It is easy to be cynical about politics. No one trusts
politicians, either here or abroad. In any case, Syria is not happening down
our street. The social and the political turmoil which is overwhelming Egypt
and Turkey does not pertain to our immediate neighbourhood or affect us in any
direct way. Neither, for that matter, does the occasional bit of encouraging
news, such as the recent election of
Iran’s relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani as that country’s new President. It is
easy to be cynical about this too, given that Mr. Rouhani must strive to
maintain an equable relationship with the conservative supreme leader, Ali
Hosseini Khamenei, while at the same time enabling a much needed warming of
relations with the West. Cynicism is what happens when we give up on hope, or
simply lose interest in it. Hope has to do with transformation; in this case the
transformation of the political scenario not only in Iran, but in the whole of
the Middle East.
Call me naïve, if you like, but I work on the presupposition
that Mr. Rouhani is not a bad man and therefore
should not be presumed to be the enemy from day one. Rather, he should be
thought of as someone who has it within him to change, even transform, the life
of Iran and thereby to free all of its people, and it is the people of Iran, as
well as those of surrounding nations, who matter most. If we are to support the
people of Iran and those of the Middle East, as opposed to the ideologies many
of them claim to be fighting for, we must keep good faith with those who voted
for Hassan Rouhani and, of equal importance, we must believe in his capacity
for wisdom and goodness and for a change of mind and heart on certain key issues. As things stand at present, Hassan Rouhani could be the one who breaks
the deadly cycle of violence now engulfing most of the Middle East threatening global stability, and thereby you
and me.
He will be directly or indirectly involved in making difficult
and perhaps compromising decisions on a number of issues, ranging from the
present conflicts in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey and the growing unrest in Egypt,
to the use of nuclear energy as a destructive force, to the treatment of women
and to relations between Iran and the wider world. All of these issues will
weigh heavily on Mr. Rouhani and he will need more than gestures of good will from
others to give him the confidence he needs if he is to embody hope for his
people, including those who did not vote for him. He cannot do this work alone.
One of the texts set in the Church
in Wales lectionary for today is ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Ps.40:10).
We, along with our Muslim brothers and sisters, need to take this text to
heart. We need to meet each other in it and let it first transform our hearts
and minds, by replacing cynicism with hope, and then allow it to flow on
through us into the troubled regions of the Middle East, not to mention the
layers of misunderstanding which divide Muslims from Christians, and all of us,
from what is blithely termed the ‘secular’. Meeting others in the stillness of God is not a spiritual game. It is nothing
less than the confrontation of despair with hope, through the work of prayer
undertaken in faith across the barriers which divide one people from another.
We can begin this work by being present
in the stillness of knowing and being known by God. The stillness embodies the
kind of love which transcends our feeble and all too human attempts at trying
to resolve seemingly impossible conflict situations. It makes demands on the
whole person, so the one who prays must be wholly given over to the reality of
the love of God at work in the power of his Spirit, and to the possibility that
it can be worked on the most violent jihadist or potential terrorist. If every
Christian, every Muslim, and all who believe themselves to be in any way
spiritual were to stop for a few minutes each day and takes these words literally
to heart, holding those who most need God’s stillness and compassion in the
forefront of their consciousness, we would, I am sure, see a transformation of the
politics of Iran and the Middle East. Try
it and see.
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