The Archbishop's speech
The most bizarre aspect of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s extraordinary declaration today of abject religious and cultural surrender to Islam was the extreme lengths to which he went to avoid precisely the furore which has now erupted — and then proceeded dramatically to depart from his own strategy.
In a major lecture this evening, which I attended, he argued for an accommodation between English law and Islamic sharia law: an end to the ‘legal monopoly’ of English law, in order to allow people to choose between Islamic and English law for the resolution of disputes and the administration of marriage, divorce, inheritance and other matters. This incendiary proposition was nevertheless expressed in the lecture in language so convoluted and ambiguous — ‘nuanced’ is, I think, the current expression of choice — that many in the audience admitted they didn’t have a clue what on earth he was actually saying. So nervous was Lambeth Palace, however, that the press would sensationalise his remarks, it tried to control the reaction by restricting embargoed copies of the text so that few papers would be able to report the lecture — and instead giving an exclusive interview with Dr Williams to BBC Radio Four’s World at One.
Boy, was that ever a mistake. For in that interview, Dr Williams for some reason abandoned nuance altogether and left no room for doubt about what he was saying. Which was, in short, that although the
sensational reporting of opinion pollsrecording large numbers of British Muslims who want to live in the UK under Islamic sharia law
clouds the issue,the adoption of sharia law in the UK seems
unavoidableand indeed desirable, since Muslims should not have to choose between
the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty.So although
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,Muslims should be able to choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a sharia court. Such courts should therefore be
incorporated into the British legal systemas a
constructive accommodationwith Islam.
The result of this pre-emptive interview was that, hours before he stood up to deliver his lecture to a packed audience of more than 1000 people in the Royal Courts of Justice, he had achieved the remarkable feat of uniting the leadership of the entire political class and more — even the leader of the LibDems! — in a firestorm of condemnation of his astonishing abandonment of the fundamental doctrine of a democratic nation state: equality before the law.
His argument was quite extraordinarily muddled, absurd and wrong. The European Court of Human Rights has said that sharia law is not compatible with democracy. Dr Williams himself accepts its principles are pre-modern and oppressive. Yet, arguing disingenuously that
There is no single code that can be identified as ‘the’ shariabut ignoring what inevitably follows — that one cannot therefore tell whether one will end up with the death-to-apostates code or one that is relatively benign (whatever that might mean in this context) — he nevertheless argued that the British state should recognise sharia law as of equal status to English law. On World at One, he said:
An approach to law which simply said - there's one law for everybody - I think that's a bit of a danger.The implications of this are simply staggering. One law for all is the very basis of legal and social justice and is the glue that binds a society together. Law is the expression of a society’s cultural identity. If there is no one law, there is no one national identity and therefore no society but instead a set of warring fiefdoms with their own separate jurisdictions. To enable people to chop and choose between two jurisdictions would destroy the unitary nature of British society and fragment the country. But does Dr Williams even understand what he himself has said? For after his lecture, he insisted that he was
not talking about parallel systems but how the law accommodates Muslim practice.Yet he had specifically said people should be able to choose which system they wanted. Hello? Maybe Dr Williams himself gets lost in the impenetrable thicket of his own verbiage.
Either way, his proposal would also mean that Britain would simply abandon its female Muslim citizens whose parlous position in respect of forced marriages, honour killings and all the other horrors that follow from their second-class religious status would be institutionalised by giving sharia law official recognition. Dr Williams says such women should still retain the right of appeal to the English courts if their human rights were breached under sharia. What absurdity is this? It is the cultural assumptions which flow from sharia which lead to the oppression of Muslim women. How is the right of appeal to human rights law going to help women who are beaten and killed by men who do it in the name of religion? In order to protect our female Muslim citizens, we need to remove from them the yoke of sharia law, not institutionalise it with the seal of official approval.
Dr Williams appears to believe that English law would somehow absorb sharia. In fact, it would be absorbed by it for the simple reason that sharia brooks no alternative authority. But the yet more fundamental question is why he thinks we need to find any accommodation with sharia at all. He said
there remains a great deal of uncertainty about what degree of accommodation the law of the land can and should give to minority communities with their own strongly entrenched legal and moral codes.Well no, actually there isn’t any uncertainty at all. The rules of our society have always been entirely clear: one law for all. The only challenge to that has come from those Muslims who want to destroy that foundational precept and along with it British culture and western society. And now the head of the Anglican church has joined them in wanting to tear up the rules governing the position of minorities which have been perfectly clear ever since the Enlightenment. These rules hold that religious minorities can practise their faith and religious precepts but under the over-arching umbrella of the law of the land. That means where there is a conflict between minority precepts and the law, the minority gives way. While minorities should be given the freedom to practise their religion, they must not seek to impose their own laws and customs on the majority. That is how overlapping identities can be accommodated; it is how a majority culture can acknowledge the value of other cultures without destroying itself and a nation’s identity; it is the very essence of a tolerant, decent, liberal pluralist society.
Every minority until now has lived perfectly happily under that formulation. What we are now facing is a push by certain British Muslims, backed up by Islamist violence and intimidation, to change the rules of the national cultural game. There is only one proper response to that: to say that not one inch of leeway will be given to sharia law, that British society will not dilute the legal principles which govern all its citizens, and that Muslims must observe the same rules that govern every other minority in this country.
But then, Dr Williams purports not to understand that this indeed the case. For he used Britain’s Jewish community to underpin his claim that there was nothing particularly untoward about multiple jurisdictions — but in the process significantly misrepresented Jewish practice to imply, entirely falsely, that British Jews aren't bound by the law of the land but get an exemption. He drew an analogy between Islamic sharia courts and Jewish religious courts. But there is an absolutely crucial difference between them.
Yes, Jewish religious courts, like sharia courts, deal with such issues as dispute arbitration, family issues, marriage and divorce. But the Jewish courts have never sought official recognition of their rulings, and these are not recognised under English law. Their dispute resolution is informal and voluntary. Their religious marriage and divorce rituals have no status in English law (with the exception of one tiny wrinkle designed to help resolve an anomaly in Jewish divorce law which causes otherwise unavoidable distress); for the state to recognise their marriages or divorces, Jews have to marry or be divorced according to English law just like everyone else. If sharia courts were to operate in this way, there would be no problem. Why should anyone care, after all, what minorities are doing in the private sphere as long as it doesn’t break the law? But the crucial difference is that such Muslims want their rulings to be accepted by the state as having the same legal authority as English law — and Dr Williams is endorsing this. But it breaks the fundamental precept that Jews have always acknowledged — that as a minority they live under the law of the land and do not seek to change it to accommodate them.
After the lecture, I challenged Dr Williams on this point, and said he was wrong to claim that the state had delegated legal authority to Jewish religious courts. Jewish religious law was not recognised by or incorporated into English law, and so I wondered why he thought that Islam alone should be able to gain special status in opposition to the legal and cultural norms of this country. He replied:
I didn’t say that Jewish law had been incorporated; I know very well that it is not. But it has established recognised practices with regard to marriage and divorce which the law doesn’t seek to override or displace. I used the analogy not to claim privileged access for Islam but to show where a parallel system of religious law was embedded in our social practice.But in his lecture he had in fact spoken of whether there should be
…a delegation [from the law of the land] of certain functions to the religious courts of a community; and this latter question, it should be remembered, is relevant not only to Islamic law but also to areas of Orthodox Jewish practice’.On the contrary: it is not relevant to orthodox Jewish practice, because the state does not delegate any legal functions to Jewish law at all.
What Dr Williams has effectively said is that a majority culture has no right to exist and hold the ring for equal citizenship among inhabitants from different cultures:
The danger is in acting as if the authority that managed the abstract level of equal citizenship represented a sovereign order which then allowed other levels to exist. But if the reality of society is plural – as many political theorists have pointed out – this is a damagingly inadequate account of common life, in which certain kinds of affiliation are marginalised or privatised to the extent that what is produced is a ghettoised pattern of social life, in which particular sorts of interest and of reasoning are tolerated as private matters but never granted legitimacy in public as part of a continuing debate about shared goods and priorities.If therefore we really don’t have the right to uphold the primacy of our own western liberal and Christian laws and traditions, the way is open for fragmentation and eventual rule by the religious culture which exercises the strongest muscle. Which is Islam.
People often say the church is now irrelevant. On the contrary — without a strong religious core providing the moral, ethical and cultural ballast, the society it has been instrumental in forming becomes intensely vulnerable to collapse and colonisation. The defence mounted by politicians becomes an empty shell — particularly when we can see they are already running scared and selling the cultural pass with measures such as sharia finance or welfare benefits for polygamous wives.
Is this really the way the history of a nation, which has for the last thousand years fought off invasion and defended its independence and the liberty it created for the world, finally ends — with the head of its established church on his knees before terror?
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field
February 7th, 2008 11:59pmWe look forward to that!
Robert Wood, Ottawa, Canada
February 8th, 2008 12:20amWho will rid us of this ... Oh, no, wait a minute. He is the Mullah of Canterbury after all.
M Clyde
February 8th, 2008 12:23amI am speechless with fury at this witless idiot who has brought ridicule upon the Christian faith, the Anglican communion and the United Kingdom by his wittering speech which extrapolates from the very general to the totally incoherent, being entirely lacking in any sort of empiric detail of the type that lawyers (as opposed to theologians) routinely concern themselves with. In such a fashion are 1000 years of British civil law dispensed with in favour of a theocratic system that has no place on our soil except as a limited voluntary code for those masochistic enough to wish to submit to it, in the manner that any voluntary society may implement their own 'club' rules for members only. Following on from the news earlier this week that polygamy is to be recognised and paid for by the (monogamous) British tax-payer in welfare benefits to additional Muslim spouses brought from Pakistan, I am writing to my MP to demand a review of this decision which was taken without parliamentary debate or consultation with the legal establishment, but will have major implications for the status of sharia as obviously it sets a legal precedent. I hope the lawyers at Temple have now woken up to the threat of Islamism (for it is Islamists who push aggressively for sharia to by thrust into mainstream British life). 'Moderate' Muslims are content with freedom of worship and halal foods. More to the point, that they have woken up to the threat posed by Rowan Williams. Bishop Nazr-Ali is a far better leader for our times.
Miv Tucker
February 8th, 2008 1:22amArchbishop hits bottom, keeps digging Just when you think things couldn't possibly get more idiotic, something like this leaps up and smacks you right in the face. But as Edgar says in King Lear (Act IV, sc i): "...the worst is not / So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'" So be on the alert, be vigilant - you just don't know where and when the next outbreak of madness will erupt.
Ian
February 8th, 2008 1:39amI cn't decide whether he's begging a secularist society to give all religions a place or cleverly trying to stir up precisely the reaction that has occurred. It was extremely considerd and carefully worded, perhaps too much so. He is supposed to Pastor and teacher to the nation; not its subtlest diplomat. 'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field whivch the LORD God had made..
Frank Pulley
February 8th, 2008 1:55amI've come to the conclusion that Canterbury enjoys being flayed by Melanie Phillips. There can be no other reason for him to utter such inflammatory and subversive twaddle. If he were not the A of C I would attribute such madness to tertiary stage syphilis ... but then he is a Welsh druid, so perhaps it's scrapie - which has similar symptoms.
Bill M
February 8th, 2008 3:36amWhat an ignorant buffoon. Perhaps he should change his last name to Atkinson.
David
February 8th, 2008 3:40am"… without a strong religious core providing the moral, ethical and cultural ballast, the society it has been instrumental in forming becomes intensely vulnerable to collapse and colonisation." This is obviously true, therefore the only conclusion I can draw is that the UK is finished as a civilised society and if I lived there, I wouldn't. I would migrate. I also have mused about the first case of a homosexual vicar being dragged before a sharia court and sentenced to being thrown to his death from the steeple of his own church. Laugh if you must, but I predict this will happen within thirty years.
EG
February 8th, 2008 4:21amI cannot believe what I am reading. Is this man totally and utterly mad!? Why is he deserting his own church, that he leads? Will the Queen sack him? A very very sad crisis for the UK and all people who believe in liberty.
Sarah Margittai
February 8th, 2008 6:06amThe Archbishop is undermining the State and denying the Bible he is supposed to uphold. That Bible teaches that there must be one set of Laws and one Justice for everyone in the land. I hope he will admit his apostasy and resign.
Roy
February 8th, 2008 6:33amDear Queen of the realm, sack him.
Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA
February 8th, 2008 6:57amWhen 'citizenship' was introduced to the school curriculum, I was asked to teach aspects of the subject at a large state girls' school in Greater Manchester. The subject of 'crime and punishment' came up, as it normally does in RE lessons. The teacher's role was to encourage debate on this subject, without making 'judgements'. Without exception, every Muslim child in the class opted for sharia law as the correct British response to burglary, for instance. When asked to elaborate further, they insisted that this should cover all British citizens, irrespective of religion or creed, as 'sharia law knows no boundaries'. When asked what the punishment for burglary would be, they all stated 'amputation of hands'. This disucssion took place in 1999, well before 9/11. When I reported my considerable misgivings to the school authorities, I was told that pupils were 'entitled to their opinion, and by the way, Manchester LEA has asked that we do not use the word 'Israel' in class, so as not to offend Muslim pupils'. Unfortunately for Manchester LEA the RE subject to be taught in another class was 'the Exodus from Egypt'. And their own syllabus mentioned 'the Children of Israel'. Teachers were now expected to use the phrase 'Children of Palestine'. I reported all this to the local Manchester Representative Jewish Council who basically accused me of fabricating the whole thing. 'We know the advisor for RE and she would never do such a thing'. Any wonder that the Arcbbishop of Canterbury is now advocating sharia law and using Jewish norms incorrectly to implement it.
Lee Jakeman
February 8th, 2008 7:11am... or he could be just plain stupid.
tommy
February 8th, 2008 7:24amWhat a sad excuse for a religious leader--- the mans acuity and suitability for his position are now not even in question Retire this dangerous buffoon now.. As a previous poster writes "Bishop Nazr-Ali is a far better leader for our times."
David M.
February 8th, 2008 8:37amComrade Williams was perhaps Tony (if you mention religion people think that you are a looney) Blair's "finest" appointment?
Oliver
February 8th, 2008 8:44amBill M "What an ignorant buffoon. Perhaps he should change his last name to Atkinson." Bill - Rowan Atkinson is an extremely bright person who has made his feelings plain on the freedom of speech and religious censorship issue. He - or Mr Bean - would make a far better leader than Rowan Williams, who should be sacked by the Queen forthwith.
Tony
February 8th, 2008 8:44amIt's interesting how Islamic apologists try to maintain they are only interested in the marriage, divorce and financial aspects of sharia, as if that't reasonable. in fact sharia shouldn't be allowed anywhere near such disputes. Anyone familiar with sharia rulings can see that the male/female imbalance in these areas is grossly unjust and mathematically unsound. Incidentally, how do we get rid of the A of C? When is his next election? Do I get to vote? Can he be impeached?
field
February 8th, 2008 8:51amWell most of us can agree that the Archbishop is a loose cannon that has just thwacked the British legal system over the head. But I think Melanie has neatly side-stepped the issue of the official recognition granted in law to the Jewish religious courts in matters of personal relationships. This cannot be right. It is wholly wrong. It will lead inevitably to comparisons (quite correct comparisons) with the position of Muslims in our society. David Green (from think tank - Civitas?) is in a hopeless position if he is going to argue that it is different for Islam because women are inferior under Islam. Women are also held to be inferior under Orthodox Judaism. We can either go down the road of legal pluralism advocated (quite logically in many ways) by the Archbishop or we can take a step back and apply the principle of a single legal system for all.
EDDIE
February 8th, 2008 9:01amIt could just be that the penny has dropped with a loud clang. The people of this country will now begin to realize that there is a long term strategy in place to undermine our systems of government. I live in hope that, eventually, even the BBC will also see the light
Louise
February 8th, 2008 9:18amThe Archbishop, who has now become a ludicrous figure and quite possibly sounded the deathknell not only of his divided Church but of Britain as we know it, should realise that the Jewish position has always been "The Law of the Land is the Law". That is why the Anglo-Jewish community is and always has been an integral part of British society. If only Islam would similarly adapt to modernity.
Stanley Jerusalem Israel
February 8th, 2008 9:24amSorry Field, Melanie has side-stepped absolutely nothing. The official status of Jewish Religious Courts in the UK is exactly the same as Courts of Arbitration. However they have no power to fine or otherwise punish and may not rule contrary to anything which is forbidden under English Law and cannot compel anyone to follow their dictat under threat of punishment.They cannot force a man to grant his wife a divorce even though the couple may already be divorced in a civil court. You are either misinformed or have a totally alternative and undisclosed agenda.
David
February 8th, 2008 9:43amJewish Law more than "acknowledges" that Jews "live under the law of the land" - under the tenet of "dina de-malchuta dina" it states unequivocally that the law of the land IS the law.
Barry Larking
February 8th, 2008 9:45amI came here and I am surprised to find Melanie is still upright – and she was in the hall with Dr Williams!
One thing is certain; after this no sharia here.
D. Cohen
February 8th, 2008 9:45amHe has become the Archbishop of Cant
Ian C
February 8th, 2008 9:47amTo quote Jeremy Clarkson (surelythe next appointee for Archbishop!) "This is a man who was arrested in the antinuclear protests of the 1980s. Who refused to call the 9/11 terrorists evil and said they had serious moral goals. Who thinks that every single thing bought and sold is “an act of aggression” on the developing world. Who campaigns for gay rights but wouldn’t actually appoint a homosexual as a bishop. And who recently said in an interview that America was the bad guy and that Muslims in Britain were like the good Samaritans..... In other words, he’s a full-on, five-star, paid-up member of the loony left..." Now what we know exactly what that means. That we have the full range of views of the 'liberal left' laid out in full. I thought that "Liberal" meant being free and equal, if it meant anything. What we are seeing is the overdue uncovering of the true views of the left as being the next closest thing to fascism.
Geoff Miller
February 8th, 2008 9:54amThis man shouldn't be running a whelk stall let alone the Established Church of England. The confusion and abject surrender of any sense of belief in anything is astounding. Here we see plainly the workings of the Liberal mind. He is one of many who are eating away at British culture, institutions and society. We never asked for the radical changes they have wrought upon our country. That plain fact says everything we need to know about our so-called democracy. We don't live in one.
Rachel Miller
February 8th, 2008 9:56amThank you for this detailed report of what Dr. Williams actually said and in what context, Melanie. So far, the reports I have read have made no attempt to go beyond giving 'soundbites' of Dr. Williams's interview. I do have one question for the Archbishop - what would he propose as a solution after the introduction of Sharia law should a Muslim have a dispute with his non-Muslim neighbour? Which law code should be applied? This highlights the very problem inherent in the Archbishop's proposal; it is not possible for two legal systems to co-exist side-by-side in one state. There will inevitably be a point at which one or the other must be declared paramount. If Sharia courts are 'incorporated into' the British legal system, as Dr. Williams suggests, conflict between the two systems is unavoidable.
Tony Rawlings
February 8th, 2008 10:06amI wonder how Terry Waite feels about these stupid meanderings?
Michael Taylor
February 8th, 2008 10:42amIn Archbishop Sentamu of York we have a very capable replacement standing by. . .
Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA
February 8th, 2008 11:21amThis is for those who think that Jewish Law is somehow the equivalent of sharia law - from a well known former British rabbi, now living abroad: 'What a catastrophic betrayal of the very Western values that have made Britain a free, open and egalitarian society! But let me not assume he is an idiot. Let me assume he just phrased things in a clumsy way and see if I can read some sense into what he said. He kept on repeating that Jews in Britain have a Beth Din that deals with family and other matters. He is right that we Jews may voluntarily take issues to a Beth Din and it is true that Jewish Law asks of us that we do this rather than go to civil courts. But the Beth Din only functions voluntarily and does not override or supersede the law of the land. 'For example, a Beth Din will not finally issue a divorce until after the civil courts have finalized the matter. As for arbitration or settling financial matters, this can only be done by agreement. As we saw two years ago, a Dayan of the Federation ended up in the civil courts in a dispute with a Jewish businessman. Halachic courts operate purely on a voluntary basis. Now if the Archbishop was saying that Muslim courts could function in the same voluntary way, no one would argue with him. Of course, every religion has the right to worship, dress and conduct its internal affairs as it wishes so long as it does not offend the law of the land. 'But he didn't say that. He said Civil Law has to accommodate to Sharia. In this charged, tense atmosphere his language was ill considered and childish at best. Such a suggestion is not only madness, but a complete betrayal of British values. No wonder so many Christians in the UK prefer the Chief Rabbi to the Archbishop. 'There is no way you can unite a country and a varied population without a single system of law. It is already a scandal that the police and the judiciary turn blind eyes to honour murders and forced marriages in flagrant opposition to English Law, for fear of offending sections of the population. It is a scandal that Social Welfare pays out large sums to multiple wives in a society where polygamy is against the law. 'The problem is that many Muslims are as open, law-abiding, and religiously moderate as most Jews. Sadly, there is a significant number that come from more primitive sectors of Islam and have not yet made any concessions to modernity, other than Coca-Cola. They need to be encouraged to do so, not be pandered to, because in pandering we are abetting the betrayal of moderate Islam. 'If Christianity is so weak that it has given up the fight for its values, please, I beg the government to stand firm. It was elected to serve British values, but if it concedes it will preside over the destruction of British values within a generation. 'The Jews who came to Britain always knew they had to abide by the law of the land. We have always done this. Now it seems the Archbishop wants to see one law for Christians and Jews and another for Muslims. We might as well invite the Saudi Royal Family to move into Buck House. Shabbat Shalom'
Joshua Scholar
February 8th, 2008 12:11pmI think he wants to reestablish the church's own political power by using Islamism as a 'stalking horse'. Certainly if the British government recognizes the authority of Islamic clerics, it must recognize the authority of the Archbishop!
Ian
February 8th, 2008 12:21pmConsider this: Bishop Nazir-Ali is outspoken and gets a reaction from those who have experienced what he was talking about, but is condemend by the liberal elite. The ABC is 'nuanced', obfuscatory,complex and polysyllabic; and succeeds in uniting the liberal elite and everyone else, apart from the sharia supporters, against him. The issue of Islam and how we deal with it is now centre-stage in a way that it was never before. I'm no supporter of liberal theology (it has all but destroyed the Church I love), but even liberal theologians, most of them, draw the line somewhere. Is this the Law of Unintended Consequences or has the ABC, by taking this shocking step, delberately sought to draw our attention to the consequences of our current cultural cringe?
Frank
February 8th, 2008 12:25pmThe Archbishop's finely nuanced stutterings can only lead to still more departures from his Church, and even more disintegration. How must Anglicans and other Christians feel in those parts of Africa where Sharia Law is being forcibly imposed upon them?
Stephen Fox
February 8th, 2008 12:31pmIt appears that the UFO widely reported over the Isle of Wight is in fact Dr Williams's mother ship. Perhaps soon he will rejoin it, and return to his home planet. And comparisons with Rowan Atkinson are deeply unfair to a well balanced and intelligent man, Rowan Atkinson.
JJ
February 8th, 2008 12:35pmI watched reports on the Archbishdolt's interview on Radio 4 on the early evening news last night and wanted to put a brick through the TV screen. How different a couple of hours later when purely by chance I got to see John McCain's speech live on one of the 24 hour news channels. From the depths of despair I was cheering to the rafters - and the language on terror! - just wonderful. No surrender here. Just a clear-headed no-nonsense approach from a brilliant public speaker. What a pity I'm not American. We will never see or hear a British political leader ever give a speech like that, either now or in the future. How shameful this country's craven surrender to terrorism is. Was it me overreacting to the speech, I thought afterwards? No. The excellent Stephen Pollard was watching and has provided a commentary and links to it on his blog. If there's anything I can do to help the FBI with their enquiries, I'm only too happy to help. Do keep an eye on Lambeth Palace, though, boys. The word treachery doesn't do it justice. God bless America and God help Britain.
Ian C
February 8th, 2008 12:48pmRuth Gledhill may have found a clue as to where he is coming from "Is the Archbishop of Canterbury unaware of the history of the Church he has been chosen to lead? Coming from Wales is no excuse.....!!!" The confidence that came from the Twickenham win perhaps!
Ian C
February 8th, 2008 12:55pmRead the whole of the Ruth Gledhill piece and see not only why, in the real world - not just in the intellectual argument Melanie has articultaed so well, the Archbishop is so fundamentally wrong in his opinion. http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/02/has-the-archbis.html
korova
February 8th, 2008 12:57pmBlah blah. So much nonsense, so little time. There is no real reason why Muslims cannot use Sharia Law Councils to arbitrate disputes rather than using the civil courts. Good luck to them. If only we would recognise the process a lot less harm might be done. Take this example: "....Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse." If sharia was permitted under English law, the rights of the woman would have been protected and the bigamist would have been locked up. Furthermore, the acceptance of khul'a will ensure that many Islamic women are protected from husbands that seek to hold them in marriage against their will. It seems sensible to allow sharia courts to deal with such issues as it will not seriously damage the legal framework in which this country operates. In fact, a registrar at a Jewish court even suggested on Radio 4 this morning that he can see no reason why Muslims do not have this right. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of sharia, and the establishment has once more closed ranks and decried anyone who dares to think differently. Such a shame.
Ethan
February 8th, 2008 1:07pmSadly, the tragic case of the Archbishop is not an isolated one. There is a malaise running through the very heart of the political and intellectual elite of our country. Basically whatever else they might believe in, they have ceased to believe in themselves. They have lost all sense of their own moral, spiritual or social authority. Whatever its failings, Islam most definitely believes in itself. That is why our leaders are so powerless against it. Belief can only be countered by belief; conviction by conviction; spirit by spirit. The maxim that nature abhors a vacuum applies equally to the moral and spiritual domain. Islam will fill that spiritual vacuum unless we do so ourselves.
Rob Slack
February 8th, 2008 1:14pm"Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make mad". (Euripidies). He's almost gone.
Ben Philips
February 8th, 2008 1:46pmThe paradox is staggering isn't it, and makes his utterances all the more absurd. I'm filled with a mixture of disbelief and anger: disbelief that he hadn't thought through the contradictory nature of what he was saying - that the 'liberal' message he thought he was advocating would infact lead to the very reverse of what he wants. And anger that the head of the established church could be such a pitiful and moral coward in standing up for the Judeo-Christian tradition in this country. From Iain Blair to Ken Livingstone, and Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, I'm sick of being governed by weak, misguided, incompetant fools with no vision or moral backbone. He should resign.
field
February 8th, 2008 1:49pmWe need to address these issues in a principled manner. I am afraid that the threats we face at home and abroad are now so serious as to mean that British muddle will not see us through anymore. Abroad we need a principled commitment to free democracies. The same goes for at home. Whilst it MIGHT be true that Jewish religious law makes itself subservient to British law (I say might because I very much doubt it - I suspect this is the Jewish equivalent of Taqqiyah), that does not alter the fact that in a modern context there is no way the state will be able to deny Muslims what it has been given to Jews. It will appear fundamentally inequitable not to out Islam on an equal footing with Judaism and Judges might even overturn the law on the basis of human rights legislation, without Parliament having a say. Mormons, Hindus, Scientologists, Pagans and others will also clamour for their version of the law. To go down the path of state recognition of religious courts takes us ever closer to the cliff edge. Time to stop, take a step back and begin on a new, principled path: equality before the law for all. We can at least thank our PC Prelate for alerting us to what is in store for the country. And incidentally - haven't all those voices who have assured us here that we were all paranoid, neo-con loons to think that Shariah law could ever be implemented in the UK gone suddenly VERY VERY quiet!!! With good reason.
Simon
February 8th, 2008 1:57pmDisestablish now
MichaelB
February 8th, 2008 2:13pmYour piece expresses the horror many of us feel about the Archbishop's clever-stupid pronouncements. What a typical product of the western Left university he is, with his cod wisdoms derived from Philip Bobbit's 'market state' and the multiculti creed. PS Your piece on SOAS's celebration of the Iranian Islamic Revolution was also spot on.
Chingford Man
February 8th, 2008 2:15pmThe best critique of Beardy's nonsense that I have read. Well done, Melanie.
Jess
February 8th, 2008 2:25pmIt's not a strong religious core that we need to protect against this outcome, it's a strong *secular* one. Where people are free to practise whatever religion they like in private, but where that religion is not permitted to encroach in any way or in any sphere on the state and its decisions. Nobody should be above the law, full stop. Get rid of the faith schools, too, all of them, of every religion - what's more divisive in a multicultural society than segregating our children?
Lynne T
February 8th, 2008 2:51pmI know the situation in Britain isn't exactly the same as here in Canada as I expect we don't have as large a Muslim community proportionately, and what we have may be more diverse as to country of origin and adherence to the faith, but a few years ago, the government of Ontario considered allowing Sharia courts status under the act that governed arbitration, under which Beit Dins and Catholic family courts had been operating as a means of alternate dispute resolution for certain family and civil matters. A large enough portion of the Muslim community, mainly female, westernized and not particlarly well organized into lobby groups, rallied against it, and succeeded in having the notion dropped. However, along with it, the Beit Dins and Catholic courts, which had been operating without complaint for over a decade, lost status. Given the influence Muslim organizations on the reactionary side seem to have in Britain, I'm not sure you can count on a similar result if your government was to entertain such a notion.
Scipio
February 8th, 2008 2:51pmSpoken like a true Livingstone/Galloway acolyte. Get rid of this moron.
Ranjeev
February 8th, 2008 2:57pmIndia has gone down this road already by allowing some laws for this group of people and some for that. The multiethnic nature of their society is being gnawed at, just as it is here, by the acidic platitudes of multiculturalism that burn through any attempt at cohesiveness. We have much to learn from India, from the folly of its lack of foresight with issues like this and also how it, too, handles Islamist terrorism. Think how bad we feel and then realise how close they are to Pakistan from whence Osama's chums sometimes pop over with a bomb or two. The British media always downplay the suffering of the Indian people at the hands of Islamist suicide bombers because it points up the fallacy of so many glib UK commentators blaming Islamist aggression on US/UK foreign policy. The conflicts we have only been dealing with here for a few years have been raging over there for hundreds of years and guess what? George Bush wasn't around to 'start' any of it.
John R Clegg
February 8th, 2008 3:16pmThese comments by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will pass into history in the same way as the murder of Thomas a'Beckit did. We have now reached in our Christian evolutionary history a low point. Our society is under a sustained and subversive attack by militant Islam and comments like these by the Archbishop are unbelievably naive and dangerous. He should have realised that his remarks would be incendiary. I look to the Archbishop of Canterbury to protect MY Christian faith and stand up for MY Christian beliefs, not to bend his knee to Islam. He's showing moral and intellectual cowardice and I can't stop thinking about his illustrious predecessors, some of whom died for their beliefs. If he can't or won't stand up for Christianity then he should make way for someone who will.
Joe Strummer
February 8th, 2008 3:17pmRowan Williams MUST be sacked forthwith. He is clearly unfit to lead what was once a revered institution such as the COE.
AppalledofLondon
February 8th, 2008 3:30pmSpot on. What we now need is not just condemnation of the Archbishop's ludicrous speech but the following:- 1. A clear statement that Sharia law will never be permitted in the UK. If people want to live under Sharia law, they should move to countries where it is the law. All citizens, whatever their religion, are equally subject to British law. 2. Minorities have the right to practise their religion but where they seek to do so in a way which impinges on the majority their rights will necessarily have to be limited: so, for instance, no calls to prayer in Oxford or anywhere else. 3. Where minorities' so-called cultural practices conflict with the laws of the land, the latter take priority. So no "forced marriages" or rape as it's known here, no "honour killings" or murder etc. Let them be called by what they are not by euphemisms and let the law be rigorously applied to such crimes. All those who participate in these appalling practices should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Indeed, I would favour making "honour killings" a specific offence, precisely because of the signal it sends out that we will not tolerate the intolerable whatever cultural pieties we hear from so-called community leaders. 4. No more Islamic faith schools until we can be confident - as we are not now - that they are not being used to indoctrinate the young with anti-British/anti-democratic views and beliefs. 5. Much tougher action against those mosques, mosque and other so-called Islamic bookshops, preachers, imams, community leaders who preach hate, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian views. We must state clearly that there is a treasonous group within the Muslim community and that we have to take whatever steps are needed to root it - and its pernicious views - out. We have waited in vain for Muslims themselves to do this. Since they won't or can't we have to do it. 6. Ban all foreign funding of Islamic mosques, schools, charities etc. 7. Refuse to deal with the MCB and other so-called community leaders. We need to encourage genuinely moderate Muslim leaders not appease self-appointed ones with an agenda which is hostile to our interests. 8. Tell Muslims that as British citizens they are expected to abide by British law in full and they have both the rights and responsibilities of British citizens. If they feel a greater allegiance to some other state, country, system of law or whatever, then they need to make the obvious choice. What we cannot have is a community here which seeks to enjoy our advantanges and freedoms while undermining - in a host of ways - the very way of life which underpins those same advantages/freedoms. 9. So take active steps to encourage integration: no burqas, reintroduce the primary purpose rule for marriages from the Indian sub-continent, stop the over-sensitivity to Muslim complaints / sensitivities, stop appeasing every demand. As a Catholic I don't expect my employer to provide me with an in-house chapel. Why should Muslims be given special prayer rooms? And to those who will inevitably say that I'm picking on Muslims and why not do the same to Hindus, Sikhs etc? Well the answer is that it is not those communities who are demanding special privileges and sympathising with and producing terrorists, suicide bombers and the like. It is from Islamic fundamentalists and radicals (and I fear not just them) that the risk comes and that is where the action needs to be directed. If Muslims do not like being associated with terrorists, then they need to do something about it. So far, there has been - largely - silence from them. If only we had leaders with the gumption to do what's necessary. But if not, I think the future here could be very bleak.
Jeremy Thompsom
February 8th, 2008 3:38pmThe problem is that sharia law is inherently unequal towards different people. Women have less standing than men. Non-Muslims have much less standing that do Muslims. For instance, an allegation by a non-Muslim accusing a Muslim is worthless unless it is confirmed by two independent Muslims. Questions of amputation and stoning are of course beyond the pale. Bottom line is that sharia law is in direct contradiction to Western law which has been attempting to see each and evey person as equal before it. It is medieval and debases modern Western law basics.
idle
February 8th, 2008 3:39pmThis tortured soul should be seen but not beard. Get thee to a trappist monastery!
Robert (Kettering)
February 8th, 2008 3:51pmA simple test for Williams would be to encourage him to pack his bags and head for Iran or better still Saudi Arabia and try to openly practice his Christian Faith. He'd very soon learn the realities for many non Muslims in Muslim countries which operate Sharia Law that there simply isn't watered down Sharia. Once you have approved it the rest will follow as sure as night follows day!
Alcuin
February 8th, 2008 3:55pmThe BBC Have Your Say" is overwhelmingly condemnatory of the ABC's remarks, yet true to form the moderator has found a supportive comment to "balance" these on the front page. Williams' days at Lambeth must be numbered.
Melanie is spot on is her fears for Muslim women. Here, the legal protection of British law is already inadequate in a sub-culture where many are intimidated into silence. Sharia would make them legally invisible. The appearance of Muttaween on the streets of Dewsbury, Bradford and Burnley would not be far behind. There is evidence in the gangs of young men, that in many Muslim enclaves they are already here. Such people need constraining, not empowering. The proposed introduction of Sharia in Ontario was stopped by protests from Muslim women.
On the issues that we may be able to accommodate Muslims, these are in their hands. Anglican priests are automatically qualified as registrars, so marriages they conduct are legal under British Law. Many Catholic priests have qualified as registrars so that they may so do. If Imams wish to conduct legally recognised marriages, they can train and qualify as registrars.
We have modified the law to allow "Halal" mortgages, though this is more a matter of economics. If they wish to use mortgages that are more expensive of more risky, that is their business.
Rights of custody over children and rights of inheritance are another matter. We should not move an inch on child custody - to do so would result in a discriminatory legal system. If any Muslim wishes to control his/her inheritance, (s)he should write a will. Job done.
If anyone wants to see how a dual legal system works, look at Malaysia. Here, your faith is registered at birth and you may not change it (see the Lina Joy case), unless you wish to convert to Islam. Muslims are prohibited from drinking, gambling etc., in a country where such activities are permitted to others. This is the road down which any concession to Sharia will lead. No thanks.
Maven
February 8th, 2008 4:00pm15:38 8th Feb. Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002 applies to both Jewish and Muslim marriages in that a decree absolute may be witheld if one of the parties raises an objection that the other refuses to provide a religious divorce or refuses to acknowledge the process to do so. It is not mandatory that a Jewish Divorce (Get) must be issued. This was to protect people in a religiously sanctioned marriage who might wish to re-marry and prove to a synagogue or mosque that the person was free to marry there. I have heard this mis-represented in the media as if it binds Jewish and UK Law as a single co-ordinated law. It doesn't. Its simply protection against a partner who is malicious and uses the refusal of a religious divorce as a device.
korova
February 8th, 2008 4:01pmJudging by the comments of Jeremy Thompsom et al, there seems to be rather too many people who do not understand what sharia actually is. Sharia doesn't, as a rule, discriminate against women. In fact, in many cases, it protects them from Muslim men. This gross mis-understandinig of what sharia means really underlines quite how ignorant (or malevolent) many posters on this blog actually are.
Chris UK
February 8th, 2008 4:27pmTo AppalledofLondon, You've taken the words out of my mouth, hear, hear, I emphatically agree with everything you say. Just one thing to add. Where has the gumption of the British people gone, the gumption that got us through 2 World Wars. It's time to stop being led by fear and it's time to start calling a spade a spade. Let's get rid of all this politically correct language and tell the truth. Come England, Scotland and Wales our beloved British Isles. Wake Up!
M Clyde
February 8th, 2008 4:29pm'"....Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse." If sharia was permitted under English law, the rights of the woman would have been protected and the bigamist would have been locked up.' Do keep up. Have you been following this at all? They that live by sharia shall suffer by sharia. Sharia recognises polygamy. Didn't the wife know this when she signed up for a sharia marriage? What did she expect? Sharia is 'allowed' (as a voluntary code) under British law in the sense that any two citizens can make any kind of pact they like provided it does not harm anyone. But it is non-enforceable by British authorities. To gain this, 'Islamic' marriages also require to be registered in a civil ceremony and Muslims are recommended to do this to receive the protection of British law. Most do. It is a simple civil act like filling in your tax forms. Nothing unIslamic in that. The lady in question, having failed to obtain a civil marriage, should now apply to her local sharia court for arbitration and reparation. Why should the British state do this? She had her chance and didn't take it: more fool her. But, mosques collect zakat from the faithfull these days and have a fund they can dish out at their discretion to abandonned women. As I said, let they that live by sharia suffer/or be recompensed by sharia. It's only justice after all? That was her free choice: it is her bed now let her lie on it.
Tim
February 8th, 2008 4:43pmWilliams must have a private agenda to let such a dangerous genie out of the bottle. Our servicemen must wonder what they are fighting to defend.
Ahad Ha'amoratzim
February 8th, 2008 4:46pmField, as to your charge that "Whilst it MIGHT be true that Jewish religious law makes itself subservient to British law (I say might because I very much doubt it - I suspect this is the Jewish equivalent of Taqqiyah)," you have declared that you will view with suspicion anything a Jew has to say about Judaism, simply because it was a Jew who said it. Not unlike the British editor who said that he automatically disregards any letter pointing out mistakes in his paper's Israel coverage if the letter writer has a Jewish name. Instead of just charging -- with no evidence -- that Jews consider themselves free to lie to non-Jews about what the Jewish religion teaches, why don't you show us a source in Jewish religious law itself? And instead of discounting that Jews believe that the law of the land is the law, why don't you show us examples where British Jews have used their religion to commit wholesale distregard of British law? The answer, of course, is that you can't, for neither proposition is true. Apparently a thing may be true althoug Lord Beaverbrook has said it, but not if a Jew has said it.
Mick Stoner
February 8th, 2008 4:52pmThe best analysis and best response so far to this dangerous, delusional Neville Chamberlain of the Christian Faith
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 5:07pmUsually we are only motivated by some positive benefit. What is Rowan Williams positive benefit in his mind.
Mark
February 8th, 2008 5:17pmI was anxiously waiting for you to take up the flaying knife, Mel. You did not disappoint. If I lived in Britain right now, I'd structure my finances so that I could buy a property in Canada or the United States. Begin planning your possible exit now. If things turn around the worst thing that'll happen is you'll have a nice nest egg to sell later on.
M Clyde
February 8th, 2008 5:18pmkorova writes: 'Judging by the comments of Jeremy Thompsom et al, there seems to be rather too many people who do not understand what sharia actually is.' We understand very well what sharia is. (Unlike Williams). It is not a precise legal code like British statute law but a loose system of ethics drawn together by fiqh or legal prounouncements by various jurists at various times and never precisely codified into a univerally agreed comprehensive body of laws. The Quran mentions hudud punishments but that is about as far as clear pronouncements go from that primary source. Sharia is aimed at religious life and is more appropriately translated as a 'spiritual path' or 'way'. Sharia is thus open-ended and subject to interpretation: it is not a PRECISE legal code as regards social issues such as divorce, etc. It is this last aspect that renders it suspect to local cultural interpretation, including the local cultural interpretation of retrogrades who perpetuate barbaric and misogynistic cultural norms in the name of Islam. See for instance the recent report from the Centre of Social Cohesion. Women who apply for divorce are often refused it. Divorced women have no rights to half the marital property or access to their children. This is why many 'agree' to their husband's polygamy, like I suspect the lady in Luton you mentioned earlier, as they have no real choice. They would lose their home and their children, as well as their status in the community. Polygamy is not the free choice of free women and never was. Until sharia is precisely codified it will always be subject to what we call here 'arbitrary law'. This was a big issue in the 17th century, and we have learned a GREAT deal from this experience. We realise that unless laws are precise and specific, and there is an independent judiciary, loose interpretation in effect gives certain individuals considerable power, influence and latitude in interpreting them. This may tend (optimistically) towards clemency; but (pessimistically) towards tyranny, prejudice, lack of transparency and abuse of power: irrational selfish corrosive elements which not only prejudice individuals, but also the common good. Long experience showed that the merits of the first proposition were grossly outweighed by the problems of the second, especially in a developing society. This is why we object so strongly to 'arbitrary law' which is what sharia is in its present uncodified condition. Please show some respect for 1000 years of development in British legal thinking; learn some British constitutional and intellectual history. We have considerable wisdom in this affair.
JJS
February 8th, 2008 5:27pmI find the correspondent called "field"'s blatant anti-Semitism appalling -- and not only from this discussion -- and why am I the only one who has the courage to say so???
James Pawlak
February 8th, 2008 5:30pmOnce, the English burnt an Archbishop of Canterbury at the stake. Times have changes. O tempora, O mores!
Laura
February 8th, 2008 5:33pm"How shameful this country's craven surrender to terrorism is" ................ Winston Churchill must be rolling over in his grave. However judging by these repsonses, I have full faith that the British people will save their country in the long run.
dsquared
February 8th, 2008 5:38pm[There is no real reason why Muslims cannot use Sharia Law Councils to arbitrate disputes rather than using the civil courts] there is actually; unlike the Beth Din, the Sharia Law Councils are not currently recognised as Courts of Arbitration, mainly because they don't seem to be able to agree on a consistent framework. Meanwhile, something like 69 comments into this thread, can I remind everyone that there is this thing called "The European Convention on Human Rights" and the UK has signed up to it as part of the Treaty of Rome? If the UK Parliament were to pass any law which allowed the creation of a sharia system which discriminated on grounds of sex, race, religion or lack thereof or sexual orientation, that provision of UK law would be in breach of the ECHR, would be found to be so by the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and would therefore be overturned by the House of Lords as invalid law. Melanie Phillips wrote a quite substantial and angry chapter about the European Convention on Human Rights in her book "Londonistan", so I'm surprised she forgot about it in the context of her article above.
alan stoddart
February 8th, 2008 5:51pmWoman who stabbed pilots on flight from New Zealand to Australia was Somali, as most news sites will tell you...except for one, the BBC. Presumably Somali could mean Muslim....
Wattock Hunt
February 8th, 2008 6:21pmI think Williams might be my long-lost brother. I detect a strong genetic similarity.
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 6:21pmField, in your clearly Antisemitic spew (undetected by the moderators) you say these disgusting things:" Whilst it MIGHT be true that Jewish religious law makes itself subservient to British law (I say might because I very much doubt it - I suspect this is the Jewish equivalent of Taqqiyah), that does not alter the fact that in a modern context there is no way the state will be able to deny Muslims what it has been given to Jews. It will appear fundamentally inequitable not to out Islam on an equal footing with Judaism and Judges might even overturn the law on the basis of human rights legislation, without Parliament having a say. Mormons, Hindus, Scientologists, Pagans and others will also clamour for their version of the law. To go down the path of state recognition of religious courts takes us ever closer to the cliff edge". Hence I read this as "Jews lie and Jews can't be trusted". Its strange that you feel that the Beth Din has taken us to "the cliff edge" as it has been around for 200+ years in the UK and you never noticed the edge of the cliff approaching, did you? Its poor taste to highlight that Islam actually has a word "Taqiyya" to specifically describe the mechanism by which they may tell lies in order to protect their status as Muslims. Note that Hamas said a few days ago it often employs Taqiyya. Actually the state DOES give the Muslims what it allowed Jews to have (not give). Any Muslim may delay a decree absolute if the ex-partner denies them a Shariah divorce. Its in the 2002 Divorce Act.
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 6:29pmJJS, I hadn't really read field's twaddle properly. Now I've read it I wonder why it was allowed.
Salvatore
February 8th, 2008 6:34pmWhen I heard the mealy mouthed Archbishop speak to his theme about Sharia law on radio 4, I shook my head in dismay.
When I later read his views in the papers, the articles appeared with pictures of him which reminded me that on occasions he can look disturbingly mad.
Conducting a personal reality check I read the Spectator Bloggs and was reassured by the common sense I found registered by most correspondents.
I don't need to repeat all the good stuff written, but felt Dr Irene Lancaster,and AppalledofLondon deserved prizes in their respective categories.
However, there are two features of this sorry story that have not really been remarked on.
The first is that the Archbishop is a political appointment, and therefore it is reasonable to suspect his remarks probably had some degree of political approval.
If he is sacked, that might be some evidence to the contrary.
The second is that giving Sharia Law and values some kind of approval opens the door for all kinds of legal mitigations when cultural clashes or reprehensible behaviour ends up in our criminal or civil courts.
That process, and the attendant confusions will itself operate to dilute our national identity, and play into those who want to change our culture towards theirs.
Alcuin
February 8th, 2008 6:37pmI have just read Ruth Gledhill's column in the Times. I recommend all read the encounter Ruth had with a Muslim woman who was acting for other women (usually not Englis speakers) sectioned into NHS mental hospitals by Muslim doctors. This brave woman was in fear for her life and those she represented. The Social Cohesion report speaks of women going to the police being betrayed and returned to their abusive husbands by Muslim policemen. When we need the Mafia to enforce social cohesion, it is time to fight or leave.
It would appear that if it is control that the Muslim patriarchy wants, they already have it through violence and intimidation, and have no need of assistance from the British legal system. Such would be a betrayal of Britain, decency and many Muslims oppressed by their own thugs. The reverse is required.
field
February 8th, 2008 6:53pmI think there is something to be learnt from the hysterical overreaction of those with a religious axe to grind - accusing me of anti-semitism when on this blog and others I have shown myself a good friend of Israel and Jews generally, who as a defined community have probably contributed more to civilisation than any other community in the last 200 years. However, I won't be swayed from my rational and correct analysis of the situation. Whilst the Archbishop is on the ropes now, gradually we will see things begin to change. People will look into the issue of the Jewish religious courts. They will see they do have official status in UK law and they will begin to say well "that all seems very reasonable - why can't the Muslims have something similar" and we will indeed see that the Archbishop's words were prophetic rather than pathetic. If you want to stop Shariah you have to stop all religions getting special treatment before the law. There is no pain-free way of stopping Shariah. Appalled of London is closer to identifying what needs to be done: we need to have a vigorous defence of our democracy. As for the specific point I made, I am sceptical that Jewish religious judges really think British law is superior to God's law as found in the OT, Torah and the rulings down the ages. That's all I was saying. The same applies to the Pope. He might ask people to be law abiding but he could never say that British law is superior to God's law. I should say I am most definitely an equal opportunity sceptic - I think all religions, indeed all ideologies (atheist, communist as well) have their version of Taqqiyah, call it cognitive dissonance if you want another name. Judaism is no different in that regard. This is not to say that all religions have it embedded in them to the same degree. I think Islam along with some others like Mormonism and Scientology is unusual in that regard.
Sergey
February 8th, 2008 7:02pmMay be, this is a medical case, say, senile dementia? The man is so obviously mad, that this question naturally arise. As for Jewish code, it became operative only after Maimonid formulated it in Shulkhan Arukh in 12 century, and since it became a religious obligation of every Jew to obey the Law of land. This the only way a religious minority can evade persecution, and anybody who breaches this rule puts in danger the whole community.
Ken Wortelhock
February 8th, 2008 7:28pmDr.Rowan Windbag ?
Monty
February 8th, 2008 7:44pm"The danger is in acting as if the authority that managed the abstract level of equal citizenship represented a sovereign order which then allowed other levels to exist."
I think he will find that is precisely the case. It was a necessary precursor to the waves of immigration which allowed the establishment of islamic communities on British soil. Sovereignty rests with the public, who can not be forced to tolerate the intolerable.
Alfred of Wessex
February 8th, 2008 8:01pm“The road to hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests, with bishops as their signposts.” - St. John Chrysostom http://countryparson.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/quote-for-today-3/
Hannah
February 8th, 2008 8:05pmYes, Alan Stoddart, I noticed that too. I watched BBC1's Six O'Clock News this evening where they all wore smug little grins as if to say: "We all know what you're thinking because we've read your comments on our website but we won't be settling for that line." Oh no, what we got at the end of the report as a summary of the situation was that the bulk of the British public had misinterpretd things as had the tabloids and that this was really what Dr Williams' problem was. The tone was: this was a lecture for academics - what's it got to do with Joe Public? Which is condescending twaddle first off and totally ignores the fact that the man took to the airwaves of a national radio station to spout some of this drivel. In other words, don't you worry your little heads, you just follow like sheep where the BBC and the Archbishop tell you and everything in the tabloids is wrong, but we're the BBC so all we say is right. You know what expletive phrase I want to put here. If you still have time, do try to catch Channel 4's Unreported World - Egypt's Rubbish People, which lays bare just how Christians are treated in an Islamic country. It will be repeated on 4 + 1 at 20.30 tonight. How long until we face a similar predicament here? Enough is enough, I'm fed up to the back teeth with having Islamic values forced down my throat at every opportunity and the sickening state-funded broadcaster acting as an apologist for it.
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 8:30pmfield, the Beth Din bows to all UK laws and has nothing which conflicts with UK Law. A Shariah court would sanction the 2nd and 3rd marriage of a Muslim to different wives. This was stated by the Imam representing the UK Shariah Courts on BBC 5Live last night. That is in direct contradiction to UK Law. The Beth din only has a relevance to 10% of UK Jewry on a permanent basis. 30,000 people. Shariah has a relevance to all 1.3m UK Muslims. That creates an identifiable split with a community we all want to better integrate. Instead we give them ways to separate.
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 8:33pmHannah, the BBC gave in when someone said "But the Jews got it!". They thought "In that case we have to balance it up. Muslims MUST have Shariah because Jews have got the Beth Din (all two of them!)"
Bill M
February 8th, 2008 8:44pmRanjeev--a healthy sprinkling of reality. Frank Pulley--it has all the appearance of being scrapie-related. My apologies to the esteemed Mr. Atkinson. To clarify, it would have been better to say he should change his name to Archbishop Bean. Regardless whatever we may call him, he remains an ignorant buffoon!
Zaider
February 8th, 2008 9:03pmI would also like to remind us all that Jewish Law is ALREADY part of UK Law and the laws found in Democracies. We follow what is called a Judaeo-Christian ethic that is our moral and law-base. Obviously, Christianity evolved from Judaism as its root. Islamic Law, Shariah follows several thousand years later. We don't need it. Been there. Done that. Rejected most of it and kept the good bits.
Scipio
February 8th, 2008 9:13pmThe effeminate, foppish ABC is in all likelihood an atheist himself.
Ahad Ha'amoratzim
February 8th, 2008 9:34pmJJS, I agree, and I think I was the first on this thread to point out that Field has said that no Jew should ever be trusted when he tells a non-Jew what the Jewish religion teaches. I hope his Jewish employees never have to ask him for time off to observe a Jewish holy day.
Ahad Ha'amoratzim
February 8th, 2008 9:48pmSergey, the Shulchan Aruch was codified by Yosef Karo, who lived several hundred years AFTER Maimonides. And like Maimonides code -- the Mishneh Torah --, the Shulchan Aruch reports the long standing ruling of Mar Samuel found in the Talmud, which predates Maimonides by a millenium -- that Jews are obligated to follow the laws of the land where they live, and that this obligation has the force of religious law. Maimonides "codified" in the sense that he took the rulings of the Talmud and reported them in systematic organized fashion, reporting the black letter law without the discussions and debates that arrived at that law. He did not create new laws or change those of the Talmud, nor did he claim any authority to, and would have been shocked at any accusation that he did. Field, no one said that Jews consider British law SUPERIOR to Jewish religious law -- what we have said is that Judaism teaches that Jews living in Britain have a RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION not to violate British law, just as Jews living in the US have a similar religious obligation not to violate US law, etc. But don't believe me -- you love Jews, you just consider them to be unworthy of trust in telling you what their religion says. Try googling "dina d'malchuta dina" -- yeah, we fabricated all those references to it just to fool you.
Tim Calvert
February 8th, 2008 10:10pmI think its time for a good conspiracy theory. Crypto-Catholic PM appoints Williams in plan to destroy CoE.
Jon_boy
February 8th, 2008 10:47pmMaybe Comrade, sorry Ayatola Williams will now issue a fatwha to silence his critics. The BBC are already accusing his critics of being counter revolutionaries, sorry Islamophobes!
KateA
February 8th, 2008 11:00pmSuperb analysis Melanie. It truly is 'make up your mind time' for British (or perhaps more immediately, English) society. "First they came for the English"? An apposite quote from Ibn Warraq: "A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate." http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_snd-west.html Do read the whole article.
Tas Walker
February 8th, 2008 11:07pmWhat post modernist nonsense the Archbishop sprooks. But then he has had a lifetime of training since first entered seminary and learned how to re-define language so he can recite the creeds without believing a word of them. He is no representative of Jesus Christ. No friend of His either. I suspect that if Jesus came to London the Archbishop would conspire with the liberal left pollies and the mobs of the religion of peace to do away with Him again.
J. Isaacs
February 8th, 2008 11:15pmThe BBC's Newsnight discussion between the unctuous Tariq Ramadan and the finger-in-ear and eyes-closed Bishop of Hulme on the Archbishop's side and the angry Douglas Murray of think-tank Civitas on the other side was very entertaining. Jeremy Paxman had great trouble holding the ring, when both the Bishop and Ramadan started having a go at him and the BBC as well as Murray. They were still shouting when Paxman had to cut their microphones. Are any bookies giving odds on whether the Archbish will be voted out at the General Synod next week?
field
February 8th, 2008 11:35pmFor those of you still interested in rational debate I would make the following points:- 1. It's possible some people are a bit behind the times as to what UK law consists of or maybe live abroad and are unfamiliar with the UK. You can be arrested in the UK for making statements critical of homosexuality, even if you quote biblical texts. Homosexual unions are recognised in UK law. Homosexual adoption is allowed and no one can do anything to prevent it or act against it. The idea that Orthodox Jewish religious authorities accept all these UK laws as valid is frankly nonsense. 2. I am not going to take any lectures from people as to whether I should believe what spokespeople for religions say about their religion. There was the well attested case recently where the Chief Rabbi while publicly mourning an individual wrote a letter to an Orthodox Jew in far less flattering terms and expressing distaste towards the person (this for religious reasons): "The rift between the Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities in Britain dramatically deepened yesterday after it was disclosed that the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sac