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The Archbishop of Canterbury and sharia: readers’ responses

From the Revd Richard Morgan
Sir, — The Archbishop of Canterbury’s nuanced and tentative suggestions about acceptance by English law for British Muslims of some aspects of sharia law may or may not be wise moves. The Archbishop, after all, attempted to open a debate.

Among the responses, however, has been the comment that Christians in Muslim areas are subjected to sharia law, and so we should not let Muslims in this country have any different legal status from that of others.

Nevertheless, in countries where a large Muslim majority favours sharia, Christian and other minorities do need the protection of exemption from that system — and, indeed, in legal disputes with Muslims, need recourse to a system that gives them equality before the courts.

If we hope that Muslim countries will seek a flexible plurality within their system as a way of securing equal rights for all, we ought to consider how we can do the same.

If we argue that, because some Muslim lands are inflexible and, we believe, unjust, we should not consider seriously the sensibilities of our Muslim citizens, that does not sit well with our Lord’s advice to do to others as we would they do to us, and not to retaliate against others who hurt us. This may be naïve, but Dr Williams seems to be following the naïvety of Christ himself.

Some of the reactions to the Archbishop as reported in the media smack of hostility to the many Muslims who have concerns about our Western society and who find themselves in tension between loyalty to their perception of how their faith calls them to act, and how British society calls them to behave.

They are not alone. Britain prides itself on being an open society, and, as such, needs to treat concerns of this kind with sympathy, not furious dismissal, even if, in the end, society cannot remove some of them. The Archbishop’s approach seems to hold more hope of good community relations than the more strident responses to him.

Those responses seem calculated to add to many Muslims’ worries, and to tempt them to despair of Western sympathies. This is to play into the hands of those who argue that violent opposition is the correct Muslim response.

I hope and pray, for the sake of our society as well as our Church, that Archbishop Williams will stand firm amid the bizarre calls for his resignation.
RICHARD MORGAN
The Rectory, Church Lane
Therfield, Royston
Herts SG8 9QD

From the Revd Oliver Harrison
Sir, — On the day the Archbishop made his remarks about sharia law, I was reading George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, first published in 1936. The protagonist spends a night in the police cells.

Down among the denizens of the criminal underworld, he meets “a small middle-aged Jew with a fur-collared overcoat, who had been buyer to a large firm of kosher butchers. He had bolted with twenty-seven pounds, gone to Aberdeen, of all places, and spent the money on tarts. He too had a grievance, for he said his case ought to have been tried in the rabbi’s court instead of being turned over to the police.”

So, 70 years ago, there was a parallel and complementary system of religious courts and ancient jurisprudence operating in London. Was it a disaster? Did liberal, democratic civilisation come crashing down? Er, no.

Perhaps prophetically, the very next chapter says: “Down there in Lambeth, in winter, in the murky streets where the sepia-shadowed faces of tea-drunkards drifted through the mist, you had a submerged feeling. . . No one was capable of asking you ‘What are you, with your brains and education, doing in a job like this?’”

Of course, Orwell’s hero eventually asks himself that very question, and gets out of Lambeth for a steady, regular, and thoroughly normal job.

Well, wouldn’t you?
OLIVER HARRISON
7 Samphire Close, Maidstone
Kent ME14 5UD

From Canon J. F. Edge
Sir, — For eight years in the 1980s, I worked in East Malaysia, where a system very close to that advocated by the Archbishop was used.

Although Islam is the national religion, the Anglican Church (and presumably others) was entrusted with dealing with matrimonial questions and disputes among its members.

On a different level, some at least among our many tribal peoples dealt at the village level with family and land questions, making use of their customary law or adat. The decisions of which I heard showed the wisdom of ordinary men and women. The aim was conciliation, reconciliation, and peace within the communities.

As far as sharia law was concerned, the national government refused to allow those punishments that offend people in the West. We also had some excellent Muslim women cabinet ministers.

The only people who suffered were the lawyers.
JOHN EDGE
24 Talbot Street, Briercliffe
Burnley BB10 2HW

From Canon Dr Daniel O’Connor
Sir, — It might be helpful to those engaged in the current debate to look at the experience of that great secular democracy India in struggling to develop and uphold a common civil code.

Not least, one could note the courage and clarity with which Nehru and his colleagues in the early years after independence defied the Hindu fundamentalists and passed a gender-sensitive Hindu Code Bill (winning a general election on the strength, in part, of this).

Contrast this with the way his grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, putting politics before principle at the time of the Shah Bano case, caved in to Muslim fundamentalists and passed a gender-malign Muslim Women’s Bill, with deadly consequences still unfolding throughout the sub-continent.

Not surprisingly, it is our own Anglican fundamentalists of one sort and another who are fizzing and popping now.
DAN O’CONNOR
15 School Road, Balmullo
St Andrew, Fife KY16 0BA

From the Revd Mike Ketley
Sir, — The Archbishop of Canterbury’s outstanding intellect and academic abilities are well known and accepted. Whatever he meant by his comments on sharia law, however, the result has been hostile public reaction and detrimental media coverage.

Steeped in academia, but with minimal experience of parochial ministry, the Archbishop may find it difficult to comprehend fully the effects of his pronouncements in parishes and priests who look to him for spiritual leadership and guidance.

I have long thought that an essential requirement for the office of bishop should be at least five years as the incumbent of a parish, with preferably a spell as an archdeacon.
MIKE KETLEY
The Rectory, 50 Rectory Road
Hadleigh, Benfleet SS7 2ND

From Mr Nick Williams
Sir, — The Archbishop’s learned musings on sharia law should never have been aired in public. His purely academic discourse has no practical application in the actual world. Dilution and division of the sovereignty of the law of the land can only lead to chaos.

Once upon a time, ecclesiastical courts wielded temporal powers over our people, laity as well as clergy. We did away with this anachronistic muddle for very sound reasons. The road back would be the road to hell.
NICK WILLIAMS
173C Adelaide Road
London NW3 3NN

From the Revd Hugh Wright
Sir, — When I was ordained, Dr George Carey led the pre-ordination retreat, which I enjoyed. Throughout the 1990s, I was supportive of him as Archbishop, and thought a lot of the opposition to him to be sneering and snooty. Of late, however, I have found his contributions less than helpful, culminating in his disgraceful articles in the Sunday papers (10 February) about the Archbishop and sharia law.

It is not what he says: it is the timing and the double standard that annoys me. Presumably, when he, in his turn, was criticised in the press, he looked for public support or at least silence from fellow churchmen. How would he have liked Robert Runcie to have done what he has?

You cannot be “supportive” on the one hand and, on the other, join in the media frenzy to “bash” Dr Williams. Once again I find myself reaching for Bob Dylan: “You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend.”
HUGH WRIGHT
St John’s Vicarage
Victoria Crescent, Ryde
IOW PO33 1DQ

From the Dean of Hereford
Sir, — Last Sunday, at evensong, Hereford Cathedral Voluntary Choir sang the motet “Woefully array’d” by the early-16th-century composer William Cornyshe, with its heart-rending text on the Passion: “They mowed, they grinned, they scorned me . . .” —

Thus tugged to and fro,
Thus wrapped in woe,
Wheras never man was so entreated
Thus in most cruel wise —
Woefully array’d.

This is a musical representation of The Crowning with Thorns by Hieronymus Bosch. In the painting, the cruel, grinning faces of Christ’s torturers contrast with the serenity of the central figure of Christ.

The motet was sung to show how the Passion of Christ was represented in the late Middle Ages; and yet I could not help but hear resonances of the past few days, in which our Archbishop has been subjected to the cruellest and basest media reporting for his comments on sharia law.

Never far below the surface in human nature is a tendency to point the finger, refuse to listen, and long to look down on others and bring them down. Even if the Archbishop’s expression was delphic — even if his words were misunderstood by some — surely such an action by Archbishop Williams cannot possibly deserve such bile.

Perhaps hardest of all is that some of this vitriol comes from those who suggest that they are upholding the Christian message. Woefully array’d, indeed.
MICHAEL TAVINOR
The Deanery
Hereford HR1 2NG


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