Is it over for the Imam of Canterbury?
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
2/8/2008
Rumors have been circulating for some time that the Archbishop of Canterbury might resign following the Lambeth Conference.
Sources in the UK have told VirtueOnline that mounting pressure from nearly all quarters in the church make his job untenable since he has single-handedly offended almost every group in Anglican Christendom.
But will he? In his latest missive, the Imam of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, called for Islamic law to be recognized in Britain. He declared that Sharia and Parliamentary law should be given equal legal status so the people could choose which governs their lives.
This raised the prospect of Islamic courts in Britain with full legal powers to approve polygamous marriages, grant easy divorce for men and prevent finance firms from charging interest.
His comments sparked a furor of responses, mostly negative from media, religious and secular pundits and some Islamic leaders, with one Church of England bishop calling on him to resign.
The Prime Minister, early on, distanced himself from Dr. Williams's remarks. Gordon Brown's spokesman 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.
"The Prime Minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values."
Dr. Williams's words opened a chasm over Islam between Church of England senior leaders, who are already trying to deal with an Anglican war over gay rights which broke out after Williams was appointed archbishop.
Within hours of the BBC interview being posted to their website, hundreds of commentators had written in to the site protesting, some calling for Williams' to resign.
The Bishop of Rochester, Pakistani-born Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said this, "English law is rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and, in particular, our notions of human freedoms derive from that tradition. In my view, it would be simply impossible to introduce a tradition, like Sharia into this corpus without fundamentally affecting its integrity."
Nazir-Ali is under police protection after receiving death threats for writing in January that Islamic extremism had turned some British communities into "'no-go' areas" and that there are ongoing attempts to "impose an Islamic character on certain areas."
Damien Thompson, editor of the Catholic Herald newspaper and a blogger at the Daily Telegraph, wrote that the Archbishop's comments were the "most monumentally stupid thing I have ever heard an Archbishop of Canterbury say. In fact, it's more than stupid, it's disgusting.
"The idea that 'one law for everyone' is 'a bit of a danger', as Williams argues, goes against every tradition of English law and culture that the Primate of All England is supposed to uphold." Thompson wrote that if he had been quoted accurately, the Archbishop of Canterbury "is lending his support to the establishment of a non-Christian theocracy in Britain."
"Has the Archbishop gone bonkers?" asked Ruth Gledhill, the religion correspondent for the Times. Gledhill said that "commentators of every variety," have been "stunned into blunt expression by the Archbishop of Canterbury's uncharacteristically clear comments on Sharia in Britain." Williams, she wrote, "wants women, children, all of us in fact, to have to kow-tow to some of the strictest, harshest and most draconian laws dreamed up by any religious system, ever, anywhere in the world."
"There might not be no-go areas for non-Muslims in Britain...But this is certainly the way to go about creating them." Thompson pointed out that Williams' credibility "is in tatters" in his struggle with the Anglican leadership in Africa over acceptance of active homosexual ministers that has threatened to destroy the Communion. "Anglicans in parts of Nigeria live under what is, in effect, totalitarian Sharia.
"What will the Archbishop of Canterbury's fatuous remarks about Sharia do to his authority as head of the Anglican Communion? Pretty well finish it off, I should think," Thompson concludes.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said Dr Williams's comments gave "succour to extremists".
"He needs to understand that his words carry enormous weight," he said in a Channel 4 interview.
"What he seems to be talking about is a situation in which people are treated differently under the law according to their religion. People cannot be treated differently. Everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law. I don't doubt the archbishop's desire to accommodate diversity, but we cannot do so at the expense of our common values."
He described Dr Williams as "muddled" and "dangerous".
Williams' comments were condemned by Downing Street, the Tories and the chairman of the Government's Equalities and Human Rights Commission. They were described as a "recipe for chaos" by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.
And on the continent a German Bishop protested Williams' comments saying a country needs a single legal system for everyone. " Bishop Wolfgang Huber, head of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany said integration can't be achieved through a dual legal system "Hoping to achieve integration through a dual legal system is a mistaken idea," Huber told Deutsche Welle in an exclusive interview. "You have to ask the question as to what extent cultural characteristics have a legitimate place in a legal system. But you have to push for one country to have one system."
A senior Church of England clergyman called for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, over his remarks supporting Sharia in England.
***
GJ - The Archbishop of Canterbury is like so many of his peers. The way to be noticed is to make trendy statements.
Nothing is quite so bad as theocracy, especially a pre-Medieval system of laws within a democracy. CAIR in the US would like to establish Sharia here.
***
Norman Teigen has left a new comment on your post "Yale Law School Political Nursery":
Thanks. I really enjoyed the compliment about being a proofreader for your blog. I've had a lot of experience, really, I have.
What is your take on the A of Cant. bit on the Sharia law controversy which I had on my blog today.
Also, I had a journalist's spin on the A of C and he used the phrase 'fools for Christ' in a way that I didn't think quite hit the mark. Could you enlighten for what St. Paul means about being a 'fool for Christ'?
Norman Teigen
ELS layman
