...claim that folks did not understand the nuance of their exposition, when the reality is that their words were understood quite well.
That might apply to you, I'm not entirely convinced. But every single person who thought that Williams was advocating stonings, or a parallel legal system simply spectacularly missed his point, deliberately or not.
And yet Dr Williams did not advocate Shari’a law; he said quite distinctly that ‘aspects’ of it might be incorporated into British law. He said other religions enjoyed tolerance of their own laws, and called for ‘constructive accommodation’ with Muslim practice in areas such as marital disputes. But he stressed that it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen. This is an important distinction.
Asked if the adoption of Shari'a law was necessary for community cohesion, Dr Williams said that certain conditions of Shari’a ‘are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system’.
from your blog post.
I feel I should point out that Cranmer, if he is writing a blog, is only doing so through the very serious sin of employing a medium. He died in 1556, which I'm sure you knew, you meant Carey who is the only living former ABC. So we actually know nothing about whether Cranmer is an islamophobe*
It is politically unacceptable that the words of the leader of the Established Church should embolden those who advocate a parallel system of law for any group. He has given succour to those who would establish an Islamic theocracy in the UK,
Maybe that is true, but again those who he might have emboldened constitute a tiny percentage of the British muslim population as Cranmer tacitly concedes later on . If he did 'embolden' that is hardly a serious matter, and his only sin is to have engaged in the debate in the position that he holds. He has been politically naive:
I cannot defend Dr Williams either. He is in effect the chief executive of the Church of England, which is the state-established church of his country. As Archbishop of Canterbury he is not quite the counterpart of the Pope (Queen Elizabeth II is technically the supreme head of the church), but almost. The issue is not whether his remarks were sensible and reasonable (which they were), but about whether he can do the demanding job of holding this figurehead position, and manage the appearances and the politics, without causing his church to fall apart in social and political discord.
The cruel fact is that by provoking this huge row he has shown that he is unsuitable. (For the second time. Remember, he also took a position on homosexuality — one that I mostly agree with — that has caused a worldwide rift in Anglicanism as all the conservative African churches recoiled in horror. Bad move.) I hate to say it, but the people who say he lacks the leadership skills for his job are basically right.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005376.html#moreI can't disagree.
Back to the blog of the deceased:
The rabbinical granting of a divorce or a canonical annulment are not civil dissolutions of marriage: the civil courts must ultimately grant the decree. But Shari’a law does not make any such distinction, for it refuses to recognise the civil authority.
But it would have to if it were to function under British law. The debate is about whether this is the true nature of sharia (and I'm not convinced that, living or dead, Cranmer is an expert) and how any future integration of aspects of sharia, only pertaining to civil matters, could be worked, within the boundaries of British law and human rights. The latter is a special interest of Williams.
It is theoretical, and Williams was turgid, and he has been misunderstand and distorted. That is partly his fault, and he has publicly accepted that, but it is not all is fault.
The Beth Din system of tribunals for settling certain matters in the Jewish community is already operating in various parts of the country. And more generally, if two parties want to settle a matter out of court by having a religious or cultural authority figure make the necessary judgment, it is hard to see how the legal system of a free society could deny them that right. In the USA people go to paralegal mediators to work out divorce matters and to various TV programs for minor financial and family disputes. The accommodation necessary to allow that some people want to go to a rabbi or a mullah for decisions on such matters that they will agree to regard as binding is virtually no accommodation at all.
Dr Williams was merely musing about the beneficial effects such developments might have on legal and theological aspects of our culture. He was not saying that a thousand years of British law was going to be swept away and replaced by sharia in Muslim-dominated British cities, with councils of mullahs in the back streets of Leicester and Bradford determining sentences of stoning or flogging or cutting off of hands for criminal offenses that the population had elected to keep out of the hands of the secular legal system.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005376.html#moreThis is only about muslims. Had Williams talked about Jewish law, or Sikh arbitration, there would have been no media response, or more accurately, no response that we didn't recognise for what it is.
Were it not about muslims I'm sure the media would be getting their usual bollocking around here, which brings me neatly to:
*
Bash the Bishop! This is The Sun's considered, intelligent and erudite judgement upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. It encapsulates everything that is wrong with the country's crass, superficial, unintelligent 24-hour media, in which everything has to be reduced to a 'soundbite' for the masses to passively absorb.
And here is the Daily Mail's astounding contribution to the debate, under the heading: 'Which of these men poses the bigger threat to Britain's way of life?'
And presently, the idiotic readership (or rather the readership who have bothered to vote) record 37% for Abu Hamza and 63% for the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is tabloid rabble rousing and mob mentality at its worst.
And yet, like it or not, this is the postmodern vernacular, and it is incumbent upon all Christians to communicate the gospel in season and out of season in terms which people can comprehend. It was not for nothing that the Early Church wrestled with communicating Hebrew theology and the incarnation of a Jewish Messiah to a Greek audience who understood nothing of Hebrew linguistic nuances or Jewish beliefs.
If only Dr Williams had spoken of 'sharia shame', or given them a headline like 'shirk off sharia', he would have been exalted as a great leader. But this, to him, would be supping with the devil. Much better to be theologically and politically authentic and true to one's convictions than to scratch itching ears. That is, after all, the stuff of which prophets are made, and the Lord told us that they are never accepted in their home town...
Strangely enough -
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/02/bash-bishop.htmlThat's hardly a serious charge to lay at a mans soul. It is probably a disqualification for high office in any church, but that says more about the state of the church, and the public "debate", than it does about Rowan Williams.
