by Father Frank Gelli
FATHER FRANK’S RANTS
Rant Number 292 11 February 2008
Rooting for Rowan: The Archbishop and the Sharia
What’s wrong with me? I am in living in Qatar , not in Yemen . I mean, here there is no qat, Yemen ’s popular hallucinogenic weed. Yet, something peculiar is happening. I’d never, never have believed but…yes, I confess it: I agree with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He backs sharia law in Britain . You bet he isn’t chewing qat either. Still, he happens to be right.
A friend even suggested it’s my influence. Well, maybe. The priest’s occult powers…even I don’t fully know them!
It is droll to see how berzerk Rowan’s enemies have gone. Stoning, beheading, chopping off of limbs and flogging, he is calling for them, they scream. Even his druidical roots are mischievously imputed. (Groan… the priest himself has poked fun at Williams for that in the past: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.) Didn’t his Celtic ancestors practise the cult of the severed head? Proof positive this Welshman hankers after the same, under the cover of Islam. Might as well charge Scot Gordon Brown with being a Pictish marauder at heart, or Texan George Bush with rooting for lynch law. A veritable apotheosis of missing the point - that sums up many people’s reactions to the ABC’s sensible remarks - in part.
Truth is, allowing Muslims in England voluntarily to submit to sharia rulings in certain family and marital disputes is no more judicially enormous than letting Catholics ask the Sacra Rota ecclesiastical tribunal to annul their marriage. Or permitting Anglo-Catholic traditionalists to bar women priests from the altar. My good friend Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg could provide condign examples affecting Jews. Angry or anguished cries of ‘there is only one British law’ ignore these plain facts. The most rational comment I have come across on the web is that of an African Christian. He observes that in their African colonies the Brits always allowed ‘parallel universes of common and customary laws’. And that worked out pretty well. But never in England ! shout Islamophobes. Do they mean it? Unless they propose to boot out all Muslims from this sceptred island, as 400 years ago Spain’s King Philip III did with the Moriscos, how can they prevent this minority from enjoying some of its own religious or customary laws, if it so wishes?
But what if religious rulings conflict with the law of the land? More about that anon. Meanwhile I note that the law of the land, like Heraclitus’ river, and unlike God’s law, is always in a state of flux. A church marriage was once prescriptive, now there is a civil alternative. Today capital punishment is off the statute book. Homosexuality was once a crime - now no longer. Ditto for same-sex unions. Whilst fox-hunting has become illegal. The priest does not pass judgment here, only notes. Parliament changes the law all the time, man!
Of course, sharia law isn’t just about humdrum family disputes and jolly Imam’s counselling. It is a whole, comprehensive and total system, embracing every social, political, economic and personal aspects of human life. Guess that is what puts the wind up a lot of Western people these days. ‘Jesus Christ we have largely disposed of, are we now having to suffer Muhammad?’ our secularists moan, shaking with fear and loathing. For such people I have no sympathy. Also, in reality sharia isn’t monolithic. OK, the Saudi and Sudanese models aren’t quite everybody’s cup of tea, and that includes many Muslims. But in many countries, like little Qatar , the Sharia Court is only for domestic cases, family troubles, whilst state courts are fashioned after a mix of Western legal practices. The Qur’an officially underlies legislation, yes. Qataris, unlike many Europeans, are in no doubt as to their identity…
The British Government, unsurprisingly, equivocates. ‘British law should apply in the UK , based on British values’, thunders Gordon Brown. British values, eh? Like what? Queuing, saying ‘thank you’ a billion times a day and being generally nice? A bit too weak a brew to work as the basis of a culture. (Note how the wily PM always keeps mum about that authentic English value, Christianity.) Anyway, his spokesman admits that legally ‘small adjustments had been and will be made’. Mini-sharia’s OK, in other words. Which is broadly what the Archbishop is pleading for. In other words, the government cynically fudges the issue. What’s new?
So, dear Rowan, the poor priest defends you. But I ask you to go one better. As a leader of Christianity - please, don’t get nervous now - you must start beating the drum for Christian principles, too. There is something faintly comical about the way in your recent lecture you set yourself up as interpreter of sharia - leave that to Muslims to determine. But you can/ought to speak strongly about Christian law. Right to have 3/% of the population have their laws, but Christians are a bit more numerous than that in England . So we too must have our share. I bet you know what Christian law is.
Wot! You don’t? Pulling my leg, eh? But just in case, let me remind you. The laws of Christianity are set out in Holy Scripture. For example, both in the Old and the New Testaments we find God through His chosen Christ, His apostles and prophets forbidding and blasting adultery and fornication. Sins also explicitly cited in Cranmer’s Anglican Prayer Book. So you must demand that the British state allow church courts to try such crimes and punish them. (No stoning, no. Maybe just a few
pebbles, plus naming and shaming the reprobates.) Our liberal rulers won’t have it of course. They’ll get mad at you. Because church courts would conflict with their permissive, iniquitous laws. When then? Rowan, this is your chance. No longer the establishment’s bearded jester everybody’s takes you for, you will take up the mantle of Christian prophecy. Proclaim loud and clear, like our first martyrs did, that Christians must serve God rather than men. Oh, boy, how they will revile you!
But at last you will truly become what you are meant to be: a leader of Christians.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
