Thursday, February 7, 2008

What does the Archbishop mean?

I am just trying to rouse myself. I have just dozed off while reading the full text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's lecture entitled Civil and religious law in England: a religious perspective. His arguments are intricate and elaborate. So much so, it is quite difficult to work out what he means. I wish he would communicate himself through more examples.

Is he, for example, simply talking about extending the role of the sharia courts, which already exist in Britain, to cover cases of arbitration, in the same way as ACAS or extra-court civil judicial proceedings do now?

Or is he talking about, for example, divorces granted by sharia courts being automatically recognised in English law?

In some areas he gives examples. He gives the example of Catholic adoption agencies in relation to the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Is he saying that he thinks the law should allow Catholic adoption agencies to be excluded from those regulations? It is difficult to make out whether he is saying so. It doesn't seem so. But, then again, if his pronouncements mean anything then surely he must be suggesting this, at least. Why? Surely if the any agencies don't want to work within the law then they have a choice: they can stop operating. No one is forcing them to operate.

He mentions abortion and embryology legislation:

What we don't want I think is either a stand-off where the law squares up to religious consciences over something like abortion or indeed by forcing a vote on some aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the commons as it were a secular discourse saying 'we have no room for conscientious objections'; we don't want that...

I am not actually sure what he means by this. Is he saying that the existing law on abortion or Embryology is wrong and should be amended for certain communities? I suspect not. So, presumably he is happy with the way the law has been determined up until now on these subjects, is he? If so, is he wanting some sort of veto over future laws which he or other people might object to? So, can his views be summarised as "We will obey any laws as long as we agree with them"? It would seem that his remarks could be interpreted to mean that - although it grieves me to say that and I stand to be corrected.

One might conclude that the Archbishop has, in his very measured and thoughtful way, set out to start a debate. He has certainly done that. But I fear he has merely scratched the skin, so that the subsequent debate will exacerbate the wound, rather than healing it. He is likely to generate more heat than light simply because he has not made it clear, by examples, what he means. I think that is because he doesn't know what he means. He does genuinely simply want to start a debate.

It reminds me of the saying: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there". Then again, I applaud him for trying to ventilate this subject. Sooner or later, we, as a country, will have to grow up and stop crawling up the wallpaper with hysteria everytime someone says the word "sharia". As the Archbishop explains, "Sharia is a method rather than a code of law".


Brian Sloan has written very sensibly about this.

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