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

[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...