They became friends amid tragedy and now they’re sharing a message of interfaith unity
Ibrahim Syed and Max Marcus first met in the wake of the October 7 2023 attacks in Israel(Image: Supplied/Ibrahim Syed)
Faith leaders have come together and issued a message of unity amid tragedy. Before October 7 2023, Ibrahim Syed, 42, the Liverpool Region Mosque Coordinator and Max Marcus, 71, the former Chair of the Merseyside Jewish Representative Council, didn’t know one another, never mind having spoken before.
However, amid the growing tensions in the Middle East at that time, Ibrahim said he was eager to try and build ties with the Jewish community in Liverpool. Ibrahim told the ECHO: “It was just in the aftermath of October 7 2023 where both myself and the Chair of the Merseyside Jewish Representative Council, Max Marcus and me in my capacity as Liverpool Region Mosque Coordinator wanted to reach out to the local Jewish community.
“We met for the first time on October 20 in the Liver Building café and it was an awkward encounter because we both felt quite uneasy with the whole situation, but we unpacked it and we went through what we both believed in terms of the conflict but also the history of the region. But, most importantly we talked about each other’s faiths and our own family stories.”
Ibrahim Syed, co-ordinator Liverpool Region Mosque Network.
While he admitted slight trepidation before meeting Max for the first time, since then the bond between the pair has grown immeasurably.
Ibrahim said: “We held an event at the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque which was attended by council leaders, police and other mosque leaders and the two Jewish community representatives came to that and then we’ve just kept the the dialogue going. I was invited to King David High School to visit, I’ve been invited to Hanukkah events, civic services, and over the course of time we’ve become friends.
“When the riots were happening in Southport, and then in Liverpool subsequently in summer 2024 and I was obviously coordinating with mosques and the police and it was quite a tense time, I received a message from Max in the summer of 2024 and it was quite a touching one saying ‘look, we’re really feeling for you know and the goodness of our communities really needs to shine through this’.”
After Max reached out in support of Ibrahim and Liverpool’s Muslim community in the aftermath of the riots which unfolded in Merseyside after the Southport attacks, tragedy struck the Jewish community in October 2, 2025 when Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester was attacked leading to the deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby.
Max Marcus, Former Chair of the Merseyside Jewish Representative Council(Image: Supplied/Max Marcus)
Looking back to that time, Max recalled the support from Ibrahim. He said: “Receiving that message from Ibrahim was was very consoling and it personally gave me a warm feeling and it was a reminder that this is not the norm, this is not what Muslims do.
“Despite what some people say about our faiths, the vast majority want to live peacefully with each other and don’t participate and don’t support [what happened].”
As the pair have come together in times of need over the last few years, Max believes their message of unity can be something which others around the world can learn from.
He said: “We keep on doing what we can do to show people that we’re just like them, we have very poor people within our community, we have successful people in our community just like they do.
“What I do with Ibrahim and his associates and you know each time we meet it’s showing that we do get on and we want to continue to prosper together and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t.”
Meanwhile, Ibrahim shared his message of unity, saying their faiths have more in common than people may think.
He said: “We can be friends despite what people think and faiths shouldn’t be there to divide us, they should be there to unite us because the values that we share particularly between Judaism, Christianity and Islam all emanate from the same roots.
“If you look at kosher food and halal food or if you look at fasting during Lent these sorts of things are really common, even if you take the greeting of peace it’s in Islam, it’s As-salamu alaykum in Hebrew, it’s Shalom Aleichem it’s almost identical.”
