The Anglican Church likened the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposal for accommodating Muslim law to the British Beth Din.
Rowan Williams stirred a firestorm in Britain this week when it was reported that he said in a lecture and in a BBC interview that sharia, or Islamic religious law, in Britain was “inevitable.” The controversy has led to calls for his resignation.
In his defense, the church released a statement saying that was addressing the complexities of a religiously pluralist society.
“In his lecture, the Archbishop sought carefully to explore the limits of a unitary and secular legal system in the presence of an increasingly plural (including religiously plural) society and to see how such a unitary system might be able to accommodate religious claims,” said the statement. “Behind this is the underlying principle that Christians cannot claim exceptions from a secular unitary system on religious grounds (for instance in situations where Christian doctors might not be compelled to perform abortions), if they are not willing to consider how a unitary system can accommodate other religious consciences. In doing so the Archbishop was not suggesting the introduction of parallel legal jurisdictions, but exploring ways in which reasonable accommodation might be made within existing arrangements for religious conscience.”
In an apparent reference to the British Jewish religious court system, which is empowered to adjudicate divorces, some business disputes and other matters, the statement later pointed out that “this is what currently happens both within the Jewish arrangements and increasingly in current alternative dispute resolution and mediation practice.”
The BBC interview also includes a reference by the archbishop to the Beth Din system.
“I don’t think we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights simply because it doesn’t immediately fit with how we understand it, and as I said earlier, it’s not something that’s absolutely peculiar to Islam,” he said. “We have Orthodox Jewish courts operating in this country legally and in a regulated way because there are modes of dispute resolution and customary provisions which apply there in the light of Talmud.”
