The harsh reminder of our common humanity

Iran’s latest sanctions on protestors are a harsh reminder of the importance of diversity, solidarity and our common humanity, writes Krish Kandiah.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A protester holds a red placard bearing the name and image of Mahsa Amini

It has been a year since the widespread protests across Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini. The courageous 22-year-old was killed in prison for refusing to wear the hijab headscarf. To mark the anniversary of her death the Iranian government issued new legislation increasing the punishment to women who are deemed “inappropriately dressed” from a previous punishment of 10 days in prison to a maximum 10-year incarceration sentence.

According to the World Economic Forum, Iran is ranked 140 out of 144 countries in the area of gender equality. Iran’s current leadership suppresses not just the clothing of women but their voices, skills, perspectives and decisions too. Women choosing to forego the hijab had previously been a way to peacefully push back on the inequality they are facing. This symbolism of resistance is now not only forbidden, but criminal. Even business owners who serve women who are not wearing the hijab are liable for prosecution under the new laws.

As a father of three daughters, I find Iran’s new laws deeply disturbing. I cannot even imagine the desperation of Amjad Amini, Mahsa’s father, who this week was put in prison in an attempt to short-circuit any protests of his daughter’s death. He faces not just the trauma of the state murder of his daughter, the risk to his own life and the inability to grieve in peace, but also the devastating consequence of her death on 49 million other women in Iran with the tightening of the very laws his daughter was protesting against.

It could learn a lot from Jesus who went out of his way to welcome those that others looked down on.

As a Christian I find these oppressive laws deeply troubling too. One of the most revolutionary marks of the Christian faith is that it recognises the absolute equality and intrinsic value of all human beings. No matter what our age or race or gender or sexuality or nationality or ability or immigration status or political persuasion or faith, all are made in the image of God. I believe it is therefore an essential element of my faith to speak up for the rights of my fellow human beings, particularly when they are being marginalised, tyrannised, dehumanised or disempowered.

This means the oppression of Muslim women in the Middle East matters to me. Although we come from different cultures, live on different continents and hold different views about God and how to worship him, I believe we are connected by our common humanity.

Sadly, our common humanity is not always recognised either by Christians or those outside of the church. The church in the UK has too often been guilty as charged for misogynist, homophobic and racist attitudes. It could learn a lot from Jesus who went out of his way to welcome those that others looked down on. He was not afraid to face criticism for spending time with those the religious folk of the time had traditionally mistreated. It is time for the church to follow his example and take a lead in treating everyone with compassion and in standing up for the basic human rights of women, those in the LGBT community, and those from other countries.

Our common humanity is becoming overlooked too in our polarised world as it further divides over identity politics. There is a developing norm to focus less on the things that unite us and more on what differentiates us. Our latest culture wars are pitting women’s rights against trans rights, telling us that the rights of black people are opposed to the rights of white people, or that the rights of immigrants are at odds with the rights of settled passport-holders. But that is not the way things have to be or should be.

I believe that the opposite is true: that the world can be better for all of us, that there is strength in solidarity, that diversity is genuinely good for everyone.

This is why I recently turned up at a campaign calling for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be respected, why I publicly advocate for refugees and care-experienced young people, and why I insisted on greater representation of the LGBT community in my work with government. This is why I offer race and faith literacy training to government bodies, churches and businesses. This is why I have opened up my home to foster children and refugee families. This is why I set up my charity, Sanctuary Foundation, to advocate for those who do not feel safe in their own country. This is why I call the church to action and compassion for all whose rights have been taken away or are being eroded. This is why, in as far as it depends on me, I will champion equality for all.

And this is why I will continue to be calling on the government to open safe and legal routes for all those who are being oppressed and persecuted in the countries where they live. I would like the government to offer our country as sanctuary to women from Iran whose lives are endangered, whose human rights are being denied. I would like our country to offer asylum and hospitality to those who have had to flee Iran after daring to challenge the brutality of the current regime. I would like our churches to lead the way in warmly welcoming all those from Iran and anywhere else who have never experienced unconditional love and acceptance.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Politics

20 February 2025

4 min read

The assisted dying bill is an undignified mess

Literally life-changing legislation needs a parliament at its best not its worst.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A parliamentary committee meets, sitting at wooden raised desks in a wood panelled room.

The bill committee meets.

The first clue came when MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill passed in the House of Commons at the end of November. She came outside to greet pro-euthanasia campaigners like she was emerging as a winner from the Big Brother house, in tears of joy, whooping and hugging and high-fiving, with prime minister Keir Starmer gurning awkwardly in her wake.

For her and her supporters, this was indeed great news. But these optics were far from great. It was as though she was celebrating the consequence of the legislation she’d introduced: “Whoa! Wonderful news everybody! We’re going to be allowed to help people to kill themselves.”

It’s not a good look, even to those who may wish for such assistance. Where was the dignity, the key word that assisted-suicide lobbyists have appropriated for their cause? Not in this carefree triumphalism, this cork-popping celebration of the prospect of death-on-demand.

Since then, the bill’s faltering passage through parliament has been characterised by this absence of dignity, a kind of cowboy rustler pushing a herd of supporters in a single direction, towards statute. And this lack of dignity matters. Not just because it is, literally, the most life-changing legislation any of us will see in our lifetimes, but because the dignity of parliament matters very much indeed.

I don’t mean the ritual flummery, the state opening by the monarch, people marching about with wigs and sticks, Black Rod and all that. I mean dignity in the sense with which we honour our democracy, the way in which we frame our legislature seriously and with due process.

Leadbeater presents as a good person and there is no apparent evidence to the contrary. But she is an inexperienced parliamentarian. Her selection for the seat of Batley and Spen, now Spen Valley, was rushed through in 2021, memories remaining acutely sharp of the murder of her older sister, Jo Cox, in the constituency in 2016. And, naturally, she has sat on the Government’s backbenches for less than a year.

Her inexperience of parliamentary process and scrutiny has shown. Committee hearings have been rammed with those who support assisted suicide and held in unseemly haste, such is the rush to get it into law. Before her bill’s second reading, she described it as having the strongest safeguards in the world, each patient requiring a sign-off from a High Court judge. When this proved impractical, the judge was replaced with a social worker, which apparently was “even safer”. So, safer than even the strongest safeguards in the world?

But more worrying still is how the passage of the bill has been factionalised. Leadbeater has alienated the mild-mannered by calling opposing voices “noise”, which is a bit like lamenting that a debate should have two sides at all. And she’s called those who disagree with her “unconstructive” and complained that opponents have “mobilised”. Well, duh. That’s how parliament works. Indeed, it’s part of its dignity, rather than a simple inconvenience for an MP in a hurry.

The media have noticed this lack of respect for procedure. I’m not sure that there’s ever been such resistance to proposed assisted-suicide legislation in the public prints before. Even the Guardian, which might be relied upon to see it as a progressive cause, has turned more than ambivalent. Only columnist and assisted-suicide flagbearer Polly Toynbee is available for a piece that amounts to saying we should move along, there’s nothing to see here and Leadbeater’s bill is doing just fine.

She, too, claims absurdly that opposition is only coming from people who oppose assisted suicide. Well, blow me down. Try as I might, I can’t trace her complaining that Lord Falconer’s supposedly independent Commission on Assisted Dying of 2011 was both funded and packed with his cause’s supporters.

In passing, it should be noted what an underminer of parliamentary dignity is Falconer too. He has claimed that justice secretary Shabam Mahmood’s opposition to the bill should be discounted because of her “religious beliefs”. Mahmood is a Muslim. For a constitutional lawyer, Falconer shows scant regard for our constitution. We might as well say that his views should be discounted because he’s a progressive secularist.

One might expect PM Keir Starmer to bring some quality to this, as an alleged stickler for legal procedure. It remains a mystery, as a supporter of the principle, that he’s left assisted suicide to a private members’ bill. If he really wanted it, it should surely be a Government bill. Cynics among us wonder if he has honoured a promise given to the terminally ill Esther Rantzen with token support for a private members’ bill, but knows it will fail.

Again, lack of dignity. If dignity in dying means anything since it was misappropriated as a campaign slogan for assisted suicide, then it should be accompanied by dignified debate and amendment in parliament. This bill has provided precisely the opposite. Let it die.

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