Kathianne
02-10-2008, 12:56 PM
Sharia alongside English law. Uh huh!
I thought this was already on the board, (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/492106/the-archbishops-speech.thtml) if it is I can't find it. It's creating more than a bit of outrage across the pond:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/495671/dhimmi-or-just-dim.thtml
Dhimmi — or just dim?
Saturday, 9th February 2008
The man doesn’t even have the courage of his lack of convictions. Far from defending what he actually said about sharia law, the Archbishop of Canterbury is fighting to save his job by frantically back-tracking and claiming he has been misunderstood. It was all got up by the tabloids… no-one actually read the lecture… people have jumped to the wrong conclusion from a few misleading headlines. Ye gods. What planet is he living on? Everyone heard what the man actually said on the World at One; by now, many have heroically ploughed through his lecture as well. It is the words that he actually uttered that have caused unprecedented numbers to take to their keyboards in outrage. And it is the words that he actually uttered that make the statement on his website attempting to justify himself, written in the third person by an anonymous apparatchik at Lambeth Palace, disingenuous to the point of being seriously misleading.
The statement says:
The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law. Instead, in the interview, rather than proposing a parallel system of law, he observed that ‘as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law’. When the question was put to him that: ‘the application of sharia in certain circumstances - if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion - seems unavoidable’, he indicated his assent.
This implies that it was only in answering a question that he coyly agreed that the use of sharia was unavoidable. But he was actually promoting this idea himself as a desirable development. And as for not having proposed a parallel system of law, this is simply untrue. In his lecture, he said in terms that he was talking about the state recognising sharia in certain circumstances as a ‘supplementary jurisdiction’. It was a central argument of this lecture that the state, which already recognised some provisions of sharia (alas, too true) should recognise other provisions such as family law, and that individuals should be able to choose which system they wanted, in
…a scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters, so that ‘power-holders are forced to compete for the loyalty of their shared constituents’. This may include aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution – the main areas that have been in question where supplementary jurisdictions have been tried, with native American communities in Canada as well as with religious groups like Islamic minority communities in certain contexts.
That means two systems existing side by side with equal status. In other words, parallel systems....
I thought this was already on the board, (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/492106/the-archbishops-speech.thtml) if it is I can't find it. It's creating more than a bit of outrage across the pond:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/495671/dhimmi-or-just-dim.thtml
Dhimmi — or just dim?
Saturday, 9th February 2008
The man doesn’t even have the courage of his lack of convictions. Far from defending what he actually said about sharia law, the Archbishop of Canterbury is fighting to save his job by frantically back-tracking and claiming he has been misunderstood. It was all got up by the tabloids… no-one actually read the lecture… people have jumped to the wrong conclusion from a few misleading headlines. Ye gods. What planet is he living on? Everyone heard what the man actually said on the World at One; by now, many have heroically ploughed through his lecture as well. It is the words that he actually uttered that have caused unprecedented numbers to take to their keyboards in outrage. And it is the words that he actually uttered that make the statement on his website attempting to justify himself, written in the third person by an anonymous apparatchik at Lambeth Palace, disingenuous to the point of being seriously misleading.
The statement says:
The Archbishop made no proposals for sharia in either the lecture or the interview, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law. Instead, in the interview, rather than proposing a parallel system of law, he observed that ‘as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law’. When the question was put to him that: ‘the application of sharia in certain circumstances - if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion - seems unavoidable’, he indicated his assent.
This implies that it was only in answering a question that he coyly agreed that the use of sharia was unavoidable. But he was actually promoting this idea himself as a desirable development. And as for not having proposed a parallel system of law, this is simply untrue. In his lecture, he said in terms that he was talking about the state recognising sharia in certain circumstances as a ‘supplementary jurisdiction’. It was a central argument of this lecture that the state, which already recognised some provisions of sharia (alas, too true) should recognise other provisions such as family law, and that individuals should be able to choose which system they wanted, in
…a scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters, so that ‘power-holders are forced to compete for the loyalty of their shared constituents’. This may include aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution – the main areas that have been in question where supplementary jurisdictions have been tried, with native American communities in Canada as well as with religious groups like Islamic minority communities in certain contexts.
That means two systems existing side by side with equal status. In other words, parallel systems....