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Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 08/02/2008
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The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday used a lecture in the Royal Courts of Justice to propose that sharia law should be applied in certain circumstances. The idea is not as outlandish as it may first appear.
Dr. Rowan Williams
There are already sharia councils in this country to which Muslims turn for advice and religious sanction in matters such as divorce. Likewise, Orthodox Jews have recourse to the Beth Din over, for example, dietary laws, divorce and tenancy disputes.
A further instance of legal sensitivity to religious belief is the ability of Christian doctors to opt out of abortions. So Dr Rowan Williams's argument that there should be "a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law" is, to a certain extent, recognition of a situation which already exists.
The problem lies, rather, in the status of the messenger and the timing of his intervention. If there is a case for the creation of sharia courts, it would be better made by a joint group representing the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Coming from the senior bishop in the Church of England, it is vulnerable to interpretation as appeasement of Islamic extremism prompted by fear of social unrest.
As for timing, the lecture was given shortly after threats had been made against one of Dr Williams's fellow bishops, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, for writing in the Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremism had turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims. Add to this the growing recognition of the failures of multiculturalism, and you have on the part of the archbishop a classic example of political ineptitude.
Even with more convincing advocacy, the creation of sharia courts in this country faces an uphill battle. In the public mind, sharia is associated with brutal punishment, whether the amputation of hands for theft or stoning for adultery and apostasy.
It is also seen as repressive to women; a journalist in Afghanistan is facing the death penalty for having distributed a report taken off the internet which questions the practice of polygamy. A further obstacle is the opposition to a dual legal system of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation not always associated with moderation.
In 2006, it was brought home to Pope Benedict XVI the way in which a supposedly innocuous reference to Islam - a quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor - can create a furore. In the case of the archbishop, it is not so much the idea, as the way it will be interpreted that counts.
Muslim radicals will view it as the bending of the British establishment to fundamentalist pressure; that will hardly make for the social cohesion which lies behind Dr Williams's thinking. The present informal arrangement of sharia councils is preferable in the current context to their elevation into courts. On this most inflammatory of subjects the archbishop would have best kept silent.
Rowan Williams' authority is in tatters
Posted by Damian Thompson on 07 Feb 2008 at 19:19
Tags: Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Sharia law, African Anglicans
What will the Archbishop of Canterbury's fatuous remarks about Sharia do to his authority as head of the Anglican Communion? Pretty well finish it off, I should think.
For years, African Anglicans have been threatening to blow the "Communion" to smithereens unless Rowan Williams follows their line on homosexuality. He has duly fallen in with their wishes, despite his long (and, in retrospect, phoney) record as a defender of gay rights. But now that Williams has said nice things about Sharia, his credibility in Africa will be destroyed.
Anglicans in parts of Nigeria live under what is, in effect, totalitarian Sharia. It goes without saying Williams does not defend the stoning of adulterous women and other charming Islamic practices. But, in his interview with the BBC, his condemnation of "bad" Sharia is deeply buried in acres of Vichyite waffle about the need to see Sharia "case by case within an overall framework of the principles laid down in the Koran and the Hadith".
For the Archbishop of Canterbury to propose an extension of British Sharia in the same week that we learned of the extent to which the Sharia authorities cover up "honour crimes" reveals a degree of ineptitude that even George Carey never managed.
And, talking of George, watch this space. Lord Carey of Clifton is no fan of his successor, but a very big fan of African Anglicans persecuted by Sharia. I would be very surprised if he can resist intervening in this dispute.
Anyway, I reckon it's all over for Rowan.
Posted by Damian Thompson on 07 Feb 2008 at 19:19
Sharia is no law for Britain
Posted by Christopher Howse on 07 Feb 2008 at 19:25
Tags: Islam, Muslims, Archbishop of Canterbury, Sharia law, Rowen Williams
The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have lost the use of his senses. He told the BBC today that the application of Sharia in Britain "seems unavoidable". This would entail lashing for fornication and amputation for theft.
Dr Williams is a good and learned man, but he is mistaken to think that Islamic law works like English law or the sympathetic deliberations of a middle-class Welshman. Indeed he said in his BBC interview: "Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that’s sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".
Sharia means literally the road to a watering place: a clear path to be followed. It is translated as "law", but it governs without restriction, as an infallible doctrine of duties, the whole of the religious, political, social, domestic and private life of those who profess Islam.
How would extreme punishments and bad treatment of women be prevented where the jurisdiction of Sharia was recognised? In Islam Sharia is the law of God as revealed in the Koran and through the behaviour and words of Mohammed.
Like Judaism, Islam is a thoroughly legalistic religion, and though there are no priests, there are clergy in the sense of men who know the law and make judgments. A religious scholar who gives opinions is called a mufti; his legal opinion is called a fatwa. The latter word is familiar now in a way it used not to be before silly old Salman Rushdie was condemned to death.
"I don’t know enough about the detail of the law in the Islamic law in this context," Dr Williams said, "I’m simply saying that there are ways of looking at marital dispute for example within discussions that go on among some contemporary scholars which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them."
Since the days of the Prophet, Dr Williams thinks, "the rights and liberties of women has moved on and the principle, the vision, that animates the Islamic legal provision needs broadening because of that." But Sharia does not rely on mere principles. It derives from the revelation of God, which may not be abrogated. Dr Williams referred to "principles laid down in the Quran". Here is one (4:34): "Admonish those women whose rebelliousness you fear, shun them in their resting-places and hit them. If they obey you, do not seek a further way against them."
How does Dr Williams address the prohibition on a Muslim woman to marry a man who is not a Muslim?
I am sorry to say he has made relations between Christians and Muslims more difficult.
Posted by Christopher Howse on 07 Feb 2008 at 19:25
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