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“We established the forum because faith matters to the well-being of everyone in Tower 
Hamlets. Harmonising the collective power of our numerous faiths is the first step towards fulfilling their potential as a force for positive change and community cohesion”
Reverend Alan Green, Chair, Inter-Faith Forum.
The Inter Faith Forum made this website because faith is so important to us all in Tower Hamlets. The website is to help us all understand more about each other’s faith.
See Statements or visit About the Forum for more information.
Would you like to give back to the community?
Develop your training & facilitation skills to tackle discrimination and hate crime.
Visit Festivals and Celebrations to download the popular 2012 Inter Faith calendar.
The next Forum meeting will be 6pm on Tuesday 12 March 2013 at Account 3, Birkbeck Street, E2 6JY.
For further information about meetings and venues please go here.
THE “MUSLIM PATROL” – February 11 Update
At the beginning of January 2013 two videos were posted on YouTube of a small group of men on Fieldgate Street and Commercial Street telling people that this was a Muslim area and they were not allowed to drink alcohol on the streets, that women were behaving like animals because of their dress and that a gay man was dirty and should not be allowed in this place.
The police have now made six arrests. Those original vids have been removed after police action, but the flavour of them is found in this CNN report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcsG-u2GtZE
There is quite a lot of chatter about the vids around the Web, some of it with malicious intent, suggesting that the six are more representative of the Muslim population than they are – actually, some of them are already known to local mosques as trouble makers within the Muslim community.
There have been a number of measured responses from Muslims – here is a very good address given at Ebrahim College, a school and educational foundation in Whitechapel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpDJTBBwrKM
His main point is that those who preach Sharia must try to live by it – these young men are breaking Islamic principles by trying to force their rules on non-Muslims and giving such a bad impression of their religion.
The arrests have been part of very good partnership working between Police, Council and community groups – including the East London Mosque, the Council of Mosques and Rainbow Hamlets (the local LGBT organisation). This, of course, is under reported – as is the fact that all six that have been arrested do not live in our Borough.
This is a key point: whose community is this, whose streets are the streets they tried to ‘patrol’? In the end it does not matter whether they are demanding Sharia or England for the English – they are outsiders actively attempting to undermine our community because we offend them by living well together. Once again we need to show that we are proud of our diversity and committed to working to maintain it. This does not mean papering over the cracks – such diversity naturally brings strains and difficulties which we have to acknowledge and seek to resolve – but it does mean actively preventing those who want to magnify those cracks into great gulfs of separation, whether by shouting on the streets or blinkered writing in the papers.
I would like to draw your attention to the shocking anti semitic mural which is totally unacceptable, outmoded caricatures of jewish people. I suggestyou lobby the council to ensure it is removed forthwith. Not wanting to offend or upset members of my family, I will not be able to walk with them past this and will have to think up excuses to take a different path. this is something my grandmother would have done 70 years ago. Can you believe the islamic community would be happy with stereotypical cartoons of their faith so close to their community? What goes for one faith should go for all faiths
It does go for all faiths! There is no support for this mural from any section of the community. The Council issued the following statement on Thursday, with a comment from the Chair of THIFF:
The mural in Hanbury Street is not on council property but we are responding to a number of complaints about it. We are working with the police in order to establish how best to proceed.
The Revd. Preb. Alan Green, Area Dean of Tower Hamlets and Rector of St John on Bethnal Green, who serves as Chair of the No Place For Hate Forum, said: “Whilst I appreciate street art in Tower Hamlets, it must always respect the principles of our diverse community. This mural uses images that have for centuries been used to incite hatred and persecution against Jewish communities. There is no place for such incitement against any community in this borough”.
Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman added: “I have received a number of complaints that the ‘New World Order’ mural on Hanbury Street has anti-Semitic images. I share these concerns. Whether intentional or otherwise the images of the bankers perpetuate anti-Semitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions. I am of the view that, where freedom of expression runs the risk of inciting racial hatred, as for example when the EDL attempted to march in Tower Hamlets last year, then it is right that such expression should be curtailed. I have, therefore, asked my officers to do everything possible to see to it that this mural is removed”.