Last night I was lucky enough to have been invited to attend the inaugural City of Peace lecture at Newcastle’s Civic Centre.

Just to remind you what is City of Peace, its an intuitive to:-

• Encourage communities, individuals and organisations in Newcastle upon Tyne to get to know each other better
• Safegaurd vulnerable people and groups and give support where needed
• Bring about greater integration, but also respect for difference
• Reduce inequalities and promote social justice
• Tackle prejudice, create a positive and safe environment, reduce tensions and promote good citizenship.

Some very noble aims and as a city we doing our best to move closer to them every day.

Anyway back to the lecture. We were blessed to have the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend John Sentamu, basically the head of the Church of England in the North. His lecture was on the theme of “Gracious Magnanimity versus Tolerance”, a most thought-provoking topic.

The Archbishop was introduced by the Lord Mayor, and was given the honour of being named an honorary Geordie, to which he could only say “Whey-Aye Man”.

He started by explaining how tolerance is seen as part of what makes Britain, Britain, but he argued that tolerance was actually a negative quality, resulting in narrow-mindedness and oppression.

He used the example of brothels in France which are referred to as ‘maisons de tolérance’or Houses of tolerance. He stated his belief that tolerance is putting up with something that is different and that we don’t particullarily like, and instead argued that we should gravitate more towards the quality of Gracious Magnanimity, or meeting people halfway as he put it. He said that:-

“We are more likely to hear the language of people asserting their rights, waving the terms of the contract under someone’s nose and getting in first. Yet it is these positive virtues of gracious magnanimity which I believe could help us to transform our country today.

Aristotle also discussed gracious-magnanimity in the Nicomachean Ethics. He says that gracious-magnanimity (epieikeia) is that which is just and sometimes that which is better than justice (Eth. Nic. V. 10.6).

It corrects the law when the law is deficient because of its generality. And he compares the person who is graciously magnanimous (epieikes) with the person who is immoderate (akribodikaios.)

The person who is immoderate is the person who stands up for the last title deeds of their legal rights; but the person who is graciously magnanimous knows that there are times when a thing may be legally completely justified and yet morally completely wrong.

A person has the quality of gracious-magnanimity if they know when not to apply the strict letter of the law, when to relax justice and introduce mercy.

Similarly I would say, a graciously-magnanimous Church has a responsibility to both affirm moral standards and to ensure that its rules don’t seem rigorous to the point of inhumanity. That should also be true of all civic authorities. That should be true of all of us.”

He then moved on to an interesting and moving example of this quality from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa a woman was at the hearing about her son’s murder. The police officer who had ordered the brutal killing was there, shamefacedly hearing read out the details of what he and his colleagues had done. At the end the room was quiet. The chair of the commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asked the woman if she had anything to say to the man who had killed her son.

She responded:

“I am very full of sorrow. So I am asking you now – come with me to the place where he died, pick up in your hands some of the dust of the place where his body lay, and feel in your soul what it is to have lost so much. And then I will ask you one thing more. When you have felt my sadness, I want you to do this. I have so much love, and without my son, that love has nowhere to go. So I am asking you – from now on, you be my son, and I will love you in his place.”

She went on to say –

“I can say this – I can only do this, because Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me.””

I have to say that story was very touching and extremely powerful, the room drew a gasp at this and several members of the audience, including the Lord Mayor were brought to tears.

Its a nice sentiment and a fantastic quality and one I think is worth striving towards. He finished by wishing us luck in the City of Peace inituative and that Newcastle United will flourish, which recived a massive round of applause!

My prayer for Newcastle in the months and years ahead is that you may hold fast to this vision, that you work with humility, good humour and imagination together to build-up your common life. May God bless you, Newcastle and may the fortunes of Newcastle United ever flourish.

I was also fortunate enough to meet him just prior to the lecture, and I have to say his is a charming chap, and I found him to have some extremely interesting insights to the way the UK and indeed the world is today.

I was most interested by his comments, which he later expanded upon in his lecture, about groups such as the National Secular Society, who expect those of us who hold religious views to keep them entirely private. It fits in my thoughts on hats, which I will explain another day. Anyway he said that how can we expect people to simply put their religious beliefs away in a box when they are in the public domain. The truth of the matter is that someone’s religious beliefs is a core part of their identity and without it, that person loses something.

And the experience of the religious, dealing with organisations like the National Secular Society, are exactly what Gracious Magnanimity can help us to address. We can meet half way and allow us all to happily get along and strive towards making not only Newcastle a City of Peace, but the whole Earth a Planet of Peace.

Anyway you can read his lecture here.

God Bless

Michael

CNN did a very good article on the contribution of Muslim inventions that helped shape the world we know today.  I have also been playing Assassin Creed 2 on the Xbox 360, and both of these have got me thinking about the major influences that Islam has had specifically on European society, particularly in the Renaissance of the 15th century.

Islam has a surprisingly long history in Europe; for a nearly 800 years there was a major Islamic presence in the Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal), which at one point pretty much encompassed the whole peninsula as well as some parts of southern France. There was also an Islamic state in Sicily during the 9th – 11th Centuries.

When these areas were recaptured by Christians during the Reconquista in Iberia and the Norman conquest of Sicily, the introduction of many parts of medieval Islamic culture into European society lead to the Renaissance of the 12th century, which paved the way for the Renaissance of the 15th century

So I figured I would look at just three areas and explore how these were influenced by Islam. The preservation of classical texts, the Scientific method and agriculture.

The Preservation of Classical Texts

When the Roman Empire fell, Europe descended into what we now know as the dark ages, an awful lot of science and knowledge from classical antiquity was lost to Europe. As a result of the Islamic conquest of the former territories of the Byzantine Empire, the work of  Aristotle, Galen, and Plato (amongst others) were translated from the crumbling papyrus they were written on. This knowledge was persevered, studied,commentated on and expanded upon. As early as 832, there was a great library of these texts kept in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

As the Muslims conquered Iberia & Sicily, they brought these writings with them as well, reintroducing the ideas and concepts back into Europe. When they were driven out by the Christians these texts were left behind, and the ideas were translated into Latin and spread over Europe, meaning things like the Hippocratic oath came back into use.

The Scientific Method

In Greek science, a great deal of emphasis was placed upon rationality rather that experimentation however in Islamic science, the reverse was true. This may be down to the emphasis on empirical observation found in the Qur’an and Sunnah, but whatever it was, Islamic scientists combined precise observation, controlled experimentation and careful record keeping. Every A-Level science student will tell you that those things are the key to science as we know it. The use of controlled experiments to determine the correctness of a theory was ground breaking then. This is the same method that has carried on since and is still used all over the world today, from the smallest school science classroom to the most advanced university research labs.

Abū ʿAlī al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (in Europe we call him Alhazen), wrote the Book of Optics in 1021, and if you read it (and I highly recommended you do, my A-Level physics teacher made me and I am glad she did), you will see the beginning of all modern science. So influential is this book that Alhazen is often called the first scientist and many historians place it up there with Newton’s Principia Mathematica as the two most important scientific works ever.

If you look at Alhazan’s method you will recognise the heading and sections of any modern scientific reports. It basically consisted of the following headings:

1. Observation
2. Statement of problem
3. Formulation of hypothesis
4. Testing of hypothesis using experimentation
5. Analysis of experimental results
6. Interpretation of data and formulation of conclusion
7. Publication of findings

Familiar to any student and/or scientist all over the world!

Using this method, Islamic scientists even developed a theory of evolution by natural selection as far back as the 9th century, while we had to wait until the 19th for Darwin to figure it out!

In regards to science in general, in Europe there is a gap in scientific development of around 1000 years, and it was only due to the works of the Muslims that science was able to develop so quickly in Europe during the Renaissance.

Agriculture

The Muslim conquest of Iberia saw the introduction of some extremely important agricultural innovations, particularly crop rotation, where a different crop in planted in winter and summer, doubling the productivity of a field. Muslims also grew cash crops, crops which are not just for a farmers own subsidence, but are sold for profit. Muslim rulers also took a radically different approach to labour rights and land ownership, rewarding productive farmers, as opposed to the feudal system in Europe in which farmers were practically slaves with little hope of improvising their lot in life.

Until the Islamic rule in Iberia, most crops grown in Europe were wheats. The Muslims brought with them some fantastic crops to grow, including sugar cane, rice, lemons, oranges, apricots, cotton, artichokes, aubergines, bananas, and saffron. All of which we still use today and they are very yummy, except cotton which leaves your mouth kind of dry!

On the technology side, Islamic famers brought us irrigation, industrial milling, fertilizers and windmills. And all of this allowed for the development of towns and cities as fewer people were needed to grow the fod to feed society, so great scientists and artists were able to flourish, would Leonardo Da Vinci, have accomplished so much if he had to work the fields to feed himself?

Conclusion

So there are my thoughts on it, in my opinion we should really be thankful for Islam, without it, who knows what kind of world we would be living in, maybe we would never have gotten out of the dark ages!

Have Fun

Michael

Lately I have been thinking a lot about food, and more precisely sustainable and environmentally friendly food.

You see, I look at what we here in the developed world eat, and then I see images of children in the developing world starving, and like many people, I can’t accept that this is the way the world should be.

Now I am an admirer of Norman Borlaug, and his Green Revolution, though I imagine that if he had done his work today, it would certainly not be called that. Now his work led Mexico from being a net importer of grain in 1943, to self sufficiency in 1956 and finally to becoming a grain exported by 1964. The Green Revolution has a number of environmental issues though, substantial use of pesticides, loss of agricultural biodiversity, heavy use of water etc. But considering the rate of population growth this century, it clearly has helped to keep the world feed, and if we didn’t use these techniques, surly we would have seen many more famines that we have.

Now this leads me onto organic food, personally I like the idea of organic, personally I don’t like the term though, I prefer traditional agriculture, as for thousands of years it the only way we could grow crops. But yields is an issue, with some crops the yields can be as low as 50% compared with intensive farming methods, and I honestly do not think that we could feed the worlds current population if we went 100% organic. But environmentally speaking, organic is best, fewer pesticides, less water use and increased biodiversity.

Its clear that continued use of the techniques pioneered by Borlaug are not good, and the environment is suffering. So for my part I think the world needs to move towards more organic food production. But do I necessarily mean certified organic, no personally I think that if synthetic fertilizers are used that say contain only vitamins and minerals, that’s fine, I know its not with a lot of people, but that’s just my personal opinion. GMO is another matter altogether, I don’t understand the science to form any kind of opinion about it, though we have been altering crops for millennia with selective breeding, so I sometimes wonder if GMO is simply a more advanced version of that.

But I am a real hypocrite, I don’t always buy organic, and I don’t always buy local, I try, and I am getting better, but sometimes my budget just doesn’t stretch far enough, I wish it did though. And at the same time I am aware that I am thinking like a western elitist, as a friend from Pakistan says, I have never know the pains of hunger, and as he says from his point of view. He told me that he looks at me and my ilk and thinks we are simply rich idiots prancing around thinking we know whets best for the world and telling him if he has to starve to make sure our melons can be organic then tough.

Now I do think if I was in his shoes and was starving, I would be screaming at the top of my voice for farmers to farm as intensively as possible and use the finest GM crops science could manufacture, oh and use tractors galore and fly it to me on the fastest jet planes possible, cause I don’t care about carbon footprints, I am just starving to death!

So where am I going with all of this, well I really don’t know, this world has so many problems, most of them caused by man, we have grown simply too numerous for this world to handle and we need to start thinking about reversing population in order to ensure the world can sustain not only the human race, but the other wondrous plants and animals on earth.

But even if we don’t go down the organic route, how can we feed the ever growing world population without further damaging our environment, personally I don’t think we can, the world is at breaking point and we need as a matter of urgency to either bring population growth down to zero, or better still reverse it so its negative population growth.

So to sum up my thoughts on food:-

• I like the idea of organic food
• I am not sure if organic farming can feed the world
• Local is best
• For things that cannot be grown locally Fairtrade is best
• Synthetic fertilizers of vitamins and minerals are ok
• Population growth needs to go to zero or less to allow us to be able to feed the world.

None of it makes sense but then again, it something I can’t make sense of in my own mind anyway!

But I will finish with this question:- Did the Green Revolution solve the potential hunger crises caused by the human pollution explosion of the 20th century, or did it enable that growth to happen?

Sorry for rambling on!

Michael

Tomorrow our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair goes in front of the Iraq enquiry.

Now the war, in all honesty, is something that really worries me. I mean, I can’t put my hand on my heart and say that Iraq would be a better place with Saddam still in power. But at the same time war troubles me, war should only be an option as the very last resort.

As a great man once said, where there is a thought of war, it must be overcome with a more powerful thought of peace.

In my heart I detest the fact that there was a war, with the deaths of innocents and young men on both sides, who only wanted to serve their country. But when you look at the crimes committed by Saddam against his own people, I think, maybe there was a case for regime change.

We were taken to war on what turned out to be false information, was that the result of deception, I don’t know, I hope not. I think that Tony Blair is an honourable man who honestly believed he was doing the right thing.

I am not really making sense am I, well, I really don’t know how to sum it all up in my head. My dad said to me before we went to war, imagine if we had stood up to Hitler after Kristallnacht, and removed him from power, would that have saved 60 million lives?

I wonder if regime change can ever be right? Who would decide when a regime crosses the line, who has the right to police the world, and who would watch the watchmen?

Either way I don’t think I will ever reconcile the war in my own mind, best I can hope to do is pray that this never happens again. I guess this is for historians to judge and make sense of.

God bless,

Michael

At the Newcastle Bahá’í Centre, we have recently started a monthly open deepening/fireside, exploring different themes within the Faith. It all started with some deepening’s we received from the NSA on the fund and we kind of carried it on. Having had deepening’s on Marriage, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, our next one which is on the 27th is on Unity.

I am facilitating the February one which is on the 24th, and when deciding what to use as a theme, I didn’t really need to think very hard. I decided to focus on Fairtrade and how we can approach it from the perspective of the Bahá’í Faith. Its also fantastic that it falls in Fairtrade Fortnight as well!

You see this year instead of making silly New Years resolutions that would be all forgotten about by the 2nd January, I instead made a single resolution, to try and really put into practice the principles of the Faith.

One principle which I think that I, and indeed all Bahá’ís can really put into practice in a very practical way is the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty, and one of the good ways to put this into action is to buy Fairtrade products.

Late last year my LSA decided to go Fairtrade and purchase only Fairtrade tea & coffee, and I guess since then I have really been thinking about Fairtrade a lot, and what does the Faith have to say about it.

Clearly during the time of Bahá’u'lláh and `Abdu’l-Bahá, the concept of Fairtrade that we have today did not exist. So when looking at the writings, I didn’t expect to come across a bit saying, “oh and by the way, Fairtrade is good”!

But when reading the Writings a particular Hidden Word springs to mind straight away.

“O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH!

The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.”

Bahá’u'lláh, The Persian Hidden Words No. 54

So this is Bahá’u'lláh saying that if you are well off, just looking after your own needs is not good enough. We have a responsibility to look after the poor as well, and if we remember that in his youth in Tehran he was known as “Father of the Poor”, then we should realise already have an example that we must follow.

Talking of examples, we have ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as The Perfect Exemplar, the person whose behaviour we should look to emulate, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was very kind to the poor. One of the things that really speaks to me are the stories of the Master giving away coats to the poor and needy of Acre, one in particular speaks to me:-

The wife of the Master was about to depart on a journey. Fearing that her husband would give away his cloak and so be left without one for himself, she left a second cloak with her daughter, charging her not to inform her father of it. Not long after her departure, the Master, suspecting, it would seem, what had been done, said to his daughter, “Have I another cloak?” The daughter could not deny it, but told her father of her mother’s charge. The Master replied, “How could I be happy having two cloaks, knowing that there are those that have none?” Nor would he be content until he had given the second cloak away.”

His reasoning can be applied to Fairtrade. How can we be happy sitting at home drinking our cuppas made with bargain tea bags, when the farmer who grew that tea is having to sell some of his land as he can’t afford to grow on it all, thanks to the low prices that tea buyers demand, even though he has already pulled his daughter out of school, and is skipping as many meals as possible, in order to ensure he is able to survive?

We Bahá’ís also believe that productive work is a form of worship and Bahá’u'lláh instructs us to work:-

“Please God, the poor may exert themselves and strive to earn the means of livelihood. This is a duty which, in this most great Revelation, hath been prescribed unto every one, and is accounted in the sight of God as a goodly deed. “

Bahá’u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 202

But he says “strive to earn the means of livelihood”, now an awful lot of the world live in poverty, because we won’t pay a little bit more for our tea, these people are working and are trying to earn a livelihood. But because of our insatiable demand for cheaper and cheaper products, they are denied the ability to earn a fair income, and Fairtrade products look to redress that. Bahá’u'lláh wrote:-

“They who are possessed of riches, however, must have the utmost regard for the poor”

Bahá’u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 202

‘Abdu’l-Bahá also said:-

“Service to the friends is service to the Kingdom of God, and consideration shown to the poor is one of the greatest teachings of God.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 27

So from two of our central figures we can quite clearly see that we have a real obligation to help and assist the poor amongst us, and remembering that Baha’u'llah also wrote:-

“It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

Bahá’u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 250

So it is not just about helping the poor in our country, it’s about helping all the poor in the world. And that’s what Fairtrade is all about. By making that choice to spend a little bit more on our tea, coffee and even our rubber gloves, we can all play a part in working to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

But I think we can pretty much sum it all up when we think of the “Golden Rule”, a value which is present in all of the major world religions, and in the Bahá’í Faith, its:-

“Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself.”

Bahá’u'lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 71

But in Christianity, you will recognise it as

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Matthew 7:12

And in Islam as:-

“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”

Sunnah

So going forward the theme for the February evening will be “Fairtrade – A Bahá’í Perspective”. I have some samples of Fairtrade products that I am going to take along for people to try, and hopefully I will show the friends, and other members of the wider community, why we should use Fairtrade products where we can.

Fairtrade isn’t the answer to the problem of poverty, its only part of the solution. In order to fully eradicate it we need to work towards eliminating poor governance, an end to the marginalisation of women, halting environmental degradation, and the provision of universal education. And only when we have achieved all of these goals, will the eradication of the extremes of wealth and poverty be possible.

But let’s start with this small step.

God Bless

Michael

For the past couple of months myself and a friend have been developing a new website for our local Bahá’í community. We started with a document passed to us via the UKs office of Public Information, which immediately required we change our domain name.

Our original domain name was bonut.org.uk, which stands for Bahá’ís of Newcastle upon Tyne, which actually sounds very unprofessional and a wee bit silly. So we have moved to NewcastleBahais.org.uk, we wanted NewcastleBahais.org, but this was taken by a community in a small village in the US which is also called Newcastle.

It was recommended to have our site built using the Jimdo service, which would have cost us £60 a year, not a lot some might say, but we figured we could do better, for free.

There is one site up that uses the Jimdo service, BromleyBahai.org.uk, and it looks pretty good, but looking at it in some detail, we figured we didn’t need the Jimdo service, we decided to go with a Wordpress based site.

Wordpress is a pretty decent open source blogging platform, but it’s also a pretty good Content Management System. Its easy to use, very flexible with a wide range of plugins and extensions, its appearance is also very customisable with a wide variety of themes which can all be altered if you know a little HTML. I use Wordpress on this blog, and so does the UK Baha’i news website.

One big advantage is that with minimal setup, you can use MS Word, and OpenOffice.Org Writer to publish articles, Microsoft also produces the excellent Windows Live Writer which is extremely good at this. So combine these with the excellent Wordpress Dashboard, and you have a fantastic bit of kit that can be used by anyone, no need to know how to code HTML.

Now for content, we have decided to go with some static basic info, trying to give a little background on the faith and what we do, but for in depth stuff directing them to the relevant info at Bahai.org. We have place the blog items in a news section, where we are publishing local news items, in order to bulk it out a bit, we are also using a plugin to republish relevant news items from news.bahai.org and Bahainews-uk.info.

We have also used Google Calendar to publish our calendar on, this is a brilliant tool as its so easy to update and we have been able to pop an upcoming events box in our sidebar and using a clever little redirect, the sub-domain calendar.newcastlebahais.org.uk, is our calendars’ homepage.

While we have been doing this, we have been looking at all the ways we communicate with the world at large and keep people updated, on what we do and our events. We have had a Facebook Page for a while, which is working ok, and we are learning more and more how to make better use of it. One thing which we have put to good use is our Twitter account @newcastlebahais, now you will all no doubt know, that I love Twitter, its a great tool and can really work well at keeping people updated on what your doing.

We have got our Facebook page and our Twitter account linked, so that whenever we update the Facebooks Page status or add a new note etc, it updates the Twitter account, which is nice. The SMS updates that you can get with Facebook and Twitter are both pretty good, but I will have to write a guide to help people make better use of them.

One unintended consequence of doing all this is that we have had to develop a consistent, for want of a better word, “brand”, which we can use across all services. My wife is a pretty fair artist, and has designed a simple logo, it’s a nine-pointed Bahá’í star, which is black on the outside and blue on the inside. Originally it was black & white, Newcastle’s colours, but it was a bit too dull, so she added the blue, and it’s worked quite well. It’s only a temporary thing; I am sure in time we will come up with something brilliant and catchy and Geordie.The hardest thing has been keeping the site a Bahá’í site, but at the same time local, and locally relevant, this has been hardest to do when it comes to the banner. The Bromley site is a banner with some local landmarks, none of which I am afraid to say stand out for me, as someone who hasn’t visited Bromley in maybe 9 years. So we have tried to used some of the great symbols of our city in our banner and try and make it well, a Bahá’í banner as well. That is something we are still working on.The site is now pretty much complete on the engineering side, just got to sort out the static content and I think we are pretty much done; hopefully we can get it launched in the next few weeks.I shall keep you updated, and let you know when we launch.God BlessMichael

Back to one of my favorite topics, the Malaysian Allah problem, ever so quickly just to catch you up, in the Malaysian language, the word for God is Allah. But the Muslim dominated government has banned non-Muslims from using the word Allah in their worship. For a bit more check out my previous posts on the subject back in May and November.

So there was a court case over who has the right to use the word Allah, and the courts have decided that the Government cannot restrict the right of people to use the word Allah in their worship.

That makes a lot of sense, after all in other Muslim majority countries such as Egypt and Indonesia, Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims are free to use the word Allah for God, and in the same vein, whenever I have heard Muslim worship in this country, when prayers are said in English, they refer to God, rather than Allah.

Now one would think that the courts ruling would be the end of the matter, but no it isn’t, since the ruling there have been fire bombings of Christian Churches and Schools, and its causing a lot of tension in the country.

It probably doesn’t help that the government has decided to appeal and try and keep the word Allah, just for Muslims, it just drags the whole thing out. I understand that there are historical reasons for the government favoring the Muslim majority, but in my personal opinion this is going a little too far, especially when you get government ministers saying that “Allah is only for the Muslim god”.

The thing is most Muslims recognise that other religions worship the same God, they call them People of the Book. Its believed that earlier faiths are divine in origin but were corrupted by man and the true message lost along the way. The Qur’an says:-

“And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best, except those of them who act unjustly, and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him do we submit.” Qur’an 29:46

There are other passages but this one stands out for me most, and pretty well sums it all up. Islamic law goes a bit further and generally speaking in most interpretations offers a great deal of protection to non-Muslims, including the right to freely practice their faith and exemption from Zakat and in many cases military service.

Now speaking with a Malaysian friend whom is shortly to return to her homeland, its apparent that the above is generally speaking true, and its only a small minority who really have an issue with Christians using the word Allah, but unfortunately this small minority have a lot of influence in the government.

The government has condemned these attacks, and has over the past couple of years been working really hard to bridge the various ethnic and religious divides within Malaysian society under the 1Malaysia banner. But it’s the government which has been actively pursuing the Allah issue in the courts. For me this really puts into context why governments should not interfere in religious issues, nor should religions try to get mixed up in politics, it always leads down a nasty path.

Ultimately I think that both sides in this disagreement need to sit round a table and agree what all of their sacred texts say, that they share the God of Abraham. It’s easy to say that isn’t it, and if that can be accepted, then surely, the word used to describe God can be the same.

God Bless

Michael

Hi all, been a bit ill past few weeks so my post pretty much dried up. Picked up a seasonal lurgy, you know the type, nasty cough that refuses to go away and with the very cold weather it just wouldn’t shift.

So today its Christmas eve and I want to talk about a couple of things that I have been thinking about regarding Christmas, do I celebrate it now that I am a Bahá’í, and how traditions change and merge and melt together.

To Celebrate Christmas or not???

This is something that has played in my mind the past few years and lots of people ask me about it,  and mostly its about whether or not Bahá’ís celebrate  Christmas. The short answer is no, Bahá’ís do not celebrate Christmas, its not a religious holiday for us. You see we recognise all the prophets as Manifestations of God, and if we celebrated all of their festivals, then well that’s all we would ever do!

But personally I don’t think that’s the be all and end all of Christmas, its a festival which is about, charity, generosity, family, goodwill to all men, unity and peace, and those are ideals which any Bahá’í would agree are good things, and as well as this, its a cultural festival as well, its part of me, its what I was brought up with and its not something I can just drop, because its so ingrained into my cultural background.

So I prefer to put aside the whole commercialism of Christmas, and forget about the presents being the most important thing, they are nice to give, but they are not the be all and end all of Christmas. The aforementioned  charity, generosity, family, goodwill to all men, unity and peace are the main things about this festival. I have been trying to stick to educational toys for my nephews and younger cousins and more charitable gifts for the rest of my family, with varying degrees of success, sometimes that cute little spider-man costume is just too much to resist, not for me, my nephews of course!

My wife and I are moving towards making our main gift-giving festival Ayyam-i-Ha, and by the time I have children I hope that this will be more important to them than Christmas, but I think I will still celebrate Christmas with them, as a cultural thing only mind.

I see it a bit like how non-Bahá’í Iranians celebrate Naw-Ruz, not as a religious holiday, which it is not, but as a part of the Persian cultural background, its important to them to maintain that tradition, and its one of the things that makes them who they are. Going a little further, most Muslim families I know celebrate Christmas for the same reasons as I do, for the cultural and the whole peace and goodwill thing, one whom I spoke with today said that he felt its something which allows his children to connect with their identity as Brits, which he thinks is a good thing.

Merging Traditions

Someone told me recently that the only reason people get married is to have an excuse to not spend Christmas with their family, well I don’t think that’s true, for me family is an extremely important part of this festival, but it is fascinating to see how my wife and my family traditions regarding this time of year are merging together to form new traditions for our embryonic family.

We come from very different backgrounds, religious, cultural, socio-economic, geographical etc, in many ways our families are complete polar opposites, and we both have very different family traditions, and living together we find ourselves really building new ones. For example, my family have dinner at 3pm, while Lindsay’s have theirs at 12 noon, so somehow without talking about it, we have ours at around 1pm, its just happened like that. My family tended not to have parsnips but Lindsay’s did, and so we have parsnips, but we do them roasted with some chilli and paprika with leeks and carrots, something neither of our families did, but I am not keen on the taste of parsnips so we figured out something that keeps us both happy, and we have done it for a few years now!

And its all these little things which this year in particular, I am noticing in a big way, for me its sort of showing how we are really starting to have our own family identity emerge, something that we will no doubt pass to our children who will go on to take our traditions and merge them with their spouse and create their own new traditions.

Anyway Merry Christmas, here is praying for peace of Earth and goodwill to all men.

God Bless

Michael

Today (December 10th 2009) is Human Rights Day, so to honour this, please read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is found below.

God Bless

Michael

Article 1.

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

• Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

• Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

• (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
• (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

• (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
• (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

• (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

• (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

• (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

• Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

• (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
• (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
• (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Last week the Baha’i community which I belong to receive a letter from the Universal House of Justice (UHJ), forwarded to us by the National Spiritual Assembly (NSA). And the contents of the letter say so much about our community here in the UK.

The letter says that the worldwide Baha’i community has a growing dynamism as one of its salient features, fantastic, according to the dictionary that means we have a great energy force and power.

Now because the community is growing rapidly, and more and more individuals are attending study circles and being touched by the message of Baha’u'llah, more and more people are aware of the Nineteen Day Feast.

The Nineteen Day Feast is the primary spiritual, administrative and social part of our community, now because of the administrative part; previously non-Baha’is have been excluded from the Feast. When I was a seeker and investigating the Faith, I have to admit I was quite put off by the concept of the Feast being closed off to Non-Baha’is, it felt a bit weird, and I must admit I really did ponder of what happened at them, human sacrifice perhaps!

When I embraced the Faith, I soon realised that is wasn’t a secret thing involving human sacrifice, but simply what it says on the tin, a devotional, followed by some administration and finally some tea and biscuits with a bit of socialising. But I am aware having been on the outside looking in, that the closure of the Feast to non-Baha’is can make us look a bit secret societyish.

So with the fact that more and more seekers are finding out about the Feast, its more and more likely that some may turn up at Feasts even if we haven’t invited them, I know I sometimes really wanted to just turn up and see what it was all about.

Previously we would simply skip the administrative portion, or ask the seeker to step outside the room while we took care of business, but these are a little bit rude, so the new guidance from the House is:-

“The House of Justice has decided that, in such instances, rather than eliminating the administrative portion completely or asking the visitors to withdraw, those conducting the programme can modify this part of the Feast to accommodate the guests. The sharing of local and national news and information about social events, as well as consultation on topics of general interest, such as the teaching work, service projects, the Fund, and so on, can take place as usual, while discussion of sensitive or problematic issues related to these or other topics can be set aside for another time when the friends can express themselves freely without being inhibited by the presence of visitors.”

That’s not to say we can just invite seekers to the Feast, which remains an institution created for the Baha’is themselves, but now should a seeker turn up, we can do things as normal, bar anything which is sensitive/confidential, and they will be able to see how the community functions, we shall have to be more flexible in future

And I welcome this, it makes us feel less like a secret society, more open and welcoming, and now those curious seekers can now satisfy themselves that we don’t have any human sacrifice.

God Bless

Michael