Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, visited the European Parliament on Wednesday as part of events celebrating the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. After addressing MEPs, he talked to us in an exclusive interview about hope and humour and said "the issue is how do we talk to the moderates so that we can isolate the extremists?"

 

 

Americans have always had to integrate newcomers, so the concept of "covenant" has always been part of the political culture of the United States. But the concept came from the political culture of Europe after the Reformation, which drew strongly on the Hebrew Bible. I suggest that Europe needs to go back to that concept, which has the power to unite different groups across differences of culture.

 

It says: "we the people come together" - it's a very inclusive form of political identity.  If you want to build a society, you must include everyone as a builder.  If you contribute to something, you belong to it.

 

So the US got this idea from Europe.  They borrowed it and they kept on using it while Europe forgot all about it. It was born in the 17th century when European nations had to find a way of uniting themselves. Other ways are not good. The romantic reaction against rationalism in the 19th century created nation states predicated on race. If you predicate your nation on race, or religion, you have an exclusive nation. We know where that led: two World Wars and the Holocaust, so we can never go down that road again.

 

 

The condition for being able to talk to somebody is that they recognise your right to speak, that you are a partner in dialogue. Someone who negates my very existence, or my identity, or my right to have rights, cannot be a partner in dialogue. So the issue is not how do we talk to the extremists, the issue is how do we talk to the moderates so that we can isolate the extremists.

 

Europe must empower the moderates, so as to marginalise the extremists. That is a political challenge, because unfortunately the media empower extremists. If you hijack an oil tanker, or explode something, or kill people, you get publicity. So the very structure of the media presents extremists as a role model for disaffected young people. They become heroes. And then young people say: "oh, I want to be like that". And, my goodness, unless there's a counter-force, then everyone is in trouble.

 

So don't talk to the extremists, make heroes of the moderates.

 

 

Religion is like the weather. Sometimes it is sunny and you love the weather and other times it's cold and wet and you can't stand the weather. There is no such thing as religion without good elements and bad elements.

 

In ages of rapid change, destabilisation, uncertainty and fear, people turn to those offering them certainty, and they are always the extremists. For them the world is simple: we are right, they are wrong. Where you have political turbulence and religious extremism, the real heroes are the people who oppose the extremists within their religion. Some have been assassinated for it, some excommunicated. You need courage to stand up against the extremists.

 

There are amongst the Israelis and Palestinians, religious leaders very much in favour of peace and of recognising the genuine religiosity of the other side.

 

 

People confuse optimism and hope, and there is a difference. Optimism is the belief that things are going to get better. Hope is the belief that if we work hard enough we may be able to make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is active. One needs no courage to be an optimist, just a certain naivety. But it needs a great deal of courage to have hope.

 

Knowing what our people have lived through over 3000-plus years, no Jew who knows Jewish history can be an optimist; but no Jew can ever give up hope. The national anthem of Israel means "hope". Our task as religious leaders is to be agents of hope in a world close to despair.  It takes tenacity and even courage to keep hoping, but the alternative is not to be contemplated; the politics of despair are always dangerous politics.

 

 

Absolutely! Humour is the first cousin of hope. I even suggested to President Pöttering that after the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue he might try a European Year of Humour.  I was only joking!

 

 

 

Religion and politics coexist, because they both serve man, they both exist for man. A politician cannot hide his faith, his religion, as these are part of his personal make-up and part of the way he does his job.  European culture too is based on Christian faith, on the lessons of the Gospel - but this does not imply we should exclude non-Christians from Europe. The coexistence of Christians and non-Christians means mutual enrichment.

 

 

The presence of several million Muslims in Europe today is simply a reality. We Christians, the majority, as well as those in the minority, must aspire to live in harmony as children of the same God.  No minority, including Muslims, should live separately: they should be a full part of the society that welcomed them, and gain from the majority the best it has to offer.

 

European society is open. Mosques have been founded in many European cities (including at the heart of Catholicism in Rome) and it is natural it should be so. In Athens too there should be a mosque for Muslims to pray when they want to. But this must work both ways. It is unfair for example that it is not possible to establish a Christian church in Saudi Arabia. In Constantinople we are a very small Christian minority, but we are Turkish citizens and, as a minority, entirely fulfil our obligations to the state. But we do not always receive equal treatment with majority Muslims. It saddens us to feel somehow second-class citizens.

 

 

I inherited this interest in ecology from my predecessor, the late Patriarch Dimitrios, who established 1 September as a day of prayer for the protection of the environment. This is an urgent and critical issue in all corners of the globe. Every day we hear about the devastation caused by hurricanes, floods and climate change in general.

 

I was in New Orleans to see the destruction wrought by Katrina. You have to see it with your own eyes to absorb the magnitude of the disaster. The church has a duty to do something. It must raise awareness among people, particularly the young, because the future of the planet is in their hands.

 

Environmental issues affect us all - Christians and non-Christians - because the planet is our common home, our "oikos". The word "ecology" derives from "oikos", Greek for "home". When the hurricane hits, it does not make distinctions...

 

We organize symposia on average every two years, to which we invite not only Christians but also people from other religions and specialities (biologists, environmentalists, clergy, etc). We are attempting to stimulate dialogue between science and religion. There are practical results. Recently, for example, in the Amazon, we saw with our own eyes how forests are felled to grow soya. An Anglican bishop from Liverpool was there; he was very moved, angry about what was going on and, when he returned to his diocese in Liverpool, he persuaded the local authorities to forbid ships carrying soya from Brazil from docking there.  The forests of Brazil generate vast quantities of oxygen and thus affect not only Brazil but the whole planet.

 

 

Turkey has good relations with all its neighbours, including Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, three Orthodox countries and now members of the EU. These relations will help Turkey in its accession negotiations, but will also benefit the peoples of the wider neighbourhood, who instead of killing each other and spending billions on armaments, can learn to coexist peacefully and to use their money for public works, education and so on, rather than for weapons.

 

Many say that Turkey, as an almost entirely a Muslim country, has no place in Europe. We believe that the difference of religion should not be an obstacle. If Turkey fulfils all the criteria for candidate countries, it can be accepted to the EU even if its population is Muslim. This is a different world, but it can coexist with the Christian world, as it has happened many times in the past and in many places across the globe. In Europe there is room for everyone, as long as we adapt and avoid living in ghettos.

 

Many road safety measures were originally devised to protect motor racing drivers. No one knows this better than rally driver turned MEP Krzysztof Holowczyc. A champion in his native Poland and European rally champion in 1997, he has turned his attention to politics. The 46 year old now sits as a Christian Democrat in the European Parliament. We asked him about road safety. What can be done to reduce death toll on European roads?

 

Road accident death statistics are very gloomy, with the countries that recently joined the EU having the dubious distinction of topping the charts. Fortunately we have moved from wishful thinking to substantial changes. Two projects concern me in a particular way as a race driver: intelligent car and eCall.

 

There is a strong trend to introduce regulation that would require a vast range of track control systems in new cars. If such an “intelligent” car drives slightly out of balance, the whole electronics system gets back on track and allows it to escape danger.

 

The eCall system is already well advanced in Europe. After a car accident, a special device preinstalled in the vehicle sends an automatic signal to the nearest emergency unit. The faster rescue arrives, the better the chance of survival. As a rally driver I understand how important those minutes are – I simply know how it hurts.

 

The system has been widely used in motor sport. In the Paris-Dakar Rally, if a car stops en route, the crew has to press the button within 30 seconds, otherwise there is an alert. Most of the road safety solutions were originally conceived to protect the lives of daredevil race drivers. As one of the pack, I enjoy real hands-on experience in EP talks on new road legislation. The figures indicate – and we are talking about human lives here – that eCall could save around 2,500 souls a year in Europe alone. 

        

 

Our continent is perceived as the place where human life is the most precious in the world. I would like the rest of the world to take the example of Europe and copy our legal solutions. There is still a lot of work ahead – for example we need specific rules on quad bikes. They are great fun, but can also be deadly dangerous. It scares me when I see a teenager on a quad speeding over 100 km/h between cars on a public road without wearing a helmet.

 

 

There are still too few decently trained drivers in countries like Poland, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria where casualties are high. No wonder there are problems when it costs a third as much to learn to drive as in Germany or France, while car and fuel prices are similar.

Drivers across Europe must learn positive habits. The overarching principle of the “highway code” is common courtesy and respect for other drivers. For example slowing down to let another car change lanes makes you feel good because you are doing somebody a favour.

 

 

Of course, the proposed “three times twenty” (20% less CO2 by 2020) rule on emissions makes sense. But I believe that it is above all the current fuel crisis that will force us to seek less petrol-thirsty engines. Lower fuel consumption will naturally decrease emissions of CO2. 

We have to think about how to develop our road transport to assure fluidity of traffic. An average lorry that has to stop start and speed up again five times for red lights, burns as much fuel as it takes to drive 20-30 tons 80 kilometers. That is why city bypasses and through arteries need to be streamlined to let  drivers maintain an even speed. Transport is the nerve of our economy, our key to development. Do not curb transport – improve it!

 

 

African week has brought many prominent people to the European Parliament this week. One of them is Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer, poet, playwright and the first African winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1986. On Thursday, in talks with MEPs, he spoke passionately about the need for human rights violators to face justice. Whilst at the EP we caught up with him and asked him his views on cooperation between cultures.

 

Wole Soyinka has been imprisoned several times in Nigeria for his mediation during the civil war and later criticism of the military and government. All his poetry and plays seem to deal with corruption, tyranny and the cult of personality in African dictatorships.

 

 

"For me it's a human phenomenon - what we're talking about is how to practicalise and enhance this kind of dialogue. The international community has reached the level now that the notion of a hierarchy of cultures has been eroded. Nowadays the recognition of cultures that are unknown or strange is far more advanced and there is far more dissemination of cultural phenomena. So what it means is that the mechanisms of cultural exchange need to be enhanced".

 

"Again we come to this cultural interaction and obviously every culture has its priorities. I have always taken the position that somehow political concerns have a way of occupying the proper space within cultural programmes. People constantly ask the question "what is the place of the individual in the community". I believe that the socio-political element of culture, whether it is the poetry of the African continent or the Soviet Union, finds its own way. It's like water - it finds its own level".

 

 

"To give you examples, the British Council and the Alliance Française from time to time send theatre groups to Africa for performances and workshop - to Nigeria for example. Then Nigerian groups can go abroad and introduce to the audiences theatrical idioms that they have never encountered before. One only has to be part of this to see how much enriching it is that they spread their horizons".

 

The other example is the phenomenon of the internationalisation of local festivals. One example is the festival at my University which is called "Masks, Masquerades and Marionettes". It was an opportunity to introduce Nigerians to the mask traditions of the rest of the world. We invited Japan, China, and the Scandinavian countries. Many Nigerians do not know that so called "masking" is a tradition of these countries - they always thought it was from Africa.

 

It was doubly useful for Nigerians because there is this religious fundamentalism which is warping the cultural understanding and the horizons of people. Many Christians and Muslims (in Nigeria) still believe that masks are a sign of fetishism, paganism, barbarism - including students.

 

 

How do I feel? This is my old stomping ground! When we were in trouble I used to visit MEPs and talk to them. When things seem to be stabilised in our country and I received an invitation, it was an opportunity to come here and say thanks for your assistance during the last dictatorship. I'm usually invited during crises for Nigeria - and we're hoping never to have to come back under those circumstances. I'm quite happy to pass through...

 

President of the EP delegation with the South Caucasus countries, Marie Anne Isler Béguin was in Georgia just a few days after the beginning of the conflict in South Ossetia. Appointed by EP President Hans-Gert Pöttering to represent the Parliament, she participated in the ceasefire negotiations after the first phase of hostilities, and travelled in some of the areas directly affected.

 

Subsequently, Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Security and Defence and the Delegation for relations with the South Caucasus met on Wednesday 20 August to discuss developments in Georgia. Georgian Minister Foreign Affairs  Eka Tkeshelashvili was there and called on the EU to send a mission to Georgia 

 

We spoke with Ms Isler Béguin on the phone to hear first-hand about what she saw on the ground and to hear her views on possible prescriptions for a resolution of the situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe now faces starvation and rampant inflation. Its people are living in fear and Robert Mugabe's regime is persecuting all opposition. Against this backdrop a recent one-candidate Presidential election has been condemned internationally. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leads the opposition. Its representative in Europe, Hebson Makuvise, met MEPs on the Development Committee on 15 July. Whilst in parliament, we put a few questions to him.

 

 

The problems that we have in Zimbabwe today are largely a result of Robert Mugabe; it's a man-made disaster. There is no room for Robert Mugabe in the future. His expertise in violence is not good for Zimbabwe, it's not good for the region and it's not good for Africa.

 

 

Mugabe has been assisted by the gang of so-called service chiefs - heads of the army, police, prisons and the air vice-Marshall who protect him. This is why he managed to stay in power even after the MDC was formed. These people are also beneficiaries of the policies of patronage. But that's just 5 individuals. The soldiers and police officers want to see change, but they have to vote in front of their bosses and cannot express their free will.

 

 

I don't think dictators are different. The tactics are the same - violence, politics of patronage, political rhetoric. If you look at all the dictatorships in the world, you will notice that they have a lot of similarities. Robert Mugabe knows his days are numbered and I believe we are slowly getting there. We are getting regional and international support, even though there are still a few regional leaders that still look upon Mugabe as a hero. Minds are changing in the region and in Africa.

 

Robert Mugabe is going to go whether he likes it or not, because Zimbabweans have decided that it is time and they voted for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai. That election is what made Robert Mugabe brutalise, rape women, torture and kidnap. He realized that Zimbabweans had rejected him.

 

 

The MDC is a democratic party that does not function because of tribalism or colour. We are one peace loving people - white, black, Shona and Ndebele speaking - who have been betrayed by Robert Mugabe wanting to stay in power.

 

Before and after 29 March elections, if Robert Mugabe had considered defeat, people admitted they were going to forgive Mugabe and allow the country and the people to move on. But now some people think that maybe Mugabe and his regime need to go to the Hague. Nevertheless, Zimbabweans are a peace loving people, and MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai was always talking of the government of national healing. So I believe that he is going to give an amnesty to Robert Mugabe and his cronies and allow them to leave the country.

 

 

We need all their support. We value the support that the international community - especially the EU - has always given for Zimbabweans in the creation of the rule of law in their country. That is why the MDC managed to get where it is today. That support encourages Zimbabweans to fight a dictatorship. The African Union and the SADC are our brothers, with the exception of problems with some of the leaders. Minds are changing, many countries in Africa already admitted that Mugabe has to go and Morgan Tsvangirai won the elections.

 

The MDC has always said it will support South African President Thabo Mbeki and the mediation process. It is only now that we raise our concerns when we see he is not showing impartiality, after he kept quiet about Robert Mugabe's political rhetoric on not stepping down even if he looses the election.

 

We are saying to the UN and African Union that we need a permanent representative in Harare, so that he can assist in the mediation process.

 

 

On 10 July MEPs adopted a resolution calling for tighter sanctions against Harare, including an arms embargo and the freezing of assets held by the leadership.