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.