Letters to the Editor
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Disappointed
"While his tone may be gentler than that of an ayatollah, in the end, like all imams, he is cut from the same cloth."
Well, here's what Williams said. It doesn't sound all that fundamentalist to me. I don't think you'd find hard-line Islamic clerics talking like this:
"It’s very important (t)hat you mention there the word ‘choice’; I think it would be quite wrong to say that we could ever licence ... a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general, so that a woman in such circumstances would have to know that she was not signing away for good and all ... I’m simply saying that there are ways of looking at marital dispute ... which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them. In some cultural and religious settings they would seem more appropriate." - BBC
And the long, detailed, complex lecture he gave is virtually ignored by Salil Tripathi, which is odd because it's available online for anyone to read - http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
Tripathi says:
"Sharia's militant adherents, on the other hand, claim it applies everywhere, all the time, in all instances. To be fair, Williams did not endorse sharia's criminal law -- which includes stoning, public hanging and amputations. But the problem is that for the fundamentalist Muslim, the sharia is a seamless whole. It does not allow cherry-picking."
Possibly true, but Williams did not endorse sharia law as defined by Muslim fundamentalists, so I think Tripathi's argument goes out the window here. Williams went out of his way to say otherwise.
And the idea that he's going to convert people to Anglicanism by appealing to Muslims... Looking at the divisions within the C of E I can't say he's succeeding by taking what's likely seen by christian conservatives as a very liberal stance.
I'm an atheist and I agreed with what I thought was his central point - forget the hysteria over Islam or religion in general, he just wanted to get it out there that people aren't just defined by state laws and state-determined rights. People have their own lives, their own beliefs and WILL practice them even if they're ostracized and harassed over it. How will it help muslim women if sharia law is applied 'underground', which is what happens when the state ignores the existence of religious law?
Tripathi asks a good (though somewhat loaded) question; "can a multifaith country require a group of its citizens to live under different rules, many of which might undermine human rights?" William has an answer, but I guess Tripathi and many others didn't like what he had to say. We don't have a choice - "[O]ur social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging." So we have to live with different sets of rules for different cultures - unless we somehow want to force people to live a certain way.
Sharia-believing muslims are Sharia-believing muslims, even if the governments, journalists and bloggers tell them to stop being Sharia-believing muslims. Williams says he wants to find a way to live with it and find a balance between religious rights and human rights, whereas people livid over his attempt to start a discussion on a controversial topic seem to be the ones who want to force their beliefs on people they see as being wrong.
I found Haroon Siddiqui's Toronto Star column on the topic a lot more reality-based.
"Getting past our hysteria over Islam"
http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/303477
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Schism
This is just one more reason for the Episcopal church to be glad about its impending schism from the wider Anglican Communion.
In fact, to have any credibility in modern society, I think there is no choice for the American Episcopalians and the much more liberal Canadian Anglicans but to willingly and happily get out of the Anglican Communion now, before the officially imposed schism, and form their own, more progressive, international organization.
One that would fight for the rights of women, and gay people, not against them.
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Turbulent, surely?
But not to worry.
I agree that Mr Tripathi has much more of an agenda here than his proto-liberal fluff would have you believe. But he also places far too much emphasis on the role and authority of the Archbishop and Church within British life.
The almost universal response to the Archbishop's comments was a collective sigh of condemnation, alongside relative disinterest. As fewer and fewer people come to care in any way what men like these have to say, so they are pushed to seem ever more controversial in their efforts to make themselves relevant. Senior church figures certainly do sit in government... in the House of Lords, an increasingly antedeluvian institution whose role is as much as a rubber-stamper of actual policy as it is a bunch of elderly white men sitting in a large comfortable room digesting a large comfortable meal.
Judging this man within the context of American religious life - which is more deeply ingrained as a life choice, more carefully observed and more politically active - robs the article of any relevance. So do be careful how you read it. Tripathi is adding a large dose of portentousness to what is a healthy non-event on any intelligent English person's radar.
We certainly do need to be clearer and more single-minded about how we approach the challenge of a modern multi-cultural society in which hugely diverse groups of people require different spiritual and social stimuli. But that's an admirable, inclusive challenge, and not one that should scare anyone who is optimistic about the future of the human species. Shame on you, Mr Tripathi.
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The law must apply to all members of society equally.
You cannot have a case where one group gets a seperate legal system to another group simply because of its religion.
People must have the right to equal recourse to the law, including civil law. That Sharia law is indeed sexist, is only a minor consideration on this principle.
If the law is not applied to all members of society equally, then what of the person who proclaims that, upon suffering spinal damage from someone rearending his car, he now has the right to have that person's spine damaged? After all, "An eye for an eye..."