Four days of dialogue

It was a privilege to welcome Adrian Christea, Executive Officer of Dublin City Interfaith Forum – DCIF, Columban Fr. Pat Colgan, and Diogo Vara, a student from Trinity College who volunteers for DCIF, to Birmingham for a four-day immersion at the end of February 2024. The visit aimed to strengthen collaboration between interfaith practitioners associated with the Columban Missionaries in Dublin and Birmingham. This visit also provided an opportunity to collectively explore more than three decades of experience in interreligious dialogue engagement in Birmingham, as well as the significant interfaith activity in Dublin, which has thrived following recent increases in migration.

Unavoidably, the current conflict in Israel and Gaza provided a sombre backdrop to all the meetings and activities during this visit. The violence and suffering in the Middle East have impacted the interfaith scene in Birmingham, putting to the test the resilience of the otherwise robust relations between faith communities in the city. Regarding this, Columban Fr. Pat Colgan remarked, “Although the issue of the Gaza/Israel conflict was never far from anyone’s thoughts and occasionally moved centre stage in interfaith conversations, these were conducted in a sensitive way. The fact that partners ‘across the divide’ are still choosing to talk rather than withdraw from each other in anger and disillusionment is a tribute to many years of building and maintaining those relationships.”

Our visitors shared how valuable understanding the interfaith activity in Birmingham can be for a city like Dublin, which has only recently been confronted with newly arrived communities from around the world. It was poignant to hear about the role that DCIF played in the wake of the riots that occurred on the evening of November 23rd last year in Dublin, involving multiple incidents of vandalism, arson, looting, as well as assaults on Gardaí and members of the public. Adrian and the Forum were able to gather faith and community leaders to advocate that people in the city could “collectively find a way to address and move on from the hate-filled rhetoric and actions of that night so they could join a shared aspiration of making Dublin a welcoming city, a city of kindness.” In the face of actions and words that sow hatred and division in our diverse communities, the united voice of faithful people and their leaders can make a difference.

The visit included meetings with Jewish, Muslim, Baha’i , Christian, and Sikh interfaith practitioners and we were pleased to be joined by Columbans Fr. Ray Collier and Fr. John Collins who are both based in the regions of Britain and enjoyed these interesting discussions. We also visited places of worship that have played a leading role in promoting interfaith engagement in the city, including the Birmingham Central Mosque, the Al-Abbas Islamic Centre, the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewat Jatha, the Hazrat Sultan Bahu Trust, the Unity Centre, and the Idara-Maarif-e-Islam Hussainia Mosque. Our visitors also experienced the grassroots interfaith work done in East Birmingham by local groups like Roots and Branches. The hosts in all the above places, shared insights about the ways in which their faith communities strive to serve their respective local populations, a service that is usually offered beyond the boundaries of their own faith communities.

This visit by our colleagues from Ireland was so fruitful and thought-provoking that we are already designing the next step in our collaboration, which could be a visit to Dublin by an interfaith delegation from Birmingham later this year.