Maha Abdo is the CEO of Muslim Women Australia. Chapter 7 shares how she negotiated sameness and difference at a Sydney Alliance meeting in 2010.
Maha entered the room carrying what she described as a “heavy heart”. The meeting brought together religious leaders, union secretaries and community organisers, including representatives from the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, in the shadow of an upsurge in violence between Israel and Palestine. Maha had just returned from a spiritual retreat and knew she did not want to belong to an organisation that “cancelled people out for the actions of others”.
When another leader named “international conflict” as a potential barrier to the Alliance’s work, she stood up and spoke. She spoke about the violence in Gaza, about the harm caused when Muslims and Arabs are judged collectively, and how difficult it was for her to work in an alliance that included a Zionist organisation. She did not speak to win an argument or force people onto sides. She spoke so that others might better understand her experience and what it meant to carry that difference while they all worked to find sameness.
What made the moment consequential was not that the room reached consensus, but that the relationships held. Robin Margo from the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies responded without defensiveness, thanking Maha for saying plainly what others had often left unspoken. Others then stepped forward in support, turning what could have remained a Muslim–Jewish impasse into a shared concern for the whole alliance.
Maha’s story shows that difference does not disappear when people act together. Sometimes it becomes more visible. The question is whether a tribe has relationships strong enough for difference to be spoken, heard and held without collapsing the possibility of common action.
