Sharia and the Archbishop of Canterbury

[Correction: Upon review of the audio of the interview, it turns out that Williams did indeed claim that Sharia is "unavoidable" -- the editors.]

Much has been made recently of Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams' comments in an interview with the BBC, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury was widely interpreted as endorsing the idea that the adoption of Sharia --- the informal and sometimes internally inconsistent regulatory framework that forms the basis of Islamic religious law --- in Britain is unavoidable.

Much of the reaction to Williams' comments is off-base.

Matt Wardman, a conservative writer, demonstrated that the storm was facilitated by the BBC’s desire to create a controversial narrative even before the Archbishop’sRowan Williams: Islamist stooge? interview was finished. Further, the Archbishop didn’t use the word “unavoidable.” It was Williams' interlocutor who first used the word in a question, and the Archbishop merely gave a pithy one-word answer. And the elements of Sharia that Williams was discussing didn’t include criminal punishments such as stoning or amputation, but only elements of personal and financial law.

Moreover, judging from his later clarification, it appears that the Archbishop’s major concern was to show that a person’s religious sensibilities will sometimes lead him or her to try to opt-out of a secular legislative scheme. To this end he offered the examples of Muslims seeking to follow Sharia law in family, inheritance and some commercial matters, as well as the Orthodox Jewish Beth-Din courts. Williams' position, that non-devout people need not view such occasional withdrawals as anathema, is only natural for the leader of a religious community. By granting exemptions to other religions, after all, he benefits his own.

However, once the BBC’s narrative was unleashed, competing groups seeking to exploit the Archbishop’s comments came rushing forward.

The Islamophobic contingent roared first and most fiercely. Papers from the reputable Independent and The Times to the mischievous Sun began to frighten people about the specter of a Sharia takeover of UK, armed with references to barbaric hudud punishments (which the Archbishop had explicitly repudiated). Newspapers published explicit and first hand accounts of “Sharia justice." An unrelated story about so-called "Muslim inbreeding" propelled the narrative forward.

Thus Williams’ comments suddenly became a referendum on every part of Islam that people fear. The Archbishop himself was rendered a puppet of nefarious Islamist interests and calls for his resignation rang out on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the multiculturalist faction, joined with groups of traditional Muslims, argued that voluntary and consensual application of some Sharia requirements for the most devout Muslims should not be deemed beyond the pale. Some argued that Muslims are merely asking for a form of third-party arbitration, while others went a bit further and said that extra-judicial Islamic courts already exist to deal with certain social matters and they should simply be recognized and regulated. These groups downplayed the threat of coercion and abuse of women and argued that rather than ghettoizing Muslims, adopting some measures would actually help in combating extremism.

For some Muslim leaders, the Archbishop’s willingness to include Islamic concerns within the larger framework of religious liberty in the West was a welcome sign. As a result, Muslims and Jews are now working together, as Muslims are seeking to learn from the Beth-Din model, and a prominent Jewish leader threw in his support for Sharia arbitration. Muslims are also drawing support from the fact that there are Sharia courts in Israel.

Members of the Sikh faith, another large religious minority in the UK, were largely supportive of pro-Sharia Muslims. Abdul Hakim Murad, a prominent Muslim leader who had once longed for some kind of European Catholic-Muslim alliance (only to then see the Pope make his anti-Islam comments), pointed out to the BBC that he had accompanied the Archbishop to Singapore where they had seen how various religious communities could handle their own affairs internally while still being part of the state. Still, among average Muslims, such as those at the largest mosque in the UK, the idea of self-segregating from the civil law didn’t arouse much interest and left many of them "puzzled."

While it is interesting to evaluate the anthropology of Sharia among Muslims and pass judgments on the state of Islamic reform, Sharia is not really the central issue. In reality, the Archbishop has created a very American debate in British clothing.Sharia in Action Can a government that openly acknowledges and give dispensations to major religions be considered secular? In the US, even though the state regularly funds faith initiatives and (the courts have even applied Sharia law when legally required) it is easy for the state to assert its fundamental secularity because according to its written constitution, the US cannot have an established religion. The idea is so deeply enshrined that no one takes the threat of theocracy seriously (not even when religions openly infiltrate the government and military).

The UK cannot play the same game. Those who know the history behind one of the longest words in English language – Antidisestablishmentarianism – know that unlike the US, or even Wales and Ireland, England still has an official Church. Naturally then, the fear among many non-religious people in Britain is that the introduction of Sharia bodies would be harmful not only because of the non-uniform and anachronistic character of Islamic law, but also because any dispensation for one religion would simply give the dominant faith, Christianity, a stronger grip on the country’s purse and policy. As Andrew Copson astutely pointed out:

Judging by the outraged reaction of so many at Rowan Williams’ comments on sharia law, there was considerable surprise that he said what he said. In fact, nothing could be less surprising. Of course Williams wishes to argue for the extension of at least some of the privileges enjoyed by his own church to other religions. Such an argument, coupled with the sustained critique (some might say assault) on secularism and other Enlightenment values by a number of bishops in the Church of England, is the best defence the church today has for its own privileged position. What would have been genuinely surprising would be for an archbishop to come out in favour of universal human rights and state neutrality in its dealings with each citizen, whatever their religious or non-religious convictions; for an end to the archaic privileges of the seats in the Lords, the schools, the state-funded public services, the legally enforceable protection from insult. For as long as we allow the anachronism of an established church, however, we can pretty much guarantee that no Archbishop of Canterbury will ever do so.

The UK probably should have had this debate seventy years ago, when it gave the same rights to Orthodox Jews that some Muslims want now. However, at that time, Talmudic law probably didn’t inspire the kind of visceral hatred that Sharia does, and the Beth-Din courts came into operation. The existence of Sharia, then, is creating a more vigorous debate about secularism, but the fact that so much of the discussion has been steeped in hysteria underscores the paucity of sane voices in this debate.

The UK can go in two directions on the acceptance of special religious laws for Muslims. One way is towards a multi-culturalist extreme, in which there would be a Centralized Islamic Commission to adjudicate matters of Islamic law. After all, if there are questions of Islamic family law to be decided, there will need to be an agency to standardize and apply that law. Such a path hearkens back to the hyper-multiculturalism that weakened the Ottoman Empire (and was in fact abolished by the State partly on national security grounds in the Tanzimat reforms).

The other extreme is a more hard-line secular state, for which the immediate disestablishment of the Church, banning of public displays of religious symbolism and de-funding of the faith schools would be necessary. Given that the current Archbishop previously presided over a disestablished Church (of Wales) and has taken a lot of heat for his liberal views on homosexual clergy, it may actually be possible that the man being painted out to be some kind of theocracy promoting mullah, is the best hope for resolving many of the tensions between religion and state in England, even if he temporarily forgot what he believes in.