Extracts from Lords debate on Religious Persecution - Jul 11
|
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab):...Secondly, tolerance should begin
at home. If our representations abroad are to be taken seriously,
we should be strong on Islamophobia; otherwise, this will blunt our
pressure on cases such as that of Mrs Bibi and the blasphemy laws.
Equally, if we turn a blind eye to anti-semitism at
home, including in our student unions, we will be less credible
abroad. I hope our political leaders will heed this. We should
listen carefully to the Jewish...Request free trial
Lord Anderson of Swansea
(Lab):...Secondly, tolerance should begin at home. If our
representations abroad are to be taken seriously, we should be
strong on Islamophobia; otherwise, this will blunt our pressure on
cases such as that of Mrs Bibi and the blasphemy laws. Equally, if
we turn a blind eye to anti-semitism at home,
including in our student unions, we will be less credible abroad. I
hope our political leaders will heed this. We should listen
carefully to the Jewish community and publicise more of its massive
contribution to our national life...
...Finally, if we feel the need to refresh our commitment to religious freedom, we need go no further than room 52 at the British Museum and gaze in wonder at the Cyrus Cylinder, created in 539 BC—a true symbol of tolerance and freedom, which some view as the first charter of human rights in liberating the Jewish minority from its Babylonian captivity. This is an example for today’s Iran and for the growing anti-Semitic movements in our Europe today... Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB):...As the Truro report notes, just over a century ago, Christians constituted 20% of the Middle East’s population. Today it is below 5%. It began with the Armenians but it did not end there. A student of those events, the Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, 49 of whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, coined the word genocide, and the United Kingdom signed up to the genocide convention which he helped develop, and which requires us to prevent, protect and punish... Baroness Berridge (Con):...As I said in your Lordships’ House when talking about anti-semitism we need to be very clear about the distinction between hating or criticising a faith’s tenets and hating people. The latter is the issue we are dealing with, and the report itself makes the mistake in recommendation 3 by referring to the, “particular character alongside similar definitions for other religions”. Article 18 protects people, not religions. anti-semitism is defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and, of course, means Semite people. It is worth noting that both Islamophobia and anti-semitism are being defined by the communities. Who authors a definition does matter. For instance, if anti-semitism were to be defined by the Israeli Government, it would muddy the issue and potentially put Jews at greater risk... Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl):...I attended the funeral and saw very little difference between Muslim and Jewish rituals. A few weeks later, there was a memorial service in Hampstead Town Hall. I was asked to speak and made my speech. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was present, and after a few days he wrote an article in the Times. I have deposited the full article in the Library, but will quote a few sentences: “At the memorial service recently, one of the speakers was Lord Bhatia, whom he had come to know through his work for Oxfam. It was clear from the tone of his tribute that the two men shared a moral vision and had been close friends … What held them together, one a passionate Jew, the other a no less committed Muslim? The short answer is that they cared for something larger than their respective faith communities … When they saw disease, poverty and despair, they didn’t stop to ask who was suffering; they acted. They knew that tears are a universal language, and help a universal command. They saw faith not as a secluded castle but as a window onto a wider world. They saw God’s image in the face of a stranger, and heard His call in the cry of a starving child. Does faith make us great or does it make us small? On this question, much of the future of our world depends. Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in friendship, so long as we never forget those things that transcend religious differences – of which human suffering is one. When we focus, not on ourselves, but on those who need help, our separate journeys converge and we become joint builders of a more gracious world”...
Lord Farmer (Con):...Mr Hunt also
pledged to develop a term for anti-Christian hatred equivalent to
“Islamophobia” and anti-semitism , as we heard
from my noble friend Lady Berridge. The term “Christophobia”,
suggested by various religious leaders, is popularly considered
to have been coined in 2003 by law professor JHH Weiler, himself
an Orthodox Jew. Weiler challenged wider Europe’s fixation with
what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor refers to as “exclusive
humanism”—humanism determined to exclude transcendent reference
points from cultural, social and political life... |