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The ABC of Sharia

Rowan Williams: is adopting aspects of sharia "unavoidable"?
(Photo: (c)On Location/CMS)

Muslim does not mean terrorist. And Sharia does not mean stoning. Knee-jerk reactions to the Archbishop’s comments show why we must move from ignorance to understanding and fear to love, says Richard Sudworth

Another day, another controversy around the place of faith in Britain. Oh what a sorry mess we are making of this business of public faith!

Sharia is one of those words that conjures up immediate negative images, and because of that, is often a rallying point for polarising opinion.

For most people sharia = stonings for adultery, hands chopped off for stealing and institutionalised misogyny.

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Rowan Williams is an intelligent man. He knows that sharia is far more complex than this. The vast bulk of Islamic laws that are invoked within Muslim communities (yes, present tense because it is a current reality here in Britain) concern family relationships (divorce and separation), and inheritance matters. The trouble is, the media and our beloved political establishment are either not intelligent enough to know this or, and God forbid this be the case, prefer to play to the simplistic public perception of sharia = stonings for short term electoral expediency.

It helps to have a little bit of wider knowledge, including a little bit of historical knowledge. Did you know that the Jewish community have religious courts ruling on familial and inheritance matters that have credence in our legal system? Did you know that under British colonial rule in India, many Muslim regions operated a parallel sharia system to the English legal system? And let’s come closer to home: did you know that the Church of England has its own valid legal structures for enforcing discipline and disposing of property?

What makes Rowan Williams’s comments so incendiary then? Fear and ignorance.

Ignorance we can do something about very easily and sadly our politicians don’t seem to want to do much about that at the moment. What comes out in the press over the next few days will tell us whether our media wish to remain ignorant.

Fear takes more time to deal with, and fear is not to be minimised or swept under the carpet. The very idea of sharia in Britain doubtless suggests public floggings in northern towns. The very fact that Rowan Williams has broached the issue ought to be welcome because the conversation to be had is, “what aspects of sharia are incompatible with life in Britain today?”

You can’t have this conversation if you’ve not recognised that the reality for many Muslims is to want to adhere to Islamic prescriptions in their public dealings. By shutting off the conversation at source, you are effectively saying, “your faith should be entirely private”. Is that what we want?

I don’t want a society where that is the case for my Christian faith and I should apply that freedom to my neighbour as much as to myself.

The tough call is the mutual challenge of which laws and practices should be denied in the pursuit of the common good. Thus, respect for the vulnerable, fully equal status for women, illegality of corporal punishment would be among my challenges to some Muslims that would want to bring an unadulterated sharia to Britain.

So, all in all, I’ll thank the Lord for our Archbishop… and pray that we will seek truth and move from fear to love.

Richard Sudworth is a CMS mission partner working as a consultant for Faith to Faith. He has just published Distinctly Welcoming, a guide for Christians on relating to other faiths. www.distinctlywelcoming.com

Published: 11:02 AM :: Friday, February 08, 2008 :: 2280 views :: 5 Comments ::

:: Mission in Britain, Church of England, Mission partners, Media, Interfaith, COMMENT

Comments

By Ross Lawhead @ Monday, February 11, 2008 11:24 AM

What was surprising to me was that Rowan Williams was not broaching the idea for discussion, he had already come to a personal conclusion that he was voicing.

Sharia law does not automatically mean stoning and maiming, but it CAN mean those things under certain circumstances.

To say that there should be an option between two laws implies that there are weaknesses in either one or the other of the law systems, in this case, that there are weaknesses in British law. What are the aspects of British law that are less just or fair in comparrison to sharia law? Do women have fewer rights? Are the punishments too lenient? Is the system less fair?

Sharia law is very subjective and open to interpretation-- not just of the the way the laws are written, but also of the language in which they were written.

British law has been largely influenced by Christian thought, philosophy, and culture, over a long period. Why, as Christians, would we desire anything else?

I do not agree with the Archbishop, but it's not because I'm fearful, and I hope not because I'm ignorant (I try hard not to be). I'd hope for more tolerance from someone calling for more tolerance.

By nichomach @ Tuesday, February 19, 2008 1:11 PM

The vast majority of the public comment on Rowan's speech has been either ill-informed or deliberately misreresentative. Talk of stoning is ludicrous and obscene in the context of what he said, and he made it abundantly clear that he was not talking about parallel systems or ANY situation which would result in fewer rights or protections. This article is absolutely spot-on. Well done.

By Ross Lawhead @ Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:45 PM

No, I'm sorry, but why is it 'important' to 'discuss' this? What civil liberties are Christians in danger of losing?

And why, in a speech entitled "Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective" does the Archbishop of Canterbury directly refer to Islam and Islamic Law twenty-seven times, and Christianity only twice (once when mentioned with Jewish Law, and once in a paragraph starting "I may add in passing...")?

Why does +Rowan's 'religious perspective' start and end with Islam? I read the speech and felt like I'd stepped into an alternate reality sci-fi TV show. He started by saying he was no expert in Sharia law, but then he couldn't shut up about it, and he's still going on about it.

Are the teachings of Jesus Christ on law less relevant to the Archbishop than Mohammad? Are the things Christ says about law too impractical for consideration? Why couldn't +Rowan have talked about those things than kicking this sleeping dog?

The British press don't want Sharia law, the general British public don't seem to want it, and 41% of muslims living in the UK don't want it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/19/nsharia19.xml

By christopher pix @ Thursday, February 21, 2008 5:53 PM

Richard's article was disappointing. Rowan Williams was by most standards naive in his speech and his Radio 4 broadcast. But it is not his naivity which I find most worrying. It is the idea that Richard conveys in his article that any criticism of Rowan Williams is down to ignorance or fear.

I am heavily critical of both the text of the speech and the interview RW gave on The World at One. This is mainly for the following reasons:
1. It was hugely unclear what exactly he was saying. On the one hand he said, "there should be one law for everybody." On the other hand he talked about "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty." From the first statement it is clear that he is not talking about parallel laws co-existing. So what exactly is he advocating? If for a legal system which recognises a third party arbitrator, well, as Richard points out, that already exists - so what exactly?

2. It was clear from advice given to RW that his speech was going to be controversial. The question then is, was what he said worth all the criticism, not only for the Archbishop, but also the Anglican Church and most importantly, Christianity? The answer has to be no.

Sharia Law is recognised as the expression of divine will. To advocate for it clearly goes against Christianity. Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. Christians cannot say that Sharia Law is the expression of divine will.

3. Ironically, the fear of secularism seems to have led to these comments by RW. It is precisely the secularists who are jumping up and down with glee (and with some justification) following this bizarre own goal, that has left the rest of his team scratching their heads - and certainly in a heavily Muslim area like Slough, in the face of opposition both from Christians who were Muslims and from the Muslim community itself.

4. Under Sharia Law there is a fixed (hadd) punishment for certain crimes, including apostasy. For Muslims who become Christians, under Sharia Law, execution awaits them. By supporting Sharia Law, by implication RW is supporting these executions.

6. Sharia is designed to mould society. As Christians we cannot believe that Muslims should live lives that are moulded by an un-Christian relationship with a false god.

I fear that Richard's article has done CMS a great diservice - it not only underestimates the opinions of those who were greatly saddened by what RW said, but also leaves us with a rather alarming view - that to avoid secularism, all religions, their laws and teaching, have to be treated as equal and equally valid. I fail to find any support for that view in the Bible and Christianity.

By Distinctly Welcoming @ Thursday, March 13, 2008 9:45 AM

Mmmm...thanks for everyone's comments! I feel the need to come back to the thread of this discussion perhaps to explain a few things I said that may not have been so clear. The "fear and ignorance" that I referred to was not intended as a blanket judgment on anyone who happens to disagree with the Archbishop. Rather, that was my judgment on the reason for the furore that the speech produced in the media and a reflection of the shallowness with which the debate was treated.

There is a genuine discussion to be had: about the role of faith in the public sphere and how faith underpins good law. The shock-horror reactions and responses had barely any engagement with the underlying issues and thus seemed to be more about fear and ignorance.

The question that I did not answer in my blog postings was whether it was wise of the Archbishop to make the statements he did.....Evidently it wasn't. He has a responsibility to take the church with him (and to be aware of the views of Muslims when he pronounces on matters that concern them; and many Muslims feel that they could have done without the speech!).

But my conviction remains that we need some serious self-reflection about faith in the public sphere and a recognition that so many of our laws in recent years are divorced from any moral source and accountability beyond the "self" and rights. Arguably, Muslims who seek to be accountable to a Creator God are offering a deep challenge to us Christians who happily collude with laws devoid of moral purpose: the tragedy is that there is actually no neutral space so we end up worshipping "self" instead....

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