When Yasmin met Archy
Yasmin A-B explains what Archy doesn’t get. Too bad he didn’t ask her before he jotted down the speech.
What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination…He would not want his own girls and women, I am sure, to “choose” to be governed by these laws he breezily endorses. And he is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls…Look around the Islamic world where sharia rules and, in every single country, these ordinances reduce our human value to less than half that is accorded a male; homosexuals are imprisoned or killed, children have no free voice or autonomy, authoritarianism rules and infantilises populations.
Apart from that, it was quite a good idea. Or maybe not.
There is no agreed body of sharia, it is all drafted by males and the most cruel is now claiming absolute authority…The morality police hound women and girls, beat them up, imprison them for showing an ankle, walking too provocatively or singing in the streets. They fight back but are ground down eventually…Go to Afghanistan if you fancy a 12-year-old bride – a practice approved by the mullahs. That’s sharia for you. Many women, gay men and dissidents came to Britain to escape Islamic tyrants and their laws.
Only to encounter Rowan Williams. What an unpleasant surprise.
No women are allowed to be imams or serious jurists, so cannot help make their own fair and free set of female-friendly sharia. All the systems insist on ultimate truths, hard certainties.
Which the Archbishop himself points out several times in his speech (I’ve read the whole thing now) but without being dissuaded from his absurd idea. But then of course he’s part of a system of ultimate truths himself.
Taj Hargey, a historian and Islamic theologian, runs the Muslim Education Centre in Oxford. He, with me, is a trustee of British Muslims For Secular Democracy which is attempting to educate Muslims out of authorised obscurantism…He is incandescent that Dr Williams backs a perilous Islamic conservatism, already too powerful in Britain.
Well the thing about that is that Archy isn’t all that keen on secular democracy. He thinks it ought to ‘overlap’ with the theocratic kind.
Isn’t that piece just infuriating?
So nice to know the Beeb is trying to convince us that sharia is not so bad.
Rowan Williams. Isn’t he just great? To his detractors, he’s the gift that keeps on giving.
If he wants to try Sharia for himself, Rowan should know that there are three levels of sin: minor sins; enormities and unbelief (see ‘Reliance of the Traveller’ by Al-Misri, translated by Keller). However, as the leader of the Anglican Church, he should appreciate that he is guilty of the latter, big-time. The berobed, hirsute Archbish should consider that examples of enormities are “dragging the hem of one’s garment out of conceit” and “not trimming one’s moustache” though, in fairness, the latter is listed as only a ‘probable enormity’. Nevertheless, it would be wise for him to adopt a policy of regular trimming until this issue is resolved.
The above examples of enormities are real (see the above book), and a consequence of founding one’s legal system on the delusions of a 7th century desert-dwelling illiterate. Why any non-Muslim should even begin to consider recommending such nonsense is quite beyond me.
Can I also add my barely articulate rage at the BBC article by Dominic Casciani? Do non-British readers realise that we Brits are forced to pay for the BBC – a yearly fee currently standing at 136 pounds (at today’s exchange rate, about 12 thousand dollars), and yet we have to put up with rubbish like this? Further examples of Islamic laws which Casciani seems to have overlooked are those on jihad, dhimmitude and slavery, which are used to persecute any non-Muslim, not just women and gays. However, his worst sin is the description of Islamic wide boy Tariq Ramadan as “the most famous Muslim thinker in Europe”. Noooooooooo!
Have a look at:
<http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_Religion-and-Violence.php>
Sandall’s views are refreshingly free of Political Rectitude.
Damn! once more without the angle brackets:
http://www.rogersandall.com/Spiked_Religion-and-Violence.php
Well said, Adrian!
Yes, my attention snagged on that ‘most famous’ item too – not only because of the TR-flattery but also because I just hate that ‘most famous’ trope when used of ‘thinkers’. Who cares how ‘famous’ he is; how good a thinker is he?
“a ‘probable enormity’”
where can i get the tee-shirt ?
Heh! Snap, Mo! I was just writing a post saying the same thing while you were writing that. It is excellent, isn’t it.
Communitarianism will also come in the shape of Muslim doctor’s who will collude with the husbands – in committing their supposedly unruly, difficult wives to psychiatric hospitals.
Yes, O! Snap to you too!
Shop is closing here. So good night to you!