Was I wrong to conclude that the Archbishop of Canterbury's sharia speech was dangerous, ill-advised, ill-timed and detrimental to the position of other minority groups in the country, as well as world-wide?

Here are Melanie Phillips' views on that Synod ovation received by the Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/499156/a-holy-fool.thtml#comments

and this is what I received last night from Dr. Andrew Shanks, Canon Theologian of Manchester's Anglican Cathedral. He invited me to visit after he sent it, and as he lives nearby in Salford, I popped down to see him and his wife, Dian, who are good friends.

Andrew is not just a rabble-rousing lefty, unlike many who have supported the Archbishop up to now, whilst maligning his detractors. He studied with Rowan, is himself one of the most intelligent thinkers in the Church of England, and most importantly, supported the Jewish community in public one hundred per cent over the Archbishop's decision to vote in favour of boycotting Israel, indeed of chairing the 2005 Anglican Consultative Council's meeting which overwhelmingly carried the vote to divest, despite the Jewish community being informed that this wouldn't happen.

Andrew spoke out loud and clear against the Arcbishop's role in this shameful vote, before inviting me to address an audience in Manchester's Anglican Cathedral, gathered there - ironically - in celebration of the 350 anniversary of the resettlement of the Jews to England. The Synod vote to divest had taken place the day before, in February 2006. Again, assurances had been given to the Jewish community beforehand that this would never happen.

Andrew also had a right go at Synod members domiciled in Manchester, who we met just before I emigrated to Israel in the summer of 2006. At that meeting Andrew stated very forcefully that members of the Church had no right to criticize Israel at all until they recognized Christianity's role in 2000 years history of antisemitism, and that their vote against Israel had been shameful.

So, having given you some background to the man, this is what he wrote to me last night about the Archbishop of Canterbury's sharia remarks, which I quote in their entirety, with his prior permission:

Dear Irene,

At present it feels as though there's a sort of lynch mob out to get Archbishop Rowan. I'm filled with admiration for the man's moral courage, and in fact have never felt prouder of the leadership of my church. Please don't let your combative insticts lead you astray. Think: what on earth can the Archbishop's motivation be? What's in it for him? He's simply pleading for open-minded public conversation, because he thinks that's his duty. And I think he's completely right that there needs to be generous negotiation between the non-Muslim majority and the Muslim minority in this country about the interaction of secular and sharia law. After all, sharia can be a thousand different things, it all depends on which community you're looking at - some of course are horrific, others are perfectly sensible. The response however shows just how poisonous and widespread anti-Muslim prejudice now is in Britain - and how urgently necessary it therefore is that Christian leaders should do their bit to combat it. But this, I think, was truly heroic! Anti-Muslim prejudice is akin to antisemitism at any rate in the way people want to think en bloc about 'the Muslims' all lumped together just as antisemites like to think of 'the Jews' en bloc. It doesn't help to do so, and in fact it simply plays into the hands of Hamas & co. On this I have to say I think you've jumped the wrong way.

With love,

Andrew

Comments

[Lawrence]

No, you were not wrong. It is very painful to see Muslim issues driving a wedge between Jews and their friends, but it may clarify what the nature of that friendship has been all along.

[N. Friedman]

Irene,

While I am an outsider to all that is happening in Great Britain, I shall stick my nose in anyway.

The mathematics of all of this are that Muslims will become an ever increasing percentage of the population of Great Britain - at least for the foreseeable future. It is that fact - and it is a fact - which must be addressed directly because such portends changes to Great Britain no matter what anyone may prefer or not prefer.

So taking the view, for example, taken by Melanie Phillips, that Muslims ought accommodate to British norms is sentimental but irrelevant. Muslims - having arrived in large numbers and tending to enlarge their percentage of the British population - have no imaginable reason or need to accept her demands.

The other extreme is that offered by Archbishop Rowan. Instead of demanding integration, he asks that British law adopt portions of Muslim law. It is, I think, certainly the case that such will occur. But, it is equally the case that Muslims have no reason to say, "We have our accommodation. Now we are British." That is not going to happen because, as noted, Muslims, most especially those who view themselves first as Muslim, have no need to buy into the proposal. As noted, time will bring them what the Archbishop offers and more, assuming that the current circumstances do not change.

That suggests to me - and, I note, I have read Ms. Phillip's book and have seen the data - that the data demand an American system that adopts a secular constitution but leaves all free to practice religion as they will. Such a constitution is a guarantee of sorts that one religion will not displace another as dominant.

Now, there are accommodations made for religion in the US. Where religious practice violates general regulations, the regulations bend, as they do for Kosher slaughter law. Such is justified as being necessary in view of the constitutional provision protecting the free exercise of religion. And, the law permits arbitration with the parties choosing the applicable law - thus permitting a Get, for example. However, where there is a compelling state interest to follow a regulation or law, then people are free to believe but not to practice. You might read how such works out in US jurisprudence.

The point here is that Muslims ought be offered true citizenship as part of Great Britain. But, citizenship ought to be adjusted so that it is citizenship in a truly secular state, something that does not exist in Great Britain.

Whether such would work, I do not know. I tend to think, with Walter Laqueur, that Europe's future is bleak, with religious communities divided from each other and Europe's place in the world undermined.

[Denis MacEoin]

I don't know who is to blame for the speech (in the end, Williams and his advisors, surely), but I think I know what lies behind it). Most Christians (even archbishops) simply have not understood Islam. They (aided by unthinking commentators like Karen Armstrong) judge Islam by thinking it's a kind of Christianity with added bits. (A Christianized Judaism, perhaps). Much modern Christianity is about tolerance (but not to homosexuals), eirenics, inter-faith dialogue, and so on. I don't have a problem with any of that, nor with the AoC expressing such ideas. But I worry that he, along with Armstrong et al, has swallowed whole the fiction that 'Islam is a religion of peace'. Islam isn't about any of the things I just mentioned. It is about submission. That's what the word means ('peace' is salam). By it is meant both the submission of man to God (hence the word Muslim, 'a submitter') and the submission of non-Muslims to the Islamic faith. (Read, in particular, M.V. Bravmann, 'The Spiritual Background of Early Islam'.) Islam is predicated, not on a philosophy of turning the other cheek, but of the physical conquest of the non-Islamic world, turning the realm of war into the realm of submission. To say that Islam treats Jews and Christians with tolerance is to misunderstand their true relationship with the dominant faith. In return for their lives, property, and beliefs, Jews and Christians are forced to accept second-class status.

I'm not sure your correspondent gets it entirely right about Islamophobia. Fear of the Other is a factor, but it's also a factor with other intolerances. Originally, Muslims were never singled out for their religion (most Brits couldn't distinguish a Muslim from a Hindu at ten paces; a former colleague of mine, a Greek archimandrite, used to be mistaken in the street for a Hasid). The phobia started to move in when people saw more and more photographs of Muslims behind acts of terror, burning books, threatening lives, and attacking Western civilization. I don't think Islamophobia comes close to anti-Semitism (as yet), and I don't think all the attacks on the AoB stemmed from blind Islamophobia either. People are simply worried that Muslims are demanding too many exemptions, that they want to live separate lives. My recent report on Islamic hate literature shows passages calling on Muslims to hate non-Muslims, to have no love in their hearts for their non-Muslim neighbours. The introduction of even some shari'a law would help foster this sense of separateness. At present, Muslims can pray, fast, perform pilgrimage, pay zakat, wear the veil, build mosques, sell radical books, take out shari'a-compliant mortgages, and slaughter animals, etc. What parts of the shari'a beyond this would make their lives better? Having two, three, or four wives? Having temporary (mut'a) marriage? The legal right to declare someone an apostate, an adulterer, a homosexual — all 'crimes' requiring the death penalty? We would not allow the death penalty, but what would be the impact on the individuals concerned if they were simply denounced within their community? We already have honour killings: would a declaration of guilt encourage this?

The AoB needs to get better advisors, ones who actually know something about Islam. If he can't do that, the non-debate about Islam will just get more and more silent.