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Multiculturalism could have been Enlightenment manifest.
11 February 2008 .
Johann Hari today (Indy): 'Rowan Williams has shown us one thing - why multiculturalism must be abandoned.'
'There is a better way for the state to understand and regulate human differences, beyond the old oppositions of multiculturalism and Tebbittry (...if people are going to live together, they need to look and feel similar, and have a tightly prescribed shared identity). It is called liberalism... Where a multiculturalist prizes the rights of religious groups, a liberal favours the rights of the individual.' Hari has, I admit, put his finger on an itch which has bothered me for a long time; but, even so, I think he's wrong - there doesn't, ideally, have to be a contradiction between the two. Sadly, very few things work out ideally when put into practice... He's also missing a point, I think; the reason why there was a need for a policy - which manifested as multiculturalism - was that people on the whole are not very liberal by nature. Individuals are often racists.
Elsewhere he makes the point which I almost suspect Dr. Williams, by his references to Sharia in the UK, might have been complete unaware of; that is, in respect of the 'voluntary' nature of Sharia courts - namely that women, particularly, often 'consent' to the authority of such courts because they don't know that legally they don't have to, or because of the threat of intimidation (or violence, or death) or of eviction from the only social group they know.
I wish I'd noted the account I read the other day of a young (North African?) man in a state of terror over his appearance in a Sharia court - not knowing that he was entitled to recourse to English courts.
Quote by Hari from Muslim feminist Irshad Manji: "When it comes to contemporary Sharia, choice is theory, intimidation is reality."
-/-
Since I'm with the Indy... I am tempted to reproduce Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's appalled response to Dr. Williams from yesterday ('What he wishes on us is an abomination') in full. Read it if you have the chance; I'll settle for this:
'He lectures the nation on the benefits of Sharia law - made by bearded men, for men - and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion... Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles.'
enlightenment 'Alibhai-Brown' 'Johann Hari' 'Irshad Manji' intimidation 'Rowan Williams'
Accommodating Sharia within the British legal system.
08 February 2008 .
The Archbishop of Canterbury really has put the cat amongst the pigeons. And he seemed such a saintly old chap.
Many of the Anglicans feel that he has betrayed the Church of England. Many of the secularists believe that we're in some sense seeing a new aspect of the old and still simmering conflict between church and state. There is some justice, I think, in the fear that Canterbury is challenging - threatening to reverse - the historical evolution of state law away from the influence of religion.
I've recently expressed my increasing suspicion of Sharia. (Actually, I expressed what I felt at that moment - which may have been more disdainful than my average opinion...) But I'm not sure that Canterbury, both as the incumbent of the post and as the person he is, had any choice but to express the opinions he did, or something very like them.
[I see too many practical difficulties in operating two legal systems side by side (What if two parties in a dispute can't agree which system to accept? Should a person preferring Sharia be forced to abandon it because the other party claims prior right to the state system?); but I don't for a moment think that that's what Canterbury meant. (I do worry that he seems to be suggesting almost a mutation so that the legal system actually becomes, in part, Sharia.)]
There's so much discussion, and no doubt will be, that I doubt whether I can add much that's useful: so these comments instead:
1. Canterbury's had a lot of stick; I'm convinced that this has been and is both unfair and wrong. Islam is a part of British society now, we ought to be having precisely these discussions, and it may be that the head of the English church is the right person to get them started. But...
2. What a pity that there was, instantly, so much gas and fury. Some of the folk I've heard arguing on radio and TV (on both sides of the argument) are straight out of the middle ages in their vehemence. As for the newspapers... not impressive, on the whole. More to do with selling than conciliating, I think.
3. What if Dr. Nazir Ali, presently Bishop of Rochester but who's been tipped, I believe, for Canterbury, had actually been in Canterbury over the past few years? With an experience of Islam very different from Dr. Williams's, would his position have been rather different? Would he have been more protective of our religion and culture - the threats to which he may feel he understands better than Dr. Williams?
I'll be interested to hear his response to what's been said.
Added later: Dr Azzim Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought said, 'It's a workable idea and I salute the Archbishop, he has utter wisdom'. He went to talk, in similar vein to Dr. Williams, about matters which might be of concern within the Muslim community which could be considered - such as marriage, inheritance and divorce, '...part and parcel of their religion that should be their prerogative.' And we come to the problem. I can only speak for myself; I may be pretty dubious about some Muslim marriage arrangements, but when it comes to the rules of divorce, I have been given no reason to regard them as anything but anathema (Sharia on Television, 03 Feb) and I would think that they are so contrary to European sensitivities that to give them the full force of law would be intolerable here.
Well, all for discussion, one might agree... except that Dr. T. then went on: 'Why should Christians and Jews impose something else on the Muslims? Western countries, this one in particular, need to learn a lot from Muslim countries.'
Where on earth have the Jews appeared from, all of a sudden, in this? If this isn't classic racism I really do not know what is. Never mind his outrageous comments about this country learning from Muslim ones (which ones, pray?) or the extraordinary intolerance with which the ethnic homelands of many of our Muslim immigrants treat Jews and Christians (and often fellow Muslims) - with the overt support of many of those same immigrants here - there is a point that really needs to be brought out:
Muslims are complaining that Jewish courts in this country have some sort of special privileges; they don't - so far as I know, they operate on exactly the same basis as the Sharia courts in this country: the legal system here permits them both (you could set up an Odinist Hall of Justice, if you wished, with much the same authority over those who chose to go along with it, with exactly the same legal status with regard to, say, contracts), but gives neither of them any supralegal powers.
If the Muslims want their courts to have the same authority as the Jewish courts, they already have it; end of story. What they're looking for - and what Dr. Williams seems to want them to be offered - is something more than that. The comments of Dr. Tamimi, now-demonstrable racist, and others like him, will certainly make this reader less willing to listen.
Talking of Muslim marriage; the British state is now paying (tiny!) benefits to lawful (in Pakistan, inter alia) polygamous wives; this is an idea that doesn't unduly bother me, except that I wonder why this is the case for Muslims whereas when (I think it was) Jerry Lee Lewis landed in England with his equally lawful (in the US) but underaged (in the UK) 14-year-old wife he was promptly arrested. While JLL was some time ago, I do think that perhaps we ought to have a declaration on the matter by HMG (if only to embarrass them).
And as for the Muslims themselves; I have a suspicion that in fact many of them have come to this country to escape the baleful grip of Sharia - and some of them probably to escape from the likes of Dr. Tamimi and their obnoxious opinions.
'Odinism' 'Arab anti-Semitism' 'Jerry Lee Lewis' Sharia Canterbury 'Muslim marriage' 'Azzim Tamimi' 'Nazir Ali'
Sharia On Television.
03 February 2008 .
There were a couple of series of late-night audience discussion programmes on TV a year or two ago about Sharia laws and living. (I think they may have been called simply 'The Sharia Programme'.) I caught the first one by chance, and got quite hooked. There have been more programmes on Sharia, and tonight I watched 'Divorce Sharia Style'.
Unfortunately, while I find these programmes interesting - and sometimes even unexpectedly enjoyable - I'm not sure that they're contributing to my sympathy with Islam.
Today's effort was a case in point. What ran through it quite relentlessly was the completely different ways in which men and women are regarded by the imams and sheiks. Much of the programme centred around a spoilt young man, born in England, who should have been ashamed of ever letting his tale be published: having gone to Pakistan to find a bride, he brought his wife by this arranged marriage to England, gave her three children and clearly treated her horribly. After all this, he went off back to Pakistan and married a second wife, at which the first - rather understandably - objected. So he divorced her, verbally (as men but not women can do under Sharia law). In her place, I'd just be glad to be shot of him, but of course that's easy for me to say. Later, because of pressure by his family, he obtained a fatwa to get her back (all the while saying he'd never wanted to marry her in the first place). It was obvious that she was desperately unhappy, but the pressures on her must have been enormous; at first she said she wouldn't even talk to him unless he agreed to divorce his second wife (two families buggered up...) but she ended up back with him, with His Manship still married (bigamously) to the other woman. Then he left her in England and went off back to Pakistan for seven months to be with the second wife. The sheik who issued the fatwa had gone to a great deal of effort to get the man back with his first wife... but once he'd succeeded, he was totally unbothered by what going to be done about the second wife, or about the first wife's misery. The whole weight of the law seemed to be dedicated to allowing a cruel and bigamous creature to behave like a caveman. When women want a divorce, predictably, the story is quite different: three sheiks have to agree (and in one very obvious case, where the first sheik said there should be an instant divorce, the two others wouldn't agree, so she was stuffed.
Then we were treated to this sheik saying how happy Britain would be if our government accepted the wishes of Allah and adopted Sharia law. He pointed out that a few amputated hands would soon empty our prisons, and that a woman or two condignly stoned to death would put an end to adultery.
Conciliation between Islam and the West is a matter of urgency (if not survival) - and of humanity - as is, thereafter, peaceful co-existence and, preferably, close community. But some of the sheik's beliefs and ideas are utterly, and irreversibly, repugnant to me. And, I imagine, to much of Britain (secular or religious). (Just as, clearly, some of our customs are intolerable to him.) So what do we do? Because one thing I've learned from these programmes is that I'd take to the hills with the partisans before I'd submit to Sharia.
I don't want to feel enmity to any person's beliefs, but it is getting harder to stay conciliatory. And I'm quite fed up of being told (to my face, sometimes) that the indigenous culture and religion of my country are the work of the devil. (And that goes for fundamentalist Christians saying the same things to me, just as much as Muslims.)
What is it about all three Abrahamic religions, that lets their fundamentalists have such contempt for women? (And that screws our societies up so much about sex? And that takes such a delight in mutilating people - generally, tellingly, about the genitals)?)
Interesting question by the sheik: Britain endorsed Sharia law for Muslims during the Raj, in India, so why aren't we willing to adopt it here?
'Divorce Sharia Style' 'The Sharia Programme' bigamy
Is Islamic fervour really sweeping the world?
18 December 2007 .
It's the religious duty of every able-bodied Muslim to travel to Mecca, to make Hajj, at least once (in fact, it's one of the pillars of Islam). Each year, as at 2007, two million do so.
A lifetime is, say, 70 years: so, in a lifetime, about 140 million Muslims make Hajj.
Depending on whose figures you read, there are something between 800 and 1200 million Muslims in the world. It seems, therefore, that about 15% of Muslims meet their obligation: allowing for those who are not physically able to go, those women who are barred because they have no appropriate male to travel with, and those who are simply too poor, that still seems to leave a majority who do not.
In fact, it seems to suggest that levels of devotion amongst Muslims are much the same as amongst Christians.
Hajj 'religious obligation' devotion
Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari; Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph.
10 December 2007 .
An item headed "Britain 'should adopt aspects of Islamic culture'" was followed some pages later by a fuller version of the interview, which unsurprisingly turned out to be rather more nuanced.
The taster item, however, seems to have been calculated to create alarm and despondency. It reported that Dr. Bari, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, had suggested that politicians and British society should adopt positive aspects of the Muslim faith. This encouraging start was followed by suggestions: tighter abortion laws, stricter parenting, charity, discouraging debt, modesty, sexual restraint, arranged marriages...
The new society that will be born of the marriage of Old Britain and Islam will lead to arranged marriages - and all that that implies? My hackles are up.
But then, I'm simply getting a reflection of what vast parts of the world have had to put up with for centuries from Christian missionaries (and arguably, more recently and perversely, BP and RTZ, Coca Cola and MacDonald's).
'Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari' missionaries 'aspects of Islamic culture'