Letters to the Editor
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Moral blindness comes to the archbishop
Thank you for publishing this informative article. At home and abroad, enlightenment principles (science, freedom of thought, democracy, human rights, equality of women, and many more) are under attack. The question is whether we value our principles enough to defend them?
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Yes, The Archbishop is Over the Edge
Yes, the Archbishop has gone too far, but I think I understand: he must have been wistfully remembering a glorious time in Church history......way back during the Spanish Inquistion when "heretics" were routinely put on the rack and burned at the stake. As a result, he felt a palpable affinity with Sharia Law.
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@Marcus
The archbishop is head of one of the first religious organizations to break with the Catholic Church at the beginning of the reformation and, thereby, repudiate the inquisition, among many other policies. Ooops.
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Why not
Under Islamic law...you can't be an atheist....
so it would force people back to church.
simple choice for him really
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The Christianity-Islam Alliance
Christian churches tend to think that Islam is their natural ally as a monotheistic religion also bent on bringing God back into society.
Sometimes I think that Christians would rather live as a protected minority under Islamic rule (as in Al-Andalus in Spain) than face a godless secular state which does not (or should not) give a damn about religion.
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Think of how much the religious right and islamic fundis have in common
They are on in the same
All Huckabee has to do is grow a beard.
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You should be ashamed
You all need to learn something about Islamic law, and Salon should be ashamed of itself for publishing this piece of fear-mongering propaganda. Tripathi's injudicious comparison of the beth din to "the fundamentalist Muslim" [sic] gives the game away. What Williams was proposing is precisely analogous to the Jewish courts that have existed in Britain (and Canada) for over a century. Most authentic forms of shari`a world wide and historically have been voluntary, just like the British beth din. If there are those who would impose Islamic "law" on others against their will, so too are there those who would do the same with Christian "law" and Jewish "law."
In this day and age to be promoting ignorance like this. Really. And I say this as a committed atheist and proponent of radical secularism. I assume this will be syndicated to Fox News post haste? Or is Salon a new privileged site for bigotry and crypto-racism?
PS Why not look into your authors before publishing their jingoistic hate pieces? Those of you who consider yourself liberals should check out Mr. Tripathi's attack on Arundhati Roy before swallowing too much of his swill:
http://www.saja.org/tripathiroy.html
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"Not helpful"?
Really! You don't say.
The notion of the Archbishop having "gone too far" understates the matter almost to the point of satire. This article ought to be required reading for everyone here in the self-mutilating United States Polyglot Boarding House. The notion that somehow every culture and every cultural artifact is somehow equally valid is, as a starting point, quite insane. To take the notion this far from rational thought can only suggest that the good archbishop actually does long for some sort of officially-sanctioned conflict between cultures and religions.
I will continue to stand, at all times and in all places, for normative humanism, which, simply stated, insists that some things are innately right and others innately wrong. Cast in this light, Sharia law has much wrong with it. The best way to achieve the goal of normative humanism is, obviously, to excise religion from any function of government -- including the making and enforcing of laws -- but, failing at that, we might at least remain as near the more enlightened view of things a la western thought, since the UK is, so far at least, still in the western hemisphere. So is the U.S., although we have done our damndest to accomodate so many conflicting and often just plain wrong religious and cultural influences that we are now the only place in the world where the native born have to walk on eggshells in order to avoid "offending" the delicate sensibilities of someone, somewhere, who might just be a millenium behind in human development.
We've got our own Christian Taliban to deal with here, as do the British (in the Anglican church in their case, in an array of snakehandlers here). To follow our natural inclination to imitate those whom our forefathers chose to reject first by fleeing and then by armed revolution, we may soon be entertaining the same sort of lunacy the British are now harumphing about.
Any suggestion that Sharia law or any other religion-based law should be added to the burden of the already-extant Christian cross-to-bear is patently insane.
No law, anywhere, ought to emanate from a religious base. That it often does in the form of religious states is sacrilige enough. That a western nation with such close cultural and political ties the the United States would even give such a suggestion the courtesey of a hearing is remarkably unsettling.
Not helpful. No, not at all.
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I agree with the "oops"
@RENASCENT
You got me there with the historical facts, but I still think this archbishop would feel right at home with burning a few "heretics" at the stake. How else to understand his affinity for Sharia law?
The women of Saudi Arabia get a regular taste of sharia as do people wherever the Taliban rule.
This archbishop could use some reformation on a grand scale.
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In Britain, the Archbishop is seen as a clown...
...(I believe.) This is not the same as American christianist leaders, who have political power and political followings, calling for a crackdown on homosexuals, or for a thorough nuking of Iran.
Our "Christian" kooks actually are dangerous. In England, this guy is just a kook.
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English Secularism
Troublesome indeed, but who will rid us of him? Alas, Henry II will be of no help, him being so very dead, and armed knights being in such short supply.
I am not, of course, proposing that the archbishop be removed from his office, by means violent or otherwise, though I would like to see his church disestablished. Once we've done that, then we can talk about the proper role for religious tribunals: in the face of an official state religion, sharia is hardly the most pressing threat to English secularism.