Rowan Williams under pressure to quit

[morningpaper]

I'm so furious I can hardly discuss it

All the conservatives jumping around with the stupid people and their pitchforks

How very depressing

Great article by YA-B ahom I usually disagree with.
I think RW's remarks were quite daft

Not sure I'd agree that the debate exposes a pulsing vein of misogyny in the Church but I do think the response from female Muslims like Yasmin A-B and Irshad Manji (hadn't heard of her before) exposes William's thoughtlessness borne of too much bloody thinking. They're right to be furious with him.

Poss. there's an argument for them being able to use Sharia to sort out some disputes, but the one area it should absolutely never be involved in is marriage breakdown, where the woman is likely to be massively disadvantaged, compared tothe deal she'd get in the "proper" courts.

mumblechaun, I'd presume, given that Sharia is, as far as I'm aware, a wholly male-administered system, that women would be disadvantage at any level?

mumblechum, rather. Think I got you confused with a Fila Brazillia album title there

Yes, but what I meant was that say if you have two Muslim men in dispute about, say, a building job which has gone wrong, they could thrash it out in a Sharia court.

Why? Don't we have a system that deals with that kind of thing already? Why on earth should a dispute over a building job be dealt with by a religious system of law?

Well, I'm not actually suggesting it should, just that of all the potential disputes which muslims may need sorting, the one type which should definitely NOT be adjudicated under Sharia law is divorce or any other type of family law, eg adoption, fostering, contact or residence disputes.

I'm not in any way excusing the Archbish, he's coming across as unbelievably naive, bordering on batty!

Shari's isn't specifically a religious system, it's a socio-religious.

Desperately against a 2 teir legal system 9not that I could ever see that happening officially) but this debate needed starting because it already exists in some palces- and also because adopting Shari's is categorically not the same as learning from Shari'a: poeple seem to be so put off (undertandably) by the horror stories of stonings and amputations that they don't want, or in many cases just haven't learned about, the more day to day aspects that we could learn from. ALL cultures can learn from each other, once the fears and apprehensiojns have been dealt with. islam for a start was way ahead oft he UK on inheritance law for females, who is to say there is nothing else we can gain from the study?

I can understand why Roowan Williams could be seen as the wrong person to address this but who is? Politicians by their very nature need an eye on the next popularity poll; academics and law specialists like the chap next door (Lectures in Islam and terrorism) don't have the profile.