Last month, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture in London about whether the British legal system should allow non-Christian courts to decide certain matters of family law. Britain has no constitutional separation of church and state. The archbishop noted that “the law of the Church of England is the law of the land” there; indeed, ecclesiastical courts that once handled marriage and divorce are still integrated into the British legal system, deciding matters of church property and doctrine. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.
Then all hell broke loose. From politicians across the spectrum to senior church figures and the ubiquitous British tabloids came calls for the leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination to issue a retraction or even resign. Williams has spent the last couple of years trying to hold together the global Anglican Communion in the face of continuing controversies about ordaining gay priests and recognizing same-sex marriages. Yet little in that contentious battle subjected him to the kind of outcry that his reference to religious courts unleashed. Needless to say, the outrage was not occasioned by Williams’s mention of Orthodox Jewish law. For the purposes of public discussion, it was the word “Shariah” that was radioactive.
In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them ”” hardly progress toward equality of the sexes.
[blockquote] came calls for the leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination to issue a retraction or even resign.[/blockquote]
The Patriarch of Constantinople anyone? Gotta love sloppy journalism.
[blockquote] Still, with all its risks and dangers, the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law while coming to terms with contemporary circumstances is bold and noble — and may represent a path to just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world. [/blockquote]
But what Abp. Williams suggested was the displacement or modification of an exisiting rule of law (England’s) to appease pressure from the the Muslim immigrant community.
It was hard to read this piece. Like much of what I got in seminary, it was an avalance of factoids assembled to reach artificial conclusions.
I am reminded of a [i] Time [/i] magazine cover from back when Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran…not a photo, but an artists rendition of a character atop a minaret, gazing at a crescent moon. The articles within were essentially, “Ah, Islam, a good and noble religion where the people pray five times a day, unlike those phony once-a-week Christians.”
People – even “scholars” – sometimes write what they want to see rather than what is.
What do you do when you find a prison fence? Why, whitewash it. And look, here’s Tom Sawyer. LM
Tim –
You misread Williams. There was no appeasement. If it was appeasement, he would have assumed that Sharia isn’t cultural and would have welcomed other parts of sharia into British Culture.
Great article. Someone who actually knows the history of Sharia. Very informative. And its written, it seems, by someone Jewish, who has no interest in seeing it denigrated or praised.
The Islamists today, partly out of realism, partly because they are rarely scholars themselves, seem to have little interest in restoring the scholars to their old role as the constitutional balance to the executive. The Islamist movement, like other modern ideologies, seeks to capture the existing state and then transform society through the tools of modern government. Its vision for bringing Shariah to bear therefore incorporates two common features of modern government: the legislature and the constitution.
One gets the feeling that the appeal of Shariah to this writer may be in its placing scholars in charge of the interpretation of law. He misses the main point of the storm of protest that caught Rowan off guard. What will happen to basic human freedoms which are at the heart of our legal system which are based on our own Judeo Christian value system. Perhaps the reason he misses the point is that this writer is attracted to the prospect of having scholars as the final authority. Sounds totalitarian to me.
#4 John – I don’t think I’ve misread (actually, misinterpreted) Abp. Williams. Neville Chamberlain really believed that he was achieving “peace in our time” (a line from a Collect, no less) by his concession to Hitler.
We often give Islam (or any other religion or philosophy) an unfair advantage in these kinds of discussions. The other-than-Christian systems are evaluated by their sacred texts or statements of their teachers/scholars. Christianity (probably because we are all in the muck of nominal Christianity and know the foibles of our own history) is weighed by both texts, statements and [b] evidence drawn from history [/b]. Thus the Crusades were a brutal, immoral and conterproductive thing; the Islamic conquests were, well, the spread of algebra or something benevolent like that.
timothy a few things to consider:
1) the chamberlain analogy is played out. In fact, as AJP Taylor noted, it was really collaboration in order to stop communism. Much of Britain was sympathetic to Germany. Further, Williams wasn’t conceding much – what he was advocating is essentially what we do when doctors opt out of giving contraceptives. You may think he was, but this is a willful misrepresentation. If anything, he was trying to give Christians some room (say, for restricting abortions in their hospitals or not hiring gay people) but using Islam as an example. It is impossible in secular courts to prioritize one religious organization over another.
Who was giving Islam an advantage? Don’t you remember that Williams had to face the outrage of English Atheists and Christian fundamentalists together? Only when he stayed the course did people calm down. Second, I don’t know where you live, but the idea that Muslims or Islam is… Irenic is not a commonly held opinion. And I’m in the liberal Northeast.
But if you get your information from people who feel persecuted by liberals, who think that Islam is getting a free ride, rather than liberals themselves, I can completely understand your perspective.
Last, any person who is trying to critique Islam better be ready do evaluate the difference between Turkic, Arab, Persian, and Indonesian Islam. They are very different, in practice. It is like assuming that all Christian Fundamentalists speak for Christians.
It is empirically false.
You might note that the author of the article is putting Sharia in historical context. This is important.
[blockquote] a willful misrepresentation [/blockquote]
A willful misrepresentation of my position, which is that Abp. Williams is taking a mistaken approach toward his desired end, which I believe to be social harmony and tolerance. You are claiming to see far deeper into Williams’ mind and soul than do I.
[blockquote] But if you get your information from people who feel persecuted by liberals, who think that Islam is getting a free ride [/blockquote]
A well inserted ad hominem. But I said very little about Islam – in fact, the Feldman article uses the contentious term “Islamists.” I said 1) Williams’ approach is, IMO, counterproductive to the social cohesion he desires and 2) that we often mask the reality of non-Christian entities by evaluating them superficially.
[blockquote] Last, any person who is trying to critique Islam better be ready do evaluate the difference between Turkic, Arab, Persian, and Indonesian Islam. [/blockquote]
To critique Islam politically and maybe historically. Theologically, it is enough to know that Islam denies the divinity of Christ, misrepresents the crucifixion and claims a subsequent revelation that supersedes the New Testament. And I’ve read Muslim writers in order to know these things. Any fair reading of Islam and Christianity must come to the conclusion that the two belief systems will be in conflict for peoples’ identities, faith and behaviors.
Again, I think Abp. Williams’ was addressing social cohesion, and I think his approach, though well intended, will lead to expansion of Islam in political institutions. Turkey has a secular government by its Constitution, and still feels the pressure of “Islamists.”
I should also say that Abp. Williams has engaged in dialogue with Islamic teachers and represented Christianity well on the theological front. He has his strengths – I just don’t think they are in the realm of politics (church or national).
[blockquote] Last, any person who is trying to critique Islam better be ready do evaluate the difference between Turkic, Arab, Persian, and Indonesian Islam. They are very different, in practice. It is like assuming that all Christian Fundamentalists speak for Christians [/blockquote]
John, when you speak of this you are speaking of governments and the laws they have instituted. Islam is Islam no matter where it is practiced. Some are more lax in following their religuos laws than others no matter where they are, and some of their clerics are more radical than others.
[blockquote]You misread Williams. There was no appeasement. If it was appeasement, he would have assumed that Sharia isn’t cultural and would have welcomed other parts of sharia into British Culture. [/blockquote]
This makes little sense. It was appeasement dolled up in a shabby container of “inevitability.” The only thing ++Rowan did to hedge was to distance himself from the more, shall we say, robust forms of shari’a in the fields he hastily abandoned. He took care not to specify those politically unpopular practices as a matter of expediency, and in an Obamian fashion left us to define them for ourselves: “If you object to it, I’m against it!”‘
For those of you interested I have written a short article which is an intro to shari’a. I invite you to check it out. This word is often thrown around without any kind of background about what it is and how it operates. Calling it “Islamic law” is simply deficient, just like the Torah is not “Hebrew Law”.
[url=http://islamdom.blogspot.com/2008/02/part-xvii-intro-to-sharia-sharia.html]Intro to the sharia[/url]