February 8, 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday used a lecture in the Royal Courts of Justice to propose that sharia law should be applied in certain circumstances. The idea is not as outlandish as it may first appear. [See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/07/nwilliams207.xml]

There are already sharia councils in this country to which Muslims turn for advice and religious sanction in matters such as divorce. Likewise, Orthodox Jews have recourse to the Beth Din over, for example, dietary laws, divorce and tenancy disputes.

A further instance of legal sensitivity to religious belief is the ability of Christian doctors to opt out of abortions. So Dr Rowan Williams's argument that there should be "a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law" is, to a certain extent, recognition of a situation which already exists.

The problem lies, rather, in the status of the messenger and the timing of his intervention. If there is a case for the creation of sharia courts, it would be better made by a joint group representing the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Coming from the senior bishop in the Church of England, it is vulnerable to interpretation as appeasement of Islamic extremism prompted by fear of social unrest.

As for timing, the lecture was given shortly after threats had been made against one of Dr Williams's fellow bishops, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, [see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/02/nbishop102.xml] for writing in the Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremism had turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims [see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nislam106.xml]. Add to this the growing recognition of the failures of multiculturalism, and you have on the part of the archbishop a classic example of political ineptitude.

Even with more convincing advocacy, the creation of sharia courts in this country faces an uphill battle. In the public mind, sharia is associated with brutal punishment, whether the amputation of hands for theft or stoning for adultery and apostasy.

It is also seen as repressive to women; a journalist in Afghanistan is facing the death penalty for having distributed a report taken off the internet which questions the practice of polygamy. A further obstacle is the opposition to a dual legal system of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation not always associated with moderation.

In 2006, it was brought home to Pope Benedict XVI the way in which a supposedly innocuous reference to Islam – a quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor – can create a furore. In the case of the archbishop, it is not so much the idea, as the way it will be interpreted that counts.

Muslim radicals will view it as the bending of the British establishment to fundamentalist pressure; that will hardly make for the social cohesion which lies behind Dr Williams's thinking. The present informal arrangement of sharia councils is preferable in the current context to their elevation into courts. On this most inflammatory of subjects the archbishop would have best kept silent.

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