The archbishop and all that

A lot has been said about the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent comments. It seems that everybody was astounded by his comments, and in turn he was astounded by the reaction. And for me, it is the reaction that by and large is more interesting - and more disturbing - than anything that Rowan Williams said.

I found the reaction of Gordon Brown particularly interesting. Since he came to power, the Prime Minister has been trying to draw the country together and avoid division. We saw this with all the talk of "Britishness" before he came to power; we also saw it when he tried to form his first cabinet as "a cabinet of all the talents" - including invitations to members of other political parties. So it came as no surprise that the first headline about the PM's own reaction to Rowan Williams' comments was to describe the Archbishop as "a man of great integrity". All well and good.

But it was in the detail of Gordon Brown's comments that came something fairly worrying: "British laws must be based on British values and that religious law, while respecting other cultures, should be subservient to British criminal and civil law" This, like much of the reaction to Rowan Williams' comments, makes a couple of fundamental mistakes. The first is an assumption that "religious law" is a different kettle of fish to "British" law, when in fact they are on the whole compatible. In fact, it was this very compatibility that Williams was trying to get at in his speech: that by handling relatively trivial issues in Sharia courts, Muslims can take a lot of the burden off of the mainstream legal system, and save us taxpayers a fair whack of money to boot. Moreover, British law is of course largely based on the Christian faith - so the idea that it is somehow in conflict with "religious law" is nonsense.

The second, and perhaps more important, mistake is to leave God out of the equation. God is big. He is the creator and ruler of the universe. His rules outrank any and every man-made legal system there could possibly be. The notion that the law of God "should be subservient to British law" is a notion that belittles God; for the Prime Minister, our chief law maker, to say that is essentially for him to say "I am more important than God". If unity is what Gordon Brown seeks, that is not the way to achieve it. Instead, he risks alienating everyone in Britain who believes in a deity - and that's a huge slice of our population.

So, what about Rowan Williams' comments themselves? Is his the Christian point of view? Well, whilst there's been a lot of negative reaction even within his own denomination, I think that there's certainly something good to take from what he said (or at least, if not what he said then what he meant!). As I understand it, Islam is a very legalistic religion. A Muslim has to pray at certain times each day, facing a certain direction, whereas a Christian can pray whenever he or she wants, facing any direction he or she chooses. The BBC News website explains Sharia law thus:
Sharia rulings have been developed to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes... For example, many young Muslims ask themselves what they should do if colleagues invite them to the pub after work or college.

Many people would of course make up their own mind about the appropriate course of action. But others may turn to a Sharia scholar for advice.

So Sharia covers a lot of very mundane and banal daily issues where observant Muslims want to ensure they act within the legal framework of their faith.

Imagine if every decision we made, even ones as trivial as that in the example above, had to go through a court of law! Yet that is the Muslim culture. It is in stark contrast to the Christian culture, which is very much more based on freedom and making choices for ourselves. In fact, the Bible encourages us to avoid courts of law if at all possible, and resolve any disputes personally, with the oversight of mutually respected leaders or elders if necessary.

So in a way, the archbishop is attempting to spread a Christian message into Islamic culture: resolve disputes among yourselves rather than taking them to court. In a highly legalistic culture such as Islam, it is fairly inevitable that the dispute resolution process would also be highly legalistic - hence making Sharia law "almost inevitable in the UK" - the words that Rowan Williams was shot down for saying. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, out-of-court settlements and dispute resolution processes are becoming more and more common. Essentially all Rowan Williams was doing was acknowledging that established fact.

So, like the Archbishop, I can't see what the fuss is about - in a nutshell, Rowan Williams said nothing new or in any way controversial. But in trying to calm this storm in a teacup, Gordon Brown made a claim that has much bigger and more profound implications. Sharia law in the UK is one thing, but the UK Parliament outranking God is something else entirely.

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