Back in 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams delivered a cerebral lecture about society and pluralism to a huddle of lawyers gathered in London. It might have remained fairly and literally academic had it not been for his decision to justify his comments in a subsequent BBC radio interview, when he said that Muslims were effectively entitled to have elements of their legal traditions recognised in UK law because Orthodox Jews have their own courts of arbitration, and so do Roman Catholics:
.... Rowan Williams was roundly and (almost) universally denounced for saying that Sharia Law in the UK was “inevitable” or “unavoidable”, so why isn’t Justin Welby being commended for saying that it is by no means inevitable and must be avoided at all costs? Why isn’t he applauded for defending the British Christian tradition of jurisprudence?
Why isn’t he appreciated for baldly stating that sharia brooks no rivals, and that accepting it even in part “implies accepting its values around the nature of the human person, attitudes to outsiders, the revelation of God, and a basis for life in law, rather than grace, the formative word of Christian culture”?
Why isn’t the media giving the man his due?
Why aren’t some of those Christians who have long sounded the alarm about cultural relativism and creeping sharia thanking God for the clarity of Justin Welby’s declaration? [Archbishop Cranmer] Read more
