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The New York Times
Europe
Top Anglican Seeks a
Role
for Islamic Law in
Britain
By JOHN F. BURNS,
nytimes.com on the Web, February 8, 2008
LONDON — The archbishop of
Canterbury called Thursday for Britain to adopt aspects of Islamic Shariah law
alongside the existing legal system. His speech set off a storm of
opposition among politicians, lawyers and others, including some Muslims.
The archbishop, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world’s
Anglicans, said in his speech and a BBC radio interview that the introduction of
Shariah in family law was “unavoidable.” But he said such “constructive
accommodation” should not deprive Muslims of their right to take their cases to
the existing court system.
The archbishop compared allowing Muslims to take carefully defined issues to
their own religious courts to the established practice among Orthodox Jews here
of referring religious disputes to rabbinical courts.
Roman Catholics might also benefit from what he called “plural jurisdiction” in
matters affecting religious conscience, he said. He noted that the Church
of England, formally headed by the monarch, also has its own ecclesiastical
courts.
Shariah is drawn from the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.
It prescribes religious and secular duties, along with punishments for their
breach.
In countries where Islamic militants have gained power, like Afghanistan under
the Taliban, harsh forms of Shariah law have been imposed. These have
included stoning to death for adultery and the chopping off of hands for theft,
along with severe restraints on women’s rights and provisions subjugating them
to the will of men.
But much of Shariah law deals with issues like marriage, divorce and
inheritance, and many Muslims in Britain, a small but often isolated minority of
1.5 million in this nation of 60 million, have for many years taken disputes in
these areas to Shariah councils in neighborhood mosques.
“Nobody in their right mind,” the archbishop told the BBC, “would want to see in
this country the kind of inhumanity that sometimes appears to be associated with
the practice of the law in some Islamic states — the extreme punishments, the
attitudes to women as well.”
But equally, he said, “I don’t think we should instantly spring to the
conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow
monstrously incompatible with human rights simply because it doesn’t immediately
fit with how we understand it.”
The 57-year-old archbishop, an Oxford-educated theologian, was met with
immediate repudiation from political and legal leaders.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking anonymously in the
tradition of Downing Street, told reporters that Mr. Brown did not “welcome or
support” the proposals, and added that Mr. Brown “believes that British laws
should be based on British values.”
Spokesmen for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties, the main opposition
groups, issued similar responses.
Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, a 36-year-old lawyer who is a rising star in the
Conservative Party and one of its most influential Muslim figures, issued a
statement calling the archbishop’s remarks “unhelpful.”
“Of course the important principle is one of equality, and we must ensure that
people of all backgrounds and religions are treated equally before the law,” she
said. “But let’s be absolutely clear: All British citizens must be
subject to British laws developed through Parliament and the courts.”
The archbishop’s proposal, if adopted, would set a precedent in the West.
In 2005, Muslims in Ontario appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough when
the province’s attorney general proposed Shariah-based law for use in Muslim
family disputes. But the provincial government abandoned the proposal,
saying there should be one law for all Canadians.
Legal recognition of Shariah has been a longstanding demand among some Muslim
groups in Britain, and their spokesmen endorsed the archbishop’s proposals.
Faisal Siddiqui, a lawyer, told the BBC that “sensational stories” about extreme
punishments had distorted the benefits of Islamic law. “The reality is
that it has enriched civilization and humanity for 1,400 years,” he said.
The archbishop’s speech was made at the Royal Courts of Justice, before an
audience of leading judges and lawyers. Typically, it was steeped in
historical and philosophical nuances that risked being lost in the headlines.
He argued, for example, that the principle enshrined during the 18th-century
Enlightenment, that all citizens should be under the uniform law of a sovereign
state, was a reaction to despotism. He said that a modern democratic
society should “acknowledge the liberty of conscientious opting-out from
collaboration with procedures or practices that are in tension with demands of
particular religious groups.”
This, the archbishop said, could be extended to create new legal rights for all
faiths, not only Muslims. He cited Catholic adoption agencies that have
resisted accepting gay couples as adoptive parents, a stand that has brought
them into conflict with the law in Britain, and other religious groups that have
resisted stem cell research.
But within hours of the BBC interview, the broadcaster’s Web site was inundated
with angry postings. One man, Tom Harrop, left a mocking comment that was
typical of many others: “Right, I’m off to get a burqa for the
mother-in-law,” a reference to the head-to-toe veil worn by many conservative
Muslim women.
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