The Archbishop of Canterbury supports Sharia Law in the UK

I know it sounds insane, but it’s true.

The BBC is reporting on an interview he gave, in which he argued that many Muslims don’t relate to British law and would seek to practice Sharia Law anyway. To avoid this going underground, or being a source of cultural tensions, he thinks we should implement “aspects” of Sharia Law in a controlled way, in order to “maintain social cohesion.” It sounds sort-of reasonable on the face of it, until you ask how exactly it’s going to maintain social cohesion, and remember exactly what particular wedge this could be thin end of. Dr Williams know this, and he says:

nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that’s sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well

But what he either doesn’t know or doesn’t say is that you can’t draw that distinction in a useful way. This is what Sharia Law is about, it’s not some optional extra that sits on top of a bunch of more acceptable legal constructs. Of course there is more to Sharia Law than oppressing non-Muslims and brutalising women, and it would (arguably) be possible to implement some of the less offensive aspects of it in the UK — but that wouldn’t help. And this is why it would have no positive effect on social-cohesion: No one who can’t relate to the British legal system is having a problem with the way it handles financial matters or what bank holidays we have; that feeling of alienation doesn’t stem from minor administrative details, it comes from a fundamental disconnect with the basis of the law. British law is, by and large, secular, egalitarian and liberal; Sharia Law is none of those things; it’s religiously motivated, patriarchal and authoritarian, and those are exactly the features that the Muslims who can’t abide by UK law want to see introduced. Making a few token gestures won’t appease those people, but it will give them a sense of momentum and a legal precedent for Sharia Law being enacted in the UK. I don’t know about Dr Williams, but that’s not a situation I want to find myself in.

Actually, I think I do know about Dr Williams. I’m sure he doesn’t want Sharia Law to make significant headway in the UK – he’s a civilised man, after all — but, as is so often the case with the religious, he sees any religion as better than no religion, to the point that he thinks any religion is due special privilege:

What we don’t want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people’s religious consciences.

Personally, I’d like to rephrase that second paragraph as “What we don’t want either, is I think, a stand-off, where people’s religious consciences lead them to claim special privilege to break the law that applies to everyone else.” But then, Dr Williams doesn’t believe in the law as I understand it:

An approach to law which simply said — there’s one law for everybody — I think that’s a bit of a danger

OK — what? What is the law if it doesn’t apply to everybody? It’s nothing more than a tool of oppression, and an educated man like Dr Williams should be ashamed of himself for even suggesting it. The law, one law, must apply to all people equally, otherwise we have no claim to be a liberal, free society, and we might, as Dr Williams suggests, resign ourselves to being on the inexorable path to Sharia Law.

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Standard disclaimer: I have nothing against the vast majority of Muslims, and have a lot of respect for many of them. It’s the barbaric misogynists who believe that women are property to be used and abused as men see fit, that it’s perfectly reasonable to behead “the enemies of Islam,” and (most importantly) that the “law of God” is the only one to which they are beholden, that I’m talking about here.