LP: Here is a robust question. “Must we accommodate Islam or not, as Christians?”
RW: Must we accommodate Islam or not as Christians? Must I love my Muslim neighbour? Yes, without qualification or hesitation. Must I pretend to my Muslim neighbour that I don’t believe my own faith? No, without hesitation or qualification. Must I as a citizen in a plural society work for ways of living constructively, rather than tensely or suspiciously with my Muslim neighbour? Yes, without qualification or hesitation.
LP: This is, again, a question on a premise but it might be interesting to know whether you agree the premise. “Why are Muslims so scared to debate and question sharia law?”
AB: Well, I can’t speak for Muslims. There are quite a lot of them in the world and I’m not one of them. But I think that precisely because of the convergence of faith and custom in so many contexts, the way in which people construct and pin down their identities becomes very much allied to these issues about how disputes are resolved and what protocols are observed. And I think therefore there is an understandable sense, often confused and I would say misguided, that touching any bit of the cultural complex, undermines your whole identity. That has to do with the perceived political and social insecurity of many Muslim communities in our world. And I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the paradox is that from the Western perspective we frequently see the Muslim world as powerful, aggressive, coherent and threatening. From the other side of the world, the Muslim world, or a great deal of it sees us as powerful, coherent and threatening in very much the same way. Now, when those are the perceptions, you don’t have a very fertile ground for critical, relaxed, long-term discussions of some legal and cultural issues, and I think that’s a question that can’t really be answered without looking at those larger, global, political questions.
I had some difficulty with the full text, and so went to Ruth Gledhill’s site to read excerpts in addition to the one posted here. There is no point in further “bash the Archbishop” commentary. I will simply say that he seems to me to be out of his depth on these issues. He starts with the premise that some way of accommodating Muslim legal practice must be found, and continues from there, but his critics, including me, deny the premise. Obviously immigrant groups are going to have some habits and practices which are not the same as the majority in their new country. Voluntary adherence to customs which do not conflict with, but are simply different from, the majority is usually all right. In some cases, however, even this requires modification. The Archbishop raises one, the veiling of women, and then tries to find ways to accommodate it. He does not understand that the veiling of women is directly related to the extremism of the men of the family. Numerous Muslim women here in Egypt have told me that the veil, or even the hijab, is not required in the Qur’an, and that its gradual imposition here is political, tied to the advance of Wahhabi literalism. There is no line between religion and politics in Islam. My own feeling is that Western nations need to insist that women show their faces in any place where identification is required — driving, court appearances, identification card photos, voting, and security checks, for instance.
Another issue, which I don’t think the Archbishop addresses, is the British government’s recent agreement to officially allow polygamous men to immigrate and bring their existing multiple wives with them. Where will this end? The government is playing with fire and with the dissolution of the Christian model of marriage on which Western civilization is based. And the British taxpayer is paying welfare benefits to the harems!
These questions are entirely different from the discussion of, as my husband’s immigrant grandmother used to ask, “What did they serve and how did they serve it?” Food, holidays, religious customs: these are things which can be accommodated. But Islam is not a collection of religious customs. It is an all-encompassing religious and legal system.
The clash within liberal democratic contexts between Locke (universal laws we all agree — veils are bad) and Rousseau (leave people alone to decide what is right — veils make sense for some cultures…after all we have Brittany Spears and drink culture). This Locke ve Rousseau tension is complete and must be wrestled with completely.
‘Brittany’ Spears *should be veiled.
Thank you #2…Seitz-ACI. You recognize a philosophical issue when you see it.
Well, I went through it all and what I read was doublespeak. This was vintage ABC, the long endlessly qualified sentence, the academic waffle, the patent unwillingness to speak clearly, with the upshot being that the reader, at the end, can not remember what he said. This man is an Anglican disaster, a well left liberal who is pretending that he is middle of the road but is unwilling at last to disqualify himself from the church’s problems because his liberalism is unwilling to surrender its pulpit. This conflict is beyond remedy and has left the ABC a true Buriden’s ass. LM
Its seems that this Archbishop is to be assessed on his style. He is evidently to be judged on where his breath and ideas place notional periods and commas. And, the subtleties and qualifications of his thought are to be judged as symptoms of stubbornness, for which he is to be censured. The merit of his thought is to be assessed against the putative capacity of his reader’s memory.
Is religious discourse within our communion really meant to continue to be conducted on these standards? To what end?
Actually, the conflict was pretty well settled in the great republics. Make few laws, but those laws apply to all. Don’t make laws about things one doesn’t want to make [i]universal[/i]. In America that settling of the issue was nicely packaged in a little-known document called The Constitution.
Dr. Seitz, you won’t get me to argue that Britney Spears and her lack of modesty are a good thing. Some Middle Eastern and Asian criticisms of Western culture today are valid. But because veils make sense in some cultures (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan), does that mean that they may be imported or imposed on other cultures (Egypt, the UK)? Is not the UK entitled to maintain its public culture, in which it is not acceptable for people to go around in public with their faces hidden? Egypt, being 90% Muslim and having declared, following its revolution, that Islamic law is the basis of its public law, has few defenses. The UK has no such tradition and can still hold onto its own culture, if only it will.
Christians hold that Truth has been revealed in Christ. We would therefore, I think, lean towards the “some things are true everywhere” line rather than the “all things are relative” approach.
In England of course there is no written Constitution (in the sense that the USA has a Constirtution) and there is an Established Church, which has not only laws that apply just to it, but has its own branch of law and even its own courts and judges. (Not sharia Law of course but Canon Law).
#8–you missed my point, which is not to do with Spears in the least, except as an example of rosseauian liberalism’s logic run amok. I heard a BBC interview on the merits of the veil where the philosophical roots of liberalism (and this includes the US Constitution) were discussed reasonably ably, now five or so years back. I was not taking up the position of Rousseau, only indicating where there is a fault-line. Locke wanted to keep the peace in a fragmenting religious war context — amongst protestant Christian political units in Eurpose. He would not have foreseen multi-cultural Britain, or the US of Madison v Jefferson.
#10, since I have not heard the interview, does this mean that you would agree that, while relative standards of modesty in female dress should be tolerated in a liberal society, society has an interest in discouraging the extreme of dehumanizing women by eliminating their faces from public view?
A rule designed for keeping women for whom one had paid a considerable dowry in early societies safe from other men is of questionable value in modern Britain. After all it is not necessary to make provision for guarding and watering camels in Knightsbridge nowadays.
#11 — I am a bit of a ‘pox on both Locke and Rousseau’ as you have asked. It has been interesting to watch liberals square off on this issue and find the source of their appeal inside liberalism to come from opposing forces, leaving them squirming. I am an augustinian Christian and so assume human nature is neither corrigible to natural law appeals of the Lockeian sort nor the romantic idea of freedom to do as one pleases because freedom is some kind of good — including freedom to be, and expect to be, happy (Spears example may make this point). So do I think the veil can be brought inside some court of justice where universals will establish that gender relations would be better served by its elimination? No, I think Christians must think about male and female as our sources for that so say, and to make it clear that is what we are doing. I am not keen on natural law appeals after the loss of certain basic Christian understandings of creation and providence due to the onslaughts of modernity, and so my plea has been for positive law reassessments: there is more in our Christian sources of authority than we are willing to take credit for. The veil can only be judged in the light of them. It is even questionable whether the veil is Qu’ran mandated though probably not. Encourage Muslims to reflect on the sources of their own authority — as Amos did with the nations round about.
Thanks, #13. I appreciate the explanation. This is, I believe, the genesis of a lot of the uproar. English common law, and hence, the law of Anglophone countries generally, has roots in our Christianity, as do our cultures.
#14-You are welcome. The problem is amnesia in law, given secularisation and the way what Christianity births because of its commitments does not return the favour. Universities are great examples as well. In a way, a constitution may even increase this threat: it becomes Natural Law, and yet its interpretation is wound on the same magnet.
#12
After all it is not necessary to make provision for guarding and watering camels in Knightsbridge nowadays.
Don’t give up yet.
#13
I am not keen on natural law appeals after the loss of certain basic Christian understandings of creation and providence due to the onslaughts of modernity, and so my plea has been for positive law reassessments
A very important point. Those positive law reassessments, however, would only work with a devolution of political power and by invoking concepts of subsidiarity, and we are in an era going in precisely the opposite direction. Witness the European Union and, in our country, a federal government so heedless of the constitution (especially the 10th amendment) that it makes laws governing education in local schools.
“Positive law” is a theological term meaning “law as sources privileged and non-natural in that sense” imply that. “Positive law” assumes non-Kantian categories like “election”, “selectivity,” and “particular disclosure”. I am sorry if this was confusing. I was using “positive law” in its technical sense.
#16–I apologise. You may have assumed what I write. I am nevertheless concerned that Christians argue enthusiastically Christianly, and not with a concession to ‘natural law’ categories which have turned particular sources inside out. I suspect that devolution of present political power is very far off, and so the appeals to ‘positive law’ by Christians ought not wait for this. Do I think this will happen? Sadly, Christian leadership does not seem confident on this score.
Dr. Seitz,
I’m sorry if I misunderstood you. I thought you were using “positive law” in its [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_law]jurisprudential sense[/url] of man-made law. I still like the point, though, even if I garbled your meaning! (And the very technical sense also discussed in the Wikipedia link about codification in the US Code is surely irrelevant to both of us.)
#19–How odd–‘positive law’ means law ‘posited’ and not naturally available. The very confusion at this point shows how far has migrated the basic logic and conceptuality, once at home in theological contexts.
It is probably the case that ‘man-made’ meant made by Israel in reception of God’s specific word, and so not ‘natural’ (go to the ant thou sluggard). But now ‘positive’ could mean by anyone, and so idiosyncratic and humanistic — which by definition, within Israel, and so brokered to the world of the NT and the world as such, God’s ways with Israel were not.
#6. If theABc’s c ommens were subtle and nuamnced (to ouse the fashionable word) I would agree with you point. In this case his style is a device to pretend that something substantive is taking place when it is in fact not so. This is obscuration, not subtility. LM