Interfaith Leadership in Divided Times: Young Leaders in Parliament

Raahim Zafar, F&BF Communications Lead

On Wednesday 16 April, young leaders gathered in Westminster for an evening addressing some of the toughest conversations on the public conscience today.

The question at the centre of the evening was stark: what does leadership and good interfaith practice look like when global conflicts are fracturing communities here at home, when political discourse is increasingly polarised, and when people of faith are navigating impossible moral pressures?

The Faith & Belief Forum (F&BF) and the Light Foundation came together to organise Interfaith Leadership in Divided Times – but this event really came from the young people themselves. F&BF has run the ParliaMentors programme since 2007 and it was current and past participants who helped design the event and guided the conversation topics.

What unfolded that evening was a conversation that many are thinking about privately or within their own echo chambers, but few shared spaces are brave enough to hold.

Hosted by Gurinder Josan CBE, the Labour MP for Smethwick, the panel included Imam Adam Kelwick, the Liverpool imam who made headlines in 2024 when he crossed police lines to hug a far-right protester outside the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque during the summer riots; Rabbi Dr Michael Hilton, Rabbi Emeritus of Kol Chai Hatch End and a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College with decades of interfaith scholarship; and Reverend Andy Thompson MBE, an Anglican priest, author of Jesus of Arabia, and a leading voice in Christian-Muslim dialogue who has worked across the Middle East and the UK. Between them, they brought decades of interfaith work, pastoral leadership, community organising, and lived experience of navigating some of the hardest conversations of this moment.

The room was full: from the opening remarks to the final reflections, there was acknowledgement that this was not a space for easy answers. It was, however, a space for showing up – with each other, and for each other, so we can move forwards together.

Trust Makes Difficult Conversation Possible

One of the strongest themes of the evening was the importance of human relationships. We must go deeper than statistics and abstract ideas. Imam Adam Kelwick spoke powerfully about this when he reflected on his friendship with Reverend Andy: “I’ve known Reverend Andy for years. We’ve already established a friendship. We can talk about some of the hardest things.”

That honesty ran through the whole discussion. Imam Adam described a private meeting that he attended immediately after October 2023, where people were crying their eyes out. “It was not publicised,” he said. Interfaith work is not just about public declarations, photos demonstrating unity or polished statements. The most important interfaith work happens in quiet rooms where people show up for one another, in honesty and vulnerability, to hear and understand the human being across a cup of tea.

He further challenged young people to imagine themselves in someone else’s position: “I try to imagine myself in the space of the Jewish rabbi, or a member of the congregation that got attacked in Manchester.” Real empathy is not easy to achieve, but it is built slowly by showing up time and again, especially when things become charged.

Reverend Andy echoed this when he spoke about the nature of dialogue itself: “Interfaith gives us a chance to access someone else’s position, the space that they’re in.” He warned against reducing complicated stories into simple binaries: “We have reduced [it] to us and them.” Rabbi Hilton reminded us that the current conflict is making us forget that for centuries people lived together – Muslims, Jews and Christians – protecting one another. It was a message that clearly landed. As one attendee reflected: “It was such a powerful event, ran with empathy and understanding. It was powerful to have faith leaders talk of very different experiences and opinions, but still listen to each other with so much curiosity and open-mindedness.” Another wrote: “The event broadened my understanding of different faiths and their shared values, leaving me feeling more connected and appreciative. The most challenging part was confronting my own biases, but it was a valuable opportunity for growth.”

Confronting Disagreement Without Smoothing It Over

The second question of the evening asked: what are the most difficult points of disagreement between faith groups that interfaith dialogue often avoids, and do we need to confront those more directly to build genuine understanding? Gurinder Josan MP acknowledged the challenge directly: “Get people with different faiths in the room and you’ll inevitably end up talking about what’s happening somewhere in the world. But we usually have very little ability to do anything about it. That’s a real challenge.”

Reverend Andy reflected on the challenge of being labelled and said, when people ask him whose side he is on: “I’m on the side of God’s people. Who are God’s people? Those who do things in God’s way. They pursue righteousness, justice, compassion and empathy. You find God’s people on all ‘sides’ of the conflict.”

The essential message from the distinguished speakers who lead from the front of their communities is that interfaith spaces and dialogue is not a space to convert, but to learn – and, as a result, to grow as people.

Carrie Alderton, CEO of the Faith and Belief Forum remarked that “We need more solidarity around faith-based hate, but first we need to name it.” She also emphasised interfaith practice as an essential civic duty and practice that we must all learn to engage in with skill, empathy and compassion.

One participant captured this perfectly: “Truthfully, I anticipated the discussion to be much harder than it was. It would have been easy to focus on the conflict occurring across the world and particularly in the Middle East. However, as Imam Adam mentioned, that is out of our control. What is more important is that we consider what we can do, and that we seek to act peacefully, working together with different people.” Another reflected: “It made me realise how difficult it is for leaders to balance staying neutral and speaking out during conflicts. The topic was quite heavy at times, but still very important.”

Young People as Present Actors, Not Future Leaders

The third question asked: in your experience, what is unique about the role of young people within interfaith? Gurinder Josan MP posed a challenge that stayed with many people long after the evening ended: “How do we capture the imagination outside of the peak moments? It doesn’t have to be grand. It is about individuals.”

Reverend Andy shared a story of his visit to a school – where the playground was at war. He returned to emphasise addressing what is in your power as he painted the powerful image of what such work looks like in practice:

He returned to this theme when he said: “One of the most powerful things you can do as a peacebuilder and bridge-builder is show up. If we show up in our own locality, for Eid, for iftar, for Christmas, that image is incredibly powerful.”

There was also honesty about the difficulty of this work. Reverend Andy acknowledged: “You can work for peace for 40 years and it can all be destroyed in one day.”

The work being done on the frontlines of peace often requires courage greater than any other – and the thickest of skins. There was no pretending by the panel that the work is easy. They testified that sometimes the toughest critiques come from those closest to you, from within your own community – but reminded us that the only way forward in such a diverse world is that we continue to have the tough conversations, engage with our interfaith neighbours, and find the common ground to build on together.

As one young leader put it: “This was a necessary discussion, and it was handled with grace and eloquence, which seems hard to come by. I feel deeply inspired to be bolder in engaging positively in inter and intra-faith discussions. I was moved by each of the speakers in their openness about their own challenges, and uplifted to hear the work they had been doing.”

Parliament, Young People, Interfaith and the Future

There was something significant about holding this conversation in Parliament. The setting underscored the fact that interfaith leadership is not marginal to public life. It belongs at the centre of conversations about democracy, community cohesion, and the kind of society we are building together.

For the ParliaMentors participants and alumni in the room, the event reflected something central to the programme itself: the belief that the next generation of leaders must be equipped to navigate difference with confidence and care.

Politics, faith and social change cannot be neatly separated. The questions facing communities today are moral, civic and relational all at once. Spaces like this matter because they help young people engage that complexity with seriousness, humility and confidence.

If there was one lesson running through the evening, it was this: meaningful interfaith work is not about pretending differences do not exist. It is about learning how to engage those differences with integrity. In divided times, that kind of leadership matters more than ever. This is the work that the Faith & Belief Forum has been doing for nearly thirty years – and that the Light Foundation has been doing across the North West – bringing people together across difference for the difficult but necessary conversations that build understanding, trust and lasting change.