Muslims crave freedom just as Westerners do

Here's the Bishop of Leicester's "First Person" column from the Leicester Mercury today, in which he comments on the political upheavals in North Africa and Middle East. This has been tweeted by the Muslim Council of Britain, which will have brought it to the attention of a wider audience and different constituency.

Muslims crave freedom just as Westerners do

The Bishop of Leicester reflects on the dramatic events unfolding in Libya

All of us have been watching events unfold in North Africa and the Middle East. We are living through a key period of history. But the full consequences and significance of what is happening still cannot be properly understood. But meanwhile, observing these events from Western Europe, it seems to me that it is worth asking ourselves a number of significant questions.

First, what do these events tell us about some of our assumptions about Muslim countries? Are we discovering that the citizens of Islamic societies are not so different from ourselves, wanting the freedoms and liberties and rights and opportunities that we are used to enjoying in our own country? And does this begin to shift some of our stereotypes of Islamic countries? Can we see them as much more similar in their desires for fundamental freedoms to our own country?

Secondly, what is all this revealing to us about how politics works in the age of social networking and freedom of communication? The capacity to communicate quickly with citizens across the country is beginning to mobilise people who have been under the heel of dictatorships for generations. Surely this is something that those of us who espouse Western democratic values should warmly applaud. What we are seeing on the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi, just as we did in Cairo a few weeks ago, are not fundamentalist Muslims clamouring for Sharia Law, but citizens who seek the freedom to voice their opinions and change their societies in very much the same way as we do.

Thirdly, this may be a moment for us to think again about what we mean by "Western values". We may have become accustomed to thinking that Western liberal democracies are in some ways superior to other countries. Even that we have a responsibility to impose Western democratic values on countries which have, as yet, not discovered them for themselves. These established patterns of thinking are now changing before our eyes. We cannot know what the world will look like when this dramatic "domino effect" has finally reached its conclusion. We are seeing change taking place through the will of the people expressed collectively even at risk to life and limb.

That is an inspiring vision for all of us. As a Christian I believe we should be praying for those who are risking their lives for change at the moment. And perhaps we should be praying too that we will have the wisdom to see and to understand the meaning of the changes that are happening and to support a vision of a more peaceful and just world.

Bishop Tim (photo above) is Patron of Leicester Council of Faiths.

Read this article on the Mercury website, along with reader comments:
http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Muslims-crave-freedom-just-Westerners/article-3270161-detail/article.html