Alif-Aleph Foundation

Alif Aleph Foundation was a interfaith organisation set up in 1997.

It was registered as a company (Alif-Aleph UK Limited Company number 06441502) between incorporation date: 30 November 2007; and dissolution date: 20 January 2009. It was dissolved by voluntary strike off in January 2009.

According to some sources 'In 1997 Maimonides initiated the Alif-Aleph Foundation, intended as a forum ‘for businesspeople of both faiths’. According to the same source: 'The Jewish counterpart of Calamus is the Maimonides Foundation, established in 1985 by Richard Stone, Greville Janner MP, and Rabbi Hugo Gryn, all members of the reform branch of Judaism.'

According to the website of Stone Ashdown in 2006:

Stone Ashdown has supported the development of Alif-Aleph (AAUK) through grants and strategic planning and fundraising. The website contains a calendar of events, you can download reports and publications and sign up for newsletters and membership. The newsletter is produced fortnightly, includes articles of interest to membership, with updates on activities of AAUK and of affiliate organisations and individuals.

Visit to a Mosque, 1998

Regent’s Park Mosque in London has recently hosted its first official Jewish visitors. Members of the Alif-Aleph Foundation visited the centre’s library, listened to a talk by the mosque’s education officer, and watched the afternoon prayers. The Foundation is part of the work of the Maimonides Foundation, a charity set up to promote dialogue between Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Maimonides founding chairman, Dr David Khalili said: "Unless you learn about the roots of each other’s religion, you have a problem" (Jewish Chronicle, 25.09.98).

Mapping report, 2005

Alif-Aleph produced a mapping report in 2005 which was a project of the Uniting Britain Trust a registered Charity (No. 1063484) created in 1997 and removed from the Charity register in 2017.. It launched a manifesto in 2004.

Manifesto

The manifesto was launched in 2004. It is reproduced in full here.

We are British Muslims and British Jews who aim together to build creative partnerships in the UK.

We live here. We belong here.

We are not going away.

We have every reason to work creatively together to the benefit of our own communities, and to spread the example of joint working to the other communities who inhabit these islands.

We wish to build on the positive contributions both of our communities have already made to British society, culture and business.

We find ourselves living side by side in a country where we are both minorities, and both significant contributors to society. This provides new opportunities for us to draw on our positive histories together to contribute to social cohesion in Britain.

We have a common experience of having to address hostilities that derive from mistaken stereotypes of our religions and our cultures, leading to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. The reality that confounds these mistaken stereotypes is that our religions have more in common with each other than with other religions. We have very similar cultural traditions rooted in the religious commonality.

We both come from traditions of the Book, traditions that are literate, inquiring and remarkably tolerant of differing and minority views when debating and analysing our Texts.

We regret the divisive effects of the Israel/Palestine conflict spilling over from abroad. Alif-Aleph UK aims to build on mutual understandings of the natural sympathies we each have in that conflict, and then move beyond that discussion working jointly for mutual benefit in this country.

We recognise that those who wish to find reasons for our two communities not to meet are driven to import from abroad their reasons for division and hostility. Even those external negative reasons are undermined by the amazing number of projects in the Middle East where Jews and Palestinians are maintaining and developing joint activities in the face of political drives toward division and separation.

We sign this Manifesto to demonstrate our commitment to the ideas in it and encourage others to join us.

We welcome people who are neither Muslims nor Jews to sign the Manifesto to be Associates, as a token of their support for what we are doing, and for the help that they can give us.

We anticipate that this manifesto can be adapted as a responsible basis of a later Manifesto not just for British Muslims and British Jews, but also inclusive of all communities and individuals who live in the UK.

People

Rokhsana Fiaz | Dilwar Hussain From 2005/6, he was Co-Chair

Directors of the company

• OLIVER LEONARD LOVAT Secretary, PROPERTY MANAGER, 2007.11.30 - 2009.01.20
• RICHARD JOHN VARLEY Director, POLICE OFFICER, 2007.11.30 - 2009.01.20
• SALMAN SIDDIQUI Director, ACCOUNTANT, 2007.11.30 - 2008.05.28

Alif-Aleph UK Steering Group Members, Circa 2005

Maqsood Ahmad Solma Ahmed Zaki Badawi Shareefa Fulat Clive Gabay Paul Gross Taj Hussain Nadeem Kazmi Roheema Miah Donna Sherrington Richard Stone

Staff

Luciana Berger, Clive Gabay and Donna Sherrington

Resources

• https://www.tandis.odihr.pl/bitstream/20.500.12389/19432/1/01662.pdf
• https://web.archive.org/web/20111009153010/http://www.stoneashdown.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=41

Publications

• A Mapping Report of Positive Contact Between British Muslims and British Jews By Fiona Hurst and Mohammed Nisar (First stage) Claire Berliner and Urmee Khan (Second stage) Supervised by Dilwar Hussain and Dr Keith Kahn-Harris Edited by Rebecca Sharkey Commissioned and published by The Uniting Britain Trust July 2005.