That Britain is threatened from within and without by “Islamic terrorists” is the staple message of large parts of the British press. Yes, there seems to be an orchestrated effort by the forces of the right to promote mass paranoia about Islam. If the effort is proving all too effective, it is because much of non-Muslim Britain needs no persuading that Muslims are indeed menacing aliens, a community of religious fanatics who do not and never will subscribe to “British” values.
Implicit in much of the fevered talk about Islam is the assumption that Britain has become vulnerable to terrorist attacks and Islamic subversion on account of the “misplaced deference” that has been accorded to the doctrine of multiculturalism. This was the claim of a report published last week by The Royal United Services Institute, the think-tank of Britain’s military and security establishment. Because of multiculturalism, a number of former diplomats and armed forces’ top brass maintain, Britain has suffered a loss of social cohesion and become a “soft target”. The report did not address the possibility that the loss in question might spring in the main from Britain’s espousal of neoliberal economic policies and the vast inflow of cheap foreign labur and dramatic increase in inequality which those policies have entailed.
It was predictable that the report would elicit a rather more favorable reception than did the speech made a few days beforehand by the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in which he suggested that British law and Islamic law might in certain ways seek an accommodation with one another. Williams’ words, which admittedly lacked the virtue of clarity, have bitterly divided his own church while provoking outrage among large sections of the general public. Merely because he speculated about the case for such an accommodation, the archbishop has been reviled not just as a woolly-minded intellectual but as a clerical “enemy within” who is giving succor to Islamists bent on hijacking the British way of life. “Bash the bishop”, screamed the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper, The Sun. Many would clearly welcome the opportunity to do precisely that.
In truth, Rowan Williams is a godsend to British multiculturalism’s critics. With his furrowed brows and self-effacing manner, he can be readily caricatured as a well-meaning buffoon, the very type of the 1960s liberal who is endlessly indulgent of other people’s values and beliefs, however much at odds they may be with his own. Indeed, you could say that if Rowan Williams did not exist his detractors would have had to invent him. He is the perfect scapegoat for a pathologically insecure and disorientated society rife with bigotry and intolerance.
Among his most ferocious foes is the Daily Mail columnist, Melanie Phillips. Phillips is incensed by the archbishop’s suggestion that for British law to formalize recognition of Shariah law with regard to marriage and divorce would simply be to bring Britain’s Muslims into line with the position already enjoyed in some respects by the British Jews. She accuses Williams of failing to appreciate that Jewish law is wholly subordinate to British law. What disturbs her is that Dr. Williams may be misleading British people into thinking that Jews have been granted special legal entitlements — an impression which she fears could exacerbate anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain. It clearly bothers her, too, that for Britain to recognize Shariah law in the least degree would be to hasten the onset of an Islamicized Britain, speeding the day when British Jews are subject to systematic persecution.
A self-consciously patriotic British Jew, Phillips apparently regards Judaic law as compatible with British values in ways Islamic law is not, and it is striking how closely her championship of those values is bound up with her denunciation of multiculturalism, with its alleged susceptibility to Islamic pressure. What is also striking is her insistence that Israel and the US constitute bulwarks in the defense of Western freedom. Some may feel, though, that it is Phillips, with her slavish support of foreign powers, whose credentials as a British patriot are open to question. Not that her intemperate views would deserve attention — the notion that Britain is facing Islamic takeover is patently absurd — were it not that her role as a leading opinion-former equips her with immense power to inflame public opinion.
As it happens, there are leading British Jews who have applauded the archbishop’s remarks — though they do not include Britain’s circumspect chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, chairman of the Reform movement’s Assembly of Rabbis, sees no reason why Muslims cannot have aspects of Islamic religious law recognized within the confines of civil law. Similarly, the head of Britain’s rabbinic courts, the Federation Beth Din, Dayan Yisroel Lichtenstein, believes that what the archbishop is proposing could also be of great value to British Jews.
No one, he stresses, expects Islamic or Judaic law to be incorporated into English law for criminal matters. However, he supports the scheme outlined by the archbishop according to which individuals would be free to choose the jurisdiction under which to resolve “certain carefully specified matters”, including parts of marital law and the regulation of financial transactions.
The hysteria precipitated by Rowan Williams’ speech has afforded a disquieting insight into the distempered state of the British national psyche. Still, in the long run, the archbishop could yet prove to have advanced the cause of inter-faith understanding, helping if nothing else to bring British Jews and Muslims into potentially fruitful dialogue over issues of common concern. According to a well-known Christian hymn, “God moves in mysterious ways”. The beleaguered archbishop of Canterbury may comfort himself that this will turn out to be one of them.
