THINKING ANEW:THE NAME Tariq Jahan has probably faded from people's memories already.
His son was of one of three young men killed in the recent riots in Birmingham while trying to defend homes and businesses. If his name is forgotten, what he had to say to the local community is worth remembering because, despite his terrible loss, he spoke with great courage.
When some Muslims were calling for “retribution” Mr Jahan – himself a Muslim – urged people not to seek revenge. “I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, whites – we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? Calm down and go home – please.”
We have heard similar pleas on this island from people who had suffered losses through violence. They gave us hope in bleak times by reminding us of the possibility of something better. But what was truly remarkable was that so often these people were forgiving – something tomorrow’s gospel tells us we are to do again and again and again – easy to say or even preach but very difficult to do.
Adrian Hastings, priest and theologian, suggests that we best understand the call to unlimited forgiveness by recognising that we belong to what he calls “the community of the guilty”. “At the end of it all we need to recognise that it is an inevitable part of our moral being as humans that we are sinners, sharing every one of us in the quality of guiltiness. Perhaps we can only help people to cope with guilt if, first of all, we can agree on that. We may then go on to make some sense of diversities of guilt, and of course, accept that some guilts are much more publicly serious or more morally destructive than others, but it is from within a community of the guilty that we have to approach guilt, not as people who stand outside or even think that it is possible to stand outside. There is no us and them.”
This has implications for our understanding of society and what we mean in social terms by corporate responsibility. There was real anger across Britain at the summer rioting that took place in London and elsewhere. Such behaviour is unacceptable in any society and people quite reasonably demanded that those responsible should be held to account. There was little support, however, for those who, while not condoning what happened, suggested that there might be underlying social issues to be addressed. (Efforts have since been made since to consider this aspect of the problem).
A cartoon in this newspaper at the time hinted at double standards by pointing out the failings of the privileged classes. A prosperous looking city gentleman is shown in morning dress and sporting a Union Jack waistcoat while giving this advice to looters laden with “goodies”:
“If you really thought it was clever to somehow profit from destroying the livelihoods and property of your fellow citizens you should have got a job in the city like decent people.”
The truth is that we are all responsible in some measure for the shape of the society we live in and when things go wrong, as they did in Britain, we need the courage to ask why and take responsibility where it arises.
The “decent” people referred to in the cartoon don’t see themselves as belonging to Adrian Hastings’s community of the guilty or if they do, they see themselves as on the margins, which can mean that the root causes of problems are ignored. It also questions what we mean by the word “decent”.
John Donne, famous Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” That is what that good man Tariq Jahan was saying: we belong to each other and we have responsibility for each other. It is called society.