Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Our mothership, openDemocracy, has two articles on the ABC/Sharia debate. One by Tina Beattie who thinks the UK has become a country whose eagerness to abuse and accuse is crushing its ability to listen and learn. She is rather on the one-hand and on the-other but makes some good points I especially liked:
a growing number of people (Muslims and others) feel that they have no stake in British society, its institutions and its values. The resulting social meltdown is reflected in a crisis in our legal system. In the very week that the whole nation suddenly seemed united in defence of the existing system of law over and against the archbishop's invitation to reflect on possible adaptations and changes, England's prison population reached an all-time high, and a number of lawyers expressed concern that their conversations with their clients are being bugged.
The second is by the redoubtable Fred Halliday who is in swinging form, everyone gets it in the neck:
Where the confusion has arisen - and where both Islamic fundamentalists and well-meaning but ill-informed western observers like the Canterbury archbishop have contributed to the problem - is in pretending that there is one single legal text (sharia) and that this supposedly univocal code carries divine authority. Nothing could be further from the truth.
He has already explained:
The very term so often fought over - sharia - is a misnomer; for it is not a legal or sacred code at all, but a political slogan and modern invention of 19th-century neo-Wahhabi reformers. In fact, sharia is no more specific than the terms "British way of life" or "the Italian way" or "American values". The scholarly authority Aziz al-Azmeh has noted that sharia is more akin to generic terms like nomos or dharma: it cannot serve as the basis for any decisions on legal codes or practices.
And this:
What do the texts say? The Qur'an, the only part of the Muslim tradition that is divinely sanctioned, contains around 6,000 verses, of which less than a hundred are concerned with matters of a legal nature; nearly all relate to personal and family matters. In no way can this, supposedly immutable and definitive, legacy form the basis for a modern legal code. The word sharia occurs only four times in the Qur'an; it denominates, in a general way, "the right path" (indeed each community, be it Muslim, Jewish or Christian is to have its own such "path").
Fred's article is here. It seems to throw some doubt on the approach taken by Ali Eteraz in our previous 'Sharia Subjects' post. This is now the seventh in the series you can find them all here.
