CHERIE BOOTH told a network of women from different religions yesterday that attempts to build a new society should start in the home and on the street.

The Prime Minister’s wife was speaking at the Royal College of Physicians to 150 women at the first meeting of the Women’s Interfaith Network. The network was started by a group of women from different religions who wanted to do something for interfaith religions in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Ms Booth said that it was important to challenge our own assumptions and to acknowledge that we “do not know everything”. She said: “A heartfelt desire to understand one another means browsing the web for information on other cultures, reading up on Islamic law, paging through the Torah, visiting pensioners, talking to teenage mothers about the challenges and joys in their lives.”

The most effective way of learning about people of different faiths and cultures was to befriend someone from a minority group or different religion. “Trapped in the insular chambers of ourselves and our limited experience, we may not know for example that it is against the Muslim religion to charge interest, or that there is seldom little choice involved when someone discovers that they are gay.”

Ms Booth, a committed Roman Catholic, gave as an example her mother, Gayle, who had smiled regularly at a woman from an Asian family in her street over a number of years. The woman eventually began smiling back and they now held conversations with each other.

The meeting also heard from Lady Levy, wife of Lord Levy, Tony Blair’s adviser on the Middle East. Lady Levy, who co-founded the group with Pinky Lilani, chairman of the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, said that the network had been set up in response to the “terrible, terrible catastrophe of September 11”.

She said that the attacks had left many communities feeling frightened and insecure. “When I look at the world today it is very, very depressing. There is almost nowhere in the world without problems, massacres, terrorism, repression, violence and bigotry.”

She said that it was important to “open our hearts and our minds to the dignity and humanity of others. We have to look past labels — labels of race and religion and colour and sexuality. When we dehumanise another people we dehumanise ourselves and degrade our own humanity.”

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