open Democracy News Analysis - A religious fallout: sharia furore, Anglican future, Theo Hobson - Comments

intermedusa on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

intermedusa — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:05:29 +0000

THE ABOMINATION OF SHARIA LAW: A DIRECT CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONS AND RULE OF LAW

Larry Houle
www.godofreason.com
intermedusa@yahoo.com

Wherever Muslims live under Sharia law adulterers are publicly flogged or stoned to death, sometimes before thousands of spectators in public stadiums. There are no rights for women or children, with women genitally mutilated, and beaten in the streets for the slightest infraction. They care nothing for other beliefs, about being fair, have no juries, no free speech. Television and radio are forbidden, music and dance prohibited. It is their way or execution, the death penalty, with no appeal, no delay. You are simply shot in the head where you stand, and your children shot before you. And these practices of the Sharia, once largely confined to the Middle East, even though mostly finished in Afghanistan, are now spreading to other parts of the world.

Here are the top eleven reasons why Sharia or Islamic law is EVIL for all societies.

11. SHARIA LAW IS SLAVERY

10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.

9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives.

8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye.

7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have a hand cut off.

6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated.

5. Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed.

4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.
Fornication:

3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself.

2. Islam orders apostates to be killed.

In And the number one reason why sharia is bad for all societies . . .

1. Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad.

Conclusion

The nightmare must end. Sharia oppresses the citizens of Islamic countries.

abuelita42pj on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

abuelita42pj — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:48:11 +0000

Since when is any thing perfect in man's world or his society??? Why do some British citizens who have not practiced the Christian faith in terms of church-going on Sundays, baptizing their babies, being wed in the church and having their family's funeral in the church think that everything should now be CHRISTIAN?? By the latest statistics about 2% of the British people in England follow all of these and most follow no more than two--baptism and weddings.

Yes, the culture of Britain is basically Christian since the time of the monks in the fifth century or so, but many rituals were based on the paganism with Christian covers. With time much more of the rituals of Muslims will be understood, even if the community doesn't include them. Christianity shouldn't have priority over who does what or say what to whom or when. That is done by British common law from what I have read about over the years. Now practice that common law by giving each his/her say--even if it is done in an Middle Eastern language and about aspects of the Koran/Sharia at a council. The final results would have to written in English--with or without the Arabic/home language of the complaintant. So be it!! In time more will know the laws and culture of Britain than of Pakistan or Morocco, etc.

Remember law decisions were done in Latin, then French and only until about King Henry VI's time or later was it done in English. Why do you expect those of Muslim faith and Semitic languages to change tomorrow if not sooner??

Ted Harvey on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

Ted Harvey — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:45:21 +0000

The author of this piece seems to trying to maintain an air of informed objectivity when the reality is a partially informed, biased, anti-secular article. For example by asserting;

"The principle of universal secular law can be used to bully religious minorities"

when long historical experience is that it is dominant religions that are often the most intloerant and bullying of minority religions. It has been the case that the secular state organs have been the very best protection for religious minorities against their bigger more beligerant co-religionists.

The author should also know that 'Britain' does not have an established church. Only England has the Established church in the form of the Anglican Church. Scotland as part of the U.K., for example, has by and large followed the more egalitarian and democratic presbyterian church form. This is a significant and important aspect of the 'British' religio/social/political experience that the author ought have paid heed to - perhaps the author has his very own 'identity crisis'?

Michael T on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

Michael T — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:56:23 +0000

The Archbishop's lecture is long & involved and academic.

The nub of his argument seems to be that individuals should be able to 'opt out' of the general law of the State in certain areas and 'opt in' to another jurisdiction. The rationale seems to be that individuals are not only defined by their obligations as citizens, but by multiple other allegiances.

Where there is a dispute between individuals, those individuals can always opt to have the dispute artbitrated by a third party, by mutual agreement. But if the result is a binding determination, it could only be made binding by the law of contract. The principles used by the arbitrator should not themselves be recognised as part of the law of the land.

If the principles used are in fact contrary to the law of the land, the aggrieved party should be able to appeal to the mainstream courts if they subsequently withdrew their consent to the arbitration. Imagine the case where two parents agreed to contest for the custody of a child before a hypothetical religious court, which decided that the child should be cut in two, and half of the body should be given to one parent and half to the other. Even if both parents agreed to abide by this (unlikely!), the State should intervene and override their agreement, which conflicts with the right to life of the child, a third party.

If the religious court imposed an unacceptable punishment for an offence, (eg cutting off a hand), then the State should likewise intervene, even if the party having the hand cut off continued to agreed to it, as the punishment would run contrary to the most basic community standards of what is acceptable in a European country. Not only should everyone in the community be entitled to their fundamental rights, they should not be able to bargain them away. If rights are not inviolable, they cease to be rights.

The issues are not straightforward, and these hypothetical cases are unlikely to happen, but the point is that the State should not give the force of law to any jurisdiction that could contravene universal human rights.

By all means encourage people to have a plurality of allegiances. But this must take place within one framework of laws that override any other determinations,

Human rights can be supplemented by other obligations, but not overridden by them.

John Pitcher on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

John Pitcher — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:16:07 +0000

Dear Archbishop,
I live in Indonesia but have been following the British news media closely after your lecture and recent amplifications and additions that have now apparently become a debate. My thirty-five year old step-daughter, a Muslim lady who was educated at a Catholic school, recently became pregnant after an affair that owed much more to passion than good sense and lasting commitment. Whatever those circumstances may be my beautiful daughter is now five months on the way to giving my Indonesian (Muslim) wife and me our first grandchild. Our joy is unconfined at this prospect, but this will almost certainly not be universally the case when the bump begins to show, as it soon will. Unmarried motherhood is not known at all in the area of Yogyakarta in which my daughter has her house. Male visitors, other than family members, are not allowed after nine o’clock at night; which is a typically futile moral restriction as my adopted son pointed out, ‘What is wrong, Dad, with a bonk in the afternoon, or at lunch for that matter?’ But this is not a rational argument.
The social pressures and quasi-religious condemnations that single motherhood is about to bring to our family are enormously complex and barely understandable even by someone like me who is married into, and is now the head of, a sprawling Muslim family the core of which entails nine adults (including our two adult children), two teenagers, three pre-teen children; all practising Muslims within the normal framework of Indonesian Sunni Islam. And, this is crucial, all deeply imbued with the traditions of Java; the Wayang Kulit puppet theatre; the Remayana stories and the mythology that runs like lifeblood through the island. There is form and ritual to these beliefs in tradition, so that weddings and funerals and births have procedures that are followed by all, whatever the religious community is to which they belong.
My daughter lives in a Muslim area in the city of Yogyakarta in Central Java. My wife and I live 21 kms. to the north of her in splendid isolation in a timber villa on legs in the padi fields, close to a village community to which we owe allegiance and to which we pay taxes as required for the upkeep of local amenities. My daughter’s life is urban, ours is rural. There is more similarity between rural life in Indonesia and life in a city than one might imagine. Cities are formed by clusters of villages. These villages (kampongs) quite naturally accrete to themselves people of like religious belief, origin of birth as in area of Java, or, more unusually with our own city but quite common in Jakarta the capital, origin of island in the archipelago. Indonesia’s ethnic and religious mix is barely touched upon in the Western media. Any comment about Indonesia is almost always prefaced by the standard phrase, ‘the most populous Muslim country in the world,’ and this is correct as far as it goes; but it does not go far enough. Maybe it was enough before recent events thrust Islam into the Western consciousness in such a violent and distorted manner, but today this phrase is very nearly a condemnation. In the cities like-minded and related people cluster together and the administration of the kampong is through elected members who become the headmen (RT/RW) for the area and these men (they are always men in my experience) consult with the fathers of the families within the area for which they have been elected. Since most declare for Islam, if asked, the local administrations are usually considered Muslim and tend to relate to the local mosque, but this is not necessarily the case, and where there are Christian or Buddhist families the leader of that family will be included in the decision making of the group. My daughter lives in a middle class Muslim district surrounded by doctors, solicitors, teachers and professors at the Universitas Gajah Mada (UGM) the most famous, and best, university in Indonesia. Yet she is scared of the unpleasantness, possibly to the extent of demonstrations and damage to property, which will almost certainly come her way once it is known she is pregnant and remaining unmarried. One might expect that a society made up of respected and highly educated people would understand. They are modern. They have mortgages and personal loans from the bank. Most are on the Internet and all communicate as everyone does here by SMS (Texting). These are not foolish radical fundamentalists high on the exhilaration of sermons by some fiery mullah perverting the meaning of jihad. These are mothers and fathers of children who will fill professional positions, like their own, in one of the fastest developing countries in the world. These are business people who mix frequently with Westerners and often speak much better English than I do Indonesian. Why would people like this show the kind of censorious social behaviour that British society swept away several generations ago? Instinctively my wife and I blame Islam. My wife mutters darkly about the, ‘bloody Muslim attitudes,’ which coming from a Muslim must say something, but my daughter comes closest to opening some understanding I think when she explained to me that in Java it is considered unlucky for the kampong to have an illegitimate birth. The most powerful force at work in this is not religion, it is not logical, rational secular argument, it is what we of western upbringing would view as superstition; it is here your debate is coming unstuck. It is here, amongst the superstitions and arcane traditions, the origins of which are barely known to the ‘jurists’ who are laying the law down in the sharia courts of your imagining, your ideas, bravely stated, founder. There is no law, sharia or otherwise, defining the actions of the local communities and the action taken by the administrations of those local communities in relation to girls who become pregnant and have a child outside marriage. There is no law anywhere in Indonesia that says that men must leave the house of an unmarried woman before nine o’clock at night. This is localised traditional superstitious belief and illegal pressure. But it will happen.
The fathers of the families surrounding my daughter gather about once a month to discuss the spraying of the area for mosquitoes; the repair of roads; the night-time security guard patrols; all the things that under the democratically elected leadership of the kampong headman (RT) are needed to keep the kampong functioning. They then look at things that may upset the even tenor of existence. Are there gangs of youths on stealing missions or graffiti artists that must be identified and discouraged? Is someone revving their motorbike too much during early morning prayers and shouting to friends as they go to work, does someone need to have a word with their father? The meetings discuss local fetes and festivals and make arrangements and gather money for the payment of all these things and then, usually last of all, they touch upon delicate matters. Immorality issues are as touchy here as they are anywhere but here they are addressed, not disguised or ignored, and no matter how sophisticated the assembly the fact of my daughter’s pregnancy will be seen as a threat; perhaps seen as a threat most by those with unmarried daughters. Disapproval must be shown or they will all be at it, and in any case such a thing is unlucky. I am inclined to think that the belief in a lack of luck being involved is connected to the bad example set, but if my daughter is allowed to stay within the community and someone catches malaria, a fairly rare occurrence nowadays, this lack of luck may well be attributed to the kampong not having thrown her out. Better then for us to understand this, and take action that enables us to avoid the confrontation.
There is at times a strange disconnection between what happens in most societies and what happens in Java. Usually the most extreme forms of any social prejudice are applied at their harshest amongst the rural poor. I have not found this to be the case in Java. This disconnection, and the influence of Islam and Christianity alongside the existence of a mystical culture often predating established religious doctrine, offer insights into a variety of social interactions. Here my wife and I live amongst the ‘Orang Tani’ (farmers). The Islam followed here is influenced by Sufism and is more suited to the mystical beliefs of the Tani who live close to their land and animals and the weather and, where we are, work on the upper slopes of Merapi, the most active volcano in Java and probably the most active in the world if not, recently, the most destructively explosive. In our village there are many families where the mother and father are of different religions and the children follow whichever religion they prefer once they are able to make a decision. Religion is important but the ceremonies for weddings, the birth and naming of a child, funerals; the traditional chants and selamatan (ceremonial meetings and food distribution) owe more to ancient mysticism than to Islam or Christianity. And it is these mystical parts of the ceremonial occasion that are most stringently observed. The mythos of ancient culture trumps the logos of modern religious affiliations every time. Where religion, as with Sufism in Islam, has maintained a strong mythos and not become involved in the logos of political and legal debate it is better able to blend and influence tradition and culture. The compassion and justice at the root of both Islam and Christian belief flourish best here through the medium of myth.
There is no real compulsion to be a practising Muslim, or a Christian, a Hindu or a Bhuddist, and the constitution of Indonesia is secular, but all must declare a religious allegiance; all must believe in a god. Even the nationalists who formed the country and wrote the first constitution could not conceive of a situation where there was no god at all. There are five officially accepted religions: Islam, Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Christianity is of course what we would understand as Protestantism. There are Anglican churches, Presbyterian churches and various other forms of Christian, non-Catholic, worshipping; most represented close to where we live. There are at least five mosques within walking distance of my house, some with schools attached. The Catholic Church in our nearby market town of Pakem is connected to a hospital and a secondary school with further connections to a high school in the city. There are tensions between religions but in the main these are much lower key than the kind of ferocious debate your observations and lecture have released. Without the injection of too much outside influence, whether political or religious, our society gets along fine, but what might happen to a girl who finds herself pregnant without any chance of being married to the father of her child, even here in the country where things are more tolerant, or in the town where prejudice is rampant, I shudder to think; a girl who does not have a relatively wealthy dad who can move her away for the birth, bribe a fictitious father’s name onto the birth certificate, and then look after the baby to adulthood or until the daughter finds her own husband and they re-register the child? Actually, I am being disingenuous here; I know what can happen to such a girl, I am married to her. My wife had an affair with a Chinese man and this is how my step-daughter came into being and how my wife entered a life that nearly killed her before, twenty-seven years ago, we met on a beach in Sumatra. My daughter is half Chinese and we tease her that it is this that makes her so good (mean) with money. My wife’s rebellious streak has gone through to her daughter. My Western attitudes have affected my daughter and my money has given her an independence that has maybe made her more reckless than she would have been had I not been a white European. My daughter has lived all her life in Indonesia except for an eighteen month spell spent in England with us that she did not enjoy, eventually demanding to be repatriated, whether we came along too or not. Previous experience is essential in these delicate situations as is money and influence. Experience, money and influence produce power, and this is what is needed to be able to escape from the cloying effect of superstition and prejudice. What you are proposing would tend to reinforce the quasi-sharia courts that operate in the closed communities of British cities where superstition and arcane beliefs go hand in hand with agendas that are almost always to the disadvantage of the poor and the defenceless. In most cases these poor and defenceless ones are women and children. The best defence for these is to have what my daughter has; parents with experience and a bit of power. Or failing that, the defenceless must have recourse to a system of law that protects and tries to reform before it punishes. To give any approval to an alternative system whose variables take in superstitious belief as well as the traditions of peoples from regions far beyond the knowledge and experience of the main population of the country in which they are immigrants, is very dangerous and impossible to achieve. I could not, from my experience accept, as you appeared to suggest, that the need for sharia courts in Britain is inevitable; they are not considered an inevitability in Indonesia (the most populace Muslim country in the world, remember), where they have been tried in the kind of pared down form you propose. They have been tried in strongly Islamic areas with limited autonomy like Aceh, are mostly failing and are often rejected. Indonesian law reflects a similar syncretism to that found in religious practice, especially the development of Islam in Java. Indonesian law is a combination of ancient adat laws that have their origins in the kingdoms before the advent of Islam. There have been inputs from Indian, Arab and Chinese systems. The Dutch brought their Roman-Dutch Law with colonization and on independence a system was developed based on this, elements of adat and a new Indonesian civil law. This law is still not powerful enough, nor independently applied, so that it protects the weak.
I am a minority in the situation with my pregnant daughter; we can, hopefully, resolve things and all get on with lives that will, in July insyah Allah, be embellished by a new member of the family. I am lucky because I do not need to look to the majority to protect me or my daughter; if I looked, I would get no help. You are seeking to help a minority in Britain by reinforcing the things that separate them from the majority, and in this case, given the chance, the majority will protect them.

dohenyjc on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

dohenyjc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:05:15 +0000

Those of us of a shrinkish disposition may here remind ourselves of a psychological truism: history in the main moves linearly - from simple to complex. First the wheel, then the application of wheels to ever more complex machinery; first the simple first-generation Neolithic farming settlements followed by kingdoms, followed by empires, followed by dissolution of empires, followed by democracies; first the rude, colourful, myth-making of the pre-rational mind, then the first stirrings of Athenian rationality.

Today we are witness to the early stirrings of a growing disaffection with the rewards that rationality has provided us. We seem to be starting out on an old road - back to a pre-rational world, where priests rule, and temples once again regain their long-lost congregations. We are already being treated to the spectacle of child preachers - and in the United States of America of all places! Soon, perhaps, we shall all be witness to child miracles, and child miracle-makers enjoying the same fame as yesterday's popstars!

Yes, it's all happening again. Those of us who can live in a rational world had better take note of the writing on the wall!

dohenyjc on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

dohenyjc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:33:38 +0000

Remember Emperor Constantine - the first pagan Roman emperor to convert to Christianity? And do you remember the long night of the Dark Ages that followed Constantine's fateful act of betrayal!?

Dr Rowan Williams reminds me of Constantine. Could his positive take on sharia law be the first step towards another long dark night?

Rudi Dierick on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

Rudi Dierick — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:27:42 +0000

Their concern, that arrogant secularism might degenerate into intolerance towards any religiously motivated person is comprehensible. However, their analysis of sharia is a complete idiocy. They appear to think it is mainly a theological qquestion, and a matter of respecting religions legitimate place in our society.

It is NOT. The conflict between sharia and democracy is a very different, and fundamental conflict. Sharia, in all its common interpretations (those from the 4 sunni and the shia 'law schools', and of the all but 2 states from the Conference of Islamic States whi signed the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam) is NOT a religious or a theological set of rules. Its is an all-encompassing doctrine that Insists on absolute priority over democracy and over any secular rule.

The problem with Rowan Williams’s lecture lies behind the actual text. the Archbischop completely missed this point. He appears to blatantly ignore the advise from the britisch legal expert, Sebastian Poulter. He was asked for a legal advise by the British governement on the demand from a big muslim organization who (already quite some years ago) wanted to have a formal place and recognition for the sharia in british legal system. Poulter advised this was impossible because to many fundamenal incompatibilities.
His advise was confirmed by rulings from the European Court for Human Rights in 2003 and 2004: "The Court concurs in the Chamber's view that sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy, as set forth in the Convention", 13 february 2003, Strasburg.

So, the Archbishop of Canterbury basically looks like a fool. Someone who oracles on mates he clearly doesn't understand.

Furthermore, Theo Hobson adds some idiocies from his own: he pretends that Christianity and secularism are NOT much compatible. Which is nt the issue. the real issue is that Christianism can be perfectly compatible with secular democracy (as long as there is no deep intolerance hiding behind either). very sad indeed, those idiot and undemocratic rantings.

ianniscarras on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

ianniscarras — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:21:21 +0000

As I walked home last night I though about this article. It seemed to me to come close to the core of the question of what we mean by liberalism.

Should we equate liberalism with tolerance of the other and therefore accept his or her difference (Rowan Williams' view?, closer to communitarianism) or think of it as a system of thought that regulates the public sphere (closer to the secular liberalism Theo Hobson seems to be discussing here or to the French model of a liberal secular state).

The term 'liberal' would seem to include both these strands, but they are not one and the same thing and it is quite easy to envisage an intolerant and triumphant liberalism that runs roughshod over an otherness it disdains. If there are many shades of liberalism, then Rowan Williams would seem to be arguing for one of its variants.

Iannis Carras, Athens, Greece.

JFox on "Rowan Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future"

JFox — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:23:20 +0000

With great respect, I think you are confused about the way the law works in a mature democracy.

Nothing in UK law forbids conscientious objection (this was so even during the second world war). Nor are various forms of mediation and dispute resolution in any way "illegal" per se; though they could become so if, in practice, they infringed the law of the land - such as might be the case if one of the parties to a dispute were coerced into accepting a resolution of a Sharia court.

Where both sides agree a priori - and without coercion - to the decision of a religious court, the law of the land need not intervene.

It seems to me, therefore, and doubtless to many of your critics, that you may be raising a non-issue; and doing so in a way likely to inflame opinion and to foment misunderstanding.

If, on the other hand, you are claiming that religious 'laws' should, in some circumstances (whatever those might be), have enforceable legal status, then you are on shakier ground. You seem to be suggesting as much when you say:

'There is one law for everybody and that is all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or your allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts'. I think that's a bit of a danger.'

One wonders, because you do not say, what danger you have in mind.

However, what is really troubling about that statement is the implied conflict between the law of the land and "anything else that commands your loyalty or your allegiance".

I owe allegiance to many things: to my beliefs about how the world should be run, to various organizations of which I am a member, to my family, to friends, to my philosophical, political and religious convictions (some of them deeply at odds with current received opinion in the western world); but these allegiances and loyalties are not grounds for modifying or supplementing the law. If I think some or all of my beliefs should be enshrined in law, then I am free to lobby for legislative change. What I do not expect is to operate a parallel or supplementary system simply because the prevailing one doesn't suit me.

That, I contend, is the fundamental weakness of your argument. It is weakened still further, in my view, by what seems to be your tacit assumption that religion has a role at all in our legislative arrangements. It may be that the Judeo-Christian tradition has contributed to our legal system; but so have other traditions. And what we have accepted from any of them has been highly selective - as even a cursory reading of the Talmud (or the Torah) will demonstrate. But parliament now makes the law, and the judiciary administers it. The UK is a secular state as far as concerns the law and for the best of all possible reasons: because it allows citizens of all religions, beliefs, loyalties and allegiances to receive equal treatment.
Happily, our legal system does not rest - to quote from your own description of Sharia - "... on (someone's) conviction that it represents the mind of God..."

Represents the mind of God? It is worth recalling Montaigne's dismissal of the idea that this might lie within the scope of anyone here on earth:

"... se donner l’avantage d’avoir dans la tête les bornes et limites de la volonté de Dieu et de la puissance de notre mère nature; ...il n’y a point de plus notable folie au monde que de les ramener à la mesure de notre capacité et suffisance."

But perhaps the most alarming element of your thesis is the tacit assumption that justice dispensed by clerics working under divine guidance will somehow produce results of which we can universally approve, always provided we can find a way of avoiding those judgment's and punishments of which we disapprove (decapitation, cutting off limbs, stoning to death and so on). You don't offer a methodology for finding such a way - perhaps wisely because I doubt that one exists.

Divine authority has a rather poor record in the justice department. You, of all people, hardly need reminding that, not long ago, ecclesiastical judges thought God required them to burn people at the stake for questioning the Trinity. Crusaders happily butchered the heathen - and Christians of a different orthodoxy too - because they, and the priests who egged them on, thought they knew the mind of God. God apparently told the Europeans who conquered the Americas that it was perfectly in order to massacre the indigenous inhabitants and steal their land. Divinely-inspired priests were in the forefront of the Bessarabian pogroms of 1903 -6 against the Jews.

The problem, of course, is not with God - however we might define that concept - but with those who purport to know his mind: with clerics who believe that wearing the cloth confers on them a right to pass judgments on their fellow citizens, and who carry in their hearts the conviction - a deranged one in my view - that they act in God's name.

I have no doubt at all, Dr Williams, that you are a very fine and honorable person. But you belong to a class of people - the priesthood - that has a disgraceful history of sanctioning - and actively sponsoring - war, murder, torture, witch hunts and pogroms - in the name of ecclesiastical law. You can hardly be surprised that many people want none of it.

A religious fallout: sharia furore, Anglican future, Theo Hobson

david hayes — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:25:58 +0000

The fuss surrounding the Archbishop of Canterbury and sharia law, sparked by his lecture at London’s Royal Courts of Justice on 7 February 2008, is not easy to analyse. This is partly because the angry media reaction is also a component of the story. It is also partly because the theological vision that underlies Rowan Williams’s reflections needs to be considered.

It is important in itself, and since much of the waterfall of comment and opinion in the days since his speech has neglected this, to register what Williams actually said in his address on “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective”. He questioned the idea that “to be a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state, in such a way that any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour belong exclusively to the realm of the private and of individual choice.” In other words, he challenged the narrative of the absolute authority of secular law; the idea that acceptance of secular law is the foundation of a citizen’s identity. Actually the secular law is just one part of a religious believer’s identity – the believer has other rules of engagement in public life.

Theo Hobson is a theologian and writer. Among his books are Against Establishment: An Anglican Polemic (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004) and Anarchy, Church and Utopia: Rowan Williams on the Church (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005)

What happens when secular law comes into conflict with these other rules? There is of course no simple answer, but Williams’s concern was to warn against an arrogant secularism that demands the subordination of religious law to secular law: “Where this has been enforced, it has proved a weak vehicle for the life of a society and has often brought violent injustice in its wake (think of the various attempts to reduce citizenship to rational equality in the France of the 1790s or the China of the 1970s).”

The principle of universal secular law can be used to bully religious minorities, whose subcultures are deemed backward. Such subcultures are likely to turn into ghettoes, rather than to form part of civil society: “Societies that are in fact ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse are societies in which identity is formed, as we have noted by different modes and contexts of belonging, ‘multiple affiliation’. 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.”

Also in openDemocracy on religious identity and the sharia controversy in Britain:

Callum Brown, “'Best not to take it too far': how the British cut religion down to size” (8 March 2006)

Tina Beattie, “Rowan Williams and sharia law” (12 February 2008)

Fred Halliday, “Islam, law and finance: the elusive divine” (12 February 2008)

OurKingdom, the conversation on the future of the United Kingdom, features posts and debate about the sharia controversy here and here

What the archbishop wants to question is the assumption that universal secular law is the master-builder of civil society, and that religious ideas of law are a nuisance that might or might not be tolerated. Instead, religious forms of corporate life are a key part of civil society, and their particular rules are therefore worthy of respect. For example (my example not Williams’s), a local parish church might refuse to recognise the right of a homosexual to be its youth worker. But this (small-scale) resistance of secularism is not the whole story: the church is also running soup-kitchens, protesting against the arms trade, inviting the local member of parliament to speak, or organising a fair. It is helping to form civil society, or public culture – despite its partial dissent from universal secular law. Williams is warning against the tendency to dismiss this church’s contribution to public life, to say that its partial dissent from secular liberalism makes it a force for social bad. The stronger such secularist hostility becomes, the more likely it is that this church will turn inward, stop engaging with the culture around it, become a ghetto.

A torn fabric

This is the background to Rowan Williams’s partial sympathy with sharia law. The Muslim community should not be despised as a nuisance for having, or seeking, particular legal arrangements. For the bigger picture is that religious communities contribute to overall civil life, and must be encouraged to strengthen their engagement.

On one level this is fairly uncontentious. Religious bodies already have certain exemptions from secular law (they can choose whether or not to employ women and homosexuals as priests, for example). Williams was just saying that we should extend such tolerance of difference to Muslims.

So why the critical furore - which, whether fair to Rowan Williams or not, does reflect huge popular unease? Because Britain (and in particular its largest constituent nation, England) is in the midst of a deepening identity crisis. We want to know who we are. We want to know whether we are basically Christian, or secular, or maybe multi-faith. True, this uncertainty is not new, but it has recently become painful.

British national identity used to hold Christianity and secular liberalism together. Of course there were tensions, but they didn’t seem to matter much. Thanks to the liberal established church, British people felt fairly confident that they belonged to a liberal society with a Christian basis. In the last couple of decades, and especially since 9/11 and the London bomb attacks of 7 July 2005, this confidence has collapsed. Religion and secular liberalism seem to be at odds. It’s become fairly normal to think that all forms of religion threaten secular liberal values. And in response the churches seem to have become more defensive, more ready to rail against secularism. The old unity of religion and liberalism has come apart.

The problem with Rowan Williams’s lecture lies behind the actual text. The problem is that he has contributed to the debate about national identity in a disturbing rather than reassuring way. He has signalled that he doesn’t want to hold Christianity and liberalism together. Instead, he wants to oppose secular liberalism, and to defend the rights of all faith communities to resist it. This is what has shocked so many commentators: Williams has shown that he rejects the vague liberal Protestantism of the majority of the British people: the idea that Christianity and secularism are pretty much compatible. No, he says, his role is not to prop up this dated ideology, but to fight the corner of faith communities, and to cast doubt on the very idea of liberalism.

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