Article
Comment
General Election 24
Politics
4 min read

Democracy and dairy don't mix

Let's remember the principles of political engagement.
A woman throws a milkshake at a politician, the milk is mid-flight in a curved shape.
Political engagement?
Twitter

Nigel Farage is best known for dividing opinion. It is for a politician like Mr Farage that we adapted ‘Marmite’ from a noun to an adjective - people either love or hate him. I’d like to think of myself as an elevated individual, floating above the fray of yeast-based debate with grace and equanimity. I find Mr Farage funny, because he is. I dislike much of what he stands for, because it is unlikable. It all balances out. I neither love nor hate him. I see him as a, somewhat amusing and somewhat problematic, bit of topography on the political map. I can’t really bring myself to have any feelings towards him which are stronger than a chuckling-wincing-indifference.  

Others, it would seem, have more passion. On Tuesday,  Mr Farage was doused in milkshake; ‘vanilla’, intrepid journalists reported. The response was immediate. Howls of laughter from those who find Mr Farage odious. Fulmination from those who support him. Claims of a ‘false flag operation’ from some. Shouts about ‘political violence’ and a ‘slippery slope’ from others. Much like the man, the milkshake roused the commentariat into absolute histrionics. Who on earth is right? 

The latter group. 

Obviously! 

Shock often elicits a laugh - a way of softening the tension one finds themselves inhabiting. It doesn’t mean the joke is funny. The milkshake wasn’t funny, however much some forcibly bray with laughter. It was an unkind, juvenile, contradictory act of foolishness from someone who seems to believe that true political engagement is dairy-based. It was also an attempt to set a precedent which no civilised person can accept. Those shouting about the ‘slippery slope’ are correct, for the ‘slippery slope’ is simply a phrase which is synonymous with the concept of ‘precedent’. 

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour.

Precedents’ are fundamentally progressive. You set a precedent for something, and soon people wish to argue for a precedent which goes further. Be under no illusion, milkshake can very quickly become a much nastier and more dangerous liquid in the minds of many. The principle that those who are standing for elected office must be treated with absolute respect is one which is either absolute or non-existent. There is no in-between. 

I do not mean that we must treat our political class with kid gloves. We must interrogate their platforms, positions, and policies with rigour. If they propose an idea which we find deficient or problematic (or even odious!) then we must hold them to account and demand an explanation. This is the right (perhaps even the duty?) of all engaged in the democratic process. We can never, however, allow our passion and consternation to devolve into the physical. Language and action are inextricably linked, yet there is an obvious and distinct gulf between them which we must preserve at all costs. 

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning.

On the day the election was announced, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a plea: put “…good grace and a commitment to truth and integrity…” at the heart of the campaign. We ought to demand this of our political class; but we can’t expect it of those standing for election if we do not practice it ourselves.  

Our elected representatives feel embattled like never before. The number of MPs standing down at this election is remarkable. The number who are calling for mandatory police protection of MPs is depressing. The number who have experienced threats and/or/of violence is unconscionable. The number who have been murdered in the last thirty years - two - is horrific and shameful.  

We will never get the best out of our MPs if we do not give them OUR best! 

If the Archbishops are not enough to convince you, perhaps Jesus will be. Jesus was faced with regular attack, both verbal and physical. He responded with love (‘turn the other cheek), verbal wit (render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s), and, ultimately, loving sacrifice (the Cross). He also regularly reminds us that our actions inform who we are and will become: “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 

The milkshake incident might elicit a laugh at first, but I hope anyone laughing ends up frowning. Firstly, because it was vulgar, callous, and rude: it was everything a civilised democratic process ought to reject. Secondly, and most importantly, because it demeans and degrades us all as a culture. Every such incident which is tolerated at all sets a precedent which we cannot accept. 

Our political processes, flawed and hypocritical as they might sometime be, are intended to engender the fundamental principles of respect, integrity, and love of neighbour. If we see the meeting of Mr Farage and a milkshake as anything but disgusting, we are not worthy of such principles. 

Article
Comment
Freedom of Belief
Politics
War & peace
5 min read

Iranians long for regime change, but weigh up the cost

Dreams are easier to utter than act upon

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Smoke rises from the site of a bomb amid a high wide view of a city at twlight
Tehran.

I received an unexpected response from an Iranian friend of mine this week after asking how he and others were feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis. 

My friend - like many, a staunch advocate of regime change in Iran - told me that despite his long-standing enmity against the Islamic Republic and its leaders, the conflict had if anything brought Iranians together against a new, common enemy. 

For while he and many others would love to live in an Iran that offered them greater freedoms, they are also fiercely proud of their country and, as he put it, will seek to defend it at all costs. 

Both this friend and other Iranians that I have spoken to since the bombs began to fall last Friday have highlighted how Iran’s “territorial integrity” has been breached by Israel, in violation of international law. 

And so while some might perceive an attack on a tyrannical regime and its nuclear arsenal to be an exception to this rule, it should hardly surprise us that those within the country affected may take a different view. 

Both the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the exiled crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi - whom many perceive to be the most realistic leader of any new revolution - have used their platforms to call on Iranians to seize this moment to rise up and reclaim their land. 

Yet, with bombs falling all around them and a weakened regime still known to be capable of brutally responding to any attempts to revolt, such dreams are easier to utter than to act upon. 

Meanwhile, as Tehranis are encouraged to flee their city and some have already seen homes, loved ones or livelihoods destroyed, it may well be that Iranians have other things on their minds at present than attempting to overthrow their oppressors. 

One very present concern for many Iranians at the moment will be the fate of loved ones who remain in prisons as the aerial bombardment continues. 

Tehran’s Evin Prison, for example, is on the edge of District 3, which residents were told they must evacuate on Monday ahead of another onslaught. 

But as the Australian-British former political prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert noted in an interview with Sky News, the prisoners in Evin had no option to flee and instead found themselves locked inside tiny cells, hearing the sound of bombs and rumours of what was taking place but without any real clarity. 

“Nobody's going to have a clue what's going on, and it's utterly terrifying to think that you're locked in a place, you can't flee, you hide, you can't take action to protect yourself, and you don't have access to information,” she said.  

There is not even any guarantee, Moore-Gilbert noted, that these prisoners will be being taken care of by the prison guards, who will no doubt have other things on their mind. 

“There are literally thousands, dozens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people in prison in Iran, most of them Iranian civilians,” she said. “The prison population inside that country is enormous. The conditions are dire in the best of days. Do they even have electricity? Do they have running water? What on earth is going on? My heart goes out to them.” 

Among the many prisoners in Evin are a handful of Christians, detained or serving sentences on charges related to their religious activities but framed as “actions against national security”. 

Like many Iranians, Christians, as a long-oppressed minority, have every right to hope for a change in the country and a future Iran that would better embody the prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah, believed to have found their fulfilment in Jesus, of “freedom for the captives” and “good news for the poor”. 

And yet Iranian Christians must also wrestle with the biblical command to “submit to the governing authorities” and to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. 

It is, then, perhaps no surprise that in recent years, as hopes of regime change have regularly come and gone, that Iran’s Christians have tended to focus their prayers instead on the increase of “God’s kingdom”, as many more Iranians have continued to find new hope in the Christian faith. 

Such hopes, in theological terms, are built on firmer foundations than any dreams for a change in the nature and essence of tyrannical regimes like the one currently still clinging onto power in Tehran. 

And whatever the future brings, when this current crisis is over, the Iranians who have found their ultimate source of hope and joy in Jesus Christ will know that they still have something to hold onto, whatever they may have lost: the promise of God’s presence with them today and a bright future for tomorrow. 

It may be that another revolution is what many Iranians crave, but there is also something revolutionary, I believe, about the prayer that Jesus taught, which leaves the ultimate course of our lives in the hands of God. 

“Your will be done,” Christians have prayed throughout the centuries; and Iranian Christians will continue to pray this whatever the future holds for them. 

It is perhaps little wonder, then, that it is the Gospel message that Iranian Christians have continued to preach, in spite of persecution, and regardless of whichever direction the whims of popular support have turned. 

One of the passages that an Iranian colleague of mine most frequently recites in our team meetings is the call for us to “act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”, and I was reminded of this as I noted the response of British-Iranian bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani to the current crisis. 

The bishop, the bookies’ favourite to be the next Archbishop, prayed simply for the Lord to “have mercy”. 

As a lover of The Lord of the Rings, I am also reminded of the line from Gandalf, when Frodo is claiming that Bilbo should have finished off Gollum when he had the chance: 

“Do not be too quick to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” 

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