‘Faith Together in Leeds’ Working for Unity after Terrorist Attacks
An ecumenical project run together with non-faith groups in the Beeston area of Leeds, home to three of the four suicide bombers of the July 7 London bombings is striving to unite the community in the face of grief and shock.
‘Faith Together in Leeds 11’ includes the Methodist Church, the Church of England, a Muslim organisation called Hamara, as well as other Muslim organisations. The Hamara Centre is one of the buildings used by the group to offer such services to the locality as health care, education, recreation and leisure activities, parental support and care for the elderly.
The work of the group has received much praise and interest from Christian organisations that see this as a unique and positive role model for greater ecumenical work, as well as cross-faith and non-faith unity.
Beeston is a community in shock and dismay after the London terrorist attacks and its people have again and again offered their complete sympathy and prayers for all the victims and their relatives.
The Faith Together group has worked particularly hard in the aftermath of the attacks against increased hostility to the Muslim Community in Leeds and throughout the UK.
The group defended the area, saying, “there have never been any serious problems in our area regarding racism, vandalism, or any kind of danger to the community in Beeston.”
Elizabeth Harris, the Methodist Church’s Secretary for Inter Faith Relations, defended Islam: “Islam, like Christianity, has many shades of opinion within it and we must not let the voice of the few drown out that of the many.”
She continued: “Similarly, Muslim leaders are not responsible for everything that individuals in their sub-communities are doing, any more than Christian leaders are in theirs, or politicians or journalists are. We need to help each other to understand what is happening in our communities and support each other as we try to respond and deal with it.”
Faith Together has also been working to defend the Beeston community from what it regards as unfair and unbalanced media representation, which has portrayed the area wrongly as divided and tense and misrepresented its Muslim community as simply extremist and ignorant.
The Rev Neil Bishop a Minister from Trinity Methodist Church said, “the comfortable legend is that something has gone wrong in the grim northern towns with their divided communities and high unemployment. Beeston has low unemployment, good community relations and excellent inter faith relationships. But of course that’s not what people in the UK want to hear, because if terrorists can come from a progressive place like Beeston they could be hiding almost anywhere.”
Muserat Sujawal, one of the Trustees of Hamara, speaking after a faith meeting with Rev Bishop and Bob Shaw from the Holy Spirit Church of England, praised the solidarity in Beeston, despite the London events.
She said: “Beeston is together. We strongly believe there is a sense of community cohesion across Beeston, and the events of [7 July] have only made this stronger.”
The Rev Shaw said: “The community is determined to stick together and to keep working for peace.”
He urged for the work of ‘Faith Together’ to continue, saying, “God has brought us together in Beeston as people of different faiths. Our Christian task is to continue our witness to the truth of the Gospel, knowing that faith, hope and love are the things that last forever and that these qualities will unite and sustain us through these difficult days.”
The group is leading a walk to the Millenium Square in Leeds next Saturday under the banner ‘United Together’ in order to demonstrate the strong and continuing unity within the community, and with the families of the perpetrators.
