Bonus Episode: Foujan Jenner (Barnet WIN)

In our bonus episodes, we speak to women from our Women's Interfaith Network (WIN) community to share their stories and give their own unique perspectives on keeping faith. 

In our sixth bonus episode, Foujan Jenner, from WIN’s Barnet group shares her journey into interfaith work, the difference between tolerating and celebrating our differences, and what ‘keeping faith’ means to her. 

Learn more about interfaith work in Barnet through Barnet Multi Faith Forum.

Find out more about WIN's grassroots women's groups and our wide-ranging projects.
Read our origin story here.

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide is part of Women’s Interfaith Network's 2024 Keeping Faith Programme. Read more about the programme here and be the first to hear about upcoming events and ways to get involved by signing up to our newsletter. Views expressed on this podcast are the speaker’s own and may not reflect the views of Women’s Interfaith Network.

Hosted by Maeve Carlin

Produced by Maeve Carlin and Adam Brichto

Edited by Adam Brichto

Executive Produced by Lady Gilda Levy

Theme music composed by Jamie Payne

Logo and Artwork designed by Jasey Finesilver

Support from Tara Corry

Transcript

Maeve Carlin: Welcome to Keeping Faith, a how to guide, a new podcast from Women’s Interfaith Network exploring how women keep faith in ourselves, in each other, in a cause, or in religious faith so you can learn how to keep faith too.

I'm your host, Maeve Carlin, and in our sixth bonus episode, recorded at the end of 2024, we hear from Foujan Jenner, a member of our Barnet Wynne group, and of Barnet Multifaith Forum. Foujan shares the story behind her long-standing involvement in interfaith work, the joy of celebrating not tolerating our differences, and how she keeps faith through community.

In each bonus episode, we've been speaking to women from our Women's Interfaith Network community. for joining us. Both the WIN team working behind the scenes and our amazing members, sharing their stories and giving their own unique perspectives on keeping faith. We hope these bonus episodes help unpack what interfaith really means to our community, what it looks like on the ground, and to learn more about the women who make Women's Interfaith Network what it is.

But for now, let's jump into our conversation with Foujan Jenner 

Maeve Carlin: Welcome, Foujan, to the podcast. 

Foujan: Thank you for the invite and a big hello and a warm hello to everybody who's listening. 

Maeve Carlin: Yes, and I know you're a new WIN member, so we also have to say welcome to the family. 

Foujan: Thank you. 

Maeve Carlin: And what drew you to get involved with WIN? 

Foujan: To be honest, somebody asked me if I'd be interested, and as a member of the Baha'i community, we always celebrate women and all the things they can achieve. And how they haven't been empowered enough. So it came naturally to say, yes, I will do it. 

But also I have got a history of different religious backgrounds. So it went well to go to an interfaith network. I am an Iranian, raised in Iran, so that was an Islamic country. Then moved to UK, I guess Church of England, and then I moved to Israel, I lived there for 11 years. I met my husband there who's American and married there and I had my children there. And after that we moved to U. S. and Croatia and all the way back to here. 

I did a one year around the world and having been to different countries and seeing women in action of different faiths. And how much, uh, we are stronger together. That made me decide to join this WIN and I like the abbreviation 'cause it's “win”, “win-win”. 

Maeve Carlin: Yeah. 

Foujan: Yes. 

Maeve Carlin: No, it is. It is a win-win. It's, I think having a space that combines the importance of interfaith dialogue, but that is also women led, is really quite special. And I know that often resonates with a lot of people. So we're very lucky to have you. 

Foujan: Thank you. I just wanted to say already I've been to a few meetings and I have noticed it's not just celebrating our similarities, but we're also celebrating our differences because it's with the differences that we learn from each other. If we're all the same, it's not as exciting is it?

So these differences make us look at each other and learn from each other. So we celebrate both similarities and differences together. 

Maeve Carlin: That's such an important point, because I think often when people talk about interfaith they think, “oh, we just focus on what we have in common” and that's really important. But actually leaning into those differences, treating them as a learning opportunity can be really special. 

Foujan: Yes, I completely agree. 

Maeve Carlin: And I mean, you were talking about all the sort of organic ways that interfaith has come into your life, but you've had a longer history with interfaith with the Barnet Multifaith Forum in North London. So can you share with us what this word interfaith means to you and why you think it's so important in 2024? 

Foujan: Well, I think it's always been important and not just 2024, but you know, as a Baha'i, we're being told that we should consort with people of all religions with utmost friendliness and love. So I feel like it's an obligation that I get to know people of different backgrounds, not just people who are exactly like me or similar mentality.

So when you create these bonds of friendship, within interfaith, you look at everything with another light, don't you? So when a friend comes in a room from whatever religion, I see them as the human being that they are. And what I don't appreciate is when people say interfaith enables you to tolerate each other.

And I completely find that difficult to swallow because tolerate is almost means like we're putting up with each other whereas interfaith, again using the word celebrating each other and learning to respect one another and listening to each other's point of view and having that space together. 

Maeve Carlin: Yes. That's such an important point. We're not just tolerating our differences. They're special things. They are enriching. We're not putting up with each other. 

Foujan: Yes. 

Maeve Carlin: And one of the great things about interfaith work is it encourages a really hyper-local grassroots way of working - certainly at WIN, that's very much how we work with our grassroots groups.

Can you give us a snapshot of what interfaith looks like on the ground in your community and the impact you've seen locally? 

Foujan: So in Barnet, north of London, and already, uh, the short time that I've been in this side of interfaith, I've seen how much we are enriching the community by having activities of different faiths that we all organise together.

It's not that I'm going to organise something for just my faith. But we all organise. A wonderful thing that we organise is a peace and faith walk, which enables anybody from any faith to come together and have these uplifting conversations together while we are having a walk in nature. Or we had recently organised Celebrating Oneness.

It was a panel and each faith spoke about how we celebrate our oneness. And it was most interesting to hear each other's view on these topics. So I think by putting all this out there, we invite the whole of Barnet. It really helps awaken people that there are things going on in the community where different faiths are coming together and celebrating each other's faith, no matter what it is.

I mean, recently, and we're organising Christmas carols and we're saying verses of the Bible in different languages. I'm not a Christian, but I am going to be one of the ones who are reading. And we had Diwali, and it's just wonderful to work together. And put forth each other's religion and in this unity work together.

Maeve Carlin: Wow. That sounds like such a lovely range of events. And also I just think the idea that people in the community see it as normal, that different faith communities celebrate together and celebrate each other and support each other. The more we see that as a sort of normal expected organic thing, the better for all of us, I think.

Foujan: Exactly, exactly. And it is normal. Who can tell me in their streets there is not a variety of, just in their own neighbourhood, variety of faiths, variety of skin colour, or accents, or whatever you want? It's all this, uh, adds to this beautiful diversity that we have. It's unity in diversity that we need to achieve, not unity in sameness.Yes. 

Maeve Carlin: Exactly. Unity in sameness. How boring that would be. 

Foujan: How boring would that be, yes. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, throughout our 20th anniversary year, we've been coming back to this question of how we keep faith. Whether that's in a cause that matters to us, our community, or in belief or religion. And I'd love to hear what this means to you, maybe one way you've been keeping faith in your own life recently. 

Foujan: For me, keeping faith is to go to the core of my belief on a daily basis and not dwell too much on how us human beings have corrupted what faith should be. I think I look at every faith and they are trying to bring peace, love and unity among all people.

And then you see human beings throughout time have come up with ways to divide, ways to cause war and blame it on religion. And I keep faith by trying to look at every awful thing that's going around me as the shortcomings of human beings and for them not going back to the core of their faith, which is to help one another, to love one another, to try to do good for your neighbours even, everybody who you meet. So I keep faith in that way. 

But another way is I look at the children who are our future, right? And youth is a group of young people between the age of 12 to 15, and I've been involved in teaching virtues classes with these age groups, children or junior youth, and so has my daughter. And it really gives me hope.

It gives me faith in the future because, you know, for one, you see that they're all spiritual beings. We are all spiritual beings. We were brought to the world as spiritual beings. And they will long for these beautiful virtues of kindness and love and caring, looking after each other. And if they're nurtured to develop these from the young age, it just becomes natural to them.

One of the things that really touched my heart is when I was with a group of junior youth, and we look at the grassroots - what can we do in our own neighbourhood to make this place a better place? 12, 13 year-olds can have such amazing ideas of what projects we can do. For example, one young girl said, “I think we should go to a nursing home and offer to colour their nails”, which I thought was just such a sweet thought that maybe I wouldn't have thought of it.

And when you go and do good for another person, how happy you feel after that. And when we came back and reflected, how much joyful they were to be with people who could have been their great grandmother's age and helping them with little things like this. Or go clean a park, you know, a park that they go to every day. They notice people are throwing rubbish around. And I said, let's just us go and be an example. 

I think these give me hope and give me faith. Because I see the good in every person, and I see the possibilities. I don't know, it's just a, just a thought. 

Maeve Carlin: No, it's a beautiful thought, and I think that point about intergenerational connection is so important. Over the last year, me and my colleagues have been given invitations to come and talk to young people about interfaith and what that means and what that looks like and how it can really look like anything. It looks like what motivates you, what inspires you. And to be in a room with young people who are really thinking about these questions, it is uplifting, it is inspiring and it does, it does keep faith for you, I think.

Foujan: It does, it does for me. I, I see the future can be bright. You know, we see a lot of gloominess when we turn on the news, but if we can just start with our own neighbourhood, with our own little families and extended family and friends and getting involved in all these different charitable activities really uplifts us. And at the same time, you're helping your own community. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, we've been speaking about the positives there, but in the last few years, it has felt really hard at times to keep bringing communities together, whether it's a global pandemic, bringing loss and isolation, political upheaval, or far right extremism like we saw this summer.

What would you say to someone listening whose lost faith in common ground and maybe feels we've become too divided for dialogue? 

Foujan: Well, first of all, I would invite them to join a WIN group or an interfaith group or a multi-faith, whatever name you want to call it on there. 

Once you join one of these groups or start doing charitable work, you will see people of different backgrounds. And you will see how much we actually can do together and how we are when we are stronger together, you know, when we're together, we're stronger. We always have this example of a twig you can break easily, but if a bunch of them is very hard to break. So if you're together, working together, you're just so much stronger.

So I would invite people to come and join these activities and see for themselves first-hand that there is hope and there are so many similarities. Every person I speak to wants peace in the world. I have not met one person, whatever faith, background, or wherever they're from. We all want peace for our families, for our children, for ourselves. For everybody in the world. How beautiful the world will look if we had peace globally? Not just our own little corner, but globally, everybody would be happier. 

When you start losing faith, or losing hope maybe, one thing that really helps me is when I help someone else in whatever way. Serving humanity gives you a vision that is worldwide, that together we can bring peace and unity in the world.

After all, you know, the earth is actually one of the writings, Baha'i writings: the earth is one country and mankind its citizen. So it's us who are creating these divisions. It isn't the faith of people. It's us not understanding our faith correctly and, you know, trying to go back to the core and just trying to understand what was the reason of a faith coming. It was to bring us closer together. 

The first step is maybe come to some of our- in Barnet we advertise it on social media, the council advertises it on their website- to come and see, see for yourself first-hand, and maybe there'll be, you know, start to something beautiful. 

Maeve Carlin: Well, Foujan, thank you so much for making the time, so many beautiful uplifting points in there.

Foujan: If we don't have hope, it'll be a really difficult life.

Maeve Carlin: we hope you enjoyed our sixth bonus episode, learning more about the women behind the network. You can find out more about how to join or start a WIN group near you, as well as what's next for our 20th anniversary Keeping Faith program via the links in our show notes.

We're coming to the end of this series of the podcast but we still have some really special conversations coming up, so do watch this space. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Keeping Faith: A How To Guide. Subscribe now on your podcast app to be the first to hear about our upcoming episodes, and please leave a review or share with a friend to help more people find us. To find out more about the podcast, the 2024 Keeping Faith Programme or to get involved with the Women’s Interfaith Network, you can follow the links in our episode notes or go to wominet.org.uk. Until next time, Keep Faith!

Keeping Faith: A How-To Guide was created by Women’s Interfaith Network. The podcast is co-produced by me, Maeve Carlin, and Adam Brichto. Our executive producer is Lady Gilda Levy. Theme music was composed by Jamie Payne and our logo was designed by Jasey Finesilver. Additional Support from Tara Corry.