This submission is made by the Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahá’ís of Londonderry, the elected administrative body for
the members of the Bahá’í Faith in the district, on behalf
of the Bahá’í Community of Londonderry.
The Bahá’í Community includes people of a wide range of
social and ethnic backgrounds and previous religious affiliations, and this
added to the teachings of the Faith on social inclusion, gender equality, and
community development, give it a keen interest in equality issues.
All issues related to equality have an added weightiness in the areas
related to healthcare. Any of us might be affected, but they often relate there
to some of the most vulnerable members of our society, many of whom have been
brought into these areas of need by failures in equality in the wider society.
At the same time the services themselves include people from a wide range of
ethnic and religious backgrounds, perhaps the most diverse group of any in
Northern Ireland, and they also must be considered.
The Bahá’í Community has for many years noted and
regretted the tendency to see Northern Ireland in a stereotyped
“Protestant-Catholic” way. While these two branches of the Christian
religion do represent the majority of the population, and “the
Troubles” have inevitably sharpened the focus on them, this Province
contains a significant and increasing number of people who belong to others of
the world’s great religions. They have tended to be overlooked and
marginalized, not least by official bodies.
There are also present here increasing numbers of people from ethnic
minorities. As they have become an increasing part of public and official
consciousness an impression has tended to grow that the two things –
member of an ethnic minority and follower of a non-Christian religion –
are the same thing. This is not so, the two are not necessarily the same, and
each is entitled to be dealt with in its own right. As a non-Christian
religious community the majority of whose members are nonetheless physically
indistinguishable from the majority population here we feel that the confusion
of the two does no service to either.
We therefore feel it very important that equality policies recognise and
give due weight to, both ethnic minorities and religious minorities, and not in
any way equate the two. Such equation increases the risk of marginalizing both.
By way of example we offer two examples from our own experience, examples
that cause offence and which convey an implicit message that “you are not
a full or proper member of society here”:
