Britain: The Archbishop of Canterbury's disastrous experiment with Sharia in Britain

The Archbishop of Canterbury, senior most cleric from the Church of England made steaming headlines last week when he suggested that due to inevitablility some elements of the Islamic Sharia Law will have to be incoprorated into the British legal system for the sake of community cohesion and to help Muslims aviod a choice between state loyalties and those towards their culutre and religion.

He is utterly naive or extremely clever.

Either he surreptitiously wishes to use the Muslim community as a test case in order to gradually reintroduce the influence of religion, particularly that of the Church of England, over the affairs of the State; or he believes that allowing certain aspects of Sharia as self-governance for British Muslims would achieve the greater objective of lasting community cohesion.In either case, his presumption that the majority of British Muslims would opt for Sharia courts as opposed to the British legal system will almost certainly turn out to be inaccurate and without any solid facutal grounds. Any sane-minded Muslim living in Britain under the liberal, secular, democratic system and having the faintest knowledge about Sharia and its implications would prefer the Royal Courts of Justice over the Sharia courts any day.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, while advocating Sharia in Britain, perhaps conveniently overlooked the fact that British Muslims are not a homogeneous community. Instead they are divided up along numerous lines and unstable variables, such as ethnicity, cultural practices, geographical origins and, most importantly, their interpretation of basic Islamic principles, often manifested in the form of stark differences over Sharia and its practical implications on the lives of Muslims. To presume that Sharia derived from any single school of thought in Islam could ever be deemed acceptable to all the Muslim communities in Britain is utterly nonsensical.

"Above: Various differing manifestations of the interpretation of Islamic values in Britain"

The introduction of self governance for British Muslim communities in the form of Sharia, even though under the pretence of bridging the deep fissures in existence between certain Muslim and non-Muslim communities, as proclaimed by the Archbishop as the basis of his comments, will in effect prove disastrous for the future of very social cohesion he so espouse to strengthen, and will do away for good the concept of rule of a single law for all citizens of this country and replace it with multiple laws applicable to individual communities based on their own religious or cultural beliefs. The application of dual or multiple laws in the United Kingdom would only enhance the self-imposed segregation that exists amongst the Muslim communities and further fuel the idea of incompatibility of Muslim communities with the rest of the western society.

The Sharia as we see today, has been presented to us since its inception circa 8th century by hardline Muslim clergymen as set in stone, beyond scrutiny or discussion. The latter day similar minded clerics have continued in their footsteps, sternly and often brutally resisting every single move by moderates and reformists, to re-examine its various principles for the sake of applying them in the context of the modern ages we live in. These hardliners from the olden days found Quran and Sunnat to be too liberal and progressive for their taste, which in fact, were aimed at lifting the oppressed women and other ordinary individuals out of their pitiful state during the barbaric Arabian dark ages. This was something these hardliners were simply not prepared to render redundant so easily. Thus based on their own interpretation of Quranic verses (Ayaats) and the sayings (Ahadees) and life examples (Sunnah) of Prophet Mohammed PBUH, they managed to devise what see today as the Sharia Law, which is portrayed as the final word of ALLAH and His last messenger Prophet Mohammed PBUH, and has various components upon which even the great scholars of all times never managed to reach complete mutual agreement, hence the evolution of various Schools of Thought in Islam that exist to this day and age.

Going back to the context of Britain incorporating elements of Sharia Law, many aspects of this Sharia also openly contradict the civil liberties and basic human rights that are enjoyed by British Muslims under the Western secular and liberal democratic system. Any introduction of Sharia would almost certainly lead to the curtailment of women's rights in cases such as inheritance, reducing their share to considerably less than half of what a male heir would expect to be awarded.Similarly, the testimony of a woman would be rendered half of that of a man in a sharia court. The use of modern forensic evidence, DNA technology and CCTV footage would be deemed inadmissible as evidence, should a case of alleged adultery under trial, the court, instead, have to rely solely on the testimony of four credible male witnesses for judgment purposes in such cases.

Although there are plenty of Muslim countries where Sharia is being practised in one form or the other such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan, and there are plenty more one way tickets for Muslims to utilise who wish to live their lives according to the instructions of local Mullahs and under the watchful eyes of religious police squads, turning Britain into a battleground over Sharia would not be a wise move.

What is most heartening out of this fiasco, was to see even the conservative British Muslim groups such as Muslim Council of Britain and the progressive and reformist ones such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy, along with the majority of others, stand together in defiance and condemnation of such absurd ideas projected unnecessarily to stoke hostility against the Muslim communities of Britain, by a Mullah from the Church of England.