Lesson video

Hi there, my name is Miss Marx and today I'm going to be your religious education teacher.

And today, we're going to be looking at fighting against unjust laws and whether this is always the right thing to do or not.

And as part of this lesson, we will be discussing some discriminatory prejudice ideas that have formed part of laws that have existed in societies in the past.

And so just be aware of that before we get to our lesson today.

So when you're ready, let's go.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to explain how and why people may choose to fight against unjust laws.

Let's start with our keywords.

Discrimination.

The unfair treatment of a people and groups based on a part of their identity, such as sex, race or religion.

Justice.

The idea that everyone should get a fair reward or punishment for their actions.

Law.

A rule, usually made by government, that's used to order the way in which a society behaves.

Pacifist.

A person who believes in resolving conflicts without violence and opposes war or the use of force.

And unjust, when something is unfair or treats people unequally.

So today's lesson will have three sections.

Firstly, an unjust law is no law at all.

Secondly, how some people have fought against unjust laws.

And thirdly, should we always fight unjust laws? So let's start with our first section, an unjust law is no law at all.

What does salmon and poker have in common? I wonder if you could link those two things together.

Have a think about it.

Talk to the person next to you or you can talk to me.

Well, these are both connected to laws in the UK, which people could break without realising it or think that sort of a bit pointless as laws.

Let's have a look at them.

So firstly, it's against the law to handle a salmon in a suspicious way, and secondly, it's against the law to gamble or swear in a library.

I wonder if you knew that that was breaking the law if you've ever done that.

Sometimes we can have laws that seem like they're hanging over from a different time and a different age, and they don't necessarily relate to how society is today.

But many people would argue that we do need laws to help us in society.

I wonder why we might need to have laws for society then.

Well, we could say we need laws to protect people's belongings, to preserve human life, to protect the environment, also to protect the vulnerable in society.

I wonder if you can think of any other reasons why we have laws in our societies.

Social scientists are academics and people who may study religions and religious people.

And social scientists will use evidence to back up their claims about religion.

It's what makes it sort of a science, is by looking for evidence to back up claims about religion.

And whether you have a religious or a non-religious worldview, you can use social science as a tool to understand religions through looking at how people live and looking for that evidence to back up those claims about religion.

And in this lesson, we're going to use social science as a tool to look at how and why some people may fight against unjust laws, ss well as thinking about like why we have laws in the first place.

The tools of social science can help us better understand the roles that laws can play in society.

So sociologists, for example, look closely at how laws and the legal system of society support the values and the normal ways of behaving.

In this way, we can better understand what matters in that society.

If you've got a law supporting this thing or stopping something happening, that obviously shows us that in that society, that's a really important thing if there's a law that's there to kind of make it happen or make sure it doesn't happen.

So the tools of social science can help us understand why some laws can also benefit some groups more than others in a society.

So sometimes laws are brought in that seem to benefit one group over another.

Sometimes, in history we can see examples of this, can't we? Let's do a quick check.

According to social scientists, laws can help us understand what matters in a family, school or society.

Pause the video and have a think and then we'll check what you've done in a second.

Yeah, well done.

Social scientists say that laws can help us understand what matters in a society, because the society is what sets those laws.

Now, many people would argue that laws should be linked to the idea of justice.

So a law should be something that's linked to the idea of justice, fairness and equality.

Justice is when people receive fair awards or punishment for their efforts and action.

So that's why often justice is shown as a scale, because it's showing the proportion to what someone's done.

They're getting their reward or their punishment for the actions that they've done.

Therefore, laws should be in place which are fair and the punishments for breaking those laws should also be fair.

So it's very important, particularly in this society that our law is fair and it treats people fairly and equally in the eyes of the law.

That seems to be a very important value for us in this society with our legal system.

Lucas, Izzy, Laura and Alex are discussing why it's important that laws are linked to justice, and I wonder if you agree with their views or you have a different one.

Why does there need to be this link between laws and justice? Lucas says, "Laws need to be linked to justice so that everyone is protected equally." Izzy says, "People won't follow unjust laws, so that would just lead to chaos." And if we want an ordered society, then we need laws that are gonna help it be ordered and not chaotic, don't we? Laura says, "When things are unfair, people aren't able to thrive and succeed and not have a good and happy life and benefit the society as a whole if people have been treated unfairly or unjustly." And Alex says, "Laws need to be just so that people get what they deserve fairly, good or bad." So it just needs to be right what people are getting and how people are being treated depending on what they've done.

An important Christian thinker who's influenced lots of ideas about the law and justice is this man, he's called Augustine.

Augustine was an important Christian thinker who lived in the fifth century.

And he is often quoted as saying, "An unjust law is no law at all." So linking this idea of law and justice together as well.

What do you think he meant by this? Have a think about that.

You could pause the video, talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Lots of great ideas there.

Yeah, he meant that laws that are not just don't have to be followed, because they're not fair, they're not just, they're not really a proper law.

For all those reasons we said earlier about why the law and justice should be linked to each other.

Let's do another check.

Who said, "An unjust law is no law at all?" Was it Archimedes, Aristotle or Augustine? Pause the video and have a think and we'll check what you've done in a moment.

Well done, yes, it was Saint Augustine who was quoted as saying, "An unjust law is no law at all." So when might laws be unjust or unfair? Has that ever happened in history? Can you think of any examples of when a law might be unjust or unfair? You can pause the video and have a think and talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, some examples of unjust laws could be if they favour one type of person over another.

So something about that person's identity or who they are means they're treated differently to others.

It could be that they legalise discrimination.

So that is where people are treated differently because of something about their identity.

They are treated unfairly and differently.

If the law legalises that, then you could say that's unfair.

If the laws are not applied to everyone equally.

So maybe the law on paper looks equal and just, but the way it's actually put into practise isn't done fairly.

That could be seen as unjust and unfair.

When they go against human rights.

So we have got human rights as this idea that every single person has rights to certain things, just by the very virtue of them being human.

If laws go against those, they could be seen as unjust and unfair.

While two examples of when the law in a country was unjust and unfair is the laws that supported segregation in the United States of America and the laws that supported Apartheid in South Africa.

Now, these were both legal systems that supported racial discrimination where people of different colour skin were treated differently, not fairly, and this was supported by the law.

It was a legal system in both of those countries.

So the images, you can see here I've got in the USA where different people had to be completely separated in many parts of life, housing, education, healthcare, even here, a waiting room to get on a bus here.

Different people had to wait in different areas and it wasn't that it was equal for the different types of people, you know? And then in South Africa, we had a system of Apartheid, which again separated people depending on the colour of their skin and gave certain things to certain groups and not to others.

So I can just zoom in here and you can see that this beach, for example, was for the sole use of the white race group, is what they called people who had white skin.

They were allowed access to this beach, others were not, and that's supported by the laws here.

You can see which bylaw here supported that.

So these were both examples of unfair, unjust, racially discriminatory laws that were part of those two societies.

So let's do a quick check.

Is it true or false that the laws of a country are always fair and just? So in history, have the laws always been fair and just in every country? Pause the video and have a think and then we'll check what you've done.

That is false, but why? Because whilst many countries have laws that are fair and just, and we may say that in our country at the moment, the law is fair and just, there have been times in history which have proved otherwise.

For example, segregation in the USA and Apartheid in South Africa.

They were both supported by the law.

Let's do a practise task to see what we've learned.

Izzy and Lucas are discussing Augustine's statement that an unjust law is no law at all.

For each point they've given, add a detailed reason or a piece of evidence to support it.

So Izzy says, "With this statement, Augustine could mean the law of a country isn't always just or fair." And Lucas says, "With this statement, Augustine could mean that people should fight against unjust laws." So pause the video and have a go and then we'll check and see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, some fantastic thinking there.

Let's have a look at what you've written.

I asked you to think about the statement from Augustine, "An unjust law is no law at all," and what Izzy and Lucas have written and give a detailed reason or piece of evidence to support it.

And your answers may include, Izzy who said, "With this statement, Augustine could mean the law in a country isn't always just or fair.

For example, segregation in the USA, Apartheid of South Africa were both supported by laws." Lucas says, "With this statement, Augustine could mean that people should fight against unjust laws, because laws should be just and fair, otherwise they shouldn't be followed." So fantastic thinking there.

So onto our second section then, how some people have fought against unjust laws.

Here are some pacifists who fought against unjust laws.

Now remember, a pacifist believes in non-violent solutions to problems. So they still want to solve a problem that they do not use violent means for it.

So these are nonviolent people who have fought against unjust laws in their situations.

So we've got Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Now, he saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust when the laws stated you had to give over Jewish lives so that they could be sent to the concentration camps and murdered, Bonhoeffer actually broke those laws to save Jewish lives instead.

Rosa Parks was someone who refused to follow segregation laws, and that was in the United States of America, we saw earlier supported by laws this kind of racial discrimination, and she refused to follow these laws.

Malala Yousafzai, who campaigns for girls' education.

And so where she was living in Pakistan, in the area that she was in, the Taliban had decided the laws was that girls could not go to school and have education.

And she campaigns for this now, breaking those laws.

And Martin Luther King Jr.

He led many in civil disobedience against those segregation laws that we heard about earlier in the United States of America.

Let's do a quick check.

Which of these three pacifists fought against the law which banned girls from getting an education? Have a think about your answer, pause the video and we'll check what you've done in a second.

Well done, yes, it was Malala who is campaigning for girls to have an education to this day.

So let's have a look at a case study of somebody today who's been fighting against unjust laws.

And we're going to look at a man called Ilham Tohti, and you can see him here in the image on the left.

In the middle is an image of his daughter, Jewher Ilham and the area where he was fighting unjust laws is the Xinjiang region of Northwest China.

Ilham Tohti was born in the Xinjiang region of China in 1969.

He's an academic who lectured in economics in Beijing before he was imprisoned.

He's also had a blog called "Uyghur" online where he wrote about the need for different groups of people to understand each other as a way to create peaceful coexistence.

In the Xinjiang region of China, there are many Uyghur Muslims who, according to numerous human rights organisations, are facing discrimination against their faith.

Many aspects of their religious expression are monitored and controlled.

For example, copies of the Koran are confiscated, the length of men's beards is monitored and the amount of food and fuel used during Ramadan and other festival times is monitored.

Ilham was writing about this and the need to respond peacefully to these challenges in his blog when he was arrested and imprisoned for life in 2014.

He was charged with the crime of separatism, which means he was accused of supporting the region where the Uyghur Muslims are living to become a separate state.

Since his imprisonment, there have been further accusations of human rights abuses and discrimination of the Uyghur Muslims in this area.

His daughter, Jewher, is continuing to raise awareness about the Uyghur situation, even though she hasn't seen her father for 10 years.

So Ilham Tohti has raised awareness about the situation of Uyghur Muslims in China through what he's been doing.

And he was imprisoned for life in 2014 for separatism, which meant that he's been accused of wanting that region of China to become a separate state.

Throughout all of his writings as an academic, he's called for peaceful coexistence between different groups.

So the different groups of people who live within that region of China, he's called for peaceful existence together.

He's a pacifist writer.

He's not once called for any violence or violent action.

And he used an online blog to share his ideas.

So he was talking about this in his lectures, but also online.

He had a blog where he was writing these ideas.

So Ilham Tohti has been imprisoned for fighting against these unjust laws that many Uyghur Muslims are facing in that area of China.

Whilst he hasn't fought in a violent way, because he is a pacifist, he's been fighting through raising awareness and talking about these things that are happening and that's continuing now with his daughter and the work that she's doing.

Let's do a quick check.

Which two statements are correct about the case study of Ilham Tohti? Ilham Tohti is a pacifist academic who's been imprisoned for life.

Ilham Tohti took part in violent protests against the government and Ilham Tohti's online blog was aiming to support the Uyghur Muslims and others to live peacefully together in China.

Pause the video and have a think and we'll check what you've done in a moment.

That's correct, A and C are the right answers.

He's a pacifist academic who's been imprisoned for life and he had an online blog that was trying to support the Uyghur Muslims and others to live peacefully together.

He never took part in any violent protests against the government.

So let's do a practise to see what we've learned.

The table below has examples of pacifists who fought against unjust laws.

For each person, write an explanation of what unjust laws they were fighting.

I have Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rosa Parks and Ilham Tohti and you're going to write an example for each of them of what the unjust law was that they were fighting.

So pause the video and have a go and we'll see what you've written in a moment.

Well done, that was some really good thinking there.

So for each pacifist that we've looked at today, you have been asked to write an explanation of the unjust laws they were fighting.

And your answers may look something like this.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was fighting an unjust law that was persecuting and discriminating against Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Rosa Parks was fighting against the laws which supported segregation, discriminating against people who were not white.

And Ilham Tohti was fighting against the laws preventing freedom of expression and speech around the discrimination against the Uyghur Muslims in China.

Well done.

So onto our third and final section.

Should we always fight unjust laws? Some theories in social science argue that by following the laws of a country, people can help things to run smoothly and in an ordered way.

So this group of theories within social science would argue that it's almost like everyone has their part to play in a machine that is society, and we can all run smoothly if we follow the laws together and go along them with each other.

They're there to protect us all and support us all, so we should follow them.

That's what some social scientists would argue.

But other theories in social science argue that those laws often benefit some groups more than others.

So the people who are making the laws are likely to put laws in place that support them over other people.

And whenever that happens, people should challenge them and they should protest and do things against those laws and always fight those unjust laws.

So you have these two different ideas within social science about whether the laws should always be followed or not.

Let's do a quick check.

Is this true or false? Social scientists all agree on following laws within a society.

Pause the video and have a think and we'll check what you've done in a moment.

That is false, but why? Well, because there are different views in social science around following the laws in a society.

Some say we should follow them for an ordered society and others say we should challenge unjust laws which favour some over others.

So within religions and worldviews, there are many teachings which can encourage someone to fight unjust laws.

We've already looked at the idea from Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all, but is there anything within religious scriptures that could support this too? There are also teachings which can encourage people to follow the laws of their society.

So maybe there's ideas in religions and worldviews to say that we shouldn't fight unjust laws, but we should follow the laws that are there.

Let's have a look at a couple together.

Here's two passages from the Christian Bible.

In Paul's letter to the Romans, he says, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities.

Whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted." So this seems to suggest that the governing authorities have been put there by God and we should follow what they tell us to do, because God has put them in charge.

Secondly, we have, "Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees." So something's oppressive when it's really putting down a group of people and really treating people unfairly.

And so this seems to suggest that sometimes those laws aren't always fair and they aren't always just.

What does it mean to rebel against the governing authorities? What could be an example of an oppressive decree? Have a think about that and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, rebelling against the governing authorities could be seen as not following the laws that have been put in place.

So perhaps that quote could be used to say we shouldn't ever break the law.

And an oppressive decree could be the examples we had of segregation or Apartheid, South Africa or some of the ways that the Uyghur Muslims are being treated today in that area of China.

Could they be examples of oppressive decrees? Could they be examples of unjust laws? So these passages show us that the Christian Bible could be used to encourage people to follow, as well as rebel against laws.

So it could lead to a difference in opinion depending on how someone chooses to interpret it.

Sections like this have been used to support unjust laws in the past, as well as encourage people to fight them.

So it's really how people have chosen to use and interpret this that's had an influence on what has happened in society.

Let's do a quick check.

Religious teachings can be used to support following laws, as well as fighting unjust laws.

Is that true or false? Have a think, pause the video and we'll check what you've done in a moment.

Well done, yeah, that's true.

The teachings could be used either way depending on how people choose to interpret them or which bit they choose to use.

So let's do a quick check.

Izzy and Lucas are discussing why some people choose to fight unjust laws.

For each of the points they've given, add a detailed reason or a piece of evidence to support it using one of the pacifists from this lesson.

So Izzy says, "People often fight against unjust laws, because they're not fair and often involve discrimination, which is wrong." Lucas says, "People often fight against unjust laws to raise awareness about them and help the laws to change in the future." So for each of those, add a detailed reason or a piece of evidence and use one of the pacifists that we've discussed so far in this lesson.

Pause the video, off you go and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, that was some great thinking there and really good to use the examples of the people that we've already looked at during today's lesson.

So we looked at Izzy and Lucas's points and you were going to give a detailed reason or a piece of evidence to support each of them, linking to one of the pacifists that we've already looked at in today's lesson.

So let's have a look.

You could have included, when Izzy said, "People often fight against unjust laws, because they're not fair and involve discrimination, which is wrong." You could have said, "For example, Rosa Parks who fought against segregation laws which were discriminatory." When Lucas said, "People often fight against unjust laws to raise awareness about them and help the laws to change in the future," you could have said, "For example, Ilham Tohti and his daughter are hoping that people will know more about the situation for Uyghur Muslims and hopefully change it in the future." Well done for all your hard work in today's lesson, and I wonder whether you think if we should always fight unjust laws or not.

So to summarise what we've learned today on fighting against unjust laws.

There are different reasons why societies have laws.

Many people would argue that laws should be linked to justice.

Augustine is often quoted as saying, "An unjust law is no law at all." Various pacifists in history have fought against unjust laws in their societies.

And religious teachings can be used to support following laws, as well as fighting unjust laws.

So well done again for your hard work today and I hope to see you soon.

Bye-bye.