[!@#$%!]

so i was reading the paper online and suprise article:

A Craven Canterbury Tale


By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, February 12, 2008; Page A19

Is this a storm in a teacup, as the archbishop now claims? Was the "feeding frenzy" biased and unfair? Certainly it is true that, since Thursday, when Rowan Williams -- the archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Church of England, symbolic leader of the international Anglican Communion -- called for "constructive accommodation" with some aspects of sharia law, and declared the incorporation of Muslim religious law into the British legal system "unavoidable," practically no insult has been left unsaid.

[bla bla bla bla]

Meanwhile, police in Wales are dealing with an epidemic of forced marriages, honor killings remain a perennial problem, and British law has already been altered to accommodate "sharia" mortgages. The archbishop is absolutely right in his belief that a universalist Enlightenment system -- one in which the legitimacy of the law derives from democratic procedures, not divine edicts, and in which the same rules apply to everyone living in the same society -- cannot easily accommodate all of these different practices.

[bla bla bla bla]


Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That's why -- if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop -- I'm on the side of the Sun.

--------

SO: are you this fucked and far gone? is it real? what the fuck's going on?

[✌➬]

He is a cunt, but here is another story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by ✌➬

He is a cunt, but here is another story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

i dont give a fuck. get your own thread.


======

the (arch)bishop-- is he feeble-minded?

[sonicl]

He's talking more than a little bit of sense, in my opinion. The media and politicians who are lambasting him have a vested interest in appealing to the "little Englander" section of society, and are thus blind to anything sensible that involves embracing anything other than WASP attitudes.

I'd say that he's calling for more understanding and acceptance of prominent non-Christian belief systems by the people who are running the nation, which, if we are to all live together in a tolerant society, is a pretty desirable situation, wouldn't you say?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by sonicl

He's talking more than a little bit of sense, in my opinion. The media and politicians who are lambasting him have a vested interest in appealing to the "little Englander" section of society, and are thus blind to anything sensible that involves embracing anything other than WASP attitudes.

I'd say that he's calling for more understanding and acceptance of prominent non-Christian belief systems by the people who are running the nation, which, if we are to all live together in a tolerant society, is a pretty desirable situation, wouldn't you say?

i see. i went to read the guardian after i read your post.

that washington post bitch-- the washington post is going to the shitter i think-- i mean... very misleading opinion article she wrote. more & more, unfortunately, fox news is the journalistic standard of all media.

i checked the guardian: "He was not proposing, he said, to introduce sharia as a "parallel jurisdiction" and insisted there could be no "blank cheques" regarding the status of women and their liberties. He did, however, repeat his assertion that certain provisions of sharia were already recognised by society and that this could be extended to other areas."

see that WAPO skank said that there was gonna be an "evisceration" of the british legal system.

[sonicl]

Oh, I'm not sure that you'd find much of the British media agreeing with my point of view - if you'd have looked at any newspaper other than the Guardian, and possibly the Independant, you'd have read much the same as the Washington Post said.

The Sun, our leading working class tabloid, ran with the headline "Bash The Bishop" on Saturday. Idiot journalism, but bloody funny headline.

[!@#$%!]

so, there aren't any female circumcisions being carried out in british hospitals, as that fool implies??

[sonicl]

I have no idea about that. But if her source is The Sun, that probably means that it may have happened once in the last fifty years.

[!@#$%!]

oh shit man. look @ what google turned up.

http://www.bmj.com/archive/6994ed1.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1879

http://www.humanrightshouse.org/dllvis5.asp?id=4250

[sonicl]

If you hadn't included the British Medical Journal as one of your sources, I'd poo-poo the other two, as they both have an agenda (I'm not saying that the agenda is necessarily a bad one, just that they're not working from a neutral viewpoint). But I have to give it a bit more respect than that because you've quoted a reputable source.

Doctors break the law, because of religious beliefs, or for a quiet life, or because they fear getting crap for being politically incorrect if they don't. Life's a bitch. But that doesn't mean that all aspects of Sharia law are bad, or that all aspects of western law are better than Sharia.

I don't think we're talking chopping peoples' hands off for stealing here, and I don't think we're talking making it legal to force a woman to marry against her will, or to kill a woman who won't.

[This Is Not Here]

This whole thing is completely bizarre, I know the Archbishop is a kind of liberal sort of guy, but suggesting muslims have their own system of law would just isolate them more than they already are. Maybe he was trying and failing miserably to give Muslims their due respect, however it's his use of the word "inevitable" in regards to shariah law has given this whole thing the feel of good old fashioned British xenaphobia.
However, it's nice to have someone completely unqualified telling us how to run our country who isn't Prince Charles, for once.

[Glice]

This story, more than many, has angered me. Genuinely so, as it happens. The absolutely cavernous gap between WHAT WAS SAID and what has been inferred is unbelievable.

You'll note that no-one has recently kicked up a cunt over Beth Din. Curious, that one.

[Glice]

I would shout a lot at anyone not reading this article from hereon in in this thread but I probably won't be arsed.

[floatingslowly]

I've heard that muslims actually have horns on their heads.

can anyone confirm this to be true??

Originally Posted by Glice

kicked up a cunt over

yr a master of language, mr. mingemouth.

[UVRAY]

>> I'd say that he's calling for more understanding and acceptance of prominent non-Christian belief systems by the people who are running the nation, which, if we are to all live together in a tolerant society, is a pretty desirable situation, wouldn't you say? <<

Indeed. People are such knee jerk reactive twats.

It's good for us all, if only people would use their noddles and realise these things can be manipulated to any advantage.

Only yesterday I went to the bar at a little after midnight, rather unsteady on my legs.

The bartender looked at me and said "I'm sorry, I can't serve you. You've had too much to drink."

I replied that under Sharia law he HAD to serve me.

No arguments after that. People in this country are shit-scared of a Muslim back-lash - they soon kow tow to these religious zealots.

Islam is coming. And, as the Islamists often point out, "Islam will rule the world."

Of course, the vast majority of Muslims do it by the ballot, rather than the bullet.

But the question is, which established hierarchy do you prefer to be under.

[racehorse]

i 100% would not mind living in a country whose legal structure was influenced by sharia law. Our current laws are not based upon "British Values" (what in the name of Allah are they?), but the moral code which they try to uphold stems directly from christianity. Christian and Islamic moral values are not all that different. They came from the same area of the world. It's just that they happen to be brown, and whenever they kill people it is in the media. A legal framework based upon the religious values of the people living inside that particular country is so vitally important for society. Besides, there is no one "sharia law" - people can follow the areas which will lead towards "the water source". it is a framework laid to support humanity - to make people more compassionate, healthy, and agreeable.
Women could divorce their husbands in Islamic countries centuries before they could in Britan.

[racehorse]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

so, there aren't any female circumcisions being carried out in british hospitals, as that fool implies??

fgm is a practise that predates islam by centuries. It is not a part of Sharia law. (from forward.co.uk - The Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development (FORWARD) is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works to advance and protect the sexual and reproductive health and human rights of African girls and women. )

"FGM has no link with Islam and is a neither a requirement nor a Sunna in Islam. All FGM related Hadith [1] that are allegedly attributed to Prophet Muhammad {Peace Be Upon Him} have been proved to be inauthentic."

granted, some islamic countries do practise FGM. However, a law is a piece of paper. The sharia law has no mention of it.Therefore, FGM has nothing to do with Sharia law. Christianity is also against, say, lynching homosexuals. but just because certain christians partake in this activity is not a reason to oppose christianity.

Islamic jurisprudence clearly states that women can vote, divorce their husbands, seek education, operate businesses and recieve equal pay for work. this was in the 8th century! just think....when was a law passed in britain for,... say,... votes for women?

[!@#$%!]

good to hear well informed opinions instead of the crap one encounters in the press.

i'm learning as i go.

please continue...

[the ikara cult]

Originally Posted by Glice

This story, more than many, has angered me. Genuinely so, as it happens. The absolutely cavernous gap between WHAT WAS SAID and what has been inferred is unbelievable.

You'll note that no-one has recently kicked up a cunt over Beth Din. Curious, that one.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Glice again.

This business has been so fucking ridiculous, the media always seems to be desperate to look for anything that suggests a conflict between Christianity and Islam and then blow it up into something ridiculous to sell more papers. Then people have these "Well, heres what I think" attitudes on the basis of an article in the newspaper or a radio phone in. Half of these morons arent religious anyway.

[Glice]

Some moderate thoughts:

If Williams was an academic (that is, someone without a high profile in the general public) who wrote this article, no-one in the wider world would care.

Sharia law is not as simple as 'all women should be stoned for having ovaries'.

Beth Din has been observed here for a while.

Williams was, as much as anything else, point out that there are subtle differences between the religiously observant and the non-religious. For the non-observant, the state is the highest authority; for the religious, that state is second to God (or Allah, Y____h etc). The religious must, immediately, answer to the state, but the state need not be in contrast with 'God'.

In essence, Williams hasn't been terrifically radical; he's opened a debate that anyone with a passing awareness of Islam should be able to discuss without recourse to hysterics. Some people are cunts. Some of these people are in Islamic states. Some of these cunts control the laws of Islamic states. This at no point suggests that, even if Williams was proposing a bipartisan Sharia/ traditional British legal system (which he wasn't), Sharia is necessarily incompatible, or distinct from, the values of British law.

The whole storm in a teacup has got me incredibly angry. I'm genuinely not impressed with the fact that I've seen very little in the British press that has bothered to cover the discussion that Williams has proposed, and instead has gone for the hysterical discussion of the Sun type (not on my watch etc) or the hysterical discussion of the aftermath. It's all bloody ridiculous.