大象传媒

I think the very idea is imprudent. It's yet more proof that what some minorities want isn't "equal rights", but rather it's "special rights" that they want. The comparison with native Americans doesn't work either. I live beside an American Indian reservation and am very familiar with the jurisdictional issues; they only make sense within the context of American history (they were 'native'!) and the already diverse, tiered American justice system which involves courts at many different levels from local to federal - - even then it's reaching.

But this seems to breach a more fundamental debate about the immigration currently occurring in the UK. It seems to me that there are sections of UK society that don't know whether it's right to expect immigrants to adapt to their new country and do things differently, as British people would if they were moving in the other direction. Why is there this double standard? And if Muslims want Sharia law, can't they vote for their candidates like everyone else in an attempt to change things democratically? Or is that expecting unfairly of people who do not necessarily share democratic values?

The problem of starting controversial conversations is that you become a victim of the sound-bites you didn't say, but other people heard!

Umm.... sorry, that first comment was mine. I was typing fast, as I was in the middle of a pile of stuff to do. It should be "John Wright says...."

Could it be Williams is simply bringing muslim issues to the forfront as he see's them as disruptive to religious tolerance?
Pretty cynical but possible.

Matthew Parris had a pretty good article on this IMO, quoting from Lord Napier:

"You say,鈥� said Lord Napier (confronted as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India by locals protesting against the suppression of suttee) 鈥渢hat it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.鈥�

The present Archbishop of Canterbury is no Napier."

Indeed.

I'm glad for the link anyway.

Read it, but haven't really thought it through. I suppose my first impression was that he was talking about what we mean by the idea of religious freedom.
Or perhaps freedom of conscience. The issue of the doctors being able to opt out of abortions is a bit like teachers being able to opt out of teaching RE, or conscientious objectors being able to opt out of the draft.

John when you write about Muslims as a group you are coming close to a prejudiced statement. You talk as though all muslims are opposed to democratic western values. This is not the case. I am muslim and my Koran teaches me to live peaceably with my neighbours and to fit in to the society I am living in. Please do not put us all in the same basket as militants. That would be like putting all Americans in the same basket as George Bush.

Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe;

"We have probably one of the greatest and the brightest archbishops of Canterbury we have had for many a long day,"

That doesn't say much for the others.

"Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he had "an enormous amount of respect" for Dr Williams, but could not agree with him on this issue."

That begs the question does Mr. Clegg merely play the fool pretending to respect Williams or IS he the fool he'd have us believe? That he respected him at all doesn't speak well of him either.

The notion that a law can be imposed from a religious text and not under the control of men is intrinsically antidemocratic. It therefore doesn't surprise me that such a notion would come out of what I see as essentially an inherently antidemocratic Europe. And who would interpret these laws, Moslem judges or all judges? The very notion that there is another law even it were presumed voluntary is antidemocratic because members of a particular community could be pressured by coercion to submit to it against their will or face ostracism or worse.

"We are not seeking the introduction of a new system - absolutely not. But there are some areas, issues around families for example, where many Muslims would like to be able to find solutions according to what they believe."

Like arranged child marriages and female circumcision? Like giving custody of children of divorced couples to fathers so that they could send their sons back to Pakistan for training in Madrassas or by al Qaeda?

"We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth."

The decision of who gets custody of children is and should be the monopoly of state run family courts whose only criteria is what it perceives based on the norms of society at large is in the best interest of the child.

Comparing Sharia law to American tribal laws is not apropos. American tribes predated the existence of the United States of America. On their land they are regarded as distinct separate nations that have treaties with the US. Moslems who migrated to the UK and their descendants do not fall into this category.

"Dr Rowan Williams told 大象传媒 Radio 4 on Thursday that he believed the adoption of some Sharia law in the UK seemed "unavoidable"."

Sadly this is probably more true than even he knows. There seems no will among Europe's population to resist the pan-continental socialist dictatorship being created to rule Europe and its ultimate capitulation to Islam as the nation of Eurabia appears inevitable. When Islamic terrorists are released because those who captured them will not reveal their sources or methods in open court thereby rendering them useless in the future, the handwriting is on the wall. The 10% of the indigenous population who constituted the smartest people in the UK....have already left forever to live elsewhere. They see it is pointless to fight the inevitable.

Jamal #7- Please state where you allege I "put all [Muslims] in the same basket at militants." I haven't done that at all.

I second Mathew Parris鈥� take on this in the Times.

There already have been changes to enable sharia-compliant finances.
There already are mechanisms for independent arbitration.
If all the archbishop wanted to say was that it would be a good idea if Islamic marriage ceremonies were automatically legally recognised like Christian and Jewish ones are then he could have said this directly and no one would have turned a hair.

But of course that is not all he was proposing. He was foolishly using sharia as an example to make the self-serving point that religious affiliation should be more readily and frequently recognised by the law as a valid reason for gaining special treatment.

This cannot be dismissed as a tabloid feeding frenzy as the 大象传媒 received an immediate wave of negative reaction directly after the broadcast of the interview, before the tabloids got hold of it. It is difficult to blame the 大象传媒 as I understand that the interview was at the archbishop鈥檚 behest and he even got to pick which 大象传媒 journalist interviewed him - an indulgence not granted to many. He was working the system to get his spin out in advance of the speech and apparently messed it up.

The speech itself is just asking to be misinterpreted. It is not at all clear what his point is beyond saying that religious people have divided loyalties and the state shouldn鈥檛 make them compromise their religious conscience. It lists many of the problems inherent in the current practice of sharia but seems to just hope they can be ironed out with sufficiently liberal reinterpretation.

He ought to have realised the incendiary nature of the subject and not ventured in unless he could clearly set out what he was and was not proposing. Given his fondness for not-so-creative ambiguity, perhaps some of his advisors should have seen this car crash coming. There is nothing refreshing about the storm this unleashed.

On the underlying suggestion, I believe it is wrong-headed to indulge any group鈥檚 supposed inability to relate to the UK legal system and permit a legal 鈥榤arketplace鈥�. It is often impossible to separate cultural habits from religious ones or to agree a definitive version of the rules to be enforced. Some clan-based cultures might submit more readily to the authority of community elders than that of our legal system, but this is not sufficient reason to entrench tribal justice systems, however limited, in this country. This would reinforce separateness, not promote cohesion. The case of the stabbing handled by a Somali tribunal should not have been allowed.

The idea that such moves would be benign because they would be voluntary is also wishful thinking as the cultural and religious pressures to 鈥榢eep it in the family鈥� can be immense. The attitudes enforced by some of these so-called community leaders would not just be 鈥榙ifferently enlightened鈥� but downright medieval and the state should not be complicit in the waiving away of hard-won basic rights.

There's a scene in the film "Meet the Parents" when Greg Focker is taken off a plane and interrogated by police. It goes something like this:

POLICEMAN: "The stewardess says you threatened her with a bomb.
GREG: "No I didn't! I said 'it's not as if I have a bomb'"
POLICEMAN: "Still, you said 'Bomb' on an aeroplane. You can't say Bomb on an aeroplane"

I think something similar has happened with Rowan Williams. Even if everything he said when taken in its proper context is all fine and dandy, he shouldn't have said it at all and should have forseen the misunderstandings and the backlash.

S.

In the Sudan a female teacher is locked up for allowing her class to call a teddy bear Mohammed.
In Afghanistan a young journalist student is sentenced to death for downloading an article on women鈥檚 rights from the internet.

These two recent news stories highlight the sub-human treatment of women in most Muslim countries. In Iran women are stoned to death for adultery. In Pakistan women are forced into polygamous marriages and rape victims are punished for reporting the crime. In many Muslim states men are free to go where they want while women are confined to their houses. Muslim men are not obligated to veil their beauty but Muslim women must.

There may be arguments about liberal or conservative versions of Islam, and whether or not Sharia law contradicts the spirit of the Koran, but the fact of the matter is that throughout the Islamic world women are treated as the property of men. Yet the Archbishop of Canterbury believes that the introduction of Sharia law in the UK is unavoidable and would help to maintain social cohesion. Does he want to deliver Muslim women in Britain into the hands of their male persecutors? Does he want to drag us all back to the Middle Ages?

Most of the human rights enjoyed in today鈥檚 liberal democracies were established by the state or international secular organisations like the UN, not by the churches, who frequently obstructed the granting of basic civil liberties, especially for women. Rowan Williams may be trying to shore up the privileges of his own church by accommodating others, but he is playing a dangerous game with our hard-fought yet fragile freedoms,

I think Rowan Williams is a genius. First allow the ordination of homosexual bishops and then bring in sharia law. Perhaps, John Wright, he is a Napier afterall.

For some amusing thought's on the Queen's reaction visit my blog.