred to our many past events. The website page "News and past events" lists our previous events. For events that took place after our website was created in 2010, that list contains links to a page with more information about each event.
For the talk, Heather had prepared a paper list of our 118 events from 2005 to 2019 which can be downloaded.
The question and answer session was also recorded. However, we are not publishing the full audio recording for two main reasons:
Instead, Amin has listened to the Q&A session and, where he regarded the questions as being worth sharing, has written down a condensed version of the questions. We have then published the audio of the answers from Amin and Heather.
Before the first question, Amin added a supplemental comment to his presentation.
The answer mentions Rogers Govender who is the Dean of Manchester Cathedral.
Amin's answer mentions our that twice we have had a children's football tournament. Our website page "Boys Football Tournament" contains more details about the second of those.
Amin was frank about the uncomfortable feelings many people have about going into new environments, and shared some of his own personal experience.
He suggested that Muslims should consciously set out to volunteer at Jewish organisations, rather than taking the comfortable option of volunteering at Muslim organisations.
In his answer, Amin mentioned that one of our most regular attenders is a Humanist Celebrant.
Amin mentioned our petition in 2015 to preserve kosher and halal slaughter and Heather mentioned our campaigning to keep Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson out of the European Parliament, amongst other things.
Heather gave her perspective as a Jew who has limited engagement with Israel.
Amin mentioned that the invitation to him to give a one-hour lecture on the Israel / Palestine dispute had come as a result of his connections with Greater Manchester Humanists which the Forum had created. He also talked about his one-week trip to Israel in 2018 with the Conservative Muslim Forum and the high-profile people he met there.
Heather also mentioned the need for more younger people to join us.
The group photo below shows the speakers with some members of the University Chaplaincy Team. From left to right:
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The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester
Established to develop the cultural and social ties between the Muslim and Jewish Communities of Greater Manchester