LONDON — The religious head of the Anglican church sparked an angry row yesterday after saying the adoption of some parts of Islamic Shariah law alongside Britain’s legal system “seems unavoidable.”
Leaders across the political spectrum criticized Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ call for “constructive accommodation.” He was also lambasted by the press.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s official spokesman has already distanced the premier from the remarks, stressing that “British law should apply in this country, based on British values.”
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham went further, telling BBC television Williams was “wrong” and his views were a “recipe for chaos, social chaos.”
The main opposition Conservatives described the remarks as “unhelpful.”
On Thursday, Williams told BBC radio: “There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law.”
He agreed that if Britain is to achieve social cohesion, people of religious faith had to be accommodated within the law and to this end, “it seems unavoidable” that Shariah should be applied in some circumstances.
Giving an example of how Shariah could come into play, Williams said: “There are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.”
Williams said there could be no place for “a kind of inhumanity that sometimes appears to be associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states — the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women.”
He also called on people in Britain to look at Shariah “with a clearer eye”. If the law did not take more account of minority communities, there would be “no way of legally monitoring what communities do” and levels of oppression could intensify as “people do what they like in private,” he added.
