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Williams and Sharia
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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No he's not. Have you read the lecture?
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