Laura Marks, co-founder of Nisa-Nashim, a Jewish-Muslim women’s network, expressed feeling “punch drunk” after the alleged attempted murder of two Jewish men in north London this week. “Every day it feels like there is something else. It’s relentless,” she said.
Nisa-Nashim was established eight years ago as a charity to bring Jewish and Muslim women together through social events, aiming to nurture relationships that could overcome distrust, division, and religious stereotyping exacerbated by Israel-Palestine tensions.
The violence in Golders Green, part of a wave of attacks targeting the Jewish community amid the deepening Middle East conflict, feels like a demoralising rebuke to projects like Nisa-Nashim that have worked tirelessly for community cohesion. Marks, a former advertising executive and social activist, admits to occasional despair but remains an optimist. “If I don’t believe I can make things a bit better, then what am I doing? But it is difficult,” she said.
Marks noted that the work is not primarily aimed at addressing extreme radicalisation, where “a bit of hanging out together is not going to make any difference.” Instead, the challenge is the malign effects of local violence and the wider conflict, which ratchet up fear, suspicion, and distrust. The goal is to help ordinary Jews and Muslims acknowledge their similarities and differences in culture, history, scripture, and food.
The 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent Gaza conflict made this work much more difficult. Support for Nisa-Nashim waned as the Gaza crisis grew, with some volunteers deterred by online abuse, extremist threats, or family concerns. Marks emphasised that community safety is the immediate priority, but long-term, “we can’t live behind walls. We have to build bridges.”
Mohammed Amin, co-chair of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, a voluntary group set up over 20 years ago, expressed “horror and dismay” at the Golders Green attacks. He believes the forum’s work makes a tangible difference by encouraging tolerance, understanding, and empathy. “People get to know each other. We have seen real friendships emerge,” he said.
Amin looks forward to a forum-arranged trip to a kosher-halal fish and chip restaurant in Leeds staffed by Muslims and Jews. While such events cannot change international politics, they help change the atmosphere and defuse tension. He stressed that addressing cultural cohesion requires political leadership and a change in political culture, criticising politicians who “trade on sowing division and resentment,” citing Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s comments after the Southport riots in 2024.
Marks called for government investment in interfaith and cohesion work, describing it as “social cohesion at the coalface.” Amin concluded that community tensions ebb and flow with Middle East conflicts, but local interfaith work is vital: “If you increase connectivity, you decrease hostility. The key is to recognise we are all ordinary human beings.”
