LONDON — The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans yesterday strongly defended his comments suggesting that the introduction of some aspects of Islamic law (Shariah) was unavoidable in today’s multicultural society in Britain.
The archbishop, who can only be removed by the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, is said to have been visibly shocked by the widespread criticism of his remarks. A statement on his official website said that “The Archbishop made no proposals for the Shariah ... and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law.”
However, at least two members of the General Synod (the supreme ruling council of the Church of England) have called for Williams to resign following the row. One member, Col. Edward Armitstead from the diocese of Bath and Wells, told the Daily Telegraph: “I don’t think he is the man for the job. One wants to be charitable, but I sense that he would be far happier in a university where he can kick around these sorts of ideas.”
Another General Synod member from London, Alison Ruoff, said: “Many people, huge numbers of people, would be greatly relieved [if he resigned] because he sits on the fence over all sorts of things and we need strong, Christian, biblical leadership right now, as opposed to somebody who huffs and puffs around and vacillates from one thing to another.”
However, Williams also has his supporters who have praised him for his thoughtful intervention and attacked the knee-jerk reaction to his comments.
The senior woman priest in the Church of England, the Dean of Salisbury, the Very Reverend June Osborne, said that “We can say he may have been politically naïve [but] I don’t think he was. Our society needs to be provoked into talking about these things.”
The Archbishop, the Bishop of Hulme, the Right Reverend Stephen Lowe, said he was dismayed at the “knee-jerk” reaction to Williams’ comments. “We have probably one of the greatest and the brightest Archbishops of Canterbury we have had for many a long day. The way he has been ridiculed, lampooned and treated by some people and indeed some of the media within this process, is quite disgraceful.”
Williams made the remarks in the Royal Courts of Justice Archbishop’s Lecture on “Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective” on Thursday. In the interview with the Today Program on BBC Radio 4 he did not propose a parallel system of law in the UK. Instead, he stressed that “as a matter of fact, certain provisions of Shariah are already recognized in our society and under our law”. When the question was put to him by the BBC journalist that “the application of Shariah in certain circumstances — if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion — seems unavoidable,” he indicated his assent.
In his lecture, the archbishop said that the very term Shariah is not only misunderstood but is the focus of much fear and anxiety deriving from its “primitivist” application in some areas. As such, he said that Shariah is a method of law rather than a single complete and final system ready to be applied wholesale to every situation, and noted that there was room, even within Islamic states that apply Shariah, for some level of “dual identity”, where the state is not in fact religiously homogenous.
The archbishop has been in the forefront of improving relations with other faith communities including the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.
