In June a team of young adults from the Cathedral, which included employees Anthony Dixon (Development Officer), Jimmy Lawrence (Pastoral Associate), Sarah Watts (Reconciliation Intern) and volunteer Sarah Mann, visited Jordan with two young Muslims, Hassan and Jeeshan from the Central Mosque in Leicester to learn from the work of a project focused on interfaith reconciliation. Whilst in Jordan they went through five days of experiential learning accompanied by experts in interfaith dialogue. Amongst the people they worked with were local international youth workers, professors at the University of Amman, Ministers in the Jordanian government and Christian and Muslim employees at the British Council.
During their stay they travelled around Jordan together discussing and sharing issues of faith. In this way they learnt from one another about the lives and beliefs of those who follow other faiths, entered dialogue and discussion on issues of morality and theology and formed lasting friendships which have enabled them to support each other upon returning to the UK.
They visited holy sites for both religions including the site of Christ’s baptism, the mountain upon which Moses first saw the Promised Land, the shrine of one of Muhammad’s companions and several mosques. They took part in various workshops in which they explored barriers to interfaith dialogue, learnt how to conduct interfaith work and prepared for putting this work into action once they returned home. They visited various cultural/historic sites during their stay including the University of Amman where they took part in student events, the Jordanian Museum and the remains of the Roman city.
These six young adults from Coventry and Leicester are now beginning work on an interfaith project here in the UK aimed at bringing local Christian or Atheist communities together with their Muslim neighbours in order to break down the dividing walls which ignorance and misunderstanding can put up.
Simultaneously, by giving voice to young British Muslims via the medium of informal but professional short YouTube presentations they hope to help them to highlight what they really believe. Anthony said of the project “we want to challenge the way the media portrays Muslims and their beliefs and as such correct wrong notions, facilitate learning and resource ordinary people who wish to combat Islamaphobia with accurate knowledge of the faith”.
Lessons learnt from the Amman Message Project have fed back into the Cathedral’s reconciliation ministry, part of which includes the Cathedral’s own interfaith work here in the UK.
You can find a video with reflections on their experience here.
