Williams and Sharia

[owl]

If Rowan Williams is so enamoured of Sharia law, why doesn't he emigrate to Saudi Arabia? However, to get the full benefit, I suspect he may have to be a woman subject to Sharia.

My da: The man's a buffoon.What does he think would happen to a Christian minority in a Sharia country who wanted their own laws?

The thought of deliberately setting up a legal system that isn't one law for all turns my stomach, frankly.

Comments

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was a little bit 'WTF?' about that.

I can see it if it's framed as a form of arbitration. We've got that here, where people can choose to settle their dispute outside the court. They sign a contract ahead of time agreeing to abide by the arbiter's decision. But there need to be a lot of safeguards in place to assure that both parties are signing in good faith, and not being intimidated into giving up their right to a judge. It's also only acceptable for civil matters-- you cannot 'arbitrate' spousal abuse, for instance.

[owl]

Oh, yes, private persons can make a private contract to anything they like. As far as I know, there is provision for Jewish and Muslim law—banks and things— to do that already in the UK. The Archbishop, as far as I could make out, was talking about inheritance and marriage laws having to recognise the Sharia version. No prizes for guess which sex gets the short end of the stick there.

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

uh, yeah. And the people being short-changed wouldn't have an opt-out option in that case.

Also, I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that recognizing Sharia marriage law for even some UK citizens would put the UK in violation on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which specifically mandates that signatory States must have faultless divorce laws.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

The Archbishop is a knucklehead. Of all of his dumb pronouncements, this was perhaps the dumbest.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

Honestly I don't think he is a dumb knucklehead. In fact I think he's a highly intelligent academic thinker.

If I've understood correctly the debate he wanted to spark was that in a multi-cultural society where certain people/communities have a heritage and tradition of sorting out their affairs that is a different process to current British law do we just insist that that is irrelevant and the current British system is the only system, or do we adapt and change the current legal system or do we find some way to recognise other processes. Because in certain cultural communities in 21st century Britain these other processes are happening anyway because that's the way people like it/are used to it/the 'leaders' want to keep it....

I see it as part of the integration debate - should all immigrants morph to the pre-existing culture - the mixing bowl view or is it OK to have a salad bowl where the different parts stay separate and yet somehow form a cohesive whole.

Difficult, challenging stuff - not least because of issues raised here and elsewhere about whether such a salad bowl approach leads to segregation of individuals who would rather integrate but get no choice because they are perceived as being part of X community etc etc

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

If you don't have a single system of laws governing an entire country, then you've got chaos. Customs are one thing; no custom is legally binding. But if you're going to, for example, put a shari'a divorce on the same legal plane as a divorce in a civil court, what you've done is a) told an entire group of people they don't have to follow the same laws as everyone else and b) set it up so that Muslim women in London have no more legal rights than they would in Jeddah. That's crazy!

If people want all of the benefits of living in a Western country, they need to understand they have to adapt to that society and not force their host country to adapt to theirs.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

>>>If you don't have a single system of laws governing an entire country, then you've got chaos.

I think what he's arguing in the lecture is that actually, depending on what is done and how it is done, you can have some kind of "supplementary jurisdictions" and not have chaos. In fact have a stronger society because of it. And there already exist countries where these "supplementary jurisdictions" exist - Canada being one of them.

>>>But if you're going to, for example, put a shari'a divorce on the same legal plane as a divorce in a civil court,

He didn't refer to any specific laws but did say

while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or ‘license’ protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid

which I think would cover the rights of women in divorce cases

>>>set it up so that Muslim women in London have no more legal rights than they would in Jeddah. That's crazy!

Agreed, it would be crazy if that was even vaguely the proposition. Which it wasn't. And in fact he quite clearly talked about the challenges of even beginning to think about something like this (along with what the benefits could be) particularly with regard to women:

The second issue, a very serious one, is that recognition of ‘supplementary jurisdiction’ in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women.

Have you actually read the lecture? Genuine question, not meant to be sarky or aggressive. Only the points you raise, and more objections beside, are ones he covers in great detail and with a lot of thought. Including an interesting discussion about what is the role of law.

The second part of your comment deserves a longer response about the nature of migration, immigration, cultural and national identity and citizenship than I have time for now or space for here. Though Rowan Williams does cover part of that in the lecture (the dual affiliations between citizenship and other cultural/community relations that we all have)

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, don't know how I managed to put all of that in italics - it was only supposed to be the quotation! Is there any way to edit after posting a comment?

[owl]

Only if you're a paid user and no-one has replied to the comment.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I have read most of the lecture along with commentary by others about it.

Supplementary jurisdiction is a terrible idea. Language, culture, and laws unite a nation. Creating a multiculti legal system where you can pick whatever suits you according to your race or religion or heritage will only undermine national unity and create more problems than it would solve.

[owl]

And then people not being able to choose to have the laws of the land, and being deprived of rights they have in English law and not Sharia...

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I apologise for my comment to you in my journal debate which was way out of line. However, what this whole mess has proved to me is that we desperately need to have a disestablished church in England, that the secular power needs to be utterly uninfluenced by religion (any religion) and that the Archbishop needs to be stripped of all political power forthwith.

[owl]

Apology accepted.
Yes, I agree completely about decoupling the CoE and the government. A "Christian government" ends up a nasty mess of one or the other. If the secular power is influenced by components with integrity (I suspect it may select against this, sadly) and common human morality we would get on better.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

What a nutcase. Basically he's proposing that people, once they've signed up for Sharia law, should be forced to live by it afterwards--even if they've changed their minds about it. (Because if they could easily opt out then it's not really a system of law at all, just a clubhouse). In other words, a woman who signs up for sharia law because she's a good Muslim will not be able to opt-out if her husband suddenly decides to force her daughter into a marriage or something--the British govt will force her to abide by her previous religious belief. Enforcing people's religious beliefs on them is hardly the business of government.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

>>>Basically he's proposing that people, once they've signed up for Sharia law, should be forced to live by it afterwards--even if they've changed their minds about it

No he's not. Have you read the lecture?

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I have not read the lecture, but I've seen him quoted extensively, enough to know that he's seriously muddle-headed about this. Without some degree of force, I don't see how sharia law--or any other kind of law--could work as law. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, Muslims are able to consensually arrange their own affairs according to their religious principles if they so choose. Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding the British legal system, no one's going to stop a husband and wife from choosing (with BOTH parties' consent) to divide up their assets in a certain way after the divorce, for example. But that's not a law--that's a personal choice. If the "sharia law" the archbishop wants to impose is consensual every step of the way--meaning that people submit to a religious authority for an arbitration, but can choose to pull out at any point in time if they don't think the arbitration is going fairly--then I don't see how it's different from the current state of affairs, and I also don't see how it's any kind of law. But if he's really advocating a change and if that change involves a kind of law, then at some point a religious authority will have to have the power to compel you to do something against your will.

[owl]

Yeah, that's my understanding too.