Since the lecture by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England’ in 2008, questions of Muslim law in the UK have attracted considerable public and academic attention.
In the resulting ‘Sharia debate’, traces of orientalism became especially visible in the portrayal of Sharia as the ‘other’ and in an essentialist understanding of ‘Sharia’ as being in opposition to ‘the West’.
This perception is not limited to public debate but has found its way into what can be called legal orientalism and into English court rooms where mention has been made of ‘the gulf between our statute law and Sharia law ...’. [openDemocracy] Read more
