Bashing the (Arch) Bishop

Christopher Hitchens adds his twopence worth in relation to Archbishop Rowan Williams’ call for aspects of sharia law to become part of UK law - in a piece on Slate entitled pithily

To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury

he elegantly rails against Dr Williams’ “dangerous claptrap about ‘plural jurisdiction’”.

Amongst other things he correctly identifies the critical point that sharia law, apart from being brutal in a criminal context (beatings and choppings) also grievously disadvantages women in its civil law aspect. When Dr Williams cosily invites sharia courts to determine certain civil matters, he condemns women to a fate not acceptable here for centuries. One can imagine the fear and alarm with which his words were heard by some, mainly female, in the Muslim community - I quote from Hitchens, -

“A BBC interview with Williams had him saying that the opening to sharia would “help maintain social cohesion.” If that phrase is even intended to mean anything, it can only imply that a concession of this kind would lessen the propensity to violence among Muslims. But such abjectness is not the only definition of social cohesion that we have. By a nice coincidence, a London think tank called the Center for Social Cohesion issued a report just days before the leader of the world’s Anglicans and Episcopalians capitulated to Islamic demands. Titled “Crimes of the Community: Honour-Based Violence in the UK,” and written by James Brandon and Salam Hafez, it set out a shocking account of the rapid spread of theocratic crime. The main headings were murder and beating of women, genital mutilation, forced marriage, and vigilante methods employed against those who complained. It could well be—since we are becoming every day more familiar with the first three—that the fourth is the one that should concern us most.

Picture the life of a young Urdu-speaking woman brought to Yorkshire from Pakistan to marry a man—quite possibly a close cousin—whom she has never met. He takes her dowry, beats her, and abuses the children he forces her to bear. She is not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male relative and unless she is submissively covered from head to toe. Suppose that she is able to contact one of the few support groups that now exist for the many women in Britain who share her plight. What she ought to be able to say is, “I need the police, and I need the law to be enforced.” But what she will often be told is, “Your problem is better handled within the community.” And those words, almost a death sentence, have now been endorsed and underwritten—and even advocated—by the country’s official spiritual authority.”

Aren’t these last few sentences so horribly true?

And it wouldn’t be Hitchens if he didn’t take a huge club to religion generally -

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—”There’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said”—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill…………………………

For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. This modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all.

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