Archbishop in hot water

In spite of all the furore Rowan Williams has caused, I can't help thinking it's a good thing he has forced the debate out into the open. It needed addressing. Part of the current problem, in my opinion, is that Islam is far more intertwined with every day life for Moslems than Christianity is these days. As such it provides a well defined framework for people to live their lives within. For many people this structure is comforting and reassuring. Freedom can be stressful, especially where there are a myriad of choices when it comes to making the slightest decision. This I think is why so many young people are turning to Islam. The Church of England as it has always done, encompasses many shades of opinion and to many seems almost wishy washy.

The more people who follow Islam the less this problem is likely to go away. Should elements of sharia be incorporated into Emglish law? In my opinion no they shouldn't, but are Moslem societies more law abiding than laissesz faire Britain? Almost certainly. So why do Moslems choose to live here if they don't like our laws and prefer their own? That I think is a question only they can answer. Presumably it is not because they want to change our laws to theirs. So is there really a move to incorporate sharia into English law? Apparently there are 10 sharia courts in this country - which I was quite surprised to discover. How come this has been allowed to happen? But incorporating some of sharia into our legal system makes me very uncomfortable if only because of the attitude of Islam to women in general - perhaps I should make that its reported attitude, since I'm not sure how much of what is in the media on this subject is true of the majority of Moslems. I was surprised to read recently that in 2005 more than 50% of entrants to Iran's universities were women -which hardly fits with what we usually hear about Iran.

I think we do need to remember that our laws are based on Christian principles as summarised in the ten commandments. Are these substantially different from the other major religions? I'm sure most religions have their equivalents. An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth - which I think is from the Old Testament, would seem to parallel sharia punishments. It's not very long ago that the ceremony of churching was removed from the book of common prayer. This was the ceremony which women who had given birth had to go through to be purified before they were considered clean enough to take Holy Communion.

The woman taken in adultery and stoned was a Jewish punishment I believe. Christ's command - 'Let him that is without sin, cast the first stone,' was perhaps not that well received at the time. After all if you follow that to the letter no one could ever be judge or jury. Surely the Moslem way of divorce is recounted in the Bible and many characters seem to have had more than one wife. Any woman visiting the Pope still has to cover her hair - how does this differ from a burkha in essence since a man does not have to cover his head? Women priests in the CofE can still not become bishops so the church does not treat women as equals, even though the law of the land strives to do so.

Has Christianity the moral high ground? I don't know, and I'm sure no one else does for certain either. What I do know is that the impression I was left with after my OU course on the religions in Britain since 1945 was that there are more similarities than differences between the major religions. Where Christianity, and CofE in particular, differ from Islam is that their priests are no longer the centre of the community or the arbiters of people's day to day behaviour. Unlike the imams. We have become a secular country without realising it. Maybe the debate now raging will make us backtrack on this. But it is difficult to change things over night. How many of us who profess to be Christian would accept the ruling of a priest of the CofE on our behaviour? Not many I suspect. Would we live in a society with less antisocial behviour if we did? Probably.

All that is probably just a muddle - but it is my thinking at the moment, and I'm sure the debate will rage for quite some time yet especially as the General Synod is about to meet.

Off to add some more to my 33,000 words and counting.