Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on Archy’s Idea

    He is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls.

  • Andrew Brown on Unwilling Martyrs

    There are people at Lambeth Palace who could have told Williams; some did, but he thought he knew better.

  • Riazat Butt on Settling Marital Disputes

    A woman wanting divorce usually needs the consent of her husband. Men have the right of unilateral divorce.

  • Archbishop Under Pressure to Quit

    He is said to be shocked and hurt by the hostility his comments have provoked.

  • BBC Explains: Sharia is Not So Bad

    Some people have concerns, but it’s all a mistake really. Sharia is quite nice. Cheer up.

  • When Yasmin met Archy

    Yasmin A-B explains what Archy doesn’t get. Too bad he didn’t ask her before he jotted down the speech.

    What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination…He would not want his own girls and women, I am sure, to “choose” to be governed by these laws he breezily endorses. And he is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls…Look around the Islamic world where sharia rules and, in every single country, these ordinances reduce our human value to less than half that is accorded a male; homosexuals are imprisoned or killed, children have no free voice or autonomy, authoritarianism rules and infantilises populations.

    Apart from that, it was quite a good idea. Or maybe not.

    There is no agreed body of sharia, it is all drafted by males and the most cruel is now claiming absolute authority…The morality police hound women and girls, beat them up, imprison them for showing an ankle, walking too provocatively or singing in the streets. They fight back but are ground down eventually…Go to Afghanistan if you fancy a 12-year-old bride – a practice approved by the mullahs. That’s sharia for you. Many women, gay men and dissidents came to Britain to escape Islamic tyrants and their laws.

    Only to encounter Rowan Williams. What an unpleasant surprise.

    No women are allowed to be imams or serious jurists, so cannot help make their own fair and free set of female-friendly sharia. All the systems insist on ultimate truths, hard certainties.

    Which the Archbishop himself points out several times in his speech (I’ve read the whole thing now) but without being dissuaded from his absurd idea. But then of course he’s part of a system of ultimate truths himself.

    Taj Hargey, a historian and Islamic theologian, runs the Muslim Education Centre in Oxford. He, with me, is a trustee of British Muslims For Secular Democracy which is attempting to educate Muslims out of authorised obscurantism…He is incandescent that Dr Williams backs a perilous Islamic conservatism, already too powerful in Britain.

    Well the thing about that is that Archy isn’t all that keen on secular democracy. He thinks it ought to ‘overlap’ with the theocratic kind.

  • Sharia Okay As Long as it’s Liberal Sharia

    ‘The fundamental purpose of sharia is to achieve justice.’ Is it?

  • Peter Tatchell Urges Mercy to Qaradawi

    He wants to come to UK for medical treatment; let him. Perhaps a gay Israeli Jew will save him.

  • Bishop Fumes at Reception of Sharia Idea

    ‘I believe he was standing up for the different faith communities.’ We know; that’s the problem.

  • The Archbishop’s Lecture in full

    Dr Williams has been reading Tariq Ramadan.

  • BBC Claims ‘Mixed Reaction’ to Archbishop

    Then scrapes bottom of barrel to find enough people in favour to justify claim.

  • Sharia in Ontario, Almost

    Homa Arjomand argued that the recommendations would push back Canadian law by 1,400 years.

  • Andrew Brown is Optimistic

    He likes ‘the archbishop’s vision of a kinder, more feminist, sharia.’ Meanwhile, back on planet earth…

  • Bravo is it?

    Bravo, Rowan, says Jeevan Vasagar breezily. Well, he’s a man; easy for him to say.

    In Tanzania, for example, Muslim family law applies to Muslim citizens. When it comes to questions of divorce, custody and inheritance, Muslim families settle their disputes at courts unique to their communities.

    Yes we know, and Muslim family law treats women and men unequally. That is the problem.

    There’s an interesting clash here – a classic liberal dilemma. Do you promote the rights of a minority community or do you worry more about the rights of Muslim women, who may get treated less generously under sharia than under secular law?

    It’s not really a dilemma once you think about it hard enough. Just for one thing, the rights in question are not that starkly opposed, for the blindingly obvious reason that that ‘minority community’ includes women, so if the rights of women are a priority then at least half of that ‘minority community’ will not be losing any rights for the sake of the rights of women, because they will be women themselves. But in fact no one will be losing rights, because the goal is equality and equal justice under the law, not more rights for some and fewer for others. That’s why it’s not really a dilemma; it’s a pseudo-dilemma. That ‘minority community’ is not losing any rights unless you take unequal rights to be a right in themselves. Does a ‘minority community’ have rights to deprive some (half, most) of its members of rights arbitrarily? Well, you can declare that it does, but if you do you’re abandoning a meaningful idea of rights.

    And by the way the goal is not to treat women ‘generously’ but to treat them equally. The goal is not to demand extra, it’s just to demand the same. Patronage not required, mere equality is both minimum and maximum – we want neither more nor less.

    The problem is that the right, and their fellow-travellers on the Muslim-bashing left, will seize on this. For them, it’s a case of mediaeval misogyny versus western enlightenment. Suddenly, papers that oppose abortion and believe career women will always be unhappy start cross-dressing as feminists. Don’t believe this ruse – they’re just using feminism as a stick to beat Muslims with.

    Bullshit. Some papers may do that, but papers don’t exhaust the category of people on the left who dislike Sharia – or as Jeevan Vasagar so elegantly calls us, the right’s fellow-travellers on the Muslim-bashing left. There are lots of us fellow-travellers on the Muslim-bashing left who do not oppose abortion (hello Jimmy Doyle!), and we don’t use feminism as a stick to beat anything. I don’t use feminism, I am a feminist.

    Sharia already plays a role in devout Muslim lives, and has to be accepted and understood. But there also has to be a right of appeal. In Muslim countries that practice sharia, it is not a static entity but a living body of rules – just like secular law…

    And? There’s a right of appeal, is there? So those Iranian women who get sentenced to being stoned to death for being in the company of men can appeal to be tried under secular law instead? And in any case, what use is a ‘right of appeal’ to women who are dominated, bullied, perhaps beaten? Like religion in general, sharia might be relatively harmless in the case of decent people who don’t bully others; but not all people are like that. Not all husbands would give their wives the chance to ‘appeal,’ and who else would enforce such a right? But as I said – Vasagar is a man, and it’s easy for him.

  • Forced or arranged

    There’s that report on Honour-based violence in the UK. It starts off by discussing forced marriage – and right away I got snagged by an obstacle.

    According to most definitions, a marriage becomes forced if any coercion, physical or psychological, [is] used against either spouses [sic] in order to force them to consent. A forced marriage is not the same as an arranged marriage which occurs with the full consent of both parties.

    No the obstacle isn’t how desperately the report needs copy-editing; it’s full of mistakes and typos, but that’s not the obstacle. The obstacle is that item about the full consent. What is full consent? Under what conditions is it possible? How prevalent are such conditions? All that needs spelling out, and it’s a mistake to declare roundly that all arranged marriages by definition occur with the full consent of both. In other words there are arranged marriages, that are considered and called such by all parties, that are not completely freely consented to.

    How could it possibly be otherwise? When children are raised with the idea that they will have marriages arranged for them, and that this is the right way to do things, and that to do things otherwise is risky or stupid or defiant or Western or dirty or all those – how freely do they consent when an arranged marriage is offered to them? Or at least, how freely is it safe to assume they consent? It may well be that many people who enter arranged marriages are entirely happy to do so, but is it safe or reasonable to assume that, given the circumstances? I don’t think it is. That’s not to say the police should be called out for every arranged marriage, just that the distinction between forced and arranged should not be seen as clear-cut and dependable.

  • An important pillar of our social identity hem hem

    I transcribed something the Archbishop said just before the ‘bit of a danger’ remark.

    A lot of what’s written suggests that the ideal situation is one in which there is one law and only one law for everybody. Now, that principle, that there’s one law for everybody, is an important pillar of our social identity as a Western liberal democracy, but I think it’s a misunderstanding to suppose that that means people don’t have other affiliations, other loyalties, which shape and dictate how they behave in society – and that the law needs to take some account of that. An approach to law which simply said ‘There’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said’ – I think that’s a bit of a danger.

    Very waffly, that. Of course people have ‘other affiliations, other loyalties, which shape and dictate how they behave in society’ – of course the law does not exhaust what shapes and dictates how people behave in society. Who thinks it does?! But it doesn’t follow from that that there should be one law for one group or ‘community’ and a different law for another. It doesn’t follow that it’s ‘a bit of a danger’ to take an approach to law that says there is one law for everybody, period – it’s much more dangerous to take any other approach!

    He has a mellifluous voice, the Archbishop (well he would, wouldn’t he, he’d need it in his line of work), and a nicely timed way with a banality (he pauses thoughtfully and then comes out with the most obvious word possible), which make him sound reflective and reasonable – but it’s all either waffle or nonsense. The window-dressing is deceptive.

  • A bit of a danger

    I got a record number of email messages alerting me to the Archbishop’s fun new ideas on the subject of law and religion, which seems to hint that they may not be as sound as they are exciting.

    Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

    Quite so. UK murderers, rapists, extortionists, batterers – they do not relate to the British legal system. Good idea to face up to that fact, if one hasn’t already. But is it a good idea to actually adopt ‘certain aspects’ of murderers’, rapists’, extortionists’, batterers’ law? I would say no.

    He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

    Really? Why not? Everyone has to choose between those alternatives. Why make exceptions? Because the cultural loyalty of Muslims is somehow special? Well, how, then?

    Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger”.

    Uh…do you really, Dr Williams? That’s a little scary. You think it’s a danger to say there is one law for everybody? You think it’s safer to say there are multiple laws for different people or you probably mean ‘communities’? Have you thought this through?

    Dr Williams added: “What we don’t want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people’s religious consciences.”

    Ah yes – so that’s what it’s all about. Religious consciences. The ones that make people want to treat gay people unequally, for instance – those religious consciences. Well my atheist and secular conscience tells me that laws should be universal. So how are you going to resolve that conflict?

    Oh well, Doc W is in quite a lot of hot water already, I probably shouldn’t tease a fallen giant, even if he did trip his own self.

  • What would Becket Do?

    Rowan Williams is not a bad man. He is certainly not a stupid man. He is an Oxford scholar and one in a long train of academic bishops who are as comfortable at High Table in Balliol or in lecture halls on the High Street as they are intoning the tropes of Elizabethan liturgy in clouds of incense at Canterbury.

    Why then has the good bishop failed to be fitted for a new mitre, since the one he is wearing has clearly cut off circulation to his brain?

    In an address from Lambeth Palace on February 7th, Williams delivered a lecture entitled “Islam in English Law: Civil and Religious Law in England.” I cannot imagine that anybody confronted with the choice between reading the BBC summary of an interview based on the lecture, and the lecture itself, would choose the latter. My own reason for slogging through 8 single-spaced pages of badly reasoned mud has to do with a piece I am doing on another of his pet projects–increasing the number of “faith schools”—schools tied to a religious tradition—throughout the UK. But slog I did, and I have come away feeling that I know the bishop better and like him less.

    Williams belongs to a generation of starry-eyed ecumenists whose early theology was shaped by the hope of reconciliation with a liberated and embracing Post Vatican II Catholicism. Had he studied church history instead of theology, he would have known that the cycles of such movements are decidedly against Catholicism ever becoming open to real rapprochement. The ordination of women in the Anglican communion in the 1970’s, the elevation of women to Episcopal office in the 1990’s, followed quickly by the ordination of gays and lesbians, and gay bishops—well, the pinking of Anglicanism in general—made the last two decades a great period of ecumenical retreat for Roman Catholics, and the 1990’s an era of retrenchment, a hunkering down on the Tiber expressed in the reaffirmation of the male priesthood, the broadening of the use of the Tridentine Mass, and a new tolerance of old dogmatics in the person of Benedict XVI.

    As the Anglican tradition opened its doors ever wider, virtually enshrining political rectitude as a new article of faith, Rome shut the door in its face. After all, it had its own sexual issues to deal with, and the huge cleanup operation occasioned by 35 years of doctrinal drift–and, in the last five years of his life, a senescent pope unable to deal with the complexities the Curia laid before him. (When the jury comes in on John Paul II, it seems his biggest achievement will be that he was good at making cardinals and saints, and thus will become one himself.)

    Anglicanism became the True Church of the Postmodern Era, committed along with other declining Protestant denominations to multiculturalism as a mantra, to interfaith dialogue as a position, to liturgical experimentation and religious inclusivism as a cause. As Anglican numbers dropped (out of 26 million Anglicans in the UK, 1.7 M describe themselves as churchgoers) so did the Church’s influence worldwide: the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA is a woman, Katherine Schori, and a disproportionate number, without prejudice to interpretation, of women priests are lesbians. In fact one would be forgiven for thinking that the greatest theological controversy of the twenty first century has to do not with the things of God but with whether same-sex marriages are ordained by Holy Writ. The English Church is threatened with schism from an area of the world—Africa—it once regarded as its religious dominion because of ongoing controversies about sexuality and apostolic succession. Threatened with such irrelevance and loss of prestige, the Church might have decided to go away quietly.

    Instead, Archbishop Williams feels he has something to say:

    “The Muslim communities in this country,” he said in his lecture, “seek the freedom to live under sharia law.”

    Well, why not. They are now 3% of the British population (about 1.6 M), 40% of whom live in London (14.3 in Birmingham). That means, allowing only for sliders and drifters who think of themselves as secular, they outnumber the Anglican churchgoers by a healthy fraction. There are about 4.5 million Roman Catholics in the UK (half of whom are professed churchgoers), many of them in the past ten years part of an influx from “Catholic Europe,” mainly Poland. There are roughly 267,000 Jews (about 0.5% of the population).

    All of which is beside the point since according to ReligiousTolerance.Org, only 14.4% of British Christians identify with a denomination. What the Bish is doing ecclesiastically is not different from what bonnie Prince Charles did a few years ago when he, presumably earnestly, suggested that the monarch should be known as the “Defender of Faith,” rather than “Defender of the Faith” in recognition that Britain was truly a multicultural society. The former Archbishop, Lord Carey, encouraged him in this fatuous notion by saying that the next coronation “should be an interfaith event,” in recognition of the “very significant changes” in British society. Only problem is, the major shift has not been very positive for the Christian population, so the appeal (naturally) is to those recalcitrant groups who, unlike the Anglicans, aren’t very happy about giving up their religious law and melting into British society.

    The Archbishop’s appeal strikes me as terribly political. A terrible thing to say about I man I have already called smart and good. It is dishonest in its view that all religions belong to a genus of a sort that can be labeled universally good. In his lecture, he carelessly drags Islam into a stream of tradition out of which English civil law grew. Okay—fine—let’s recall that when Hobbes composed The Leviathan (1651) he was as concerned about the laws of ecclesiastical polity in the kingdom as Hooker had been in New England (1636). There is no doubt that both of these thinkers had a profound, almost simultaneous influence on what we now call constitutionalism. And there is no doubt among serious historians that constitutionalism—by Locke, by Jefferson—leads to the neutralizing tradition in government that we call secularism. That means get religion out of politics, because religion has never been a constructive force for political good.

    Rowan Williams runs the risk of missing the great lesson of western history, by missing the lesson his own political-national tradition has bequeathed to the world. He loads us down with the preposterous idea that we need to respect communities within communities. “[Danger arises] when secular government assumes a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity.” What danger? What secular government in the British style demands is – according to Hamilton – that the majority cede their prejudices and national and religious preferences to a secular authority so that government can function equitably. (And he begins this deposition with a memorable phrase: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary…”).

    Dr Williams talks about “overlapping identities.” He writes “The rule of law is thus not the establishing of priority for the universal abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such independent of membership in any specific community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and undertaking, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity.”

    Oh, dear Bishop. That’s too much. “Space accessible to everyone”? Where is that in Saudi Arabia. In northern Nigeria, in Sudan, in the southern reaches of Beirut, or the ethnic borders of Iraq?

    “Human dignity?” Sure, cliterodectomy, stoning, suicide bombings, beheadings of the innocent, and turning retarded women into human bombs. “Claiming finality?” well—Christianity used to do that; Judaism did it before Christianity.

    But Islam as I read it is unique in not having undergone the tests and challenges and disaffirming events to which Muslims as Muslims seem immune. After all, the messiah did not come for the Jews; and Jesus did not come again (at least not on time) to the Christians. But Muhammad, the prophet without anything new to say, or anything to prophesy, created no opportunity for the disconfirmation of his teaching. What he produced was totally absorptive, like those weird tentacles of Christian tradition that see the hand of God in every act that proves them wrong. In general, Judaism and Christianity had to learn to exist and co-exist in history, in society—and in that laboratory western politics and even secularism (and the see of Canterbury, so vital to the separation of royal and religious power) was born. The Archbishop of such a see should know and teach that. Or he should resign for not knowing it.

    Islam contributed nothing to that process. Islam, given the state of its critique of the west, will continue to oppose secularism as its natural enemy.

    This debate should not be about “creating space” where the tolerant should be expected to give way to traditions of intolerance.

    And “Finality?” It’s an interesting word. But its most obvious application is in the Islamic doctrine that Muhammad is the final prophet. That the Qur’an is the final revelation. That no other tradition holds a candle to the straight, narrow, and suffocating truth that Islam claims to possess. I can think of no religious tradition that has less use for diversity, and more regard for “finality.”

    If the Anglican Communion needs to appeal to the burgeoning growth of intolerance in the United Kingdom as a means of survival, of legitimacy, what, dear Bishop, does that mean for your own tradition?

  • Haggard Leaves Early

    ‘Spiritual advisers’ say he shouldn’t return to the ministry. Not straight enough yet.

  • Archbish Says Sharia is Unavoidable in UK

    Thinks it’s ‘a bit of a danger’ to say there is one law for everyone.