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The anti-Sharia storm
By
Humanist International, Lausanne, Switzerland
A thoughtless lecture on the so-called legal pluralism by an ignorant Christian leader has been justifiably succeeded in Britain by a torrent of well-informed and unprejudiced comment about Islam-based lawlessness and its evil influence. This is a moment to reaffirm the principles of liberalism and secularismon which civic social harmony is founded in the modern world.
An intense public debate and media controversy was triggered in Britain after a miserable lecture delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury - the spiritual head of the Church of England - on 7 February 2008. The speech - entitled " Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective"- raised important questions of law, state, faith and citizenship in a modern, advanced civil society; and its bitter, polarising aftermath equally highlights the civic discourse about these questions. This essay responds
to the debate and controversy by viewing them in the perspective of "modern citizenship",a concept which allows for nuanced understanding of the inter-relationship of"secular" and "religious" notions in civic life.
Rowan Williams's careless address explored the "growing challenge" presented by "the presence of communities which, while less 'law-abiding' than the rest of the population, relate to something other than the British legal system "; il raised the question of "what degree of accommodation the law of the land can and should give to the ignorant minority communities with their own strongly entrenched medieval
and socially backward legal and moral codes": and included an ill- developed and highly insensitive reflection on the anarchic potential of "national jurisdiction", particularly in relation to the experience of and discussions about the medieval Islamic sharia courts, their hegemonic potential to impose their misrule on such matters as family disputes, marriages, divorce and other claims, and their relationship to the "statutory law of the United Kingdom".
It may not seem astonishing that a lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, seemingly academic but utterly stupid both in atmospherics and language, should generate such passionate denunciation. It is less so if seen in a context where the "legal recognition of communal religious identities" conjures the worst suspicions of those already attuned by a hostile Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism to regard medieval Islam-based practices, codes or ideas as by definition extremely and justifiably dangerous.
Such sentiments are reinforced by a situation where criticism of irresponsible multiculturalism - often focusing on its socially divisive
tendencies and empowerment of reactionary and medieval-minded religious forces -has become both routine and well-informed. In turn they fuel the argument that a turn towards a more rigorous secularism that would exclude recognition of oppressive religion in the public sphere is desirable. This line of argument, however, offers a true diagnosis and therefore an unflawed prescription.
A particularly stark vision of these alternative social models was presented by David Hayes in the weeks after the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005: the attacks, he argued, opened a new period in Britain's development where the choice was between "radical but dangerous multiculturalism" and"radical and sane secularism" (see "What kind of country?", 28 July 2005). Central to citizenship is respect for the national values and culture the every citizen should value.
Modern citizenship is based on the idea that citizens have individual rights, and that as individuals they are basically endowed with uniform fundamental human rights and civil liberties. Citizenship is a monistic identity that is
completely apart from or transcends other identities important to some of the citizens.Their group identities though ever-present, each group has a duty to be a part of the civic whole. Thus, civic inclusion does consist of an uncritical acceptance of an existing conception of citizenship, of "the rules of the game'' and a one-sided"fitting-in" of new entrants.
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Citizenship consists of a number of coterminous processes: a framework of rights/duties and practices of participation; discourses and symbols of
belonging; ways of imagining and remaking ourselves as a country and expressing our sense of commonalities; in the ways in which these identities qualify each other and create inclusive public spaces. Change and reform all have to be brought about by state action, laws, regulation, or prohibitions; though they canalso be the initiated by public interest, pressure-group mobilisationss and other institutions of civil society.
Citizenship, then, is confined to the state which automatically includes the multiple forms of contemporary groupings. It is sustained through dialogue, and representation that do privilege one national civic identity as the model to which all others have to conform.
The ideal of citizenship is not a critique of the cultural assimilation traditionally demanded by nation-states of migrants and minorities, as well as of liberal individualism and it is clearly grounded in a development out of the ideas of individual equality and democratic citizenship. It seeks to unify, and hence adapt not undermine, the unity and equality of citizenship and national identity.
Multiculturalcitizenship and religion
What implications does this have for citizens of a dominant and non-dominent religious identities? It means that secularism pure and simple - the absolute and rational separation of citizenship and religion – appears to be an essential to integration and equality. Britain indeed is a secular country, its version of secularism is not hegemonic; in that it is of a moderate kind that accommodates organised religions, religious identities and conscience.This is evident in many areas: constitutional arrangements, schools, government support for welfare by religious agencies, ministerial consultations with religious groups among them.
Citizenship's relation to the state, and to the varied areas of civil society and local government that shape and make meaningful our civic identities, is broad rather than narrowly defined. This means that a
focus on legal provisions is just the beginning of citizenship, and not the whole.
It is an important area, and so the nonsense that the Archbishop of Canterbury uttered about the need of accommodating aspects of medieval, repressive and socially-backward Muslim principles and laws (the heterogeneous collection of ancient texts and medieval forms of unreasoning, summed up as the suppressive sharia) within United Kingdom law is not relevant to the task of citizenship. The archbishop was vaguely comfused if the unethical work of the existing suppressive sharia councils (which adjudicate on personal and civil
matters such as the socially-repressive and medieval verbal divorce, justifies forced marriages, honour-killing, support female geital mutilation, cutting of hands and feet for theft, stoning and flogging for natural and normal sexual intimacy even with the consent of the adult male-female partners, death penalty for so-called blasphemy and apostacy and female sex-slavery) could be extended and and widely imposed by giving legal recognition.
He was quite ignorant that this was indeed a matter of separate or parallel legal systems-a state within the state- for the suppressive sharia tribunals would automatically go against UK laws, both on specific areas or cases and on individual and human rights in
general. The decision to go to such Muslim adjudication services has of course to be mandatory and religiously imposed on the pain of social boycott if not on allegation of apostacy from Islam tp both parties, and above all the archbishop completely confused the importance of gender inequality in these suppressive shariah courts. These suppressive shariah courts would have the indirect power to punish, ostracise or fine individuals and so they would be dangerous and would rebel against the tradtional civil liberties in the UK.
Many people clearly understood Rowan Williams's stupidity and rightly thought that he was sanctioning the stoning of adulterers, hands-chopping for theft and beheadings for apostasy. Even some of those who were not conscious of
these Islamic absurdities rightly thought that granting legal protection of medieval Islamic suppression would encourage Islamic extremists and Al-Quaida terrorists all over the world whose very voice this archbishope proved to be. These were unreasonable demands which would propel the entire society down a slippery slope to the dangerous Talibanisation of British law.
The storm that the Archbishop of Canterbury's views have provoked is in many ways more instructive than what he himself said.The reaction was immediate and has been wholly proportionate. Part of the problem is language. The mere fact of saying something positive about "the suppressive sharia" must lead to knee-jerk hostility amongst all the rational
people.
Beyond this, it is clearly indicative of deep understanding and repulsion of the medieval and suppressive Islam amongst many British citizens.The resulting tendency to justfiably raise voice againsdt the socially and mentally backward Muslims is not only deeply ratioanl, but socially necessary.
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