He doesn’t know it’s best to quit when you’re ahead. Most people had forgotten Rowan’s ramblings about how good Sharia law would be for Britain. Considering the fuss it caused last time he brought this up, one would think he’d leave it alone; but does he? Of course not:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended his controversial comments about the introduction of Islamic law to Britain and claimed that public opinion is now behind him.
On the anniversary of the interview in which Dr Rowan Williams said it “seems inevitable” that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country’s legal code, he claimed “a number of fairly senior people” now take the same view.
He added that there is a “drift of understanding” towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.
However critics insist that family disputes must be dealt with by civil law rather than according to religious principles, and claim the Archbishop’s comments have only helped the case of extremists while making Muslim women worse off, because they do not have equal rights under Islamic law.
Rowan Williams makes it easy for us to overlook the fact that he is the leader of the Church of England, the established church in Britain: he is supposed to be defending Christianity, not acting like the Grand Mufti of Middlesbrough.
Update: Melanie Phillips has written about this here:
The attitude among Britain’s establishment towards Britain’s creeping Islamisation becomes ever more surreal. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who betrayed British Muslim women, Christian values and British national identity when he said that Britain had nothing to fear from embracing sharia law in personal status issues and other disputes, has used the anniversary of those infamous remarks to opine that more people now agree with him.
Well if he’s right, there’s going to be an enormous drift of misunderstanding between the establishment and the rest. There may be an increasing number of ‘fairly senior people’ who are taking up residence with the Archbishop on Planet Cringe, but among ordinary folk there is a steady buildup of positively volcanic fury at the way the UK is being offered up in salami slices to the Islamists.
He claims that “a number of fairly senior people” agree with him. That’s definite and strong support, isn’t it?
One of my pet peeves is the expression “a number of”. It could be 1, it could be 100, who knows? It doesn’t mean anything.
Who are these people who agree with Rowan Williams? Judges and politicians, I suspect.