Things keep getting rougher and rougher for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over his call for Britons to make room for sharia in the UK. But an American professor believes +Rowan is being treated unfairly, as Pope Benedict was over his Regensburg address. Excerpt:
He rightly appreciates that when the liberal state demands that it should trump all other allegiances, then it is demanding its own sort of religious devotion. But to the religious believer, to acquiesce to such demands—no matter how “secular” they claim to be—is nothing short of idolatry.In contrast, I hear the Archbishop gesturing toward a post-liberal and post-secular account of the state which resists both monolithic hegemony and isolating tribalism. He is certainly not saying what the tabloids would lead us to believe. Perhaps he owes us a clearer, still digestible account; but we also owe it to ourselves to carefully consider his proposal. So be one of the few and read the entire speech here.
Yes, do read the speech. It's something of a slog to get through the prose, but it's clear that Dr. Williams, however ill-judged his sharia-is-unavoidable comments were, is raising a perfectly legitimate set of issues about how we manage our common life under the law in pluralistic society.
Forget about Islam in the West for a second. Think of the big Catholic Charities thing in Boston a couple of years ago. Catholic Charities of Boston said that it would not adopt babies out to gay couples, because to do so would seriously violate Catholic teaching. But the agency could not continue to handle any adoptions if it wasn't licensed by the state -- and to be licensed by the state, it had to agree to the state's nondiscrimination policy, which it clearly could not do. Result: Catholic Charities of Boston no longer adopts out babies.
Maggie Gallagher uses that case as a jumping-off point to discuss the coming, and irresolvable, clash in US courts between civil rights and religious liberty. It's an important piece, and it centers on the same sort of thing Dr. Williams is talking about. How do we make room for diverse practices in our secular, pluralistic societies -- particular practices that the majority finds distasteful? Go too far, and you crush desirable liberties for dissenters. Don't go far enough, and you enable practices that ought to be outlawed. How does a society decide what to permit under the law, and what to forbid? How much should the law tolerate?
I still think +Rowan was extremely unwise even to suggest that sharia should be accomodated in British law. Nevertheless, he does raise some questions that secular Western democracies must deal with, particularly in regard to its religious citizens.
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"These types of laws seem to be at least open to the charge of constituting "secular Sharia", rather than neutral common law."
Or, they represent the common values of the people who elect legislators and vote in elections. The desire for conservative Christians to exempt themselves from the state's common values when it comes to acceptable discrimination constitutes a "Christian Sharia" where the rule of law is viewed not to apply to people's whose valuea are outside the common values.
It's all about perception.
"Or, they represent the common values of the people who elect legislators and vote in elections. The desire for conservative Christians to exempt themselves from the state's common values when it comes to acceptable discrimination constitutes a "Christian Sharia" where the rule of law is viewed not to apply to people's whose valuea are outside the common values."
I do think this is debatable. However, the B&B places in question were not refusing to admit gays, but refusing to permit specific activities (bed-sharing). Hotels, restaurants, etc., can make all sorts of rules about permitted activities: eg. some impose dress codes; some forbid drinking alcohol in the bedrooms. When looking for a room as a student in London, a Muslim family told me they only let rooms to men who agreed to have no unrelated female visitors - that seems a legitimate restriction to impose, and is analogous to not allowing two men to share a bed, whereas I think if the family had said something about not letting rooms to fornicators, analogous to not letting gays stay in a hotel at all, that would have been unacceptable. Some pro-gay legislation strikes me as having gone beyond what can be seen as acceptable in a society that only tenuously shares common values, especially about sexual matters.
Herr Schadenfreude:
Denke Schön; ich habe einer Irrtum gemacht.
Sincerely, J R Dittbrenner
The wiccan incident really happened near where I live and everyone had a good laugh at her expense. It even made that evening news.
As a society we cut people a lot of slack for their beliefs because it is a way of ensuring civil peace and not clogging the courts. Also because we really believe that people, for the most part, have the right to organize their lives as they see fit. But it gets messy at times because no law code can hope to cover every circumstance.
If the Muslims want to handle minor disputes among themselves, that should be no problem. If they think they can start killing each other, or anyone else, then we must make it abundantly clear to them that we won't let them do that, by imprisoning them and taking their children away to raise as atheists. Remember that Paul wrote rather scathingly of Christians who resorted to civil courts to settle disputes among themselves, so there is lots of precedent.
Mr. Dittbrenner,
It happens to us all.
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