Midwest Conservative Journal

LAODICEANS

Defenders of Rowan Williams assert that aspects of sharia already exist in Great Britain so what's the big deal about Dr. Williams' proposals? The big deal, notes Johann Hari, is that Dr. Williams and his defenders have no clue about how British sharia actually works:

We don’t need to speculate about what these British sharia courts would look like. They already exist in some mosques across Britain, as voluntary enterprises. Last month, a plain, unsensationalist documentary called Divorce: Sharia Style looked at the judgements they hand down.

If a man wants a divorce, he simply has to say to his wife, "I divorce you" three times over three months. The wife has no right of appeal, and no right to ask for a reason. If a woman wants a divorce, by contrast, she has to humbly ask her husband. If he refuses, she must turn to a sharia court, and convince three Mullahs that her husband has behaved "unreasonably" – according to the rules laid out in a pre-modern text that recommends domestic violence if your wife gets uppity.

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. (They grant a divorce half a year later, after a dozen more "last chances" for him to abuse her.)

Then we meet Nasirin Iqbal, a 27-year-old Pakistani woman who was shipped to Britain five years ago to marry. Her husband, Imran, has kept her isolated, and she does not speak a word of English. "I came here thinking he’d treat me well," she says. "But he keeps hurting me. He brought me here to use me. I’m not an object.... Do I not have a heart?... 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.

And the notion that Muslims, particularly Muslim women, would have a choice about all this is too stupid for intelligent people to seriously entertain.

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."

A British Muslim woman named Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is horrified at idea of British law recognizing sharia even a little bit.

What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination and I write here as a modern Muslim woman. He lectures the nation on the benefits of sharia law – made by bearded men, for men – and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion.

Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles?

What he did on Thursday was to convince other Britons, white, black and brown, that Muslims want not equality but exceptionalism and their own domains. Enlightened British Muslims quail. Friends like this churchman do us more harm than our many enemies. He passes round what he believes to be the benign libation of tolerance. It is laced with arsenic.

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 or ones that seem to dictate honourable financial transactions.

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.

Dr. Williams has no business being shocked by this controversy. Rightly or wrongly, the Archbishop of Canterbury is still one of the most important religious figures in the world so that anything he says is going to paid attention to even by non-Anglicans.

What's tough to understand is Dr. Williams' obtuseness about all this. One reason, I think, has to do with the fact that my gracious lord of Canterbury is a liberal Anglican. Liberal Anglcans believe that all men, regardless of their religion, are reasonable and civilized and that all problems can be solved over a glass of really good Port.

So if the Muslim scholars with whom he regularly confers assure him that sharia is actually gentle and benign, Dr. Williams will be inclined to believe them. He will also be inclined to believe that Great Britain will easily be able to pick and choose which aspects of sharia will apply and which will not.

Confront him with the way that what sharia there is in Britain actually functions and he will profess to be horrified and tell you that "Muslim scholars" view such applications as distortions. Perhaps Dr. Williams and his defenders can explain what comfort the opinions of "Muslim scholars" will be to a Muslim woman dragged into a sharia court and then kicked to the curb by her abusive husband with the approval of such a barbaric "court" for I certainly cannot.

The other reason is much simpler. The idea of calling Muslim savagery what it is, the idea of standing up for the religion he claims to profess and the idea of telling Muslims that they are, well, wrong are ideas too terrifying for men like Rowan Williams to contemplate.

So it is much easier to have "interfaith" meetings than to confront the truth. It is far easier to believe the honeyed words of "Muslim scholars" that sharia doesn't really mean that.

Because if you know what sharia really is and how it is really applied, you have to speak out against such an evil. Unless you value the opinion of the world more than the opinion of your God. Or unless you are a moral coward.

Or both.

Posted on 2/11/2008 3:47:24 PM , 11 comments

Submitted by Gregg the obscure at 2/11/2008 2:39:25 PM

Rowan seems incapable of comprehending that there are indeed people in the world who believe in transcendent timeless truths, so he pretends they're just like him and his confreres. He also seems to have a difficult time comprehending that human beings, left to their own devices, tend to sin -- that is to do things that hurt themselves, others and the relationship between God and people. Were one not a liberal, those would be two rather significant handicaps for one in his office. Since his constituency is largely made up of liberals, though, these are seen as strengths.

Submitted by W.A. Whitestone at 2/11/2008 3:16:39 PM

This ABC and his cohorts (in the CoE, TEC and ACoC have sullied the names Anglican and Episcopal beyond repair. They try to harness the power and honor of Jesus' Name, but cannot. The world and the demons know they are counterfeit. Even the Muslims know they are counterfeit.

May they beg the Holy Spirit to grant them conviction and repentance. If they do not repent, they should be anethema to the Church. They will live in eternity separated from God.

Submitted by saint at 2/11/2008 3:24:52 PM

Gosh were you reading my mind CJ? (I think I need to add an extra link to this. Although I think you coud do a better fisking. Or maybe another Meet the Press)

Submitted by KC at 2/11/2008 4:15:39 PM

Can you imagine what Churchill would say, if he were here today?

Submitted by Russell at 2/11/2008 4:18:08 PM

Poor Rowan, head in the clouds and feet in the mud. His legacy is "Nothing Get's Done" because it is all over-thought.

Submitted by Consanescerion at 2/11/2008 5:01:55 PM

Hitchens waxes eloquent on this: To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Submitted by david loving at 2/11/2008 6:01:11 PM

How can an educated cleric like Williams behave like such a moron? I agree with Hitchens, above, well, at least with the title.

Submitted by dwstroudmd at 2/11/2008 9:32:38 PM

Hitchens is correct, unfortunately, about the "modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all." Alas that jeremiads should come from the a-theistic and be so justified. Hitchens is indeed a prophet to be heeded in this matter...if not in all. Even Caiaphas was correct on one occasion prophetically.

Submitted by Katherine at 2/12/2008 12:48:23 AM

These are both excellent articles, Chris. Thanks for posting them. If only Dr. Williams and his fellow advocates of multiculturalism would read them! When looking at different systems of law we are called to evaluate them -- that is, to make value judgments on whether the systems are essentially just or unjust. Dr. Williams fails to answer this call.

Submitted by ForNow at 2/12/2008 1:06:18 AM

It is sad. Williams seems like one of those leftists who is swayed above all by, as Chris put it, that of which his ideologically compatible fellow scholars assure him over some good port. If he wants to be mainly a theorist, why does he try to remain Archbishop of Canterbury? Why does he think that his power of theoretical reason is to be so trusted in practical matters?

Here in the U.S.A. we have watched a Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England get swayed by his Islamist advisor Hesham Islam who was busy inviting Muslim Brotherhood types into the Pentagon. Hesham is stepping down now but evidently the gullible England will remain in place.

Gullible England. (Why is Rowan still in?) Silly pun, but it's there, I'm using it.

Submitted by Floridian at 2/12/2008 6:19:35 AM

ForNow, What a symbolic pair of names, (Hesham) *Islam* influencing (Gordon) *England*...scary.

Another scary thought - our presidential choices... Obama with his own inborn Muslim influences. He was Medrassa-educated and his 'UCC' membership makes him hardly more than a radical TEC member.

Hillary is a socialist (rumors of her channeling Eleanor Roosevelt in the Whitehouse during her first, er, her 'husband's administration')

John McCain is not pro-life, is he?

Only Huckabee is pro-life and he will lose bar a miracle.

Can a second Arkansas Gov. prevent what the Clintons and Obama want to do?

Would/could McCain stand against the Islamic, socialist, sexual agendite tides?

One commenter here or on SFIF advised us to vote for the *least objectionable* saying we are 'only one administration away from' (Britian's) socialist/communist government and from anti-Christian persecution. If the hate speech legislation is passed, we like the CoE can be sued for not hiring the self-identifying 'gay' for youth pastor.

Accepting or recognizing the extra-biblical manufactured propaganda concepts 'gay' or 'gender', 'orientation', 'sexual-identity' is a compromise of Scripture and ground has been given to satan just as surely as in Eden, when Eve compromised what God had said.

From Lambeth 1930 to 1998 Lambeth Res. 1.10, Anglicans have continually compromised Scripture, and compromised their guardianship and stewardship over Truth, Love and Life (symbols of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in the name of mercy and compassion influenced by another (contraception) agenda group. In reality, the Church was giving ground to lust and as a result, has made men, women and children more vulnerable to sin and evil, devalued life, separated more people from God, led to abortion, euthanasia and acceptance of homosexual activity. Now the Western Anglican provinces fomenting the unisex lie and taking 'sexist' 'patriarchal' terms out of the prayer book and Bible are denying Genesis 2 and God's design and creation of two sexes, male and female. The Church is left with essentially the worship of Baal (sexual gratification) Molech (death: abortion and euthanasia) which is idolatry, self-worship and spiritual confusion.

The PC lobby wants to lower the age of consent to sex in order to allow the pedophiles their jollies and polyamory and bestiality will get their share of the carcass of our collective souls.

Reading the first chapters of Isaiah and Romans 1 is a reminder that God frequently gives His people over to invasion, seige, conquest and/or captivity by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, etc. for abandoning Him to worship idols. Numbers 33:55,56 is an example of this principle. God does not force His people to honor, love, believe, obey or follow Him and His Truth. Instead, He allows us to disobey and suffer the consequences.

Confession (agreeing with God about evil) AND Repentance (surrender of pride and self-will and turning heart and actions back to following God's laws and ways that bring life, truth, love, peace and joy)are always the way back to God. Too often we choose to try to reconcile good to evil. That is what has caused the Anglican debacle.

	Fr. J.
	From Bonnie: "Right now the how of coming to the truth is as important as getting to the truth. Right now, the way in which the Anglican Communion goes about the search for the elusive truth is as important as the truth itself." I went to seminary in Berkeley, CA, so I get this. Back in the 60's the cultural revolution, which started in Berkeley, phrased everything in terms of power. In part, this is because a young generation wanted to change everything though it did not have the status, titles, jobs to make those changes. To sidestep people who had such status, titles, etc. there was a shift in emphasis for them from WHO makes a decision to HOW a decision was made. This was expressed in a variety of ways. Remember the old catch phrase, "the medium is the message?" It became all about process. The process bug was all about manipulating those with authority through various processes until you get what you want. Feminists became the experts at process. Every thought and feeling of every person even tangentially involved must be expressed, recorded, reported, validated, affirmed and become part of the "data" upon which a decision is made. "OK now, let's break down in small groups and report back to the big group later. OK, every small group needs to have a facilitator of your process and a recorder/ reporter." etc. Catholic women religious were famous for this processing the process. These nuns became self appointed process cops in every organization they worked in. This spelt misery for every pastor who hired them. The process thing is pretty much over in the CC. The liberal sisters communities are retirement societies now and are irrelevant. The Catechism has abbreviated all conversations on Church teaching. Pelosi just learned that. Liturgy also is no longer endlessly processed except in L.A. But, TEC is the embodiment of the process illness. Masters of process know one single fact that every police investigator knows. If you force someone to talk long enough, you can get them to say what you want You can wear them down, break their resolve, and thereby achieve "concensus." By the 80's most CC parishes had parish TEAMS with weekly TEAM mettings. A Team mtg. is process lingo meaning everyone gets to comment and opine about everyone else's area. This mostly meant that those least competent in their own job would waste the most time opining about everyone else's area. I know a liberal pastor who was a famous master of process. In the first year his Team meetings went from 90 mins/wk to an entire day per week. This was because he never wanted to make a decision without concensus for he wasn't a "clerical priest." By his second year his meetings were back to 90 mins because the Team suddenly realized that he was willing to talk as long as it took to get everyone to see things his way. That is, the Team realized that they were really a staff. Where things were really bad was in parishes/ organizations when the boss wanted to work by concensus but wasn't the local master of concensus. Soon he found himself working 80 hours a week doing everything some part-time temporary receptionist who was a process master thought should be done. For some reason the local process master always seemed to be the one with the least responsibility, the least pay and who was only tangentially involved. There was a YouTube vid by Greg from SF about 2 years ago where Bonnie says angrily into the camera--"The only thing we ever threatened to do was stay!" As a process queen, just by staying, Bonnie wins and it would not even matter what he agenda was, LGBTQ or Mass Murder. So, this is what Ms. Bonnie Know-It-All means by "the HOW" of Truth being as important as "the WHAT" of Truth.
	8/28/2008 6:11:55 AM

	Katherine
	Fr. J., just a small quibble. Covenants before God which were binding were common in medieval times; they underlaid the feudal system. But of course the use of this language in the church, as if people make a deal with God when they are baptized, is new. And the '79 baptismal service, which I don't care for, is misused as you point out. Poor seminary training is undoubtedly a big part of the problem.
	8/28/2008 6:02:38 AM

	The Pilgrim
	Ken "Is it, however, accurate to say that Orthodox do share with Catholics (and Anglo-catholics) a sacramental view of baptism, which is to say that it actually has a saving effect?" Yes. It's in the Nicene Creed: "I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sin". Also, as Mark said, for infants and unbaptised catechumens, chrismation is subsumed into the baptism ceremony, and is not done at a later date. Also, ommunion is administered to the newly baptised at the next liturgy; infants as well as adults. Jurisdictions differ, but in the Antiochean church the baby is not baptized until after being "churched," which happens forty days after birth, unless death is imminent.
	8/28/2008 5:42:40 AM

	Fr. J.
	Wow, lots of questions here tonight. Yes, Catholic converts used to be baptized conditionally. Today there are a few "Christian" churches whose baptisms the CC does not recognize: Mormons, JW's, and some others. These are not conditionally baptized but simply baptized. Conditional baptism is done today only in cases where it is unknown whether one has been baptized before, as with folks whose parents have died and whose church did not keep records--which is a lot of churches! About Baptismal Covenant, it is pretty hokey. For Catholics and Orthodox there is one and only one new covenant in the blood of Christ and it is everlasting as is stated in the Eucharistic prayer's words of institution over the cup. "Cup of my blood, blood of the new and everlasting covenant." It is Calvin who gets us all messed up here. He wrote in his Institutes that a group of baptized Christians can gather and declare a covenant before God that is binding upon them. This is absolutely unknown in Catholic/Orthodox theology. It is how a Calvinistic church is founded. The group that declares covenant becomes the elders or vestry and they select a preacher. The preacher has no sacramental role and even the two ordinances, baptism and communion, are extensions of his role as preacher of the word. There is no sacramental ordination in Calvin. Of course denominations evolved with ordination and there is almost no pure Calvinist church. Anyway, it is Calvin who gives us this very non-Catholic concept of declaring a covenant. You will notice that it is only the evangelicals generally who speak of creating covenants. Even the use of the term covenant for the new Anglican Communion constitution is really improper from a Catholic point of view. I would prefer they use the term constitution or rule or just about anything else but covenant. So, where do baptism and Eucharist fit in? Baptism is the doorway into the covenant for a Christian. One enters into the one covenant of Christ by the dying and rising of baptism. The eternal sign of this covenant is him crucified (hence crucifixes in CC churches). In baptism we die with Christ to rise with him. The Eucharist is the renewal of Christ's covenant for all the baptized present who, being properly disposed through absolution as necessary, receive Him in the Body and the Blood. Note we only see Christ's body and blood in three places: The Cross, the Eucharist and the Circumcision. All three are covenantal. Circucision is the sign of the covenant of Abraham, the Cross is the sign of the new Covenant and the Eucharist is the only way to renew the new covenant--passover sacrifice being the way to renew the old covenant. So, to speak of a Baptismal covenant as something extra that TEC members commit themselves to that other Christians do not just simply makes no sense in Sacramental Theology. I have said again and again that TEC's theological problems begin with poor seminary training. There is not nearly enough systematic theology taught, so little pet ideas get blown up into whole new teachings without anybody to say "wait a minute, that's not right." Or TEC is perhaps just not a Catholic church. The ancient concept of Baptism cannot be added to or subtracted from without making it not baptism. So, either this baptismal covenant is a redundancy or it is alien. If it is a redundancy, then it is meaningless and harmless, though confusing. If it is alien to the Gospel, then it is an initiation into a new religion. I am opting for the first interpretation. While I do think that the Baptismal Covenant is rather ridiculous I do not think it alien. Though, if TEC is another religion, which there are some good arguments for, I would wonder if getting the theology of Baptism screwed up isn't at least in part to blame. Signs of this "new religion" aspect of the Baptismal Covenant are the way people make arguments based on it. Nothing in the Baptismal Covenant text says that all the baptized are absolutely equal and the same before God. Still, the Baptismal Covenant is used as the reason for WO, Gay Ordination, SSB, the House of Deputies and the coveted TEC polity. But, I dont see any of this in the text of the "BC." Look for yourself: Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? I dont really see any justification for using the BC as a basis for any of these new errors. However, if the intention of the minister of baptism is to do something different from what the Church has always intended by baptism, that is, if the intention is to do something really new, then this clearly a false teaching from the point of view of the CC, if I may say so.
	8/28/2008 5:19:57 AM

THE MCJ

LAODICEANS