London, England, Feb 10, 2008 / 01:19 am
Senior Church of England clergymen are criticizing the Archbishop of Canterbury for his remarks about accommodating Islamic Sharia law in Britain, The Evening Standard reports.
On Thursday night Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the highest-ranking cleric of the Church of England, gave a radio interview in which he suggested it was “unavoidable” that some form of Sharia law would be introduced in Britain. He said that Sharia and Parliamentary law should be given equal status in some areas so that people could choose which governs their lives.
"This may include aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions, and authorized structures of mediation and conflict resolution," the Archbishop of Canterbury said, noting analogous Jewish courts already operate in Britain. He took care to distance his proposal from the “severe punishments” and “inhumanity” of the law in some Islamic states.
One reaction to the Archbishop’s lecture came from Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, who was put under police protection last month after receiving death threats for suggesting some areas of Britain are ‘no-go areas’ for non-Mulsims. Bishop Nazir-Ali said Sharia would be “in tension” with the rights of women, noting that Muslim women’s groups in Canada had blocked attempts to introduce Sharia law in marriage cases.