Chris Haydon, director of Community TV Trust, was invited to give a paper at the conference on Multiculturalism and Global Community that has just finished in Iran. Delegates came from 20 countries and shared presentations and debate over four days. As a result, CTVT has established contacts as far afield as Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, United States, Denmark and Oldham. Haydon’s paper addressed the work of CTVT in Southwark’s vastly diverse community where it can be truly said that global community can be found within the Borough’s boundaries.
First out of the blocks is Bahrain, with whose Bahrain Women Association’s Be-Free Programme ideas for a media training and filmmaking course are being developed. Dr Soroor Qarooni described Bahraini youth being lost in films, the internet and Facebook … and in harmony with Western young people, albeit in Arabic, are inclined to respond “Whatever”.
Dr. Phil Enns of the State Islamic University in Indonesia pointed out that where there might be conflicts within democratic processes, there was room to encourage projects outside the political realm. CTVT concurs heartily.
One or two papers confronted the hard line Islamic stance on tolerance and religious freedom, remarking in one case that it was inconceivable in the West that a law be passed punishing those that converted from Christianity to Islam, and in another case observing that religious freedom is acknowledged in the Quran itself and therefore that Islam needed to return to its golden age of more than two hundred years ago when science, knowledge and Islam itself were all riding high.
Not surprisingly the opposite stance was taken in a number of propositions: for example, modernity had reached its end, convergence was impossible and Islam could not be secularised; the first duty of citizenship is to practice religion; God is needed for intercultural dialogue; US state politics is seriously ill; media is the latest colonising threat coming - by implication - from the West.
The conference was attended by a number of leading Iranian Shia clerics, including Ayatollah Tehrani from the Qom Seminary. The closing ceremony was itself brought to a conclusion with a speech from Dr. Gholem Ali Hadded Adel, the former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, who gave a forthright presentation fully reflecting historical as well as recent political events. His daughter is married to the son of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One imagines therefore that his views are on message. Overall, Iranian hospitality excelled and delegates enjoyed a very full programme of debates, presentations, and finally a day seeing a few of Tehran’s cultural landmarks.