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Morality

Politics

11 March 2024

6 min read

The moral sugar high of the protest vote

We shouldn’t give politicians bloody noses over insurmountable single issues.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A winning candidate at an election address the audience from a lectern while the loosing candidates look on

The victorious candidate at the Rochdale by-election.

A cat was elected as a Member of Parliament. A cat. George Galloway - former Labour party MP and Rula Lenska’s former cat - has been elected as Member of Parliament for Rochdale. The unique circumstances of the by-election make this a less surprising result than one might think. The Labour Party disowned their candidate, the Tory Party hardly contested the seat, and the sheer number of inappropriate independents meant that a split-vote victory for Galloway was entirely foreseeable. One must also note Galloway’s many skills: as a campaigner, an orator, and a dirty-tactic by-election gadfly.

So…Rula Lenska’s cat did the unimaginable and won a seat in Parliament. How did the cat do this? He convinced people that they could vote for him to protest the current Parliamentary position on the Israel-Gaza War. In his victory speech, Galloway gave an ominous warning: “Keir Starmer…this is for Gaza.” He went on to intimate that his victory was due to the high proportion of Muslim voters in Rochdale; their disgust at the Labour Party’s response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza morphing into a wish to give Keir Starmer (‘one cheek of the same backside’ - Rishi Sunak being the other cheek) a bloody-nose. He warned that Starmer “…will pay a high price for…enabling, encouraging, and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine, in the Gaza strip.”

My fellow voters are intelligent enough to recognise that the single addition of George Galloway to the green benches will do almost nothing to affect change. They have voted so, the general consensus goes, simply to register their fury at the plight of ‘fellow Muslims’. I simply want to respond with a question. Is this moral?

People vote for all sorts of reasons. If we believe political scientists and pollsters, voters might care about many things, but will end up voting on the basis of one thing. Normally the economy. One’s own economic interest is a perfectly rational reason to vote for one party’s promises than another. There is a potential immediate impact on our lives and those of our family and friends. But Gaza?

Sociologists have spilt a tremendous amount of ink describing how human communities tend towards ‘tribal’ affection. We tend to feel more connected to those who are like us - in terms of geographic location, in terms of obvious racial characteristics, in terms of language and culture, of course religion. The notion that the Gazan War is a war on Muslims would be a natural driver for the Muslim community of Rochdale to vote ‘for’ their fellow Muslims.

On the other hand, in the world of modern ethics there has been a move to recognise that such tribal allegiance is ultimately meaningless - a call to see all human beings as equally worthy of our care and attention, especially irrespective of geography. Peter Singer famously presented the thought experiment of a drowning child - if we are willing to get our shoes wet and muddy to save a drowning child we walk by a shallow pond, why aren’t we willing to give up some of our wealth to alleviate the war-stricken poverty of a Gazan child many miles away?

The people of Rochdale must vote as their conscience requires. I simply worry that their conscience has taken on an impossible burden of care that they will struggle to sustain.

The words of Jesus seem to support such an ethic, which is always global in its vision. We are not only to love our neighbour as ourselves, we are to go out into all the world, evangelising the nations. From its beginning the Christian faith has preached that loving our neighbour means loving everyone. Everyone is a beloved child of God. Everyone is our neighbour. Surely a vote for Galloway, a vote of rage against the occupation of Gaza, is fundamentally moral - either on grounds of tribe, or rejection of tribe. Surely its Christian!

I’m not so sure.

I’m not so sure we fallen humans actually have the capacity to ‘care’ about the horrors that go on many, many miles away. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, but we barely have the emotional energy to love ourselves. We live in a society of such activity and distraction - with a seemingly concomitant rise in the incidence of hopelessness and depression - that I don’t think we can really give our moral and emotional energy to an event as distant and overwhelming as the plight of Gazan civilians. We can barely give it to our families. We can barely give it to ourselves. C S Lewis once wrote that the best way of eradicating suffering was people working away quietly at limited objectives: “I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.”

Jesus was the ultimate localist - God became incarnate as a unique individual, of a particular tribe, of a particular nation, in a particular time and place. Jesus taught an ethic of universal love and dignity and respect, but lived out in specific acts of service. He didn’t wash the feet of all Jerusalem - just his disciples. He didn’t heal all disease everywhere and forever - but he did restore sight to the few blind people he met. St Paul wrote individual letters to individual communities. Yes, he asked them to pray for him and each other, but otherwise told them to focus on their immediate needs and charity and holiness. The popularity of Jordan Peterson is largely based on the achievability of his slightly nebulous self-help worldview: make YOUR bed, keep YOUR back straight, look after YOUR family. Improve yourself first if you want to even begin improving the world. You’ll probably never manage to improve more than your village…maybe only your own household. That might be enough.

I don’t judge those who voted for Galloway as a Gaza-conflict protest. A new campaign, ‘The Muslim Vote’, has emerged to persuade Muslim voters to lend their support to candidates who commit to ‘Peace in Palestine’ – ceasefire, sanction Israel, and a state for the Palestinians. It is becoming clear that what appears to have happened in Rochdale may well happen in constituencies up and down the country. The idea of the ‘Muslim vote’, which Galloway was able to turn into electoral victory, is being given form and force. It is emotive and persuasive, and may well convince people who have no link to Gaza other than their Muslim faith. It is entirely possible that some of the voters have family and friends trapped in the siege. I empathise with their vote and weep for their sorrow.

I don’t judge those who voted for Galloway as a Gaza-conflict protest. I do, however, worry that many have taken upon themselves a fundamentally unwieldy ethic. Galloway is not a one-man parliamentary wrecking ball - whatever he says. The position of the Government will not be changed by his election. The resolve of the Israeli military is unlikely to be dinted by the UK Government, no matter what resolutions the House of Commons passes. The people of Rochdale must vote as their conscience requires. I simply worry that their conscience has taken on an impossible burden of care that they will struggle to sustain. Perhaps they would be more fulfilled and more effective if they cast their vote on the basis of what could be achieved for them in their community, in the immediate future.

We must pray for the people of Gaza, and we must not cease praying; but I would suggest that we must vote in the interests of the people of our own place, our own constituency. Giving the Labour Party a bloody nose over Gaza might be an immediate moral-sugar-high. Electing an MP who will actually work for the needs of the community in their particularity will certainly be less instantaneously thrilling - but maybe it is more moral.

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Freedom of Belief

4 September 2024

6 min read

Experiencing Tbilisi's cold shoulder

Georgia’s warm welcome doesn't extend to refugees fleeing Iran.

Steve Dew-Jones

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

On a rainy night a pedestrian, holding a brolly, waits to cross a road.

Tbliisi, Georgia.

Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash.

On the surface, Georgia has a lot going for it: natural beauty, historic sites, lovely food and wine.

It also boasts an extremely free market. Anyone can to set up a business of their choosing within a couple of hours, should they have the wherewithal.

But therein also lies the rub. Life is not so easy for those without such wherewithal - perhaps they don’t have sufficient capital, or vision; a disability prevents them; or they try but fail.

And then life is not so easy in Tbilisi.

My focus on my recent trip to Georgia, as an employee of an Iranian Christian charity, was its small Iranian population - and principally those who have claimed asylum there.

I spoke to several such individuals during my stay, and the conclusion that I reached was that Georgia is a lovely place to live, provided that you: a) have money; and b) are happy not to speak out about sensitive issues.

Which, honestly, sounds eerily like the country from which my Iranian friends fled in the first place.

When he ignored the warnings, the threats escalated. His car was broken into, and someone even came to his church, claiming to have a bomb strapped to himself.

Take Reza, for example, who left Iran eight years ago and came to Georgia in the hope that in a country where nearly 90 per cent are Orthodox Christians, he would be free to practise his chosen faith.

He even set up a church there, and for a while all was good. Until he started getting involved in protests against the regime back in Tehran.

Reza joined demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy in Tbilisi - which is in a lovely area of town, right next to the Russian embassy and also, somewhat awkwardly, that of Ukraine.

He also protested outside the “Ferdowsi Educational Complex” - a Shia school with a sign outside proclaiming it as an entity of the Iranian embassy.

And for these protests, Reza received some, at first, gentle reprimands. He was called by a private number, encouraging him not to take such action again in the future.

When he ignored the warnings, the threats escalated. His car was broken into, and someone even came to his church, claiming to have a bomb strapped to himself.

It was only at this point that Reza decided, against his initial intentions, to claim asylum.

But though the Georgian immigration service eventually acknowledged him to be a Christian - unlike many of his fellow Iranian asylum-seekers - they did not accept that this fact would put him at risk of persecution were he to return home.

To which the only rational response is a wide-open mouth and outstretched arms.

Have the Georgian immigration service not read the news? Do they not know that Christians - and more specifically, evangelical Christians and converts like Reza - face sustained and systematic persecution?

The answer to this question, I was to discover, is two-pronged.

Firstly, there is Georgia’s close relationship with the Islamic Republic, the reason for which, sadly and all too predictably, is of course money.

“Georgia is a small country,” a lawyer who deals with immigration cases like Reza’s told me.

“It’s surrounded by three big countries: Russia, Turkey and Iran, and can’t afford to have bad relations with all of them.”

Both Russia and Turkey have history of seeking to occupy Georgia, while Russia has made no secret of its hope of re-establishing the territories it once held, including, one presumes, Georgia.

In this context, it is little wonder that little Georgia does not feel able to cast aside so lightly its relationship with its third mega-neighbour, Iran.

And when an Iranian claims asylum in Georgia - on whatever grounds - what message would it send for the Georgian government to recognise that claim?

In the case of Christians like Reza, the message would clearly be that Iran persecutes Christians, which is an uncomfortable reality for a close ally of Iran to publicly admit.

You can search his name on Google, in both English and Persian, and it’s safe to say that what you would find would not please the Islamic Republic.

The second prong at play, meanwhile, which is equally uncomfortable to speak about, is the reality that in general Georgia’s Orthodox Christians tend to share some of Iran’s ill-feeling towards evangelicals.

“They think of us the same way as Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Reza explained.

“A Georgian friend of mine accused me three times of being a spy for America,” another convert told me.

Another, whose case was rejected because Georgia’s immigration service did not accept he was a Christian, told me the questions he was asked in his interview related only to elements of the Orthodox faith, about which he had no idea.

And when this individual sought to explain his own reasoning for his deeply held faith - for which he was arrested in Iran - they told him he could only answer the questions posed.

And so he said that he could not. And so they rejected his claim, declaring that it had not been established that he was a Christian.

An easy win.

I could focus now on the particular challenges faced by asylum-seekers who are unfit to work - two of whom I met, and who receive no support from the state - but I would like to close with one final example which I think highlights the absurdity of the situation.

And that is the example of Behzad Asiaie, an Iranian whose claim for asylum was based on his political activity and not his faith, although he has since converted to Christianity - for which he blames Reza, as, no doubt, would the Iranian and dare I say even Georgian government.

The striking thing about Behzad’s case is that it’s extremely well documented. You can search his name on Google, in both English and Persian, and it’s safe to say that what you would find would not please the Islamic Republic.

For one thing, Behzad has already spent a year in Tehran’s Evin Prison for his activism. Added to that, since arriving in Georgia five years ago, with no intention to claim asylum, he started a new activist group called Hamrasho (which means “all together”), which has organised protests about various things outside the edifices of the Islamic Republic in Tbilisi.

As part of the protests, which is where Behzad met Reza, Behzad even filmed himself burning images of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and published it on social media.

So, when the Georgian government rejected his eventual asylum case and told him that they didn’t think he would have any problem were he to return to Iran, the jaw really must drop open.

My conclusion upon leaving Georgia was that it really is a lovely country - provided that you have money and don’t make too much noise.

I put this perspective to a Russian couple, who I met on my last night in town, and they - like Reza and Behzad before them - nodded in agreement.

For they, like my Iranian friends, are exiles, having fled Russia because they are against Putin’s war.

They told me they know of no other Russians among the thousands in Tbilisi who support Putin’s war, but nor do they know any who would be foolish enough to protest about it - whether back home, or outside the Russian embassy in the lovely Vake district of Tbilisi.

I penned this article on my last night in Georgia in a Ukrainian restaurant housed roughly between the two edifices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which felt about right.

The entire restaurant is painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag; the Wifi name is “Slava Ukraine”; and the password, I was told, translates as “super slava”.

Which seems to be about the loudest protest that one can get away with in Tbilisi.