Posts from — July 2005

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, inter-faith, interfaith, politics, Prince of Wales, religion

Erica and I took the day out to hunt for houses in Herts. And a grey, overcast and drizzly day it was too, but perhaps it’s better to see properties in less than ideal weather conditions - sun can make even the most unpromising house look good.

We actually liked the very first house we saw, in the village of Digswell, just north of Welwyn Garden City. The great advantage of Digswell is that it has a station on the Great Northern Line into Kings Cross and that would get me onto the Piccadilly Line to Knightsbridge, the closest Tube station to the National Baha’i Centre in Rutland Gate. As it happens, Digswell is a rather nice dormitory village which also has a village life. There’s an interesting Character Appraisal of Digswell on the Welwyn Hatfield District Council website.

Not going to say what house we’re looking at. Don’t want everyone rushing there and outbidding us.

We looked at one other house in Digswell. We couldn’t make up our minds whether it was a 1930s or a 1950s house, but whatever the date the house would have needed a lot of work doing to it. In any case, the house was low-lying and hard on a fairly busy road. So, not that one! We called the estate agent and told them not to both to come and show us around the house, as we had previously arranged with them.

We moved on to Hatfield. Sorry, can’t say I like Hatfield; and when you talk to people in Hertfordshire and mention Hatfield, there’s an almost universal wrinkling up of noses. We took at a look at the outside of what seemed to be quite a substantial house - might even have suited us - but there was an almost impossible network of streets to be navigated before we found the house (thank goodness for the sat nav in the car!) and the surrounding housing estates were not of the best. Also took a gawp at a couple more houses in a much nicer part of Hatfield. Both were similar in design and size, but the first one had been extended and had five bedrooms, three of them with en suite bathrooms. Good houses, but not what Erica and I like - which tends to be rather quirky houses and houses that feel open inside. I really dislike houses where the rooms (especially on the ground floor) don’t feel connected to each other.

We picked Hari up from the uni in Hatfield and took her to see the first house we’d seen. She liked it too, so we called up the estate agents and made an offer.

Everything now depends on our getting an offer for our house in Abingdon.

Of course, it is important to emphasize that my experience was a minor inconvenience compared with the suffering of the families of those killed and of those who have been injured. My thoughts and prayers go out to them.

London’s history is full of fire and violence, as Peter Ackroyds books about London history show. Today’s attacks will become part of that ever growing history, just as the blitz is part of London’s identity.

Now the debates will begin about who carried out these outrages. Were they al-Qaeda operatives? People from outside the UK or home grown terrorists? Who else would they have been? Very unlikely to have been the IRA. The pattern is al-Qaeda. What relation does this bear to the G8 summit in Gleneagles? To the choice of London as the Olympic city for 2012?

This is from the BBC news website:

The BBC has located an Islamist website that has published a 200-word statement issued by an organisation saying it carried out the London bombings.

The organisation calls itself the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda [literally the base] of Jihad Organisation in Europe.

The group is previously unknown.

The website has previously carried statements purporting to be from al-Qaeda. It is not possible to verify such claims published on the web.

This is the full text of the statement.

“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God’s peace be upon him.

“Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

“We have repeatedly warned the British Government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

“We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

“God says: ‘You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly.’”

I’m just watching Newsnight. Tony Benn is trying to put the blame on the British and American governments for the existence for al-Qaeda, and Zaki Badawi denies that al-Qaeda exists as anything more than as a loosely linked movement and has no particular link to Bin Laden. Both seem to me to be wrong.

Clearly people are interpreting today’s events in terms of their own ideologies and opinions. We shall have to wait for the police and security forces to complete their investigations, but I have no doubt that Islamists carried out the attacks - in ways that will undoubtedly have horrified my very good (and moderate) Muslim friends, such as Imam Sajid.

So this was the day that the security warnings were preparing us for. The day after we celebrated London’s getting the 2012 Olympic Games, we’re plunged into the horrors of a bombing campaign on the Underground and the destruction of a bus near Tavistock Square.

For a detailed description of what happened it’s worthing looking at the BBC News website and the Going Underground blog for Thursday 7 June.

I happened to be the day’s opening speaker at a Sufi conference on non-violence at Goldsmiths College in New Cross first thing this morning. I arrived at New Cross by about 8.30am and so missed the disruption on the way there. And I was able to get back from New Cross Gate to London Bridge by about 11.30am, but from there on, I had to walk back to Knightsbridge and my office. There were no tubes, no buses and the taxis were all occupied. It’s quite a long walk - it took me about two hours (but I did take half-an-hour out for a sandwich on the way). I walked along the south bank of the Thames, past Southwark Cathedral and the Tate Modern, under a lowring sky and with my umbrella raised against drizzle blown on the keen wind (and increasing to quite a downpour by the time I got as far as Knightsbridge Tube station).

The Thames Clippers river buses were still going up and down the river and I later found out that they were offering free rides. I could have gone up river to Westminster Pier and saved my feet and my shoe leather.

Police boats were speeding up and down the river, as was a large inflatable carrying a number of what looked like police marksmen.

Londoners are pretty phlegmatic at times like these and I saw many people in business suits walking, presumably to meetings with their brief cases. However, I did hear one fairly idiotic comment from three blokes walking along the Embankment in the same direction as me. One of them commented, “Any excuse not to run trains on the Underground.” I thought a series of explosions was a pretty good excuse, and I don’t think Transport for London could have done anything other than close down the Underground and the buses.

I walked along the south bank as far as Blackfriars and crossed the river by the Blackfriars bridge. Walked along the Embankment, past Temple, Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross, until I got to Westminster and then turned inland, Parliament Square, Victoria Street, Grosvenor Place, Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge.

The pictures on the BBC news tonight were horrific. This morning as I was on the train from London Bridge to New Cross Gate I thought with some pride and excitement about the fact that London has been awarded the Olympic Games. What a great city London is, I thought. But on the way back, I thought with sorrow and horror about the impact of the bombs on London. We were plunged so quickly from the joy of victory in the contest for the games to the fear and terror of these attacks.

In such circumstances the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá I quoted in my address to the Sufi conference are particularly relevant:

“The gift of God to this enlightened age is the knowledge of the oneness of mankind and of the fundamental oneness of religion. War shall cease 20 between nations, and by the will of God the Most Great Peace shall come; the world will be seen as a new world, and all men will live as brothers.”

“O peoples of the world! The Sun of Truth hath risen to illumine the whole earth, and to spiritualize the community of man. Laudable are the results and the fruits thereof, abundant the holy evidences deriving from this grace. This is mercy unalloyed and purest bounty; it is light for the world and all its peoples; it is harmony and fellowship, and love and solidarity; indeed it is compassion and unity, and the end of foreignness; it is the being at one, in complete dignity and freedom, with all on earth.

“The Blessed Beauty saith: ‘Ye are all the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch.’ Thus hath He likened this world of being to a single tree, and all its peoples to the leaves thereof, and the blossoms and fruits. It is needful for the bough to blossom, and leaf and fruit to flourish, and upon the interconnection of all parts of the world-tree, dependeth the flourishing of leaf and blossom, and the sweetness of the fruit.

“For this reason must all human beings powerfully sustain one another and seek for everlasting life; and for this reason must the lovers of God in this contingent world become the mercies and the blessings sent forth by that clement King of the seen and unseen realms. Let them purify their sight and behold all humankind as leaves and blossoms and fruits of the tree of being. Let them at all times concern themselves with doing a kindly thing for one of their fellows, offering to someone love, consideration, thoughtful help. Let them see no one as their enemy, or as wishing them ill, but think of all humankind as their friends; regarding the alien as an intimate, the stranger as a companion, staying free of prejudice, drawing no lines.”

I’m a bit late in writing this entry, but I’ve been busy since I returned from Bulgaria on Sunday afternoon.

To be honest, I hadn’t looked forward to going to Bulgaria. I’d checked out various websites and I’d thought I was going to a country of bandits. Well, of course, it was nothing like my expectations. Yes, it is still quite poor and parts of Sofia, the capital, are run down. The potholes in the roads are craters that the taxi drivers have to weave around to avoid destroying their cars’ suspension. The trams and buses are old. But the hotel I stayed in (the Shipka Hotel) was modern, plain and clean, and not unduly expensive - I’ve stayed in far worse hotels in the UK with far greater pretensions than the Shipka.

The people I met were friendly and incredibly well educated. Sorry if this sounds patronizing: the country may still be relatively poor by western European standards, but Bulgarians read books, listen intently at meetings and ask penetrating questions.

I went to Sofia to do a number of things. The national governing council of the Bulgarian Baha’i community had asked me to do some training with them on external relations and to speak at a couple of meetings. They had also invited me to meet various prominent people in Sofia. And I was there to attend the 12th European Public Information Management Seminar run by the Baha’i International Community Office of Public Information (Paris).

I flew to Sofia on Tuesday 28 June and spoke on ‘The Journey of the Soul’ at a public meeting in the Shipka Hotel that evening. About 35 people came. They listened intently and then asked some really quite challenging questions. If I were speaking on the same subject in the UK, I might get some fairly polite, possibly even superficial questions. But the Bulgarians I was discoursing with were interested enough to keep asking questions and making comments for a couple of hours. There were references to Jungian psychology and Lacan amongst others - and one questioner who works with children with learning difficulties wondered how such children’s souls could express themselves.

I was fortunate in my interpreter, Elena Mustakova-Possardt, a professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia in the US. Elena is a Bulgarian who is bilingual in Bulgarian and English. Because her academic and professional specialty is human development, she could answer any really difficult questions! We made a good team.

Elena translated for me again the next day when I spoke at a slightly smaller meeting in the Baha’i Centre in Sofia about interfaith dialogue and ‘One Common Faith’, the new publication from the Baha’i World Centre. This followed a day-long training session with the National Spiritual Assembly, the national governing council of the Bulgarian Baha’i community.

I started Thursday 30 June with an interview on Bulgarian national radio. I have done quite a lot of radio interviews, but this was a new experience for me. The interview was taped for a late night show with presenter Rumen Stoichkov. Rumen understood English quite well but could speak only at a fairly rudimentary level. So Elena interpreted once again, translating Rumen’s questions into English and my replies into Bulgarian. The main theme was the central Baha’i teaching of unity in diversity and the skill of the Baha’i community in bridge-building between different groups and communities.

I made this the theme of my subsequent conversations with Professor Christo Matanov, an expert in inter-religious dialogue, with Stamen Tassev, Bulgaria’s Deputy Finance Minister, and with Maxim Behar, Chief Executive of the largest PR agency in Bulgaria (and head of the Bulgarian chapter of the European Business Leaders’ Forum).

Terry Madison had set up all these meetings. She is an American Baha’i who’s lived in Bulgaria since 1991 (before that she lived in Suriname). Terry is a former professional singer and entertainer and has tremendous qualities. Although she must be in her 70s, she has great enthusiasm for life and her sense of wonder, is a dedicated Baha’i, and very warm hearted. She is a great builder of friendships.

I was fortunate enough to be able to see Angela Tidswell. Angela and Robert have been through extraordinary difficulties and challenges since they moved to Bulgaria a year or two back, but Angela is a rock; her vision is to stay in Bulgaria (near Varna) and to help strengthen the Baha’i community there. We spent time catching up.

Baha’is from 35 European countries (from Iceland to Turkey) attended the seminar in the Shipka Hotelm including many old friends.

There was a public relations reception as part of the seminar and I was very pleased to greet the Deputy Finance Minister and one or two of the others that I had met on Thursday, including Karina Todorova, the editor of a magazine called ‘One World’. The entertainment was provided by a wonderful young dance group, Zhestim, all of whose members are deaf or hearing impaired. Their dancing was immaculate and full of life, conducted by their leader who stood at the front and signed.

On Saturday night the seminar participants decamped to an ethnic Bulgarian restaurant with a resident band, two generously proportioned ladies who sang a wonderful range of songs, and an exciting and dynamic dance group (four men, four women) which did traditional dances interpreted through a series of stories or scenarios. The men started, strutting in with knives and swords and looking like the bandits I had thought inhabited Bulgaria. The women were very attractive and danced with great energy and finesse. And then the Baha’i diners took to the floor and danced in various ways (some more skilled than others) as the music got louder and louder. Finally, a chain of us were enticed into a Bulgarian circle dance.

Let me warn you against Bulgarian circle dances. They are dances to the death. The music goes on and on until only the very fittest survive. The rest limp and stagger from the floor, wondering why they were so foolish as to risk heart attacks in pursuit of a surfeit of terpsichore.

Temperatures soared to 33º or 34ºC mid-week in Sofia, but then we had some spectacular thunderstorms.