Category: Religion

The Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill, introduced by Philip Hollobone MP (Conservative – Kettering), has had its first reading.

Given Mr Hollobone’s previous statements that the burka is ‘against the British way of life’ and ‘offensive’, it is fairly clear to me what its intent is.

Three points.

Firstly, this is deeply illiberal. I shouldn’t need to say much more, but I will. I understand that there are times – airport security, for instance – where we do need to make sure that the person matches the passport and we seem to be managing just fine with providing an area where people who wear the burka can be identified and so on. However, if people are just going about their daily business, I think they should be able to wear more or less what they want. Short of that, this must rank as an extraordinary expansion of the writ of the state and I don’t want the introduction of some sort of sumptuary law.

Secondly, this isn’t the way to go about it. If we assume that the burka is indicative of oppression and isolation, I don’t see how a ban will remediate the situation. If the premise is that women are oppressed and forced to wear the burka, they can be compelled to remain at home or only leave it occasionally. If the premise is that they are an isolated community, ditto, with the additional bonus of feeding into the extremists’ (al-Mujahiroun, the Daily Express…) narrative that it is impossible to reconcile being British with being a Muslim. Mr Hollobone and his fellow-travellers in UKIP haven’t talked about education or reaching out, just about bans.

Thidly, unintended consequences. It is far too easy for me to see how a badly-worded bill could lead to situations like welders’ masks having to be removed if you’re not welding for more than half a minute and not being able to dress up as a ghost for Hallowe’en. The alternative is to specify that this law only applies to Muslim women.

Ultimately, I don’t think this is about covering one’s face. I think that is being used as a proxy for Islamophobia.

I find this proposal abhorrent and I’m glad to say that, as Mr Hollobone came seventeenth out of twenty in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills, I don’t think it stands any real chance of making progress. The second reading will be on December 3rd, by which point the text of the bill should be available.

xD.

Am I contradicting myself?

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I have recently written two posts on religion; one dealing with Islam, the other with the Roman Catholic flavour of Christianity.

I wonder if there is a contradiction between the positions I advance. In the former case, I argue for an individualistic freedom, saying that people should be able to wear what they want. In the latter case, I argue, effectively, against it, saying that people shouldn’t be able to discriminate in employment on the basis of sexuality.

On the homosexuality issue, I dislike the argument that it is natural because I really couldn’t care less if it’s natural or not. I’m typing on a computer that I am fairly sure does not normally occur in nature. Similarly, I see how religion spreads and replicates but I don’t think that removes or reduces people’s agency.

Is there, then, a contradiction between not thinking the state should ban the burka but saying that the state should regulate employment? Admittedly, part of my argument on the former question is fairly utilitarian as I think the negative consequences of a crude ban outweigh the benefits of any positive effects.

I’d like to know what you think?

xD.

Birther sedevacantism

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sedevacantists are a small minority within Catholicism who hold that Vatican II was illegitimate and so current Popes and the current Catholic church are shams.

They base this, as I understand it, on three ideas. Firstly, the changes passed at Vatican II, particularly the removal of the doctrine of Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (nothing saved outside the Church, or two fingers to ecumenism) as this means the Church no longer has a unique mission. Secondly, new procedures and practices, such as the Paul VI Mass, are held to be in conflict with established Catholic practice. Thirdly, they regard Paul VI as a heretic and therefore unable to be Pope, even if he appears to be in the role, and consider his successors – John Paul I, John Paul II and the current Benedict XVI – to be antipopes. They therefore consider the Chair of St Peter to be empty; sede vacante – empty chair – is the term used by the Catholic Church for the period between the death of one Pope and the coronation of the next.

All this stems from Vatican II (1962-65). Despite their irrelevance to contemporary debates within Catholicism, the presence of traditionalist Catholics within the Church and poor understanding of history, they carry on promulgating their beliefs that the Catholic Church is not Catholic and that the Pope is a fraud.

Compare and contrast with the birther movement in the USA. Wikipedia has a rather nice definition of birther from Rachel Maddow:

a specific new breed of American conspiracy theorists who believe that the real problem with Barack Obama being president is that he can’t possibly have been born in the United States. He’s not eligible to be president. The birth certificate is a fake. He’s a foreigner. Once this has been exposed, I guess, he will be run out of the White House and exposed for the alien, communist, Muslim, gay, drug dealer, al-Qaeda member that he is

I do wonder if in years to come, we will see something like sedevacantism over Obama. It is easy enough to make the transposition; Vatican II is replaced with the 2008 election (doubtless vitiated by the liberal media), Paul VI is replaced with Obama and all subsequent decisions are illegitimate, as Obama does not have the capacity (in birthers’ eyes) to be President and any officials, including Supreme Court Justice, appointed by him do not ‘really’ hold their posts. While they retain their love for America, they see its administration as illegitimate and the line of constitutional authority, rather than the line of papal succession, as broken and America loses its unique mission.

xD.

In answer to Chris Dillow

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Chris ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ Dillow asks five questions. Here are my answers; number two is the best. I’ve put Chris’s questions in italics.

1. The government wants children to learn about the slave trade. But in 18th century England, how much different were the living conditions of the average slave from those of the average unskilled worker? I mean, both got a bare subsistence living and neither had political rights. But slaves had more job security. So how bad was slavery compared to free labour?

I know the passage from Africa was horrific, and there are examples of terrible mistreatment of both slaves and workers. But I’m asking about averages. Anecdotes aren’t enough. And don’t give me any nonsensical effort to empathise from today’s perspective.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence – the pictures of beaten slaves and of (free) children pulling heavy carts through narrow mineshafts – that life for most people in the 1700s was not pleasant. That, however, doesn’t answer Chris’s question. To do that, we’d need detailed breakdowns of the socioeconomic situation of the various types and classes of people at the time. They are not, so far as I know, available.

However, slavery was not just an economic condition. It is very much tied in to race and religion; the question of whether non-whites even had souls was prevalent. While the economics of the situation are worth studying, the moral justifications that were deployed and the attempt to keep slavery out of sight and out of mind are worth studying too; after all, “one Cartwright brought a slave from Russia and would scourge him; for which he was questioned; and it was resolved, that England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in.”1

In any case, the eighteenth century was one of great change that saw the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions and the move from the countryside to the city. I would add that, although villeinage had disappeared in England by 1700, villeins existed in Scotland until 1799.

2. The National Gallery of Scotland wants the tax-payer to buy some paintings from the Duke of Sutherland. Why don’t we apply Nice-style cost-benefit analysis here? Would £100m spent on art really produce £100m worth of increases in quality-adjusted life years (by improving the quality of life, not length of course)? And if we don’t apply such reasoning, why not? Why is the restrictive CBA of Nice only applied to drugs, rather than to all public spending?

Actually, NGS doesn’t want to do that or, at least, if they do they haven’t told anyone. I telephoned the NGS’s contact for the Sutherland purchase and they have not announced how they propose to fund it. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that they want to take it out of general taxation.

Using QALYs would, in time, almost by definition suggest that the spending is justified. It is a one-off purchase of two paintings that will also secure a long-term loan on a further fourteen pieces of art. If we say that, on a scale of one to zero, one is perfect health while zero is dead, we can give a figure to the change in QALYs from the expenditure.
I quote from the entry on NICE’s website on QALYs:

Patient x has a serious, life-threatening condition.

If he continues receiving standard treatment he will live for 1 year and his quality of life will be 0.4 (0 = worst possible health, 1= best possible health)

If he receives the new drug he will live for 1 year 3 months (1.25 years), with a quality of life of 0.6.

The new treatment is compared with standard care in terms of the QALYs gained:

Standard treatment: 1 (year’s extra life) x 0.4 = 0.4 QALY

New treatment: 1.25 (1 year, 3 months extra life) x 0.6 = 0.75 QALY

Therefore, the new treatment leads to 0.35 additional QALYs (that is: 0.75 –0.4 QALY = 0.35 QALYs).

The cost of the new drug is assumed to be £10,000, standard treatment costs £3000.

The difference in treatment costs (£7000) is divided by the QALYs gained (0.35) to calculate the cost per QALY. So the new treatment would cost £20,000 per QALY.

Let me substitute a little.

Person y has a serious, life-threatening condition; they are alive and therefore will die in n years.

If they continue receiving standard treatment they will live for n years and his quality of life will be m, where 0? m ? 1 (0 = worst possible health, 1= best possible health)

If they receive the new drug they will live for n years (assuming that art doesn’t affect length of life), with a quality of life of m + b, where b is the benefit in terms of quality of life derived from viewing the art

The new treatment, art, is compared with standard care in terms of the QALYs gained:

Standard treatment: n x m = nm QALY

New treatment: n x (m+b) = nm+nb QALY

Therefore, the new treatment leads to nb additional QALYs

The cost of the new drug is assumed to be £50,000,000, inaction costs £0.

The difference in treatment costs (£50,000,000) is divided by the QALYs gained (nb) to calculate the cost per QALY. So the new treatment would cost £50,000,000/nb per QALY.

Let us say that a nice trip to the gallery to see the picture is equal to a positive change of one one-thousandth, or 0.001. We very quickly see that the cost, given that n is constant, per QALY is an astronomical number: 50000000000. That, however, is for one person. To bring it down to the £30,000 limit suggested by the NHS, 1,666,667 people would have to see the paintings. That’s not per year; that’s in total ever. NGS tell me that one and a half million people visit the National Galleries of Scotland per year, a million of which go to the National Gallery of Scotland where the Titian is.

It may be that my assumption of one one-thousandth of a QALY is too high. It wouldn’t matter; you’d have to wait longer to derive the benefit, but it would happen. It is also, of course, possible that it is too low. Not everyone who sees the paintings (the total is fourteen) is going to be someone off the street. Some will be schoolchildren on guided tours who may have a lifelong interest sparked in art; I’m sure you can think of other, equally unquantifiable examples.

You could also add into the calculation the benefit of the continuation of these major works of art to the local economy, including the increased publicity they will receive from the coverage of the possible purchase.

I wonder if Chris has been reading Bentham; the QALY method is the descendant of the felicific calculus and I’m sure that he would like to think he’s had an impact. The reason, I suspect, that this form of CBA is only applied to medical treatments for two reasons. Firstly, medical types tend to have a decent grasp of statistics and so are more likely to come up with ways of quantifying abstracts like ‘quality of life’. Doing the same thing for, say, Trident would be a lot harder as you have to make unprovable, untestable assumptions about the effect of having nuclear weapons. You could say that having a bell on a stick would prevent us from being nuked and it would be just as hard to prove. It is also hard to test the effect, if any, of things like prestige. I suspect, though, that the main reason is that the budgets for the NHS in general and medicines in particular are so large that they cannot be ignored and that, as the Government wanted to move responsibility away from itself, both to avoid the demands of political exigence and thereby to give a fairer result, NICE was set up and went about things in the best way it could.

3. How can academics be so quick to close down free speech? Surely, any proper teacher must know that the solution to mistaken beliefs is to correct them through discussion – that’s what teaching means. Academics must therefore support free speech, by definition. Does this episode merely corroborate my prejudice, that a close interest in the Israel-Palestine question is dangerous for one’s mental health?

Unfortunately, there are plenty of academics who don’t sign up to the scientific method; I point to many of the people involved in promoting creationism or intelligent design and, for some excellent rebuttal, Thunderf00t’s YouTube channel.

Mistaken beliefs should, in theory, be correctable by teaching so long as the belief is honestly held on a misappreciation of facts or misapplication of argument. Often, the aim is not to find any sort of ‘truth’ or answer but to ensure that your side wins; the fervour behind that aim, whether religious or secular, is such that any methods are justified leading to a lack of understanding in why what can be broadly termed the scientific method is important. That leads to lazy citation and research and quoting David Duke.

In answer to the final point, yes. I agree with much of Dave Osler’s thinking about the problems around discussing the area at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean.

4. Companies are moving their head offices to Ireland or Luxembourg to save tax. So, is there something to be said for a cut in corporation tax, financed by higher top income tax rates? The idea here is that companies’ head offices are more mobile than individual high-earners, and it doesn’t matter much anyway if a few of these leave or retire anyway. So we protect tax revenues without increasing inequality. What’s wrong with this?

In a unitary state, not much. However, in a country like the USA, where a slight rise in corporation tax could allow for a reduction in income tax in a given state, making people move to a state next to the state where they work. Indeed, it could make sense for a state to try to ride the Laffer curve if they have a nearby headquarters. Ultimately, it depends on whether the costs of moving justify the rewards of lower taxes for a given high-earner.

As to what might be wrong with this, we well know that the majority of the press will not report such subtleties other than as ‘tax rise’ or an attack on anything resembling progressive taxation.

I have wondered what would happen if we scrapped all taxes except income tax, adjusting the total take accordingly; I suspect, though, that whatever we did companies and other states would play the system to their advantage.

5. Merrill Lynch has lost a quarter of the profits it made in 36 years in just 18 months. Does this show that the profits to investment banking are a reward for taking black swan risk? You make decent profits, on average, in exchange for massive losses on rare occasions? Were Merrill’s profits (and those of other investment bankers) in good times merely a reward for taking this obscure risk? Did they – and their rivals – really fully understand what they were doing, or were they just lucky punters? What would count as persuasive evidence here?

Persuasive evidence here would be pretty hard to come by as we are only looking, for the most part, at the actions rather than the rationale. The turnover in staff may also mean that people came in without sufficient time to analyse the situation and those that did thought that the expectation of the low probability event given a short time at that company was low enough to take the risk. I would add that Merrill Lynch and others may have actually had a role in causing and worsening the crunch that has led to their losses.

Are there interesting, non-trivial answers here that are well-founded in evidence? Or is it that there’s a lot we don’t know?

Both, I’d say.

xD.

1 – cited from a judgement of 1569 by counsel for Somersett, a slave, in Somersett’s Case (R. v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett) of 1772 which “held that slavery was unlawful in England (but not other parts of the British Empire”

The BNP, Hizb ut-Tahrir and no-platform

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Sunny Hundal asks a couple of interesting questions over at Pickled Politics; should a no-platform policy with regards to the BNP be continued and should that it be extended to groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir?

By way of a background, I understand a no-platform policy (in the instance of the BNP) to mean that no-one from an organisation with that policy would share a speaking platform of any description with a representative of the BNP and that the BNP should not be invited to speak at said organisation. I don’t consider this to impinge on freedom of speech. Firstly, there is no obligation, for the most part, on anyone holding an event to invite people of all political persuasions. Secondly, there are no restrictions placed as a result of the policy on the BNP’s ability to inform others and on others to inform themselves about the BNP as there is plenty of information out there, not least on their website; nor does it prevent their arguments being dealt with as it is not necessary for someone to be present to be able to take on board their argument.

The point of the no-platform policy is to prevent a serially mendacious party from being able to claim any form of recognition or acceptance from civil society because they will twist ‘appearing on platform x’ into an endorsement of their existence and precisely because they crave that acceptance. The evidence for that is the dropping of the boot-boy image for suits and the attempt to cover up their racist and violent tendencies for the image of a legitimate political party.

Sunny asserts that the ‘BNP has been successfully de-legitimised’. I’m afraid that this is not universally true; in parts of East London, they are very much legitimate to some parts of the community. It is true that there was not much of an increase in the vote for the BNP but it put them above the five per cent threshold to give them an Assembly seat; we cannot deny and must not ignore the benefits that the BNP will seeks to extract from this position. There are many things that can be done and, in fairness, are being done. However, abandoning a policy of delegitimisation just as the BNP achieve an electoral success would simply allow them to say that their ‘growth’ means that the mainstream parties now see them as a legitimate part of the political sphere.

A good reminder of the illegitimacy of the BNP comes from the Tory Troll, who reports that an internal challenge to the leadership of Nick Griffin has been met by that organisation’s elections officer, one Eddy Butler, telling members not to sign any nomination papers and for ‘zero publicity’ to be given to the challenger.

Hizb ut-Tahrir are a different kettle of fish altogether. Yes, they are unpleasant and, yes, they have traits in common with the BNP but it would be wrong to see Hizb ut-Tahrir as simply an Islamic version of the BNP. For one thing, they are in different situations and they have different political ends; that alone is grounds to consider different tactics for opposing these groups differently.

The BNP, as I see it, wish to appeal to all whites. Their tactics are dependent upon a broad appeal and, because of the level of their support, they cannot nurture individuals. Their aim is to represent what they would consider the ‘true’ inhabitants of the UK; a broad take-up of the no-platform policy makes it harder for them to claim that representation as the mainstream not only disagree with them but see them as beyond the pale. That might sound a little counter-intuitive, but they are not just going after the alienated but after people who feel they are abandoned by the major parties; the difference there is important.

Hizb ut-Tahrir are not targeting all Muslims; rather, they are going after Muslims they might consider susceptible to their influence. They seek to capitalise on alienation and would be able to capitalise on the exalted position of difference if no-platform were broadly implemented towards them; for those who might feel removed from the British polis (to the extent that it exists), this would highlight Hizb ut-Tahrir as a standard around which to rally.

I would echo a point made by Sunny:

“The other problem is that most of the people who choose to take on HuT don’t know much about them, which provides them an opportunity to play the victim card and pretend they’re just lovely people.”

“[T]he truth will set you free” (John 8:321) or knowledge is power2; whichever way you prefer it, providing honest information and background to both these groups is a decent part of defeating them. The question of no-platform is essentially a question of the best way of delivering the message and countering the threats they pose in a manner which at least does nothing to strengthen their position and at best weakens it. Given that, as I have said, I have no philosophical objection to no-platform, it becomes a tactical issue. Going back to the original questions, I would say that we should continue the no-platform policy against the BNP but that we should not extend it to Hizb ut-Tahrir at this juncture.

xD.

1 – Disclaimer – the truth will set you free, but you might not like it.

2 – And, given that I’m quoting a lot and that both the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir have their own variations on truth, ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’.

Dhimmitude

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Dhimmitude is a pejorative term that refers to people in the West who, in the opinion of users of the word, are guilty of surrendering to Islam. Islam, it would appear by reading the profferings of people who use the term, is the greatest evil out there and it seeks to insist that all non-Muslims under its sway live in conditions analogous to the worst varieties of dhimma; that is to say, subjugation for non-Muslims. As a dhimmi (as I understand it), certain rights were protected to varying degrees depending on the secular political situation but, in all variants, there was an exclusion from the political arena inasmuch as the decisions could only be taken by Muslims.

I mention this in light of the debate around my post on Liberal Conspiracy and, more broadly, the furore around Dr Rowan Williams’ comments on sharia. My favourites come from the Daily Mail website, which includes this gem from ‘Alastair’

What so many Muslims seem to conveniently forget is that Britain is not an Islamic country. If they want to live under Sharia law, they should go back to an Islamic country. If you live in Britain, obey its laws’

As I have tried (at length) to point out, sharia law is not necessarily a replacement for current law; it is not even a single entity. Rather, it is a manner of thinking. Much of the opposition to Dr Williams’ remarks is Islamophobic inasmuch as it is based on an irrational fear of Islam. Much of the rest, as above, is on this idea that you have to accept Britain as is and that the laws, as they are, are a positive expression of ‘Britishness’ and that any deviation from that is to be stepped on while people who want to live differently should be grateful for being able to associate with Britons. This unBritishness, according to the Bishop of Winchester, extends to homosexuality. Sounds a bit like… dhimmitude.

Earlier in the same thread, ‘David’ (no relation) said:

Oh yes, Lambeth Palace says the Archbishops comments are too academic for the population at large.

QED.

xD.

In defence of the Archbishop of Canterbury

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is in trouble over his comments on the incorporation of Sharia law into UK law.

It is my opinion that Dr Williams’ suggestions deserve reasoned consideration; that they do not require a change in the nature of the law; and that much of the opposition to them, implicitly, requires a very grave change in the law from defining what is illegal to defining what is legal.

I think it’s important to work out exactly what the most reverend Primate is saying. It has generally been reported as ‘sharia law is unavoidable’ along with cries of Londonistan and dhimmitude.

According to this transcript of an interview between the Archbishop and Jonathan Landau, what Dr Williams believes is that

“the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion seems unavoidable”

What I intend to do in this post is briefly to sum up Dr Williams’ argument before giving my reasons for supporting it. I will then seek to show not only that the arguments used to oppose his comments are based on misconceptions, accidental or otherwise, of his opinions and that they, in fact, to a great deal to damage community relations in the UK. Finally, I will reflect on the implications of Dr Williams’ comments and the reaction they have provoked.

I apologise if it seems a bit pretentious to lay things out like that, but this is going to be a longer post than usual.

1. Dr Williams’ argument.

I am basing this section on the aforementioned transcript and the text of his lecture that can be found here.

Arms of the See of Canterbury, courtesy of WikipediaDr Williams can probably cast his eye towards Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, declining attendances and growing secularism and realise that, one day, the Church of England will be disestablished. He is, in essence, preparing the groundwork for the Church of England to retain some of its privilege and position when that occurs. Within that framework, I think that sharia is being used a shorthand for the principle of providing a statutory framework for the implementation of religious law, within bounds set by civil law, where all parties concerned consent.

The first things that Dr Williams says are; that sharia is misunderstood; that there is no single conception of sharia; and that he does not advocate the extreme interpretations of sharia that exist.

“far from being a monolithic system of detailed enactments, sharia designates primarily – to quote [Tariq] Ramadan again – ‘the expression of the universal principles of Islam {and} the framework and the thinking that makes for their actualization in human history’”

and

“what most people think they know of sharia is that it is repressive towards women and wedded to archaic and brutal physical punishments”

He is also at pains to point out that acceptance of sharia law categorically does not mean rejection of civil law. Indeed, the examples he gives are:

in modern times, the clearest articulation of this was in the foundation of the Pakistani state under Jinnah; but other examples (Morocco, Jordan) could be cited of societies where there is a concept of citizenship that is not identical with belonging to the umma

The implication of this is that someone can choose to submit themselves to religious law but (from the point of view of the Weberian state) has no choice but to submit themselves to civil law.

Williams goes onto identify three, specific implications of the concept. They are, in short, greater attachment to law based on personal belief than state-membership; effective persecution of the most vulnerable members of society being facilitated; and the lack of necessity of exercising legal rights to any or their full degree.

Williams openly accepts that some people claim religion as a defence for all sorts of odd actions:

A recent example might be the reported refusal of a Muslim woman employed by Marks and Spencer to handle a book of Bible stories.

His answer, simply, is to say that this is a cultural trait, not a religious trait. By the terms of Williams argument, this is a non-issue. While there is a debate as to what extent some things are cultural or religious and while there are primitivist interpretations of Islam , the general principle is that people cannot claim religion to explain their actions or lack of actions without reason behind it.

The second implication is that supplementary legal opinion-givers could be used to compel weaker people to accept their judgements. This is essentially a question about social pressure. Williams’ solution is prior consent. For what its worth, I find that unsatisfactory. I would prefer prior consent to the system and consent before each individual binding judgement; it is not a problem if it is in an advisory capacity.

The third point, here, is key. Under English law, I am entitled to file for divorce from any spouse I may have. That does not mean that I have to file for divorce at any given time, or at all. If I file for divorce, a (properly constructed) pre-nuptial agreement or parting on good terms may make things all pretty easy to decide. If not, arbitration can be used without the intervention of the state. All Williams suggests is that Islamic jurisprudence should be considered as a possible source of reasonable arbitration.

Unfortunately, Williams, in a somewhat academic fashion, comes round to his point by a circuitous route. He is essentially saying not just that people should be able to choose, where the choice is freely made, an arbiter in certain legal processes but that an Islamic arbiter could have an official recognition that makes it the source of arbitration of choice, increasing the extent to which its judgements are exposed to critical assessment.

At all times, civil law would retain its absolute, unqualified primacy; any body giving opinions under sharia would not be able to go beyond what is prescribed by law.

2. The weakness of the opposition

The opposition to Dr Williams’ comments comes, to my mind, in three forms. They are wilful misinterpretation, Christian traditionalism and republican culturalism.

To deal with the wilful misinterpretation, I turn to the great organ of the state, The Sun, which asks:

YOU THE JURY
SHOULD the Archbishop of Canterbury be sacked for his comments on Sharia law?

The Archbishop of Canterbury serves at the pleasure of the Queen; I would have thought that The Sun would not want to encroach on HM’s remit.

Earlier, The Sun says

FOR many, Sharia law will forever be linked to the grainy images smuggled out of Saudi Arabia or Iran of people being beheaded or even stoned to death.

It is Rowan Williams’ belief (and it is one I share) that there is no one, singular, authoritative sharia. To conflate the extremes of Wahhabism with Dr Williams’ proposals is intellectually cheap and, to be honest, morally bankrupt.

Melanie Phillips’ has a slightly different misinterpretation. To be fair, I think that it is less deliberate; Phillips, while I disagree with her profoundly, is intellectually honest. Quoth the raven:

Either way, his proposal would also mean that Britain would simply abandon its female Muslim citizens whose parlous position in respect of forced marriages, honour killings and all the other horrors that follow from their second-class religious status would be institutionalised by giving sharia law official recognition. Dr Williams says such women should still retain the right of appeal to the English courts if their human rights were breached under sharia. What absurdity is this? It is the cultural assumptions which flow from sharia which lead to the oppression of Muslim women. How is the right of appeal to human rights law going to help women who are beaten and killed by men who do it in the name of religion? In order to protect our female Muslim citizens, we need to remove from them the yoke of sharia law, not institutionalise it with the seal of official approval.

Dr Williams does not merely say that there would be a right of appeal, but that there would have to be prior consent. Equally, there is a feminist current within sharia that Williams, I think, seeks to encourage. Certainly, I know a couple of observant, Muslim women who cannot be characterised as other than feminist in the Western tradition. They happen to bolt on to this the wearing of a veil based on a practical suggestion from the Koran – that men ogle women.

The next current of opposition is Christian traditionalism, for I which will turn to Danny Finkelstein.

As I argued in my column yesterday, this is a Christian country, even if (unbelievably) the Archbishop himself wishes it were not so. Everyone is entitled to worship any religion or none but this under British law and with due respect for the way that British traditions hold in public space.
Fortunately these traditions include remarkable tolerance for others, a welcome and interest in the practice of others and great generosity of spirit. But such values are not abstract one, conjured out of nowhere. They are rooted in this country’s history and practice as a Christian nation.

Which is, frankly, bizarre. It was Christianity that led to the expulsion of the Jews, for starters. It is Christianity that led to blasphemy being a crime that is still on the statute book. It is a subset of Christians who are trying to keep it there and keep it used. It was Christianity that led to persecution of Catholics because they were the wrong sort of Christian. It is true that Christianity also motivated (say) William Wilberforce or countless other doers of good works. To say that there is such a thing as monolithic Christianity in the UK is, frankly, ignoring several hundred years of inconvenient truths; indeed, there is a decent argument to be made that the strength of the Liberal Democrats in the far South West of England is due in no small part to arguments between Church and Chapel.

Finkelstein says:

“There are any number of places in the world where people can live under Sharia law. This isn’t one of them.
Nor should it be.”

In other words, he is saying that people cannot have a moral code different to the minimum enforced by the State so long as it does not go beyond the bounds laid out by the State.

This Christian traditionalism goes as far as to invent for itself a mythology. Ruth Gledhill’s article in the Times is accompanied by some pictures. Do please take a look at them; they represent one aspect of Islam out of many and I will say no more than that I do not believe that they help the debate.

Gledhill says that:

The Church of England was born out of an express desire to rid Britain of a foreign, ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Article 37 of the 39 says: ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.’ Queen Elizabeth I early in her reign decreed that the Crown had restored to it ‘the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical and spiritual, abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same’.

Which is an almighty assumption. The Church of England was not born out of any one desire, but a combination of the spiritual and political desires of certain, militant clergymen with the financial wherewithal to visit parishes across the country, the King’s coveting of the monasteries’ wealth and the desire of Elizabeth I, in choosing the Via Media, to keep the country together. Equally, Henry VIII was not motivated solely by spiritual concerns but very temporal concerns, including, for instance, cosying up to the German Lutheran states in case of actions by the Holy Roman Empire in the form of Charles V.

Article Thirty-Seven of the Thirty-Nine articles does indeed refer to the Bishop of Rome. Sadly, Gledhill doesn’t quote the full article, which runs:

“The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not nor ought to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction“Where we attribute to the Queen’s Majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended, we give not to our princes the ministering either of God’s word or of sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen doth most plainly testify: but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself, that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.

“The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences.

“It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars.”

It is not my belief that the Queen is ordained by God, as article XXXVII suggests; equally, it is as much about saying that the singular Catholic authority had no power, as it claimed, in either the temporal or spiritual affairs of England. Firstly, that is a fiat. Secondly, it was written in 1563 and as such may not be completely adequate for today’s world. Thirdly, they have never been universally accepted; indeed, the Archbishop of Armagh said, as long ago as 1643, that

Some of them are the very same thing that are contained in the Creed; some others of them are practical truths, which come not within the proper list of points or articles to be believed; lastly, some of them are pious opinions or inferior truths, which are proposed by the Church of England to all her sons, as not to be opposed; not as essentials of Faith necessary to be believed by all Christians ‘necessitate medii’, under pain of damnation.

The argument I have most often heard for maintaining the position of the Bishops in the House of Lords is that they can do the detailed thinking on moral issues for a predominantly Christian country. The debate on the issue has been reduced to hectoring and invalid heuristic by not just the gutter press but by papers like The Times, the newspaper of record, with a heavy dose of wilful ignorance of and outright hostility to Islam because it is the fashion of the day.

We then have what I term republican culturalism. That is to say, the promotion of an official state culture with what are, essentially, republican goals on the French model. The most succinct example I have found of that so far is on Donal Blaney’s blog:

The maxim “when in Rome, do as the Romans” springs to mind. If muslims want to live under sharia law or a caliphate they are of course free to do so – outside Britain. Our country is based on the rule of law and equality before the law. If these extremists who so hate Britain want to leave, maybe we ought to offer to pay their airfares. For if we truly want social cohesion, the adoption of sharia law is the worst thing we can do.

I reject, in the very strongest possible terms, the maxim that Blaney cites for two reasons. There are many things about our polity that I dislike and I do what I can to change them; I consider it to be an obligation on a citizen. Sadly, most people do not, and I would not like people to let their beliefs slide and not try to enter into debate around them; that is moral cowardice. Secondly, the Muslims in question are British. They are, at any rate, at least as British as George III was. Although he said, in his first speech to Parliament, that

born and bred in this country I glory in the name of Briton

he was the son of immigrants, the first Hanoverian to be actually born in England and was also a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and latterly King of Hanover. I reject the territorial assertion of nationality; it is a much more complex, nuanced matter.

It may well be that some people who confess the Islamic faith wish to do live under a caliphate. I do not; however, I believe that they have a right to argue for Britain to become a caliphate. I believe that if they want to use the provisions of English law in new, innovative and legal ways, they should be congratulated on their ingenuity, wished the best and made it clear that I won’t stop saying that I disagree with their choices.

These are not people who hate Britain; they can, quite easily, go to other countries. However, the many advantages of living in Britain mean that they would rather stay here. All that Dr Williams has suggested is that we might, within the existing spirit of the laws, make some accommodations. I will return to this theme in my closing remarks.

3. Effects on social cohesion

As I have said, I believe that some people have deliberately misconstrued Dr Williams’ words. The effect is to suggest to the readers of, inter alia, The Sun that there is a realistic possibility of Saudi-style sharia becoming the primary source of law in the United Kingdom and that the Primate of All England supports the idea. That raises a hostility that becomes misdirected from its misbegotten birth.

What Dr Williams has suggested is that the strict delineation that some seek between ‘Western’ or ‘Christian’ sources of law and ‘Eastern’ or ‘Islamic’ sources of law is not in any way helpful as it leads to unnecessary tensions between culture, religion and citizenship. His argument is that these can be ameliorated by, as occurs with the battei din, accommodations within the existing legal framework. This goes on an informal basis, but formalising it could improve the situation by increasing transparency, visibility and accountability.

Let me turn to the comments of one of my favourite bloggers, Iain Dale:

I don’t want any form of Sharia Law in this country at all. Ever. That is not being Islamaphobic. It’s my opinion and it’s one shared by 99 per cent of the British people, as well as, I suspect, by the majority of British Muslims.. Sharia Law has nothing in common with British values and parts of it could fairly be desribed as downright evil. Anyone who believes that women and men are equal in the eyes of society and the law could not countenance it.

Let us replace sharia law with Jewish law, and see how that sounds. The battei din exist and get on with life without the approval or otherwise of Mr Dale. Even Nye Bevan, who declared in no uncertain terms his views on Tories:

No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party

did not seek to ban Tory rule. I would have hoped that Iain – as someone broadly within the liberal tradition – would have recognised that I can live my life as I see fit and, so long as I remain within the law, his opinions matter not a hoot. What is being proposed by Dr Williams is the same.

It suggests to me that a great deal of the problems around Islam in the UK at the moment is due to the rampant paranoia expressed by some commentators, aided and abetted by a general anti-religionism (and no, I don’t mean anti-clericism) of the Dawkins variety.

I turn to the effects of Dr Williams’ proposal by looking at one particular aspect, mutah. I do not present myself as expert, so let me explain that I understand mutah to be a concept within the Shia interpretation of Islam that provides for temporary marriages which, for the duration of the marriage, lay certain obligations on both parties analogous to a ‘full’ marriage and whereby any offspring cannot be disowned by either party after the expiration of the body of the arrangement. It is, in fact, a contract, as is marriage. Making an allowance for a contract of this nature would (it can be contended)

4. Implications

If I have a contract with someone and we wish to renegotiate that contract, there is no obligation for that renegotiation to have any recourse to the state. English law says what is illegal, not what is legal; there is no prescription of the ‘good’ life. Therefore, I can conduct myself, within the law, in any manner I see fit. If someone has a problem with that, they are welcome to polemicise and to remonstrate, as am I. From this principle, we have arbitration. In (say) a labour dispute, parties can accept the binding judgement of a third party as to what is ‘fair’. If we change that, we are fundamentally changing the nature of liberty in the UK.

I find it deeply worrying; people who set themselves up as defenders of liberty are, in fact, falling on half-understood interpretations of religious texts from some centuries past in what is, in effect, the result of the fear of the unknown.

These are sensitive issues; sobriety is needed. The reaction of many sections of the press – to put words into the Archbishop’s mouth that are quite different from what he said – inflames tensions in the name of money. God and mammon, indeed. The assertion of Christianity, tradition, history and cultural norms I find repugnant as it is an appeal to the dead and not to reason. Equally, the assertions are based on misinterpretations, which makes me think that they are phobic of Islam; they have an unreasonable, pathological fear. There are, for instance, sections of Islam that would shut themselves off from all who don’t agree with their interpretation of the world. Making any generalisation about contemporary Islamic practice on the basis of such a group is like comparing the Church of England to the Exclusive Brethren. I would add that the official Christian tradition in England is, at least since the first Elizabeth, that of the Via Media. It is a tradition of accommodation and delaying unnecessary conflict in the hope that it dissipates.

I state the point again, because it is important. The right to arbitration exists already; formalising it could actually improve some of the problems with extremists in British Islam at the moment.

If people want to go to arbitration, they can choose whichever arbiters they like, whether I’m happy about it or not. Equally, to suggest that looking at alternate sources of law is totally unreasonable – particularly when the call comes from a religious figure who presumably wants some sort of Christian law – and not even worthy of debate is a little strange; after all, we have a mix of sources of law in the UK already, statute and precedent.

I suppose you could say if Mohammed will not come to the magistrate, the magistrate will have to come to Mohammed.

xD.

1 – I recommend Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars for more on this era

PS I have written this at a rate of knots, and so apologise for any offence I have caused by by mode of expression; it is unintentional.