Egyptian thinker and commentator, Dr Tarek Heggy, visited the UK’s National Baha’i Centre in London, this afternoon, at the suggestion of some Egyptian Baha’is who are based in the UK.

Dr Heggy, a Muslim, is absolutely delightful, and a number of us enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with him. He is very taken with the Baha’i Faith and with the Baha’is he has met. He has read widely about the history of the Baha’i Faith and is fascinated by the characteristics of peacefulness, openness and trustworthiness that he finds in the Baha’is. These characteristics, he says, should be found in all faiths. However, Islam in particular has been twisted and made an expression of anger towards others rather than of love.

He is critical of the ignorance that many have about their own faiths and advocates education as an essential part of bringing an end to religious conflict.

He asked many questions about the Faith. He was particularly interested in the similarities and links between the Baha’i Faith and Sufism - he himself is particularly sympathetic to the Sufi understanding of Islam and is very critical of the narrow Wahhabi ideology that has become dominant in Islam.

It was a great privilege to meet Dr Heggy and he has expressed a determination to pay a return visit to our Baha’i Centre the next time he is in London. He went away with a bag full of Baha’i books.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Islam, Muslim, Sufi, Wahhabi, Heggy, Egypt, religion

I’ve just learned about a brand new UK local Baha’i website.

The Baha’is of Northampton have just launched their site. It’s well worth a look. There’s information about the Baha’i Faith itself and about the Northampton Baha’is’ activities. And there are “My Favourite Quotes” sidebars, in which local Baha’is share their favourite quotation from the Baha’i writings and reflect on it. It’s a really nice feature.

Check it out, why don’t you?

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Northampton

I spent the yesterday here at Coombe Abbey Hotel, near Coventry, taking part in an informal meeting between the commissioners of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the Commission’s “stakeholders” (who thought of this awful term for people who have an interest in the work of a particular organization?). There were 64 of us all told at the conference. I was there with my “Chair of the Religion and Belief Consultative Group on Equality, Diversity and Human Rights” hat on.

The meat of the conference was most interesting. We, the stakeholders, had been invited to share our thoughts and ideas for the future development of the EHRC, which was 150 days old yesterday. The mandate of the EHRC is defined by the Equality Act 2006 and explained on the EHRC’s website:

The Equality and Human Rights Commission acts not only for the disadvantaged, but for everyone in society, and can use its new enforcement powers where necessary to guarantee people’s equality. It also has a mandate to promote understanding of the Human Rights Act.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) established under the Equality Act 2006 – accountable for its public funds, but independent of government.

Setting the scene

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Commission, set the scene for the day’s discussions by reviewing the big picture in which the Commission finds itself - we’re in an economic downturn and the next general election is beginning to occupy the minds of politicians; both of these factors are making decision-makers less willing to take risks, even though risks need to be taken, if UK society is to become more equal and diversity is to be welcomed as a permanent fact of UK life. He also reviewed the bigger picture: the UK population of 60 million is experiencing unprecedented levels and rates of change; globalization is forcing us to re-examine our competitive advantage in the world; the population is aging; both of these factors will make us look again at who needs to develop skills, what skills they need to develop, and how they will develop them. Many of the newly skilled will have to come from currently marginalized or excluded groups, such as the disabled and minorities.

Patrick Diamond, the EHRC’s Group Director, Strategy gave an excellent presentation on how the EHRC’s change model is shifting from the traditional anti-discrimination approach of much of the older UK anti-discrimination legislation and of the work of the three commissions that existed before the EHRC came into being to a culture-change approach. A culture change model has a vision of the direction in which society should move to become more equal, less discriminatory, to become a setting in which everyone can flourish, and then it uses “soft power” (influence, education, media messages, citizen power) to enhance people’s autonomy and thus their life satisfaction, their well-being and their happiness) as well as the “hard power” of enforcement provided by legislation. It can be argued that an effective culture-change organization needs both “hard” and “soft” (which should not be read as “easy”) power to do its work. Patrick’s vision was that the UK can become a world leader in positive ways of handling diversity and promoting greater equality.

Four questions

After lunch the conference participants were put to work to answer four questions:

1. What are the three most important challenges for the Commission and Stakeholders to address?
2. What makes an effective partnership?
3. How would we know if we are having the impact we seek?
4. What are the Equality and Human Rights outcomes we really want public duties to deliver for the 60 million people in Britain?

We were grouped in eights around tables. The eights paired off for discussion about the questions and to write responses on pieces of paper that were then posted on boards, discussed and clustered by theme. After the round-table discussions, we were reassigned to four “super groups” and each super group compiled all the answers given by the tables of eight to one of the questions. I was pleased to be on the same table as Zia Sardar, writer, broadcaster and EHRC Commissioner (he describes himself as a “critical polymath”), whose excellent book, Desperately Seeking Paradise, I’ve previously reviewed here.

In the end we all came back into plenary to share our findings on each of the questions.

Vision for a more just society

So what did we think? Were our discussions helpful? (The people invited to this informal meeting were all senior people in a wide range of equality and human rights organizations, religion and belief groups, senior staff of the EHRC, and Commissioners - so one would expect them to be able to handle a wide range of issues at both strategic and practical levels.)

Zia Sardar’s view was that we’d come up with a vision for the future society we want, not just for the future of the EHRC - and certainly not just about the particularities of the way the EHRC works.

And it was clear to me and others at the informal that our shared vision was one of commitment to a society in which prejudices of all kinds are no longer allowed to be a driver of public policy and action, in which everyone has greater personal autonomy and the opportunity to flourish (although we cannot force people to take the opportunities that are on offer, since to do so would undermine their autonomy), and in which everyone’s human rights are fully accepted and fully supported.

What next?

The findings from the conference represent the latest stage in the strategic conversation between the EHRC and some (if not all) of its stakeholders (there are questions, as always, about who arethe stakeholders, who is included, who is excluded?), a conversation that will continue through a range of consultations and a further stakeholder informal in 6 months time. The findings will go to the Commissioners and the senior officers of the EHRC for their consideration and may (or may not) become part of the EHRC’s policy and strategy for its future work.

Photos © John Barnabas Leith under a Creative Commons licence.

Technorati Tags: EHRC, religion and belief, Zia Sardar, Trevor Phillips, human rights, equality, diversity, Britain