The harsh reminder of our common humanity

Iran’s latest sanctions on protestors are a harsh reminder of the importance of diversity, solidarity and our common humanity, writes Krish Kandiah.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A protester holds a red placard bearing the name and image of Mahsa Amini

It has been a year since the widespread protests across Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini. The courageous 22-year-old was killed in prison for refusing to wear the hijab headscarf. To mark the anniversary of her death the Iranian government issued new legislation increasing the punishment to women who are deemed “inappropriately dressed” from a previous punishment of 10 days in prison to a maximum 10-year incarceration sentence.

According to the World Economic Forum, Iran is ranked 140 out of 144 countries in the area of gender equality. Iran’s current leadership suppresses not just the clothing of women but their voices, skills, perspectives and decisions too. Women choosing to forego the hijab had previously been a way to peacefully push back on the inequality they are facing. This symbolism of resistance is now not only forbidden, but criminal. Even business owners who serve women who are not wearing the hijab are liable for prosecution under the new laws.

As a father of three daughters, I find Iran’s new laws deeply disturbing. I cannot even imagine the desperation of Amjad Amini, Mahsa’s father, who this week was put in prison in an attempt to short-circuit any protests of his daughter’s death. He faces not just the trauma of the state murder of his daughter, the risk to his own life and the inability to grieve in peace, but also the devastating consequence of her death on 49 million other women in Iran with the tightening of the very laws his daughter was protesting against.

It could learn a lot from Jesus who went out of his way to welcome those that others looked down on.

As a Christian I find these oppressive laws deeply troubling too. One of the most revolutionary marks of the Christian faith is that it recognises the absolute equality and intrinsic value of all human beings. No matter what our age or race or gender or sexuality or nationality or ability or immigration status or political persuasion or faith, all are made in the image of God. I believe it is therefore an essential element of my faith to speak up for the rights of my fellow human beings, particularly when they are being marginalised, tyrannised, dehumanised or disempowered.

This means the oppression of Muslim women in the Middle East matters to me. Although we come from different cultures, live on different continents and hold different views about God and how to worship him, I believe we are connected by our common humanity.

Sadly, our common humanity is not always recognised either by Christians or those outside of the church. The church in the UK has too often been guilty as charged for misogynist, homophobic and racist attitudes. It could learn a lot from Jesus who went out of his way to welcome those that others looked down on. He was not afraid to face criticism for spending time with those the religious folk of the time had traditionally mistreated. It is time for the church to follow his example and take a lead in treating everyone with compassion and in standing up for the basic human rights of women, those in the LGBT community, and those from other countries.

Our common humanity is becoming overlooked too in our polarised world as it further divides over identity politics. There is a developing norm to focus less on the things that unite us and more on what differentiates us. Our latest culture wars are pitting women’s rights against trans rights, telling us that the rights of black people are opposed to the rights of white people, or that the rights of immigrants are at odds with the rights of settled passport-holders. But that is not the way things have to be or should be.

I believe that the opposite is true: that the world can be better for all of us, that there is strength in solidarity, that diversity is genuinely good for everyone.

This is why I recently turned up at a campaign calling for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be respected, why I publicly advocate for refugees and care-experienced young people, and why I insisted on greater representation of the LGBT community in my work with government. This is why I offer race and faith literacy training to government bodies, churches and businesses. This is why I have opened up my home to foster children and refugee families. This is why I set up my charity, Sanctuary Foundation, to advocate for those who do not feel safe in their own country. This is why I call the church to action and compassion for all whose rights have been taken away or are being eroded. This is why, in as far as it depends on me, I will champion equality for all.

And this is why I will continue to be calling on the government to open safe and legal routes for all those who are being oppressed and persecuted in the countries where they live. I would like the government to offer our country as sanctuary to women from Iran whose lives are endangered, whose human rights are being denied. I would like our country to offer asylum and hospitality to those who have had to flee Iran after daring to challenge the brutality of the current regime. I would like our churches to lead the way in warmly welcoming all those from Iran and anywhere else who have never experienced unconditional love and acceptance.

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Politics

5 March 2024

5 min read

Politics needs some deep stirring emotion

In politics, the struggle between our reason and desire is a fair fight.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A young woman in a blue suit stands at a wooden box in a parliamentary debating chamber looking upward while speaking.

British Youth Council parliamentary debate.

British Youth Council.

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.” So goes the famous quote, variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Joseph de Maistre and George Bernard Shaw. Of all these thinkers, Maistre is perhaps the most interesting, describing the business of government as a kind of religion, a political “faith” – one complete with dogmas, mysteries and even ministers.

Maistre was, somewhat surprisingly amid the turmoil of eighteenth-century France, a staunch monarchist. His argument was that, if the authority of a political leader was only a product of social convention, then that authority would always lack a sufficient degree of legitimacy, leaving the door wide open for violence and strife. His solution was to defend the divine right of kings. This was a controversial position, as much then as it is now.

Aside from his famous quote about elections, Maistre’s political philosophy is oft-criticised as polemical, hearkening back to a golden era of European monarchy that never really existed. Nevertheless, within his writings, Maistre laid bare a reality that we often prefer to keep veiled: that our political will is as much about what we find to be emotionally compelling as it is about what we find to be rationally convincing, indeed, the latter is very much dependent on the former. The more social scientists are able to demonstrate the reality of subtle phenomena such as confirmation bias, unconscious bias, and racial prejudice, the more we see that we are often being governed by pre-cognitive or non-cognitive instincts, even those of us who like to think that we are better than that. In the end, we have to concede that when it comes to politics, as with so much else, the struggle between our faculty of reason and the desire of our heart is a fair fight.

“They have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.”

Amy Buller

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In 1930’s Europe, there was certainly a lot of emotionally compelling politics around. Fascinated by the language and culture of the German people, thinker and educator Amy Buller made repeated visits to Germany from the 1920’s onwards, often accompanied by reading parties of British academics, church leaders and university students. In those decades, as the political landscape of Germany began to shift, her purpose became less about countryside walks and studying, and more about the facilitation of urgent, open and honest dialogue between Buller, her fellow travellers, and their German counterparts in the churches and universities wherever she had contacts. As Hitler rose to power, and even before the full horrors of Nazism became widely known, Amy was compelled to find out why so many people, especially young people, were being attracted by what she saw as a “brutish” ideology.

In 1943, amid the violence and destruction of World War II, Buller published a book, Darkness Over Germany, which gives a first-hand account of the many people that she and her travelling parties had met, and the conversations that had taken place. Like Maistre, Buller proposed that without God, politics was a dangerous kind of faith in something, one that tended towards violence. In the introduction to her book she writes of “…the tragedy of a whole generation of German youth, who, having no faith, made Nazism their religion.”

It’s common these days to hear complaints about the political apathy of the young, with polls commonly reporting that only about 50 per cent of British 18 to 24-year-olds are intending to vote in the next General Election. However, there are those who raise the caution that this may not be a symptom of apathy, so much as a symptom of the cultural and structural injustices that put barriers in the way of young people engaging with our nation’s political life. Young people are not likely to “believe in” a political system from which they feel excluded. As Buller’s writing notes – when this happens, young people are likely to put their “faith” in something else.

Maistre’s solution was perhaps too extreme for modern sensibilities: asking the politically minded populace to believe that their leaders were imbued with the authority of God, by God. In the twentieth-century, Buller took a more moderate view. As the Nazis began to view her with suspicion, trips to Germany became increasingly difficult to arrange, so she travelled elsewhere to places such as Hungary and Bulgaria. Wherever Buller went, she found more and more young people who wanted to talk to her about their political hopes and ideals. Summarising the whole, Buller suggested that Europe’s political landscape was eschewing “shallow rationalism” and instead being shaken by a “deep stirring” of emotion, particularly among young people. She recorded the observation:

“They all want change, and they all want a chance to play a part in that change, but so few have any religious faith, which means that they have few standards by which to judge between falsehood and truth in revolutionary movements.”

In a recent report, published by the Jo Cox Foundation, increasing the public’s “political literacy” was highlighted as a key response to prevent the outbreaks of abuse, intimidation and violence towards elected officials. As any educator will tell you, literacy is a two-way street – it includes not only the “shallow rationalism” of knowing information, or knowing where to access information, but also the ability to communicate that information effectively to others. Such communication comes from a much deeper, embodied kind of knowing, one which requires one to have assimilated knowledge and worked with it, feeling its malleability, and testing its apparent truth-claims against an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong.

For Buller, this internal standard was inextricably linked to faith. To the end of her life, she remained open minded as to what form this faith might take, albeit her own religious practice was firmly Christian. Cumberland Lodge, the educational charity she set up to promote her aims, was from the start open to those of all faiths and none, and she warmly welcomed dialogue between those of different faith groups, including atheism. But in 1943, as Amy Buller looked with hope towards the prospect of a post-war Europe, she summed up the political landscape as follows:

We are now faced with the greater task of bringing healing to the nations, including our own, I am convinced this cannot be done without a faith in God adequate to the tremendous task of reconstruction.

Given Amy Buller’s open-mindedness, one can read the word “God” in this statement its broadest possible sense, as referring to whatever moral compass one takes as an internal standard of what is true and false, or right and wrong. But the point remains that the political will is therefore not a matter of rational thought, or not only of that, but is an expression of feelings and instincts that run far, far deeper.