The LSE Faith Centre recently hosted a conversation between Sami Awad and Lindsay Simmonds on peacebuilding and promoting interfaith relations. Here we publish a recording of the event and Eliana Abdo‘s introduction to the two speakers and their work in this area.

At the beginning of December the LSE Faith Centre hosted Sami Awad, founder of the Holy Land Trust, for a lunchtime discussion reflecting on faith, leadership and his peacebuilding journey. He was in conversation with Dr Lindsay Simmonds, an associate faculty member at the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS) who recently concluded her PhD in Gender Studies here at LSE.

Sami, who lives in Bethlehem, has been a friend of the Faith Centre for six years now. Since 2014, we have taken an interfaith group of students to visit Israel and Palestine on our annual Interfaith Encounter programme. Part of the programme itinerary is a visit to the Holy Land Trust, founded by Awad in 1998 to promote non-violent resistance and to foster the understanding, healing and empowerment of people in the region.

Lindsay has been involved in interfaith work for several years. She cooperates with Nisa-Nashim, a UK-based Jewish–Muslim women’s network that builds connections between the two communities, while also doing really ground-breaking work within the Orthodox Jewish community around gender, interfaith dialogue and the Israeli–Palestinians conflict, topics often not discussed in more conservative environments.

Listen to the recording here.

Note: This piece gives the views of the author(s), and not the position of the LSE Religion and Global Society blog, nor of the London School of Economics.