Archbishop's remarks fail to reveal true meaning

Published on Thursday 7 February 2008 21:16

IT WAS only too predictable there would be a public row following the statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that the introduction of Sharia law in the UK was ultimately "unavoidable". Dr Williams sees it as his mission to provoke debate on the great moral and political questions of the day, and there is nothing wrong with that – especially as elected politicians are increasingly unwilling to venture beyond platitudes.

Dr Williams may also have been trying to distance himself from the comments of the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who recently made the headlines by saying that non-Muslims find it hard to live and work in Muslim areas of England.

However, the archbishop's bald statement has generated more heat than light. For a start: just what does he mean? Is Dr Williams suggesting that Muslims (or any other religious group for that matter) should be free to adopt and live under a completely separate body of criminal and civil law from the rest of the nation? Clearly, such a proposal is impossible in practice: uniform laws are what define a community. How can you have different criminal or business laws for different people in the same place? And would people be free to opt for a different set of legal obligations if the mood took them? If not, who would assign people to live under the different legal jurisdictions – especially if they did not want to?

Even if this set-up were possible in practice, the idea that having different laws for different groups would aid community cohesion seems risible.

Dr Williams might have been implying something less extreme. It is already the case that voluntary civil arbitration in the UK can be handled by religious courts. Many British Jews use their own "courts" – the Beth Din – to resolve matters covering issues from business disputes to divorce settlements. But the service provided by the Beth Din is restricted to binding civil arbitration and they do not replace UK laws. The same holds true for Sharia courts in the Muslim community in Britain.

The archbishop might have been thinking about extending and codifying this useful and acceptable voluntary approach. However, as this option is already available to Muslim and other communities, it is difficult to see it as the major change implied in Dr Williams's choice of language. Unfortunately, by speaking off the cuff and without clarification, the archbishop has probably confused the debate on multiculturalism and social cohesion, rather than added any enlightenment.

Rightly, Britain has always been flexible in finding ways for immigrant communities to adapt and integrate – witness the availability of state-funded Catholic schools. But no-one ever suggested such schools should teach a different academic curriculum. Public life would be duller without Dr Williams, but he needs to talk more in specifics and less in generalities.