Soul and Spirit

Rowan Williams, the most senior figure in the Church of England, said that giving Islamic law official status in the UK would help achieve social cohesion because some Muslims did not relate to the British legal system.

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Williams said introducing sharia law would mean Muslims would no longer have to choose between two systems.

“If what we want socially is a pattern of relations in which a plurality of diverse and overlapping affiliations work for a common good, and in which groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty, it seems unavoidable.”

He compared the situation to faith schools, where “communal loyalties” were brought into direct contact with wider society, leading to mutual questioning and mutual influence towards change, without compromising the “distinctiveness of the essential elements of those communal loyalties”.

Earlier, in a BBC interview, he was more succinct. He said it was a “matter of fact” that sharia law was already being practised in Britain.

“It’s not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival system; we already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land … There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law as we already do with some kinds of aspects of other religious law.”

“Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that has sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states: the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women,” he said, according to a Times report.

“But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them,” he said.

Williams claimed Orthodox Jewish courts already are in operation in Britain, and the pro-life views of Catholics and other Christians are “accommodated within the law.”

However, Alistair McBay of the National Secular Society said Rowan’s comments “directly undermine” the concept of citizens being equal under the law.

“We have segregated schools, segregated scout groups and even segregated toilets for Muslims, and now the archbishop says we should have different laws. It’s madness,” he said.