It was disheartening to observe all the hysteria over the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams’ recent lecture on shariah law. The mainstream press’s infallible capacity for misunderstanding is matched only by the politicians’ spectacular ignorance of religious jurisprudence - an ignorance best captured by a Home Offi ce minister’s response to Dr Williams’ comment stating: “To ask us to fundamentally change the rule of law and to adopt Shariah law is fundamentally wrong.” As though Dr Williams had been calling for an overthrow of British law! The outpouring of ignorant and brutish abuse against Dr Williams only served to expose the deception of liberalism by so many personalities in public life and the media, adding to the growing theory that secular law is just as intolerant as their perception of religious law.

Whilst the queue of critics say he should not have given this lecture because it was bound to be misinterpreted, many others, such as the Bishop of Hulme – Stephen Lowe came out to defend Dr Williams, praising him for defying this attempted censorship and for showing many within the establishment how to conduct an intelligent and good-natured conversation on a highly sensitive subject.

Shaykh Suhaib Hasan, a prominent Islamic Scholar in the UK responded to the attacks against Dr Williams stating; “I think people are so ignorant that they cannot understand what he was saying. He has been misunderstood and should be allowed to explain himself.”

To be frank, I believe the problem was that Dr Williams is so much smarter than many in the Church, and of course infi nitely smarter than many more in the news media, who hadn’t the faintest idea what he was actually talking about, and simply resorted to sound bites and fragmented statements to act as a release for their ‘bottled up’ bigotry, (which they continually deny exists) in this politically correct world.

To give you an example, the BBC on the same evening Dr Williams lecture became breaking news, on the 10 o’clock news gleefully repeated archive clips of fl oggings, amputations and Taliban fi ring squads to illustrate Dr Williams speech.

Furthermore, during a radio interview with a BBC presenter, the editor of the Sunday Mail Peter Hitchens, was forced to confess that he hadn’t even read the lecture for himself, but was prepared to comment on it!

The fact is there are plenty of countries including the UK where shariah law exists alongside secular law, for example in fi nancial transactions, marriage, food and drink etc. In reality, dozens of examples can be given on aspects of shariah law existing without confl ict or interference with the domestic laws of the country. The aim of Dr Williams lecture was not to discuss the clash of (as the West sees it) a medieval set of rules versus Western enlightenment, but he wanted the country to “think a little harder about the role and rule of law in a plural society,” and to think more generally about the character of law itself.

But thinking seemed to be hard work for many and not as enjoyable as a good lynching as was the case here. It is scary to think what would have happened if this debate was sparked by a Muslim scholar.

The Christian Muslim Forum with members such as Reverend Esme Beswick, Bishop Richard Cheetham, Bishop Michael Evans and Dr Nicholas Wood released a statement saying that the comments;

“..opened an important debate, not primarily about shariah, but about ‘the broader issues around the rights of religious groups within a secular state’, he uses shariah as an example, while mentioning Jewish religious courts and Christian concerns about some laws.”

“The big religious question that he raises is ‘whether there should be a higher level of attention to religious identity and communal rights in the practice of the law’.”

The important point to note here is that the UK already allows the existence of a parallel legal system known as the ‘Beth Din’ which implements Jewish law for those who choose to settle disputes in this manner.

Nevertheless, one lesson of many which I believe has to be learnt out of all of this is to look with scepticism at those liberals who appear to preach freedom but then expect everyone to conform to their own pieties. Many of our politicians have shown themselves to prefer to take refuge in an extreme and intolerant secularism and accept only the laws they pass, with any validity.

Although this ideology appeals to our political class, it seems a little ironic that they too cannot decide which set of laws to follow, those from Brussels, or Westminster