A tale of two Iftars

"Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high" Isaiah 58:4


Everyone nowadays is organising an ‘iftar’, the breaking of the fast for Muslims during the month of Ramadan. As a community meal, it is on its way to becoming the Islamic equivalent to a Christmas Lunch or a Harvest Supper. It’s the sort of occasion to which you can invite your mother-in-law or those neighbours with whom you rarely get beyond trading views on dog fouling or poor television reception.

Last week I went to two. First I went to the East London Mosque in Whitechapel for its annual ‘iftar’ gathering, organised by the East London Council of Mosques. As we were shown up to a room with rows of tressle tables and burco boilers simmering away in the background and lots of helpers busily ferrying plates and glasses around, it had the feel of a jolly good patronal festival. Something smelled great. It was all looking really quite promising.

Then, as some serious looking young men started to sound check the mics, it became clear that there were going to be speeches and that these would take place before the food. When are the speeches ever before the food? This is certainly not how we do things in the C of E.

The main fare for the evening was quite clearly not curry but politics. The honoured and esteemed guests took their place on the platform. The Home Office Minister (with responsibility for policing, security and community safety) told us that Islam was a religion of peace. The Deputy Chief Constable for the Met told us that Islam was a religion of toleration.The leader of Tower Hamlets council told us that Islam was a religion of social responsibility and that there was money available for them to prove it. Pots of it, in fact, as a result of the 2012 Olympics coming to town.

Dr Bari, the President of the Muslim Council of Britain, (and former Mosque Secretary here in Whitechapel) then told us about some of the problems within the community. Quoting chapter and verse of local deprivation statistics, he went on to describe what the Mosque was doing about these: Healthy Living projects, Improving School Attendence programmes, a Women’s Link etc. Then he went for the Big Ask. The Mosque, he said, was needing to raise money for its ambitious expansion. £5M should cover it. Inshallah.

On the next evening I found myself in the midst of those deprivation statistics at an altogether different type of ‘iftar’. I was in Bethnal Green at the St Hilda’s Centre, sitting between a couple of old Bengali residents from the local Boundary Estate. They were ‘cut make and trim’ tailors suffering the vicissitudes of seasonal (un)employment. One of their daughters came and joined us and sat her own son on her lap. She told me she was working for a women’s collective along Brick Lane, run by a local housing association. She asked me about getting her son into the local church primary school. We actually had a conversation. We may even have discussed poor television reception.

When the local imam and the local vicar made their speeches (after the meal), there was a lot of good humour. They challenged each other to a sponsored fast. I stayed behind to help with the washing up.

And what was the difference between these two? In Bethnal Green we had the meeting of the small platoons, networks of association learning to depend on each other and contributing mutually to civic life. In Whitechapel we had the big battalion dealing directly with Government and its Saudi funders, essentially disinterested in the required mutuality of local civic relations. Bethnal Green was chaotic and familiar. Whitechapel was organised and impersonal, the fellowship of the football stadium and, in the end, really quite worrying.

La donna è mobile

"But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first." Revelation 2:4

When I broke my collarbone last year, after the doctor had screwed it back together again, I spent six weeks pottering around waiting for the fracture to knit. I made a lot of jig saw puzzles, re-read all the Bond books and played a lot of Snake on my mobile telephone. As a consequence of this last form of distraction therapy, I effectively erased all the characters on the rubber pad of my phone; the Nokia 1100, if you're interested.

After I got better, I became somewhat embarrassed by this defaced pad. I would not leave my phone out on the table during meetings and I was very reluctant to let anyone borrow it. Once or twice I even pretended not to have it, when someone needed to make a call.

A few weeks ago, I made up my mind that I was going get a new one. I decided to bite the bullet, to make the move from pay-as-you-go and on to a contract. While I know there is no such thing as a permanent relationship in the world of mobile telephones, I felt that I was getting too old for the hurly burly of the top-up card. Time to go steady.

I went to the Carphone Warehouse opposite Liverpool Street Station in the City. I have to say, it was a bit of a shock. I wasn’t prepared for all the tariff deals, the offers and discounts and personal use permutations. Did I want free weekend calls or discounted international calls? Was I more concerned about network coverage or price? Was I a big texter? What were my pixel and MP3 requirements? Interestingly, there was no mention of Snake.

“My advice to you,” said the pretty saleswoman, “is spend a little more money and get more free speaking minutes. You’ll have a nice new phone and you’ll want to use it.” She showed me all the handsets. They all looked lovely. One particularly caught my eye. “Great battery life that one,” she said encouragingly and then added [hiss hiss], “if you chose it, we’ll offer you half price redemptions every three months for 11 months. You’ll want to upgrade anyway, then.”

What more could I want? Free time and redemption every three months. I filled in the direct debit forms and went off with my nice new phone. But maybe it’s harder to move on from one’s first handset than I had thought. When I got home, and put the phones side by side, the new one (the Samsung X820 Ultra, no less) looked, frankly, a bit sharp. Was it really ‘me’, I wondered? Was I being a little hasty?

It sat on my desk for a week. In the meantime, I made some comfort calls with my old phone. I did some recreational texting. I played a game of Snake, for old times sake. Something was nagging me. "Upgrade" after only a year? Apart from anything else, why would I want to go through the whole "did I want to flick or did I want to slide" routine again?

In the end I took it back within the two week 'cooling off' period. But now the pretty saleswoman was less helpful. “I’m afraid you need a valid reason if you want to cancel the contract,” she said. “Is it the wrong phone or the wrong contract? Also you need to be aware that cancelling the contract will effect your credit rating. They'll think you don't have the money.”

Should I say that I was returning the phone in defiance of the false consciousness generated by the consumer fetishism of late capitalism? Would this be considered a valid reason? Instead I said, “It’s just that I now realise, as I was about to dump it, how much I love my old phone and how much I have always loved it.” There was a long queue and she wasn't going to argue.

Let's play Livery

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this you will never stumble" 2 Peter 1:10

John Stuttard is a plumber, though not one you would want to ring in an emergency if your boiler breaks down or your pipes suddenly spring a leak. He is actually not so much a plumber as a Plumber, a member of the Court of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, one of the City’s ancient Livery companies, tracing its origins to the Fellowship of Plumbers, active in 1365, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1611.

Like many of his fellow Plumbers, Mr Stuttard is in fact a Chartered Accountant - with a bit of time on his hands and on the look out for an interesting hobby. At least, for the ensuing year, he is going to be kept pretty busy. After last Friday, Mr Stuttard is now (officially) next year’s Lord Mayor of the City of London, having received the public acclamation of the Livery in Common Hall assembled at Guildhall.

They were all there, all 105 Companies, filling out the hall. Along with your common or garden Butcher, Baker and Tallow Chandler (and Plumber) the list of those trades represented read like a roll call of Old English surnames: Turner (the user of a lathe), Cooper (the maker of wooden casks) and, my personal favourite, Fletcher (the adder of flights to arrows). Archery in the City of London is bigger than you might think.

I am not a member of a Livery company but as a City of London Councillor I am curious as to what this lot does and so I went to John Stuttard’s election or (since all is not what it seems to be in this world of City Livery) should I say “election”? He was the only candidate.

Once the procession of Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffs, Remembrancer, Recorder, Comptroller, Chamberlain, Town Clerk, City Marshal (and of course Chaplain, blessing it all), each carrying a little bunch of flowers, had taken their seats on the raised platform in Guildhall, it was the Common Cryer’s job to pray for silence and then direct all those who were not Liverymen “to depart the Hall on pain of imprisonment.” He said it as though he actuallly meant it. I kept my counsel.

We carried on playing at being a medieval City, with a bit of Merrie England mood music to accompany the nosegays and Oyez, Oyez, Oyez common crying from men wearing white gloves and black tights and waving their wands of office. On the announcement of his “election”, Stuttard spoke of how the office of Lord Mayor of London was part of Ancient Constitution, part of maintaining “the balance of power between the ruler and the ruled.” Yes, but did he actually understand what this meant?

He went on to say, without blinking, that this meant it was the City of London’s unique vocation to fight protectionism and promote free trade throughout the known world and that this would be his special role in the ensuing year. May the financial markets flourish! The Hall of bald men in black suits nodded their satisfaction in silent assent. John Stuttard then expressed his profound sense of privilege, thanked his wife for helping him chose his ties, and told us his “watchwords”, one of which was “enterprise”.

As we were leaving Guildhall I asked my neighbour about the gown he was carrying. “I’m a coachmaker,” he said cheerily. “Coachmaking? Really?" Maybe I sounded a little more quizzical than I had intended. He looked at me a wistfully, “I’m actually in commercial property.”

Deadend Hoxton

"He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong." Mark 12:27

The lid is replaced quite gingerly and screwed down with one of those battery-operated screwdrivers that sounds a bit like an electric tooth-brush. Then the coffin is pretty thoroughly blasted with holy smoke. In the olden days, before the introduction of modern embalmery, incense was used to mask “the smells”. Nowadays, of course, we can be so much more spiritual about the whole business of death.

There was nothing particularly spiritual about Bluey’s end. He had died, on his own, in Homerton Hospital, having been picked up in a delirious state wandering the streets of Hackney. He was not yet forty. He had spent much of his short life on these same streets, suffering from debilitating mental health problems. Having been born in Hoxton, he returned here in his last years. With his dreadlocked West Indian charm, he was known and beloved by all; the “original gentle giant” says Dot from the Florist Shop.

Linda from the Bakery kept an eye on Bluey too. She describes how he would come in everyday in order to pick up his egg mayonnaise sandwich: “he always insisted that it was made with brown bread, mind.” Reg, a fruit trader from Hoxton Market agrees: Bluey was very particular about his bananas. He didn’t like them unripe, that’s how the English ate them, he would say, “hard as potatoes”. Tracy from the Chemist tells me how he would come in every morning “for a chat and a squirt of Linx”.

The little team of undertakers wheel Bluey, feet first, from the chancel step, down the middle of the church and out to the hearse. The sixty or so people, who have come to the funeral shuffle out behind. Mourners always shuffle but today there is very little reason to rush.

The slot at the Manor Park crematorium had been booked when that was where the funeral service was going to take place. It had been down as a “contract funeral” - what used to be called a “pauper’s funeral”. Under such circumstances the Council doesn’t pay for a church service too. They say it doesn’t meet with Best Value: a hearse and a couple of limos don’t come cheap, even when they are sitting around, as they were now, just looking splendid.

It was only when the local shopkeepers and stall holders heard that they weren’t going to get a chance to pay their final respects that they clubbed together for the additional cost of church funeral. “What does the Council spend its money on anyway?” asks Reg, “what they do is they put in speed bumps and then they take them out again. It’s all money for someone. It’s all costing loads of money. Someone’s making it.”

There is a growing clamour for Bluey to take the route down Hoxton Market. “He would have loved that,” says Julie from the local betting shop. The undertaker, however, is all doom. “I’ll never get my car over the ramp in the road where the market begins,” he says, “The car has a very low base. The ramp is too high. It's effectively a deadend for us.”

There is a sudden animated discussion and the suggestion of re-routing the funeral procession behind the housing estates, round by the Britannia Swimming Pool and then turning up Hoxton Street from the other direction, the trendy end. That way Bluey will get to pass the bakery, the off-licence, the chemist, the pie and eel shop, the betting shop and the florist, before turning around again when he reaches to the ramp from the other side. An entire lap of honour.

“I may have to do a three point turn when we get to the ramp,” says the funeral director, still looking still for a way out, “I’m afraid that this is not going to be very dignified for the deceased.” Everyone laughs.

Hilton inhospitality

"But they do not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol" Proverbs 9:18

We had a date with Mr Howard Friedman, UK President of Hilton International. To be fair, Mr Friedman didn’t know this. That may explain why he wasn’t actually at the Hilton Park Lane in Mayfair when we turned up at five o clock on Saturday afternoon for a cup of tea and a bit of a natter. We had to make do with the Hotel Manager instead. In fact, when I say the Manager, I actually mean Benny the Duty Manager. Nice man, not the UK President of Hilton International though.

London Citizens, a broad-based alliance of community institutions (churches, mosques, trade unions and schools etc) is campaigning over the rate of pay for maids at luxury hotels like the Hilton. It has written to Mr Friedman, four times now, requesting a meeting to discuss this issue of low pay, but is yet to receive a reply, an acknowledgement even. Not so much as a comp slip. So we thought we would try another way of - how to put it? – opening the channels of communication.

A couple of dozen of us from London Citizens drifted into the hotel shortly before five and made ourselves inconspicuous among the pots of purple hydrangea and marble and bronze water features of the lobby area. Sister Margaret, from the Community of the Blessed Sacrament, showed an uncharacteristic fascination in a cabinet of assorted Rolex watches for the discerning deep sea diving chief executive, while a couple of the Somali sisters found themselves intently studying a print of a racing scene at Derby, “Runners and Riders of the Turf”.

At five o clock, we split into two groups. One group went to the reception desk and asked to meet with Mr Friedman. Could we have a word with the President please? Would you possibly mind putting a call through to his office? How about giving us his “out of hours” mobile number? The receptionist stood back a little from the counter, better to appraise the situation: Sorry sir, we have no means of contacting the President. What about in a crisis? This isn’t a crisis, sir.

It’s true that keeping a handful of Japanese businessmen from checking in for a few minutes did not probably constitute a crisis for Hilton UK. But as the other group of London Citizens went round the lobby, the restaurants, the bars, the shops and the rooms distributing a flyer (“Hilton Luxury is Housekeeper Pain”) which offered patrons a few relevant statistics (maids earn £5.05 an hour for cleaning the rooms; the cheapest room at the Hilton is £339 per night; Hilton UK operating profits in 2004 were £190M), Benny the Duty Manager was getting a bit antsy. He called security. He called his manager. He called the Police.

“If the maids are unhappy with their arrangements, they don’t have to continue working here. No one is forcing them to work here,” said Benny, looking out anxiously for the Police to arrive, “I think it is a bit unfair of you to come in here and disrupt the hotel. We are trying to run an organisation here.”

The fact is, so is London Citizens. That’s actually what it is does. It’s an Organising organisation. And as Saul Alinsky, the founder of Organising says, before you can organise you’ve got to disorganise. Sorry Benny.

Archbishop, At Home

"For he thought, 'I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me'." Genesis 32: 21

Archbishop Rowan Williams introduces his ‘joint declaration’ with the Chief Rabbis from Israel, with an extended meditation on the nature of ‘critical friendship’. This is what happens, as he puts it, when one party “challenges and engages” the other in an environment of “mutual respect” and “appreciation” and “genuine exchange”. Some people just call this friendship.

The microphone is then passed to Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger, the head of the Ashkenazi community in Israel, who is sitting to the Archbishop’s left. Rabbi Metzger arches his eyebrows in quizzical amusement. He stands up. He begins speaking in English, telling us he is going to switch to Hebrew. He switches to Hebrew and then immediately engages the interpreter in a debate over the accuracy of his translation. He is clearly enjoying himself.

He says that this is not only a first in terms of the meeting between the Chief Rabbis of Israel and the Anglican Communion, but also, in its way, between the Rabbis themselves. Never before, in fact, have they flown together on the same plane. Nervous laughter ripples through the hall at Lambeth Palace. Rabbi Metzger looks pleased with his work.

He then tells us how, each day, Jews cover their head and their right arm with 'Tifillin', to remember that their commitment to God is both one of thought, of the intellect, as well as one of action. This ‘joint declaration’ with the Archbishop is made in the same spirit. The idea of friendship will be translated into action, he hopes. And for the Archbishop too? Will he intervene, for example, to assist and mediate for Israeli prisoners of war? Rowan Williams looks as though someone has just shackled his own feet under the table.

But the ‘joint declaration’ is duly signed; a priest-usher, watching from stage left, claps vigorously and we all start applauding. Rabbi Metzger then hands the Archbishop a neatly wrapped present, the size of a small brick, which has been resting throughout the proceedings in front of him. This seems to take the Archbishop a little by surprise, however. Unwrapping presents in public is always, maybe, a little awkward.

Another priest-minder steps forward, this time from stage right, to help. Ripping the tissue paper away with great enthusiasm, he reveals a bible, in a case. He removes the bible from its case and hands it to the Archbishop. Above them all, four bewigged 18th Century prelates, Archbishop Williams’ predecessors, look down on the assembled company like slightly disapproving school governors at the annual prize giving. The Rabbis are having a great time.

Rowan Williams then reaches under the table and produces two identical coloured prints of Lambeth Palace of the sort you can pick up a couple of miles down river at Bermondsey Market. He fans them out in his hands, so that we can all see, and offers them to the visiting Israelis as “souvenirs” of their visit to London. Will they find their way into the rabbinical loo, I wonder? Is this really a "genuine exchange", the 'Chumash' for a print of the Archbishop's Gate House, albeit authenticated no doubt as a ‘one hundred year old antique’?

Before you can say ‘critical friendship’ we have all been chivvied to the back of the hall and are busy slurping little files of kosher Gazpacho and exchanging business cards. I am left feeling rather disappointed. What is it about this sort of ‘interfaith dialogue’ that causes us Anglicans to loose our humour and become a scrutiny panel from the Standards Board for England?