Following on from my post yesterday, I scanned the front pages of the main British papers today; with one or two mild exceptions, the headlines – including the Guardian – were pretty damning (David Blunkett was admirably blunt; proof that the former Home Secretary has his good points). As far as the general thrust of commentary is concerned, as well as the straight news reports, the tone is that the Archbishop has made a right royal berk of himself.
I disagree with fellow Samizdata contributor Guy Herbert that the Archbishop is not an ‘ass’ but guilty at most of over-optimism; frankly, a man of such supposed learned views as Dr Williams should know that a religion that has a legal code that applies to women in the way that it does is outrageous; doubly outrageous, considering that the Church, with all its faults, has in the past acted as a moral beacon on stirring up consciences on issues like the slave trade. I am sure there are admirable aspects of sharia: it is hard to believe that it would not have died out were it not to have contained such features. But let’s be crystal clear: if the Archbishop thinks it is right that whole groups of the UK population can choose to deal with issues like marriage, divorce and treatment of women outside the structure of the English Common law and its insistence upon treatment of women as consenting adults in matters of marriage, then he might as well hang up his cassock.
I do not know if he will resign over this, or indeed if it is right and proper for anyone to call for his sacking. Some commenters might know of how these things work, but it seems to me that the General Synod of the Church of England might want to discuss this issue, vigorously.
Could you point out any successful societies which have Sharia,also sans oil.
As Elizabeth I may have written to the Bishop of Ely:
“Proud Prelate, you know what you were before I made you what you are. If you do not immediately comply with my request, I will unfrock you, by God!”
Perhaps our current monarch could write something similar to the Archbishop to express her disquiet as Defender of the Faith?
When I read a post like this, on this blog no less, I know that Britain is lost.
When I read a post like this, on this blog no less, I know that Britain is lost.
Roark, not lost, just in a holding pattern. I think the sheer venom of the reaction is actually quite encouraging.
I am impressed, I listened to yesterdays The World Tonight and the Today Program over the internet today, and I was surprised at the vehemence of the response.
In this matter even the slimes of NewLab showed a trace of being vertebrates.
The Evening Standard has a very damning story today.
Not what the archbishop was suggesting, but unfortunately for him, it appears that some London boroughs are (in a small number of cases) already seeking to delegate criminal law to “community” courts. Utterly outrageous.
That ought to be the end of the Dr Williams, but the way these things work, I severely doubt any social-workers or policemen involved in the actual scheme will be
There is a glimmer of hope, of course, for Britain. Every time an idiot like Williams opens his unthinking mouth, every time fresh lunacy (and violence) from the Religion of Peace is reported, the average Brit gets ready and will one day bite back.
We have been threatened before and come through it. I have no doubt that we will overcome all the insults and sneers heaped on us by anti-west muslims in our midst and when we are ready we will restore Britain.
But the one thing that puzzles us all as we prepare is why are so many of our vain “leaders” so vehemently anti-British? Why do they mock us and seek to dismantle all that we are? There must be something in it for them that we have not seen yet…
They once, long ago, ran a contest for the most sensationalist headline. One of the candidates was:
“Pope elopes with married woman”
Now we have a real life story:
“The Archbishop of Canterbury adopts sharia”
Amen Roark. The Ron Paul fetish was bad enough, but this equivocating about the bleeding obvious has done it for me. Either Britons defend their own church or kiss their own arses good-bye.
Bleh! By this logic authoritarianism must have something going for it because its been around a while.
Ron Brick,
Could you point out any successful societies…
Not being a collectivist, I don’t have any criteria for the “success” of a society, and in fact no idea of a society as a coherent closed entity at all.
“But the one thing that puzzles us all as we prepare is why are so many of our vain “leaders” so vehemently anti-British? Why do they mock us and seek to dismantle all that we are? There must be something in it for them that we have not seen yet…”
Oh come on it’s not like they want to remove any sort of positive patriotic sentiment attached to Britain’s past from the history classroom …. oh wait…
My view is that this needs to be looked at in terms of belief systems. People do what they do based on what they believe at a fundamental level. Religions are a subset of belief systems, but belief systems aren’t necessarily religious or quasi-religious (all humans are mammals, but not all mammals are humans). People will do the craziest things if their fundamental beliefs impell them in that direction, even things which demonstrably harm themselves; e.g. self mortification or even voluntary suicide. So we shouldn’t assume that even sane people are always acting rationally in their own self interest.
A generalised axiom of the progressive belief system is that the western world is a bad thing., which sort of descended from a starting point that capitalism is evil, but now ecompasses a wide range of evils; the west destroys the environment, the west oppressses other people, the west is a selfish cancer. The progressive ideal didn’t start this way. Its original intent was to make things better through technocracy (to put it very vaguely). If you look at it historically, early progressives were effectively about spreading “the best of the west” to the whole world. But through Marxism etc, they came to see everything about their own societies as corrupt, oppressive and evil.
Thus at a fundamental level, people infected with this memecloud are impelled to tear down everything western and to elevate everything non-western as superior, however odious those non-western things might seem to other people like perhaps us lot here. THey’re not per se trying to destroy the western world, they’re trying to root out all the bad things from the western world; the problem is that through their cognitive filter, everything western they look at looks evil, except for their own belief system, that is. Britain for instance is seen as too white, too British, too Christian, too capitalist, too sexist. It leads them to the bizarre situation in despairing of the lesser sexism in the west, while ignoring the far greater sexism in another culture as “culturally appropriate”.
They’ve reached the point, long ago, of believing that there is no valid western culture, that their own society is somehow an aberration and a stain on the planet that needs to be cleaned off. Thus a British cultural festival, or British religious tradition, is seen as an embodiment of all the bad things they believe characterise the western world- racism, misogyny, greed, oppression, imperialism. I think it’s far to use the term here that Roger Scruton coined- “oikophobia”- literally a fear and hatred of the home but meaning a fear and hatred of the self, broadly.
So they’re not doing this because there’s “something in it for them[selves]”. They’re doing it because they’re driven by fundamental beliefs that shape their entire view of the world.
No, I am not saying that a belief system must have some good points simply because it is ancient, but 14 or so centuries of belief counts for something, though not a lot. Most religious beliefs, like secular ones – see Ian B’s excellent comment immediatley above this one – draw on the deep human need to feel that one’s life has value, that one has some sort of worth, that one is good. Now an awful lot of philosophical bollocks gets produced in the course of this, but I doubt that most Muslims believe that their religion is nonsense, or malevolent, etc. And while a lot of that religion has been maintained by violent conquest, it has not relied on fear entirely.
Mr Herbert,
“Not being a collectivist, I don’t have any criteria for the “success” of a society, and in fact no idea of a society as a coherent closed entity at all.”
Can’t miss them, they are the ones where the libertarians aren’t dangling from the end of a crane.
A ‘society’ is real, but it is just a shifting aggregate of emergent properties.
And hence neither coherent nor closed.
Ian B,
That is a very good sumation on what is wrong with “The Left”.
Johnathan Pearce,
The word you are looking for is belonging. As Roger Scruton says, the point of culture (in the multi-cultural sense) is to provide a feeling of belonging; being able to determine who belongs and who doesn’t in a society. Which is why Mr Scruton attacks multi-culturalism as essentially self-defeating; a “culture” where everyone can automatically belong, is not providing the basic needs required of it.
Mosques into churches, it’s very simple.
There are a lot of people out there who believe that the resources of the world are limited as opposed to capable of near infinite expansion and they quite sincerely believe that if one has something it was taken from someone else.
They believe in the pie theory and if you, for example in the UK have a bigger slice than Somalia then it was acquired through some sort of nefarious chicanery. We owe them – that’s the mantra. Instead of joyously acclaiming our good fortune for being what we are and doing what we do/did so wonderfully well we shake and quake at our past sins and misdeeds.
What my children like to label, in the irreverent way children have of taking the mick out of their elders, Millie’s loony theories is the one that any Asian or African societies that were colonised by the Europeans had to be basket cases in the first place. And just look at them in the post colonial period – basket cases all. We have nothing to learn from cultures that are still waiting for a Thomas Crapper to bring them into the 21at century.
Belonging is a big part of it, but not the only or even the dominant part. Religion feeds on many different aspects of human nature. That is why it is so deeply embedded, and why atheism or skepticism, despite the advances of science etc, is still seen by many intelligent folk as somehow evil.
Millie – That’s nineteenth century, not twenty first century, other than that spot on.
On the subject of unworldly Dr Williams. Best he quietens down and resigns – sharpish.
I watched a fascinating set of interviews on BBC News 24 with Muslim women in Bradford. They were not exactly pleased with Williams and they had nothing but praise for UK law including and especially divorce law.
Good heavens, if there were ever a better example of a cowardly old appeaser who should be expeditiously sacked, I have yet to see it. If the man had any decency, he would resign. But he won’t because, as it ever is with appeasers, “it” is all about “him” and the evidence is abundantly clear that he is presently holding the best job he could ever hope to get.
Perhaps this is news to you, but exactly the same sort of parallel system for marriage and divorce has existed for decades (if not centuries) in both the US and UK. It’s the system that Orthodox Jews live under–using Jewish law to decide all such questions (although obviously no one even thinks of executing someone for adultery).
The key difference is that secular law is also respected and partially enforced. A rabbi will not allow a marriage that is not allowed by secular law, and religious divorces are not given unless a secular divorce has been granted, or at least is in process. But women still get unfair treatment in many cases because the husband can block a religious divorce, which gives him the power to force a woman to accept a raw deal in the secular courts, or even to keep her undivorced for years, so as to escape alimony/child support payments. (Google agunah if you want more details.)
However, no one seems to notice in outside circles, and this doesn’t seem to be the problem that is tumbling the US and UK down.
kishnevi :
The wife’s local Beth Din can grant her request command the husband to give her a divorce.
Also, I am curious to know why the woman in question would have to accept a raw deal in the secular courts? Do you mean in general or in comparison to what she’d have gotten from the Beth Din?
…request and command… that is.
I have this image in my head of that great scene from 300 with King Leonidas replaced by Churchill and the Persia dude replaced by the Archbishop.
Repeat after me: THIS! IS! ENGLAND!
When I commented on this site a few days ago that Sharia law would bring down the UK before an encroaching EU did, a reader wrote in that I (and Americans in general) was clueless. Today, madam, I think we have a clue that even you can recognize.
I despair of my adopted sect. We’ve got Rowen Williams with this silliness, Katharine Schori’s statement that American Episcopalians understand that they’re called to have fewer children so they don’t use up so much of the Earth’s earthiness, that Episcopal priest in Seattle – a woman – who’s also a practicing Muslim and sees no dissonance there (to say nothing of the fact that her superiors apparently see no dissonance there either)… Why again did I migrate from Catholicism?
It’s like that old saw about not having such an open mind that the wind whistles through it.
No actually, you are still clueless and in view of the resulting shit storm from across the political spectrum, you have even less excuse now. If you had any notion that even the vaguest prospect of sharia in the UK would would be broadly greeted with a resigned shrug, well now you know otherwise.
Is Islam the fastest growing religion in the UK? No, Catholicism is. Are Muslims the fastest growing immigrant group? No, Christian Eastern Europeans are (half of Poland seems to be heading for the UK). How is Sharia going to ‘bring down the UK’? Please lay it out for us how a culturally and economically weak community of practising Muslims is going to do that.
I am all for responding vigorously to the actual threats posted by Muslim extremists and intolerant Islamic culture, but the notion Britain as a nation will ‘be swept away’ by these clowns is just laughable.
The UK probably will vanish at some point but it will be because enough people in England/Scotland/Wales/NI see little value in political union. Islam is a transient side issue of little importance in the long run.
Somebody up there said:
Britain is only a Christian society because most of us can’t be arsed to actively opt out. For most people in this country the church is a irrelevance. I have no interest in defending the CofE. It can stand or fall for itself.
What I am interested in securing is equality before the law. Unless and until Islam gets its own version of the Reformation, that won’t happen with Sharia. Prof Ramadan on Newsnight tonight was arguing that the stoning and handchopping versions are not the only interpretation. He may be right, I don’t know – but all the evidence I have available suggests that it one of the most dominant.
Got to agree with Ian. If the CofE vanished tomorrow, most of England would shrug their shoulders and turn to see the sports results at the back of the newspaper.
The fact the archbishop actually provoked us is, in retrospect, probably a story in and of itself given how utterly irrelevant religion is to most people in the UK.
Now that I think about it, this indifference to religion may also be precisely why a dislike of something so intrusively religious as sharia runs so deep in the normally somnambulant British public and why this sparked off such a shit storm of fury. What say you, Ian?
The British have never been very religious.We don’t want ours and we don’t want theirs.
Now if the Human Trowel will kindly stop digging.
Mr. Boswell–the Bet Din can order the husband to give a divorce, but the husband can ignore that order with impunity. A woman can not initiate a Jewish religious divorce on her own unless the husband cooperates in some degree. There are a multitude of cases in which the husband has refused to allow a divorce unless the woman gives in to extreme financial demands that effectively leave her in poverty and without means to support herself and their children. Some rabbis will do what they can to do alleviate the problem by publicly condemning the husband or finding technical grounds to annul the original marriage, but many won’t do anything, and a Jewish woman who seeks a divorce suffers from extreme disadvantages.
As an indication of women’s status in Jewish legal matters, they are officially barred from being witnesses in court cases along with children, mutes, and slaves. (Straight out of the Talmud.) (This is one of the reasons that women are not accepted as rabbis by the Orthodox, because they can not act as witnesses.)
I think you’re not quite right on that one Perry. The British en masse may be somewhat indifferent to christianity, but I think most british people expect it to be there. They see it as a cultural constant. If you were to ask the average bod what religion Britain is, they’d say “it’s a christian country”. They may not be deeply religious, but they expect it to be that way. The church is an expected British landmark, the mosque an alien invader. It’s a cultural identity thing. If the CofE were abolished, I think you’d see a surprising degree of outrage.
And having typed the above, I think it worth mentioning that declaring “an average level of religiousness” of some population e.g. English people is kind of irrelevant, because even if that average is quite low, there are many people who consider themselves strongly christian.
At the very least, the average man in the street expects the notional leader of the Church Of England to be in some way a christian. It’s not at all clear you can even say that about Dr Moonbat.
The shitstorm against sharia is because people find it repugnant and terrifying and, at a gut level, do not want it in their midst. Mass immigration has been imposed on the great unwashed without their consultation nor consent. They’ve done their best to deal with it as best they could, but have realised that it has brought dangerous and evil things among them, and there is a genuine and valid reaction of cultural panic regarding that. The frontline of this cultural invasion is at working class street level. It’s easy for the well heeled, insulated from that front line, to pontificate about it being no big deal or how people should embrace change, when they don’t have to face the intimidation, violence and loss of environment.
People are scared. They fear what the government/ruling class will do to them next. To many, Dr. Moonbat’s utterances sound like what they strongly suspect will indeed be imposed on the voiceless masses next. People aren’t stupid. They can see where this thing is heading. You don’t have to extrapolate current trends far before you realise that this culturally suicidal idea will soon be seriously on the agenda, and then it will happen, and then…
The case of Rowan Williams resembles that of an inebriated alcoholiker; It takes a second to produce a big spaut of vomit, it takes a half an hour to clean it…
The slaves of god rejoice that we dwell in the land the Elizabeth the Second, Anthony Blair, and Gordon Brown, because we have no doubt what Elizabeth the First would have done if her Archbishop suggested the use of superior Moslem law in England! Venomous talk and calls for resignation are the ineffectual berating the ignorant.
Exactly what Ian B said, with the addition that for many Brits we may be nominally Christian but we can join it if we want or we can choose to stand back from it. No penalties imposed, none expected.
Islam – were this darkness to descend utterly on us and allowed to grow here in any way, sharia or whatever – would not allow us to withdraw from it, or declare it corrupt or useless or immaterial to our life. We are apostates anyway so the necessary revenge on us would be swift. Islam would become central to all actions, and all sorts of people would suffer in its name.
I can accept in some tribal areas of the Middle East that Islam has become a useful tool for one person or group to control another. It was barabaric enough to start with, but has been to various rulers’ satisfaction re-interpreted to have even more control and negativity. Islam whatever its claims for scholarship and sciences in the past can currently have little or no claim to any semblance of progress or enlightenment.
And yet our so-called leaders and the vain witterings of supposedly intelligent columnists, backed by a compliant BBC, like the idea of embracing this darkness as part of our nation’s future. Or rather they want ordinary people to bear the brunt of trying to cope with it on their behalf.
The moonbats may think they can escape it somehow, but they haven’t even begun to see the reality. And when it does penetrate their ivory towers, it may be far too late.
I think there is an innate stoicism in Britain that allows things to drfit. I don’t however think we are immune to the sort of internecine strife that happened in the Balkans or is happening now across Africa. Although not Britain but with an extensive shared history, the Irish Civil War was extremely bitter and further back so was the English Civil War. The intensity of feeling on Clydeside between the wars and during the first Miners strike are also indicative.
That is why the backlash against even discussing Sharia law – and I hope any religious law – is both hopeful and worrying. On the one hand it may give the politicians pause for thought, but on the other it may provoke the sort of inter-communal violence I mentioned earlier.
Despite what many people here think, there are many Muslims who do not want to see Sharia law applied – not just women. They welcome the opportunity to live in a liberal, secular society. I think to them it looks like Arch. Williams has sold them out. I do wonder if in fact he was hoping to sow the seed for Christian based courts. If he was then he was a) being rather unChristianly devious and b) heading out onto an exceedingly slippery slope.
What the Archbishop is trying to do is to create a coalition to defend (and possibly extend) privileges of the C of E.
Right now, there’s talk of scrapping the blasphemy laws in this country. The archbishop knows that trying to defend it is impossible – one religion shouldn’t have that right. But he does think that he might be able to get something to replace it that covers all religions.
This what this is about, trying to create a union of faiths to work together to get more special pleading.
Thankfully, it’s backfired spectacularly, and with a bit of luck, the public and politicians will be more open to abolishing the remaining privileges afforded to the Church of England by the state.
Tim –
less rationally (from the Archbishop’s POV) he actually argues in his recent speech that only minority religions without access to “privileged discourse” should be protected from offensive speech. This would clearly seem to exclude the CoE, though probably include Islam. The Archbishop is patently a masochist.
Offensive Speech? Offensive Speech!>/em>. Not libel, not slander, not even blasphemy but merely offense.
So, if they don’t like it… Oh, the hell with you Williams.
Now, please fucketh off in the direction of Tehran or Riyadh.
DK covered this a while back and my wife explained bits of it to me today.
We’ve all gotta just be nice. Ain’t that nice. Let’s just respect hogwash because that’s the nice thing to do.
Kumbayah my* Lord, Kumbayah…
*Or anyone elses… We have to respect all belief systems so much that… Well go figure for yourself.