My Experience at the first ever Gender and Faith conference
On December 2nd, two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited to the first ever ‘Gender and Faith’ conference at Bristol Student Union. It was a ground-breaking event, which saw thirty Jewish and Muslim student women from across the country gathering to celebrate their faith and uncover the similarities between the two, seemingly opposing, religions.
The day was centred around tackling leadership roles within our own faith communities, and extending that reach onto campus, learning about gendered islamophobia and antisemitism and much more. Organised by Bristol’s equality, liberation and access officer Sally Patterson, and coordinated by Nisa Nashim’s event coordinator Saha Habib, the day saw a variety of guest speakers and topics.
It all kicked off with guest speaker Remona Aly, journalist, commentator and broadcaster. Remona spoke about exploring her way through this new world of media as an Indian, Muslim woman and navigating her identity as she grew up. This particularly resonated with me and was especially paramount in its meaning, given the date of the event; 80 years since the first Kinder Transport’s arrival into Liverpool Street Station. My grandpa found himself on that very first train from Berlin, Germany and we often spoke about his attempt at navigating his identity as a German, Jewish male, with a polish passport; a fact he said saved his life.
Both my grandpa and Remona arrived in this country with all the odds stacked against them, but both found their space and thrived.
With every speaker, the seemingly prominent barrier between the two faiths began to break down. The aim of the conference was to underline and pinpoint similar problems faced by both groups and traverse ways to overcome polarisation and intolerance in our communities.
Nisa Nashim co-founders, Laura Marks OBE and Julie Siddiqui, identified the problems of gendered discrimination within the two faith communities, emphasising the situation, by considering the perspective of the others faith. Marks spoke about islamophobia facing the Muslim community and Siddiqui spoke about anti-Semitism facing the Jewish community.
Both islamophobia and anti-Semitism are forms of discrimination and as such cannot be tolerated, however, I have begun to understand that they are not entirely the same and although both are faith-based, they are targeted very differently. Anti-Semitism often targets the ideological beliefs of majority of the Jewish population, claiming a secret plan to take over the economical world, or denying the events of the holocaust. Many Jews have personal attachments to this period of history, myself included, and are deeply offended when faced with deniers. Whereas, Islamophobia is known to target the individual image of Muslims. Many Muslims are unfairly persecuted for their appearance and more often than not stopped for ‘random’ security checks at airports. People of both faiths are labelled, called names and hounded when simply trying to go about their daily business.
Neither forms of racism can be tolerated, and to work together as allies, to stamp out all forms of discrimination will hopefully help further future generations. It’s about moving past tolerance and acceptance and reaching a stage of friendship, something which this conference sought to do and indefinitely succeeded.
Other keynote speakers of the night included; a student panel, which hosted leaders from different backgrounds and allowed them to share their experience as women of faith, as well as, guests from Jewish Women’s Aid and Integrate UK.
The pack-filled day ended with the lighting of the chanukiah, a Jewish tradition during the festival of Chanukah, and closing remarks which saw all thirty women sitting in a circle, silently contemplating the day.
Each of us are hoping to go back to our respective campuses and further encourage and foster this important relationship between Jewish and Muslim students, by working together and putting on localised events.
I am honoured to have been included in such a monumental day in student history, surrounded by women from different faiths and ethnic backgrounds but with the same mind-set and focus, and I am looking forward to our next meeting in London, come February time.
Enjoy the winter holidays!
Dalia Landau
