Lines of Faith

By Mohammed Yahya, Daniel Silverstein and Alex Smith

In a week in which the BNP has further sought to sow lines of division, LabourList looks at an inter-faith collaboration that is bringing people together around Hope and community action.

Lines of Faith is a unique collaboration between Mohammed Yahya and Daniel Silverstein. Mohammed is a devout Muslim, having converted to Islam in 2004, and Daniel is an Orthodox Jew. Both Mohammed and Daniel are MCs, spoken word artists, event organisers, community activists, and educators who are well known within their own communities.

Each had been on their own path until, they say, fate brought them together in the Spring of 2008 for a speculative meeting about planning a one-off event.

“We knew from the first meeting it wasn’t going to be a one-off,” says Yahya, smiling. Silverstein adds, “There was a deep chemistry that came from us having a very similar relationship to our faith”.

Whereas religion is so often perceived as divisive – or perhaps more accurately as an excuse for divisiveness – in the case of Daniel and Mohammed it was the depth and authenticity of their respective religious practices that formed the foundation for the relationship.

Both Yayha and Silverstein are passionate in their faith, and equally passionate in harnessing their faith to improve themselves and the world around them. They are also both strongly committed to helping their own communities and others to identify and heal their prejudices. At that first meeting, the pair immediately realised they were on the same wavelength, and seeing the potential for collaboration, they founded Lines of Faith, a Muslim-Jewish hip hop and spoken word collective.

Within a few weeks, they were writing songs and rehearsing with a full live band, which they have taken to crowds of thousands, at festivals and venues across London and Europe. The music touches on the difficult issues of land and faith in the Middle East. The storytelling is original, personal and catchy – and often as witty as it is heartbreaking.

Both Yahya and Silverstein are visible, proud, members of their own communities, with long track records of activism on a communal and political level. If Lines of Faith had been founded by a Jew and Muslim who were less vocal, or less passionate in their faith, they say, it would be easy to dismiss it as just another example of multi-cultural do-gooding.

“A lot of inter-faith groups do great work but they only seem to deal with people who already have all the same opinions,” observes Silverstein. “It’s not like that with us – there are big differences in where we’re coming from, in what we’ve experienced, in how we see things. We have to talk to each other about everything, and we’re always learning, both of us, all the time,” Yahya adds.

The pair connect with people through genuine dialogue, which is not built on trying to convince one another, but rather a commitment to listening and learning from each other. They don’t agree on everything, of course, but that doesn’t hinder their ability to work together or to promote community cohesion.

As well as the band, two of their main projects are a schools-based education programme and a campus tour, which is where both artists feel they can make the most important contribution. Silverstein, who has over fifteen years of experience in youth-work within his own community, says:

“If you can change the way one young person looks at himself, and relates to others, the ripples from that can be endless, and can transform the lives of countless other people that you might not ever even meet.”

The duo travel to schools, putting on workshops that empower young people to use poetry and music to address difficult issues, both secular and faith-based, communal and universal, and so help re-create young people’s own identities and allow them to express themselves with increased confidence.

Yahya explains:

“When people are more confident and knowledgeable about who they are, they don’t get so threatened by other people being different to them. We don’t pretend to be all exactly the same – we go in there and explore what makes us all unique – and we find a deeper unity through that.”

Lines of Faith now runs programmes at Muslim, Jewish, Christian and mixed schools across London, and are looking forward to spreading their work nationally. Another project, their campus tour, has a distinct urgency to it, since Muslim-Jewish relations on UK campuses have deteriorated worryingly in the past ten years, and incidents of verbal and physical abuse between Muslim and Jewish students are becoming increasingly common. This tension is aggravated – perhaps even caused – by the conflict in the Middle East, and so when the boys visit campuses, they make a particular effort not to shy away from the difficult issues, but to address them directly.

“It wasn’t easy, but after a few months of trying, we eventually wrote a song about what’s going on in Israel and Palestine, and how we feel about it,” Silverstein begins to explain, and Yahya finishes the thought:

“Whatever we say, there’s gonna be people criticising us for being too-this or too-that, so it’s hard to find a balance. In the end, we just have to say what we really think and feel about the situation. Basically we’re against suffering, we’re against people dying and living in misery when other solutions can be found. It’s not that complicated.”

And the response to that most sensitive of issues?

“When we perform that song, people can’t believe what they’re hearing; we get to some really harsh truths. They’ve never heard anyone say this stuff so directly in this form, so they tend to stop dancing and just stare at us, listening intently to the words.”

Silverstein jumps in: “But when the song is finished, we’ve tied it all together, and brought it to a positive conclusion, so there’s a big feeling of release, like something cathartic has occurred. People come up to us and express themselves freely, some of them are crying – it’s intense.”

To learn more about Lines of Faith, to listen to their music, or to get involved, you can visit:

www.myspace.com/linesoffaith

www.psychosemitic.com/