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Weekly reflections

This page is dedicated to reflections by the Cathedral clergy, and will usually be updated on a weekly basis.

To read previous weekly reflections please visit our blog.

 
On Arab Springs and Anglo Summers

 

In December last year a young Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set fire to himself. His was a personal protest against the continual harassment and corruption of the municipal authorities, but the personal soon became political: Bouazzi’s death sparked an inferno of protest throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian peninsula whose consequences are still being felt.
In the first week of August this year a young man, Mark Duggan, was shot in north London in circumstances that are still being investigated. His death led, indirectly, to an orgy of violence across many of our major towns and cities, culminating in the tragic death of three young men in Birmingham, killed by a car as they were attempting to protect lives and property.

The wave of protest and revolution in the Arab word is an expression of a desire for freedom from sclerotic, corrupt, and entrenched autocracies; the rioting in the UK, on the other hand, has not been underpinned by any such grand narrative, the destruction of lives and property has been merely wanton and opportunistic. Yet however much we might wish to ascribe contrasting moral value to the two situations, we should recognise that there is also a thread that connects the events in Tunis and Tottenham, Cairo and Croydon: the alienation of whole groups of people from societies where the affluence and privileges of some contrast so much with lack of opportunity or aspiration for others. An uncomfortable truth – but as Christians aren’t we used to dealing with those?

                                                                                                                                                                        

Canon Simon Cowling