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Times Online - Archbishop of Canterbury ’should resign’ over Sharia row

A senior Church of England clergyman called today for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, over his remarks supporting Sharia in England.

The call, from a long-standing member of the Church’s governing body, the General Synod, demonstrated the strength of the backlash Dr Williams that faces from within his own Church — as well as from political and other faith leaders.

The senior Synod member, who insisted on remaining anonymous, told The Times: “A lot of people will now have lost confidence in him. I am just so shocked, and cannot believe a man of his intelligence could be so gullible. I can only assume that all the Muslims he meets are senior leaders of the community who tell him what a wonderful book the Koran is.

“There have been a lot of calls today for him to resign. I don’t suppose he will take any notice, but yes, he should resign.”

Hah!

Sorry, that’s mean, and I usually have a soft spot for The Druid, but this is just too much. He is too smart for this, which means all his ramblings aren’t just the airing of a circuitous thought process of a man of unusual intelligence but a someone who actually believes all this stuff.

Although the means of forcing an archbishop out of office are so costly and arcane — short of his committing a criminal act, he could never be made to go — the row represents the most serious threat to the authority of his office since he became Archbishop five years ago.

Of course he won’t go. The news cycle will shift and everyone will move on and he’ll stick to publishing papers in obscurse periodicals for a few weeks and everyone will forget the whole thing. Except for Islamist extremists, who will be buoyed, normal Muslims, who will know now just how well they’re valued, and everyone else, who will be even more intractably suspicious of anyone with a dark complexion.

Update:

The Times - Church in a State
The Archbishop of Canterbury has made a grave mistake

Dr Williams may be unaware of the Canadian experience. But while his desire to reduce what he calls “social suspicion” is genuine, his way of going about it seems guaranteed to create even more suspicion and hostility. The established Church was founded to break from the parallel jurisdiction in Rome. It is extraordinary to hear the head of the established Church, 500 years later, argue for a return to a parallel jurisdiction for another faith. We all wish to live in harmony. There are important questions to be answered about how to make Muslims feel more welcome in British society. But this is an act of appeasement. It threatens to undermine the practice of all faiths in Britain and the strength of our parliamentary democracy.

Update II:

Telegraph - Bishop: Impossible to have sharia law in UK

The Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who holds dual British and Pakistani citizenship, said Britain should learn from the example of Canada, where Muslim women’s groups managed to crush attempts to introduce Islamic law in matrimonial cases.

He added that sharia would be “in tension” with fundamental aspects of our current legal system, such as the rights of women, and debates on sharia law “are not an argument for disturbing the integrity of a legal tradition which is rooted in the quite different moral and spiritual vision deriving from the Bible”.

and

Downing Street moved quickly to distance itself from the Archbishop’s remarks, insisting that British law would and should remain based on British values.

A spokesman for Mr Brown 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.

“If there are specific instances like stamp duty, where changes can be made in a way that’s consistent with British law and British values, in a way to accommodate the values of fundamental Muslims, that is something the Government would look at.

(stamp duties? why?)

“But the Prime Minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values.”

and

Former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said that sharia law would be “catastrophic” for social cohesion in Britain.

“I think this is very dangerous because the Archbishop used the term affiliations,” he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We have affiliations to football clubs, to cricket teams, to all sorts of things that aren’t central to our citizenship and the acceptance of that in terms of a common society.

“We don’t have affiliations when it comes to the question of the law. And when it comes to equality under the law, we have to be rigorous in terms of making sure people do not find themselves excluded from it because of cultural or faith reasons.”

and

Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, agreed that Dr Williams was “wrong” to advocate the adoption of elements of sharia law.

“This isn’t a path down which we should go. The system, the British legal system, should apply to everybody equally. You cannot run two systems of law along side each other. That in my view would be a recipe for chaos, social chaos,” he said on BBC1’s Question Time.

“British law has to be based on British values. If people choose to live in this country, they choose to abide by that law and that law alone. It has got to be fundamental and a cornerstone of our country and our democracy that everybody is equal before that one system of British law.”

and

“The Archbishop’s thinking here is muddled and unhelpful,” said Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

“Raising this idea in this way will give fuel to anti-Muslim extremism and dismay everyone working towards a more integrated society.”

and

Baroness Warsi, the shadow minister for community cohesion and social action, said: “The Archbishop’s comments are unhelpful and may add to the confusion that already exists in our communities.

“All British citizens must be subject to British laws developed through Parliament and the courts.”

and

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: “I think there is one law in this country and it’s the democratically determined law.

“That’s the law that I will uphold and that’s the law that is at the heart actually of the values that we share across all communities in this country.”

and

Khalid Mahmood, the Muslim Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said: “This is very misguided. There is no half-way house with this.

“What part of sharia law does he want? The sort that is practised in Saudi Arabia, which they are struggling to get away from?

“Muslims do not need special treatment or to be specially singled out. This would not contribute to community cohesion.”

Update III:

The Telegraph - Archbishop of Canterbury’s inept intervention

The problem lies, rather, in the status of the messenger and the timing of his intervention. If there is a case for the creation of sharia courts, it would be better made by a joint group representing the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Coming from the senior bishop in the Church of England, it is vulnerable to interpretation as appeasement of Islamic extremism prompted by fear of social unrest.

As for timing, the lecture was given shortly after threats had been made against one of Dr Williams’s fellow bishops, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, for writing in the Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremism had turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims. Add to this the growing recognition of the failures of multiculturalism, and you have on the part of the archbishop a classic example of political ineptitude.

Even with more convincing advocacy, the creation of sharia courts in this country faces an uphill battle. In the public mind, sharia is associated with brutal punishment, whether the amputation of hands for theft or stoning for adultery and apostasy.

It is also seen as repressive to women; a journalist in Afghanistan is facing the death penalty for having distributed a report taken off the internet which questions the practice of polygamy. A further obstacle is the opposition to a dual legal system of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation not always associated with moderation.

In 2006, it was brought home to Pope Benedict XVI the way in which a supposedly innocuous reference to Islam - a quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor - can create a furore. In the case of the archbishop, it is not so much the idea, as the way it will be interpreted that counts.

Muslim radicals will view it as the bending of the British establishment to fundamentalist pressure; that will hardly make for the social cohesion which lies behind Dr Williams’s thinking. The present informal arrangement of sharia councils is preferable in the current context to their elevation into courts. On this most inflammatory of subjects the archbishop would have best kept silent.

Well, at least this time around it’s us doing the rioting. Since we do our rioting in TV studios and newspaper editorials and blogs and statements to the press. But who knows. Early days yet. Anglican ministers could still burn down the Malian embassy.

Update IV:

Centre Right - Who will rid us of this embarrassment?

I’ve just been speaking with a Muslim friend who has always opposed sharia law. ‘Where does it leave me’, he asks, ‘when the Archbishop of Canterbury is calling for sharia?’

The beautifully hostile press reaction to Rowan Williams’ disgusting views is the only aspect of this story that could provide any hope. But the story is running big across the Middle East, and people there are seeing Britain’s surrender to sharia played out on a news-loop. Do we think that Islamic extremists in the Middle East and beyond will be be more demoralised or more emboldened by this news?

A-hem.