Britain must reject craven counsel of despair

The previous post notes the Iranian application of sharia to the circumstances of those who “opt out” of Islam.

Meanwhile, the alleged Archbishop of Canterbury has spouted off on the desirability of having sharia as a part of some sort of dual legalism in the UK. Would you believe “poor situational awareness” on the part of the not-so-Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams?

In an interview with The World at One on Radio 4…, Dr Williams made his case more accessibly, claiming that the adoption of certain aspects of sharia law “seems unavoidable”. As things stand, he said, “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger.” Hence, the Archbishop’s enthusiasm “for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law”.

The problem arises here:

Equality before the law is, in practice, the most meaningful form of equality that we have. The universal franchise is exercised only sporadically. But the presumption of legal equality – the blindness of the goddess Justitia – is our best guarantee that ethnic minorities and religious groups have of fair treatment.

Far from encouraging such groups to insist on special treatment, or juridical devolution, moral leaders such as the Archbishop should be doing precisely the opposite: identifying, defending and celebrating the legal common ground on which all citizens can and should gather. It is astonishing that a man of Dr Williams’s notional intelligence should end up on the side of legal apartheid and moral cantonisation, even in the euphemistic guise of “plural jurisdiction” or “transformative accommodation”.

The Telegraph has more of this which is about as thorough a treatment of this absurdity as the Chief has seen anywhere. Check it out.