Inspire Dialogue Introductions: Tawanda Mutasah
Senior Director of Law and Policy for Amnesty International
“The stranger or ‘the other’ is a notion that we construct in our quest for a resource. In reality, there is no ‘other’…”
Let me start by shifting gear, and thinking about a difficult problem. What if ‘the other’ is not friendly? What if ‘the other’ is dangerous? What if, instinctively, I do not feel safe in his presence or in his company? What if he worships false or strange gods? What if he always comes late to meetings? Martin Luther King, in his autobiography, when he was giving us a glimpse into his years as a university student, talked about how he would polish his shoes to perfection because he was worried about living up to the image of the unkempt man of colour. What if the stranger is simply someone who is obnoxious? What if the stranger is not that dignified, well-dressed lady who is my neighbour in the first-class seat, with whom we exchange smiles over our newspapers, but he is that man in economy class whose elbows are spilling over our shared arm-rest, and I do not know what to do because I am trying to be comfortable?
The perspective I am trying to introduce here is that, ultimately, ‘the stranger’ is all about the notion and the moment when there is competition for a resource. This is not the case when we are in a good space; it is not the happy-clappy moment when I see somebody who may not be my colour but who studied what I studied some thirty countries away, and who therefore I can take to the pub and, over a beer, we can speak together about that country. No, ‘the stranger’ is the person who appears at the moment when we are competing over the same job, and that job is given to that other when I am desperately in need of it to pay for my mother’s welfare.
So if we accept that ‘the stranger’ is constructed in a complex space of shared resources, whatever those resources may be – it might be a quest for water, it might be a job, it might be the NHS, it might be about petrol, it might be a quest for the limelight, or for attention –isn’t there a real challenge to think about how we deal with this ‘stranger’ in a context like that?
In the context in which I have done work over the years – first starting as a human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, and today being privileged to be a senior director at Amnesty International – one solution that I have found is to think about what the human rights framework can offer us. Rather than constructing the stranger ‘officially’ as human beings will tend to do, let us start from a canon of that which we all share – of the human rights that belong to that individual inherently. This enables us to understand that they have the right to occupy as much space as we do. It enables us to comprehend the obligations that we have – what to do with a migrant, or a refugee, because we have refugee law; what to do with a person with a disability, because we have laws that protect people with disabilities.
But beyond that, one thing that I increasingly discover in my work is that it is not enough to quote the law at each other, or throw it in the face of state actors and bureaucrats. It is equally important to think about what it is, structurally, that is causing the fundamental problems that we are facing today in our environment… So beyond the human rights canon, the second thing I would offer is that we need to train our minds to be able to think about ‘the other’ in a more complex way, which goes beyond the happy-clappy moment. We need to think about what it actually means to be the ‘other’ that we have constructed in a moment of competition for a resource, to deconstruct ‘otherness’ and to start from what, in my faith, was inspired by that radical thinking shown when people said to Jesus: your father and your brothers are looking for you outside; and he said to them, who is my father and who are my brothers? [Matthew 12:47] We need to deconstruct the notion of what ‘identity’ means, but to do this also with the sense of what it means to think of the next person as a human being, an individual who deserves human rights and human dignity.
In short, the stranger or ‘the other’ is a notion that we construct in our quest for a resource. In reality, there is no ‘other’, and by training our minds so that we can see the next human being fairly, we are able to change the world.
Photograph courtesy of Amnesty International
Inspire Dialogue Introductions: Lord Rowan Williams
Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge
“When we go out and encounter others, we are asking for something that is not already there to come alive in us.”
Inspire Dialogue Introductions: Frederick Smets
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
“Most of these people do not need money, but they need somebody that they can have a conversation with.”
Inspire Dialogue Introductions: Baraa Halabieh
English-Arabic translator
“What makes humanity so beautiful is our multiculturalism… the variety in our colours, cultures and beliefs is what makes us all unique.”
Inspire Dialogue Summaries: The Environment
Bhaskar Vira
“How do we have a dialogue with someone who is fifty years away from inhabiting this earth? This leads to considerations of inter-generational responsibility.”
Inspire Dialogue Summaries: Conflict Resolution
Brendan Simms and Alison Liebling
“We were criticised and ridiculed by other professional groups for coming into a maximum security prison with the word ‘trust’ in mind.”
Inspire Dialogue: Final Summary
Lord Rowan Williams
“To be able to imagine that things don’t have to be as they are is perhaps one of the most important things that human beings ever do.”
MORE IN BESHARA MAGAZINE:
Bringing Light to the World: the Vision of Ibn ‘Arabi
Dr Eric Winkel talks with Jane Clark and Richard Gault about what the wisdom of the great philosopher/mystic can offer us in these troubled time
‘At some point we have to get out of the head and out of the intellect and ask: Can we look with our hearts?’
Personal Integrity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
Andrew Watson pays homage to Greece’s most famous modern poet, whose message of quiet fidelity to our own values still has great resonance today
‘What matters is the spirit in which the journey is undertaken: the desire to observe, to learn, to seek beauty, to take time…’
The Art of Conducting
British conductor James Lowe talks about the nature of music and the influence of the Tao Te Ching on his work
‘Great art and music dissolves barriers, allowing us to touch on something transpersonal, something above ourselves.’
AI and Spiritual Intelligence
Mark Vernon dives into the debate surrounding digital technology
‘Where AI processes what is concrete and known, spiritual intelligence is alert to the ineffable, the paradoxical, the mythological.’
Eating the Wild
Charlotte Maberly investigates the benefits of foraging, and talks to Scottish food writer and historian Fi Martynoga
‘Eating nature may be the best and most accessible method we have of creating bonds with it.’
The Cosmos in Stone: the Ascent of the Soul
Artist–Geometer Tom Bree explores the symbolism embodied in the design of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and Wells Cathedral in Southern England
‘The heavenly bodies present the soul with an image of its own inner workings. To look out into the universe becomes analogous to looking inwards.’
Bringing the Land Back to Life
Alan Ereira talks about the wisdom of the Kogi Indians and an important new UNESCO project in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia
‘There is one system; we are part of it and the world is part of us. If you separate us from the world or the world from us, neither can survive.’
The Grandeur of the Night Sky
Hannah Dalgleish invites us to rekindle our ancient relationship with the night at a time when light pollution is becoming a global disruption
‘The night has always held a special place in human spirituality, associated with the mystery of the unknown and the search for self-knowledge.’
An Integral Approach to Dementia
Gerontologist Bettina Wichers talks about her holistic understanding of this widespread disease of old age
‘Even though the mind dissolves itself, it is still in consciousness, because this existence is always in consciousness…’
A Thing of Beauty…
Robin Thomson appreciates the music of Bach and an inspiring new performance of his St John Passion
“One of the stated aims of the Netherlands Bach Society is ‘to breathe new life into tradition’… The richness of Bach’s works is being opened up to the entire world, for anyone who wants to listen.”