Knowing better
I had thought I could leave the poor archbishop in peace now…but another item or two has come along to drag me back to his doings. One is the Crooked Timber thread on the subject. Harry B is commenting on a piece by Minette Marin in the Sunday Times.
The comment about wooliness of mind is, presumably, a charge that anyone who recognises complexity is stupid, or something like that.
No, it isn’t. The archbishop’s speech is indeed woolly. I’ve already quoted from it more than enough to illustrate (and demonstrate) that, so I won’t quote any more. Joe Hoffman – who can handle complexity – called the speech badly reasoned mud. The speech is not simply a clever academic recognizing complexity – it’s elegantly but also badly, pompously, tortuously, evasively written.
[T]here is nothing treacherous about the Archbishop’s comments. He is appealing to the long-established British tradition of muddling through, tinkering with institutions as is needed to achieve goals of stability and rough fairness (he’s the one who is “holding fast to that which is good”). The revolutionaries—or to put it far more harshly than I ever would, the traitors—here are, in fact, the Archbishop’s critics.
Oh really – all of us? Not just Minette Marin but all of us? That’s a large claim – but it will doubtless fall of its own weight. More to the point is that bit about ‘rough fairness’. Fair to whom? To the women who would be forced or intimidated or religiously blackmailed into relying on sharia courts for trivial items like marriage and divorce? Fair to the women who have been saying ‘No thank you!’ in no uncertain terms for several days? Or just fair to the men who like sharia courts for divorce because they are arranged by men for men?
Someone points out in the comments that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown doesn’t see it the way Harry B does; Harry replies, ‘So Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, too, didn’t bother to check what he actually said. Oh well.’ Right. A Muslim woman with experience of sharia and of talking to countless Muslim women with (very unhappy) experience of sharia needs to be set straight by a non-Muslim male academic; she has it wrong and he has it right; and he knows by intuition that she hasn’t ‘checked’ what Williams actually said. So low does the multicultural mindset (I almost said left, but that’s not left, it’s reactionary) stoop.
A lot of the commenters are not having it though. Daniel Davies is flinging the abuse around as usual, but it’s not having much effect.
The other item is Johann’s article.
Last month, a plain, unsensationalist documentary called Divorce: Sharia Style looked at the judgements [British sharia courts] hand down…Irum Shazad, a 26-year-old British woman, travels from her battered women’s refuge to a sharia court in East London. She explains that her husband was so abusive she slashed her wrists with a carving knife. The court tells her this was a sin, making her as bad as him. They tell her to go back to her husband…Then we meet Nasirin Iqbal, a 27-year-old Pakistani woman who was shipped to Britain five years ago to marry…”He tells me I’m stuck with him, and under Islam he can treat me however he wants. ‘I am a man, I can treat you how I want’.” We see how Imran torments her, announcing, “You are a reject. I didn’t want to marry you.” He takes a second wife in Pakistan, and texts her all day in front of Nasirin declaring his love. The sharia court issues a fatwa saying the marriage stands. She doesn’t seem to know this isn’t a court of law. “I can’t ignore what they say,” she cries. “You have to go with what they say.” These are the courts that Rowan Williams would give the stamp of British law. In his lecture, he worries that this could harm women – before serving up a theological gloop, saying that sharia could be reinterpreted in a way compatible with the rights of women. But if that happens, why would you need different courts? What would be the point?
Well exactly. The point of them is that they’re different, and that Williams thinks it’s only fair (since Christians get to claim ‘exceptions,’ at least he claims they do) that people should be able to have their different courts. But the way they are different is that they are unequal and, not to put too fine a point on it, unjust. We’ll make it so that they’re not. But then they’re not different any more – so we’re back where we started. What, indeed, is the point?
In other words Williams has recycled Susan Moller Okin’s argument in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, but without realizing he’s done so (and pretty obviously without being aware of Okin’s argument).
The argument that women will only have to enter these courts if they freely choose to shows a near-total disconnection from the reality of Muslim women’s lives. Most of the women who will be drawn into “consenting” are, like Nasirin, recent immigrants with little idea of their legal options. Then there are the threats of excommunication – or violence – from some families. As the Muslim feminist Irshad Manji puts it: “When it comes to contemporary sharia, choice is theory; intimidation is the reality.”
Oh, but surely the good clever non-Muslim males at Crooked Timber know better than Irshad Manji. Why would she know anything about it? Or why would Azar Majedi?
As the European-Iranian feminist Azar Majedi puts it: “By creating different laws and judicial systems for each ethnic group, we are not fighting racism. In fact, we are institutionalising it.”
No, that can’t be right. The guys at Crooked Timber must know better.
Why does everyone keep saying that the archbishop’s speech was “complex” or “subtle”?
Do they just assume that no one would use such a florid writing style without good reason?
Well not everyone keeps saying that – a lot of people say it’s badly reasoned mud, or similar. But why for instance Harry B calls it that, I really have no idea. Unless it’s because he thinks only right-wingers think it’s dreck? But he has no excuse for thinking that.
I used to read Crooked Timber regularly and comment occasionally, but the place these days is depressing. It (especially via Chris Bertram and Daniel Davies) has become a caricature of the sort of left that Nick Cohen skewers. [http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=272]
I’ll borrow Martin Amis’s words: It is quite an achievement. People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a credal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead.
Ahhh Butterflies and Sneers. once more proving that stupidity is an affliction but ignorance is a strategy.
(I think it’s fairly settled netiquette these days that comments section bans can’t be considered valid for posts which insult someone by name).
As Rowan Williams has repeatedly said, he has never suggested that anyone be deprived of any of their rights under the common law of England & Wales (nor would this even be possible, given that the UK has endorsed the European Convention on Human Rights).
Furthermore, as John Band has pointed out, if you are worried that women are currently being intimidated by their husbands into giving up their legal rights and accepting the judgement of illegal, non-recognised sharia courts, why do you think that this problem would be made worse by creating legal, recognised sharia courts? The implication would seem to be that Muslim men who currently do not intimidate their wives, do not use sharia courts and accept the common law of England & Wales, would begin to intimidate their wives (an offence under that common law) in order to force them into a state-recognised sharia court which gave women equal rights (because no other such court could be established in the UK). That’s illogical.
People have the right to have their disputes arbitrated according to rules they choose, and they’re allowed to choose religious rules. Intimidation is illegal anyway and is irrelevant to that point. It’s not unreasonable for the government to get involved in helping people to set up the institutions that they need in order to have a legal basis for their arbitration, so long as those institutions comply with human rights law. As Rowan Williams said, and Harry understood him.
ahhh no, as you were. The terrible Muslims are on the march, taking over everything, and the weak-minded liberals are blind to the Muslim danger. So-called “tolerance” is actually a weakness of the spirit which will see our treasured society ground down by the feared outsiders. That’s definitely what’s happening. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.
“But why for instance Harry B calls it that, I really have no idea.”
This is peculiar because Harry Brighouse is himself a really lucid writer and is usually not keen to back up reactionary or silly positions (unlike the oafish Daniel Davies who is increasingly to be observed waving the flag for racism and reaction so long as it is promoted by theocrats). I think it may be (doesn’t he hint at this?) that Harry is a friend of the ABC or that Williams is a family friend at least, so his comments may be more an expressiion of amour propre than anything else.
“It’s not unreasonable for the government to get involved in helping people to set up the institutions that they need in order to have a legal basis for their arbitration, so long as those institutions comply with human rights law. As Rowan Williams said, and Harry understood him.”
This is what Rowan Williams said? That the government should simply help Mulslims better understand their already existing rights under the law?Why did he need all those words then? Why couldn’t he clarify that his position was such an unexceptional motherhood-and-apple-pie one?
“…why do you think that this problem would be made worse by creating legal, recognised sharia courts?”
Because then the state would be backing up the intimidation, rather than defending the rights of the woman.
“As Rowan Williams has repeatedly said, he has never suggested that anyone be deprived of any of their rights under the common law of England & Wales”
I thought the model was the Beth Din – where people do indeed give up the rights they’d otherwise have under English law. Which is rather the point of it.
“Intimidation is illegal anyway…”
No it isn’t. There are specific laws that declare certain sorts of intimidatory behaviour illegal, but it isn’t illegal per se.
[unlike the oafish Daniel Davies who is increasingly to be observed waving the flag for racism and reaction so long as it is promoted by theocrats]
“Oafish” is an opinion you are entitled to, but the rest of that sentence is a specific accusation which I must insist that you substantiate or withdraw.
I find hidari’s post #30 on the crookedtimber thread a bit odd – at face value it seems to be the most muddleheaded reasoning possible – essentially saying that separation of church and state in the UK is bad because the US has it, and it has lots of religious influence over the state, therefore in the UK where religon has less influence separation would make the UK like the US?!
And in Harry’s post itself the line about campaigning to disestablish the Church of England is framed in such a way that it looks like he’s trying to say that this would be an absurd position, rather than a rather logical and consistent part of many many people’s political outlook.
[Because then the state would be backing up the intimidation, rather than defending the rights of the woman.]
I don’t see how this works. How would the state be “backing up the intimidation” in any meaningful way? Particularly as any state-recognised sharia court would need to be consistent with the ECHR and would therefore give women equal treatment, which is not the case in current unofficial sharia tribunals? If I intimidate my wife into reading “War and Peace”, is the state “backing up” my intimidation by providing libraries?
[I thought the model was the Beth Din – where people do indeed give up the rights they’d otherwise have under English law. Which is rather the point of it.]
No, they don’t. Arbitration in a Beth Din happens subject to an agreement to arbitrate, which is covered by the Arbitration Act 1996 and thence by the common law of contract. If you agree to an arbitration, then you’ve contracted to do something, not “given up your right”. And people can and do get the Beth Din judgements overturned if they think they’ve been denied natural justice.
What specific rights are you thinking of here that are given up in arbitration by the Beth Din?
[No it isn’t. There are specific laws that declare certain sorts of intimidatory behaviour illegal, but it isn’t illegal per se.]
This really is splitting hairs. It is illegal to force someone to do something by threat of violence or by threatening to deprive them of their property or access to their children. It is not illegal to threaten someone with social disapproval, but there is no way outside of a totalitarian state that it would be possible to pass any laws at all about social disapproval, and the issue is hardly relevant to the point anyway.
“which I must insist that you substantiate or withdraw”
Oh get over yourself you berk.
I think at this point it is worth saying that we, as usual, come down to incommensurable positions. For one such as I, who believes that the only truly legitimate form of government, not being based on archaic privilege or specious metaphysics, is a secular republic, and that law, as such, should be determined on the basis of just treatment for all individuals as citizens of such a republic, and without regard for any metaphysical assumptions they or their relatives may hold; then the Archbishop’s statement is per se illegitimate and irrelevant to the question of what ought to be, under any circumstances [unless and until he ceases to speak as an Archbishop, and to explicitly advocate the taking-into-account of metaphysical claptrap in public policy-making].
Since we don’t live in a secular republic of that sort, on either side of the Atlantic, one such as I must recognise that public-policy discussions that will embrace religious claptrap will result in what I can only view as ugly, unethical, fundamentally mendacious fudging; particularly as advocates of religious systems that mutually pronouce the meaninglessness and perniciousness of each other’s views initiate blatantly opportunistic coalition-building against any suggestion that they ought to be shunted out of the public realm altogether.
At which point, from my perspective, the whole thing is such a monumental clusterf*ck with regard to anything that might plausibly be described as ‘equal justice’ that minor points over whether or not someone seeking a Sharia divorce might be able to appeal a judgment all the way to the European Court pale into the pettifogging insignificance they surely merit.
Like I said, incommensurability all the way down.
“Arbitration in a Beth Din happens subject to an agreement to arbitrate, which is covered by the Arbitration Act 1996…If you agree to an arbitration, then you’ve contracted to do something, not “given up your right”.”
Since you have given up your right to enter into formal legal proceedings then you have indeed given up a right, and the decision is binding and enforceable like a court decision.
“And people can and do get the Beth Din judgements overturned if they think they’ve been denied natural justice.”
The grounds for appeal are procedural irregularities and the court of appeal is very reluctant to find violations of natural justice in arbitration cases.
“It is illegal to force someone to do something by threat of violence or by threatening to deprive them of their property or access to their children.”
It strikes me that you are also splitting hairs since you seem to define intimidation as only that which is illegal – the law is pretty fluid on this one and often doesn’t cover implicit threats, and non-physical threats such as access to children (AFAIK).
“I don’t see how this works. How would the state be “backing up the intimidation” in any meaningful way? Particularly as any state-recognised sharia court would need to be consistent with the ECHR and would therefore give women equal treatment”
It provides legal enforcement to sharia court decisions. And I doubt that the ECHR limits a woman’s ability to enter into arbitration where she might be disadvantaged since it doesn’t seem to apply in the case of women seeking a get from the Beth Din.
On the agunot issue – I note that a lot of agunah claim that their ex-husbands are witholding the get with the intention of pressuring them into handing over money – which suggests that this sort of pressure is not against the law, or contrary to the HRA.
dsquared – The archbishop of Canterbury spoke about Sharia for the same reason he spoke about ‘cruel forms of speech’, which in turn is the same reason he supports faith schools: Bish realises that the Anglican church’s privileges can’t be maintained indefinitely so he advocates the extension of these to other religious groups. He takes as an example the issue of Catholic agencies and adoption to gay couples. He clearly approves of an exemption in that case and uses it as an example of the kind of thing that he believes should be extended. I kinda get the impression that it is *you* who is splitting hairs deliberately to avoid this general point: the archbishop favours a legal system that would in reality tilt towards men rather than women, groups rather than individuals, and religious groups rather than secular ones in terms of who’s interests and rights are likely to be given priority. More than it does already, that is.
And I really don’t think it’s any kind of argument to say that anyone who criticises the archbishop’s ideas can only be doing so based on some Steyn-ist fear of Muslim hoards on the march. Some of us have been watching Dr Williams for a couple of years now and have been frustrated by the way in which he presents essentially reactionary ideas in opaque acedemic language and clearly getting away with it. This time – with, we should stress, his own clarification of his remarks – he’s been caught out.
There’s no point arguing with Daniel Davies. He is a modern-day ‘useful idiot’. If the ‘wrong’ people (like Cohen, Aaronovitch, Amis, Polly Toynbee, McEwan, Geras, Nussbaum, Alan Johnson, Berman, Walzer, Wheen, Kamm and especially Hitchens) are on one side of an issue, you can almost be sure to find him on the other. His witless, bullying, sub-Hitchens neo-contrarianism has become rather pathetic.
I do wish people would restrain themselves from baselessly insulting dsquared. He may be wrong in this instance but he is no racist, nor is he an oaf, and he doesn’t “wave the flag for theocrats”. As for being a member of “the sort of left that Nick Cohen skewers” since that is a category that exists only in Nick Cohen’s imagination it is a group that real people find very hard to join. The club of people who disagree with the Archbishop has some very nasty members, and I can’t blame him for not wanting to be among them. The difference between CT folk and others is that they do care who is in that club. This is a mirror image of the decent folk who couldn’t oppose the war in Iraq because the SWP opposed it as well (a much too extreme example but the first to come to mind).
While I agree with dsquared on a lot of stuff (particularly wrt the decents) he does come across as spectacularly disagreeable (just see his post above 2008-02-13 – 11:26:46).
As far as I can tell from this whole debacle (and no, I haven’t been following it that closely) Williams has been sufficiently vague that most people are arguing at cross purposes and any sensible debate probably needs to define rather more precisely what the proposal actually is.
“he does come across as spectacularly disagreeable (just see his post above 2008-02-13 – 11:26:46).”
A post that ends, incidentally, with the strong suggestion that anyone who disagrees with D2 on this issue is motivated by racism.
Following on my theme – the Divorce (Religious Marriages) Act 2002 is an interesting comparison to the sharia proposal since it embodies secular law interfering with religious practice (a civil divorce – decree nisi – can be postponed if a man refuses to grant his wife a get – a religious divorce) – could this be a template for incorporating some aspects of religious law into civil law?
“A post that ends, incidentally, with the strong suggestion that anyone who disagrees with D2 on this issue is motivated by racism.”
Or just OB, or just those of us at B&W – he has a peculiar hatred of B&W, it’s quite funny.
“a civil divorce – decree nisi – can be postponed if a man refuses to grant his wife a get – a religious divorce) – could this be a template for incorporating some aspects of religious law into civil law?”
I think this is the fly in the ointment for those of us who would like a complete separation. As I understand it, though, the civil divorce can only be prevented on application by the woman who has not been given the get. I may not have this right, but it is a lot les worrisome if that is the case since it mitigates an injustice in Beth Din process rather then reinforcing it. One way of th other, though, I think it illustrates why we shouldn’t incorprate sharia and should sort out the Beth Din anomoly rather than anything else.
I brought it up because it is civil law straightening out inequalities in religious law – I was just wondering whether, in principle, it might be possible (not saying desirable mind you) for the civil law to engage with sharia law in a similar way.
“I was just wondering whether, in principle, it might be possible (not saying desirable mind you) for the civil law to engage with sharia law in a similar way.”
It seems to me that in principle this could work but I don’t find the idea very attractive and I suspect thatose pressing for incorporation of sharia don’t either. Do we really think they want the civil law to limit their authority rather than augment it?
Just for the record (see DD’s first comment) there is no comments section ban on Daniel Davies. I’ve invited him to go away on occasions when he has simply lapsed into abuse (no, really?!) but then he does that pretty much whenever anyone disagrees with him (see his replies to Steve Labonne yesterday). There’s no ban – if there were he wouldn’t be able to post!
“he has a peculiar hatred of B&W, it’s quite funny.”
It is, isn’t it.
John M, I know, I was surprised that it was Harry who wrote that post (and the comments, too – that dismissive one about Alibhai-Brown in particular). It seemed quite uncharacteristic.
“And I really don’t think it’s any kind of argument to say that anyone who criticises the archbishop’s ideas can only be doing so based on some Steyn-ist fear of Muslim hoards on the march. “
It’s the logical fallacy known as “argument from dsquared”.
“he has a peculiar hatred of B&W, it’s quite funny.”
could be something to do with the way his arguments regularly take a spanking…?
:-)
Well, he never really stay very long to defend them, does he? Even on CT he doesn’t really participate in debates, just pops up time and again to remind people 1)of his position 2)of the fact they are wrong.
Well, people are so forgetful, you know…