14.02.2008

Not privileged nor persecuted

Jim Moody examines the impact of Rowan Williams's words in a Britain that is far from secular, at least in terms of its constitution

Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, had opprobrium heaped upon him following his lecture on Thursday February 8 at the Royal Courts of Justice. Notoriously he proposed the introduction of elements of sharia law into UK legislation (‘Civil and religious law in England: a religious perspective’ - see www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575).

For Williams, who has been the Church of England’s primate for five years, this was the culmination of a long-term process of dialogue with muslim clerics. He was apparently astounded at the furiously negative reaction to his thoughts, including from other parts of the establishment.

Despite the brickbats, Williams is unrepentant. He claims that all he wants is to achieve ‘social cohesion’ in Britain, but in fact his kite-flying on incorporating ‘acceptable’ parts of sharia is all of a piece with maintaining and spreading the influence of religion in general - and that of the Church of England in particular - over British social life.

Williams is concerned with “assumptions of our society becoming more secular”, as he put it in his address to the General Synod on February 11. Just as the heir to the throne, Charles Windsor, declares that he wants to be defender of faiths, not defender of the faith, so Williams tries to show how religious belief in general can bolster the status quo and garner support for the bourgeois state.

Hence Williams cloaks himself in references to multiculturalism, calling for “a delegation of certain legal functions to the religious courts of a community”. He cited not only the treasury-approved so-called sharia-compliant financial products, but also areas of orthodox Jewish practice, such as divorce. In fact Williams takes multiculturalism to a logical conclusion: the corralling and segmentation of ‘communities’ (which, naturally, are determined primarily by religion) under their mainly male leaders.

Sharia is already implemented in Britain by private mutual agreement in some marital and domestic disputes. About 95% of the letters received by the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain are concerned with divorce - mostly women wanting to divorce their husbands; husbands can divorce wives without this procedure.

Fear of social isolation leads some muslim women to call for sharia law to be at least partially incorporated in the UK’s legal systems (primarily English and Scots law). A muslim woman may be divorced under UK civil law but still find herself religiously married.  The example of the orthodox Jewish authorities being forced to grant a religious divorce through the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002 is seen as a model.

Understandably though, the overwhelming majority of  British muslims are utterly dismayed at any suggestion that sharia might have the force of law in Britain, especially muslim women.

Religious privilege is often justified with reference to conscience. During his Royal Courts of Justice speech Williams made much of the right of some NHS doctors not to do their jobs properly: “The point has been granted in respect of medical professionals who may be asked to perform or cooperate in performing abortions, a perfectly reasonable example of the law … securing space for those aspects of human motivation and behaviour that cannot be finally determined by any corporate or social system.”

Clearly, the abortion issue serves as a focus for a faith-based alliance intent on holding back the secular tide. ‘Secular’ being translated as ‘actively anti-religious’, even ‘persecutory’. Nothing like a bit of paranoia to unite the faithful (including George Galloway). Williams wants to recruit muslim clerics to his campaign to entrench and extend such “reasonable”  spaces in society.

Gordon Brown has taken a different - on balance a more short-sighted - approach. Sharia law is associated in the popular mind with stoning, amputation and other such horrors. It has been deliberately linked in official propaganda to islamic extremists and the ‘war on terror’. Hence Brown’s ministers have been briefing against Williams since the lecture

Brown is clearly bereft of ideas. Whereas Tony Blair really did refashion the UK monarchical state - the Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, the Northern Ireland settlement and the London mayor - Brown is reduced to banalities such as inventing a national motto and upholding “British law based on British values”.

Many of the Church of England’s Anglo-catholics, moral crusaders, arch conservatives and other such reactionary diehards - as with the neo-traditionalist wing of islam - claim to stand for the timeless values handed down from god himself. In fact theirs is an entirely mythical past which is projected onto the present as a holy rejection of women’s equality, class solidarity, commodification, the ‘excesses’ of turbo capitalism and secularism. True, Williams grudgingly accepts the enlightenment. In his concluding remarks at the Royal Courts of Justice he described it as “a necessary wake-up call to religion”. But he clearly intends to roll back secularism.

Britain is, however, far from being a secular country, at least in terms of its constitution. The Church of England survives to this day as the established or official church, with the monarch as its titular head, its bishops sitting in the House of Lords, and its governing body framing legislation.

Indeed, the Church of England has its own system of canon law and a judicial branch, the ecclesiastical courts, which are a part of the UK court system. Bishops are appointed through the Crown Nominations Committee, which submits names to the prime minister. Elizabeth II is constitutionally the “supreme governor of the Church of England”; and even after House of Lords reform, 26 archbishops and bishops sit there as of right, as lords spiritual. And so the whole package is tied up, integrating the church, head of state, parliament and the legal system.

In the current version of our Draft programme (which is in the process of being redrafted) we say: “… though communists want to overcome all religious prejudices, we are the most consistent defenders of the individual’s freedom of conscience and freedom of worship.

“Communists therefore demand: