What is “British” culture? That is a topic I suspect we could debate for ever. Does it include a love of football? Yes, for many it does. How about that quintessentially English game, cricket? Does it include welcoming and extending a hand of friendship to asylum seekers and refugees? Or is it about having a suspicion of “Johnny Foreigner” and thinking we are better? Does it include welcoming diversity in all its forms, including gay marriage and transgender people for instance? Or are we a socially conservative nation? Does our culture acknowledge its past of slavery and building an empire on the exploitation of other countries and peoples? Or was that all justified in the name of exporting civilisation and European values to otherwise ignorant savages?
You see what I mean? There are many different ways of interpreting British culture, and we do not all agree on what it is. Now let’s turn to football which is such a big part of our culture, and which FIFA would like us to divorce from politics. Should the captain of our national football team be allowed to wear a rainbow armband in the World Cup in support of gay rights? Or is this just being culturally insensitive? It is not in dispute that Qatar has a dire record on human rights. Women have very far from equal rights. Homosexuality is criminalised. And, as we have seen in the run up to the World Cup, the vast migrant labour force on which Qatar relies have virtually no rights whatsoever and are treated almost as slave labour.
Does this matter? To many of us in the West the answer is yes it does, because we see human rights as universal. They apply to all people everywhere. The defenders of Qatar will answer that human rights are a European/Western concept. They arise out of our culture, but they are not part of the culture of Qatar. They argue that we should not try to impose our culture on them. They should be free to determine their own culture and their own laws based on what is culturally accepted.
I guess the key question here is who gets to decide what a nation’s culture is. We’ve seen enough of culture warriors in our own country trying to tell us what our culture is, or should be; trying to force their view of culture on everybody else. Culture is not a fixed thing. It changes. Mostly our culture warriors are trying to take us backwards in history to an imagined past where they think things were better.
I’m pretty sure if you ask many women in Qatar if they would like things to change they will say yes. Not all of them, but many, as we have seen recently in Iran. I’m certain that if you asked a gay person in Qatar if they want homosexuality to be decriminalised they will say yes. If you ask the migrant workers if they would like better health and safety regulations, the right to join a trade union, and better pay they will say…no, of course. Only joking. Of course they want those things. So who gets to decide what Qatari culture is? Those with power and wealth of course.
I think the argument about cultural relativity falls down at this point. If nobody in Qatar wanted those things, then maybe the Qatari authorities (and FIFA) would have a point. But there are plenty of internal voices who disagree with Qatari “culture”. Now you might ask what gives the West the right to expect Qatar to abide by the same human rights standards when it is not part of their culture?
There are two answers to that. The first is a legal one. Qatar is a member of the United Nations. It has been since 1971. Signing up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948 is a qualification for membership of the UN. Therefore Qatar is legally committed by international treaty to promoting human rights both domestically and internationally.
The second answer is more contentious in so far as it concerns the philosophical and, dare I say, theological underpinnings of the universal application of human rights. What makes human rights universal? Others will disagree with me I know. But for me as a Christian it is a universal application of Jesus’ “Golden Rule” do to others as you would have them do to you. Treat everyone else as you would like to be treated yourself.