Reading Jewish and Muslim women: Literature and/as interfaith Work

In contemporary Britain, Muslims and Jews are polarised. A book group, however, serves as a fruitful intermediary. In this article, I examine the dynamics of a Jewish-Muslim women’s book group. Reading Jewish and Muslim women’s writing, participants centred their gendered subject positions within patriarchal religions and discussed complex issues, e.g., Israel/Palestine, through literature, making the group a site to explore topics uniting, and dividing, their communities. Seeing members of the group as ‘sisters in humanity,’ participants learned about each other, and their own faith communities, and developed relationships that lay the groundwork for productive dialogue and shared social action.