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What is up with the Archbishop?
Loren Michael
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
What is going on here? What is this man's motivation? What is the impetus behind this kind of surrender to fundamentalism- fundamentalism that doesn't even align with one's own dogmas?
http://newcriterion.com/archives/armavirumque/02/dying-to-surrender/
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436203-details/Adoption+of+Islamic+Sharia+law+in+Britain+is+'unavoidable'%2C+says+Archbishop+of+Canterbury/article.do
Now, I don't want this thread to turn to the deficiencies of fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Christianity or whatever, if it can be helped. I'm pretty sure the the harm that comes of them and the erroneous nature of many if not most claims they put forth as true are well-known to essentially everyone here, so such a discussion shouldn't be necessary.
This is about the Archbishop, and people like him. He's not a fundamentalist Muslim, but he definitely wants to enable them. I don't get that. Where does that come from? Why would anyone want to do that? What is he reacting to? Who else buys into this?
My understanding of Anglicans is that they're generally a pretty moderate faith of the annoying hand-wringing variety. Quasi-Catholic guilt cast against a largely secular nation and such. What is this man thinking? How is this a good idea?
Also, China hates typepad, so I have no idea what this says, but if someone were willing to cut and paste... http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/02/has-the-archbis.html
EDIT: UPDATE!: Here's what he said!
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
http://newcriterion.com/archives/armavirumque/02/dying-to-surrender/
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436203-details/Adoption+of+Islamic+Sharia+law+in+Britain+is+'unavoidable'%2C+says+Archbishop+of+Canterbury/article.do
The Archbishop of Canterbury caused consternation yesterday by calling for Islamic law to be recognized in Britain.
He declared that sharia and Parliamentary law should be given equal legal status so the people could choose which governs their lives.
This raised the prospect of Islamic courts in Britain with full legal powers to approve polygamous marriages, grant easy divorce for men and prevent finance firms from charging interest.
His comments in a BBC interview and a lecture to lawyers were condemned at a time when government ministers are striving to encourage integration and stop the nation from “sleepwalking to segregation”.
The Prime Minister rapidly distanced himself from Dr Williams’s view. Gordon Brown’s spokesman said: “Our general position is that sharia law cannot be used as a justification for committing breaches of English law, nor should the principles of sharia law be included in a civil court for resolving contractual disputes.
“The Prime Minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values.”
Now, I don't want this thread to turn to the deficiencies of fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Christianity or whatever, if it can be helped. I'm pretty sure the the harm that comes of them and the erroneous nature of many if not most claims they put forth as true are well-known to essentially everyone here, so such a discussion shouldn't be necessary.
This is about the Archbishop, and people like him. He's not a fundamentalist Muslim, but he definitely wants to enable them. I don't get that. Where does that come from? Why would anyone want to do that? What is he reacting to? Who else buys into this?
My understanding of Anglicans is that they're generally a pretty moderate faith of the annoying hand-wringing variety. Quasi-Catholic guilt cast against a largely secular nation and such. What is this man thinking? How is this a good idea?
Also, China hates typepad, so I have no idea what this says, but if someone were willing to cut and paste... http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/02/has-the-archbis.html
EDIT: UPDATE!: Here's what he said!
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
Loren Michael on
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That is the proper relationship between the Church and the State. Not what he is doing and not sharia law.
It’s not, it’s merely cultural relativism and multiculturalism at its worst.
He said it better.
It's a suggestion for a religious law to be given an actual legal status over civil life activites. Which part exactly should be taken calmly, because if I was a British newspaper I'd be in a tizzy too. It's a VERY weak attempt for tolerance points, IMO, and the guy hadn't thought trough what exactly he's saying.
No, but the only way to have Sharia Law recognised formally would be for it to be adopted, officially, into the judiciary system and that is a dangerous precedent.
He's basically saying religion and culture are so intertwined in Islamic society, that we should give up trying to approach legal matters from a secular perspective and instead do so from a theological one.
On every issue where there is tension between religion and state, the government needs to be encouraged by defenders of liberal democracy to insist on the primacy of universal rights. The Archbishop was well intentioned but unwise to allow himself to be allied to the pre-Enlightenment elements of another faith by trying to go in the opposite direction.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
From here
Furthermore, the archbishop is of an academical bent and he makes very few concrete suggestions in his piece. To call a carefully measured 6000 word thought-exercise "not thought through" is wrong. Here is a precis of what the archbishop was considering (and remember he's talking about the UK):
Dr Williams suggests the possibility of introducing voluntary "supplementary jurisdiction" for communities. This would not supersede the current legal code, which everyone would still have recourse to.
"Perhaps it helps to see the universalist vision of law as guaranteeing equal accountability and access primarily in a negative rather than a positive sense – that is, to see it as a mechanism whereby any human participant in a society is protected against the loss of certain elementary liberties of self-determination and guaranteed the freedom to demand reasons for any actions on the part of others for actions and policies that infringe self-determination. "
"What we want socially is a pattern of relations in which a plurality of divers and overlapping affiliations work for a common good, and in which groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty."
"The role of 'secular' law is not the dissolution of these things in the name of universalism but the monitoring of such affiliations to prevent the creation of mutually isolated communities in which human liberties are seen in incompatible ways and individual persons are subjected to restraints or injustices for which there is no public redress. "
Discuss this, not what the papers say he say.
True. He made no proposals.
He agreed with one. It is possible he didn't understand what he was agreeing with, but I doubt it.
Also, fuck no. The application of religious law in ANY set of legal circumstances is avoidable and doesn't mean for a moment you're not taking people's religion seriously.
Please take a gander at my post. You can accommodate other cultural values without integrating them into law.
But they have no official recognition. Religious courts and civil courts are two different things and their verdicts hold different levels of authority, at least in the eyes of many Muslims
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
I do agree. Short-term pain for long-term gain.
You'd think an archbishop of all people would be down with the concept of universal rights from first moral principles.
I usually try not to be offensive, but, are you nutts? What is your definition of "run"? Because there is no bloody way a shariah court has any kind of legal status in Britain. If the country wishes to prosecute you, "No, sorry, I'd rather go to the Shariah court." won't work.
Also, IF said courts were to exist inside the legal system, all it would mean is that there has been a huuuuuuge fuck up at some point in the past and it sill won't validate the statement that accepting religious laws is a part of respecting someone's religion.
Dude chill, this was dealt with already.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
edit: To expand upon some of Loren's questions:
What is this man's motivation?
The Anglican Church in Britain is on an increasing slide to irrelevance. Dr Williams and his fellow travelers are keenly aware of this and are trying to ride the wave of Islam - the only religion on its way up in Britain*, so the Anglican Church tries to present its issues as "faith" issues. This particularly nebulous term is trotted out by the Church and Muslims whenever they want to advance issues peculiar to religion. I doubt you have the same thing in America, but often the two religions will present a unified position here, by taking a petition to the government, for example; or by being consulted as "members of the faith community". The Anglican Church knows that it has very little success anymore arguing from positions of "what's good for Christianity".
In this particular case, the archbishop knows he can't just come out and say that Christian law should be recognised by the state, so he couches his theorising / proposals in terms of what would be best for "people of faith".
I do like Dr Williams, however; you should read some of his other writings. He's a Christian after your own, cold, atheist heart. Don't dismiss the Anglican Church because of this - I'll take "hand-wringing" over whatever else may be.
*save minor statistical gains by the Catholic Church.
An example of sharia law that that takes place in the UK would be the abolition of 'double stamp duty' for Muslim mortgages. Stamp duty is a one-off tax that is charged on every property sold, but stamp duty was being charged twice on Islamic mortgages because in a Muslim mortgage the property is in theory bought twice (once by the bank and once by the buyer). This made it difficult for Muslims to buy a home, and thus the law was altered to accommodate sharia.
Usury loophole?
Anyway, so far as the actual technicalities of sharia in the UK I don't necessarily think it is unworkable - there are a few examples of countries that have mixed legal systems that seem to operate kind of ok. By mixed I mean at least two different systems running at the same time and sometimes in the same geographic area, not say a fusion of two different systems or a federal system where one could argue federal law and the regional law were different systems.
A few multiethnic countries that were colonised by a European power have such systems - where the national legal system will be either based on the British common law or French civil law system then at the sub national level, usually tribal or whatever traditional customary law can also apply to domestic/property situations (marriage, divorce, inheritance etc). IIRC most sub saharan African countries have this kind of system, reflecting the fact that most of them have a fuckton of different subnational groups who wouldn't appreciate each other's law or European law being applied in all cases. Then there are other examples like India or Fiji and probably a lot more if I cared to look further. Often there is an element of choice in this as well, a person has some power to decide under which system they would like to be treated.
There is also a good governance issue - while we all have the same basic needs as humans, which must be facilitated by the government, the degree of assistance required can differ based on ethnic communities. If there is a religious/ethnic community in the UK (South Asian Muslims for example) that are lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of income/education/basic health/crime (not to say that the above example do, just for the sake of argument) then the government has to decide how to do remedy this. They can either choose to use their existing tools and just try harder, or they can develop new tools, like incorporating Sharia as it related to the areas of concern.
So if relatively poor countries can cope with mixed systems then the UK could easily do it, given that it has vast sums of cash and competent administrators. Besides, the UK is already a pretty weird place what with devolution and a bunch of weird little islands that are sort of self governed due to what I assume is the Royal connection, so why not try something different?
Canada (and Australia?) has separate legal systems for indigenous communities, doesn't it?
It's a method by which Muslim homeowners can avoid committing usury with a standard mortgage, without having to be taxed twice.
The thing with indigenous rights/legal systems is that in some cases that might be because they are in some senses sovereign nations that exist in an unbreakable relationship with the colonial state. So on that basis its not a mixed system
It appears that it is this sort of thing the archbishop is calling for. However, since it already exists I don't see what he is doing. He is calling for additional legal recognition, but I don't see what recognition beyond the above he wants.
So really, nonsense from the archbishop even though I don't think his actual viewpoint is incinedary.