WHY DR ROWAN WILLIAMS IS RIGHT ABOUT SHARIA LAW
Now the dust has settled after the extraordinary media feeding frenzy caused by the Archbishop of Canterbury discussing sharia law, perhaps we should look at the very important issues he raised. Of course Dr Williams might have suspected what was going to happen, and should have prepared a less scholarly version of his own arguments.
Indeed in his speech itself he refers to the problem:
Among the manifold anxieties that haunt the discussion of the place of Muslims in British society, one of the strongest, reinforced from time to time by the sensational reporting of opinion polls, is that Muslim communities in this country seek the freedom to live under sharia law. And what most people think they know of sharia is that it is repressive towards women and wedded to archaic and brutal physical punishments; just a few days ago, it was reported that a ‘forced marriage’ involving a young woman with learning difficulties had been ’sanctioned under sharia law’ – the kind of story that, in its assumption that we all ‘really’ know what is involved in the practice of sharia, powerfully reinforces the image of – at best – a pre-modern system in which human rights have no role. The problem is freely admitted by Muslim scholars. ‘In the West’, writes Tariq Ramadan in his groundbreaking Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, ‘the idea of Sharia calls up all the darkest images of Islam…It has reached the extent that many Muslim intellectuals do not dare even to refer to the concept for fear of frightening people or arousing suspicion of all their work by the mere mention of the word’.
It is worth looking at what Dr Williams actually said about Sharia law, rather than what was assumed by people who had not read his speech.
Fundamental to Dr Williams’s argument is the importance of collective identities: in a multi-cultural society people who are all equally law abiding can have more than one sense of identity or allegiance. These identities can coexist, so someone can consider themselves both Scottish and Rastafarian, or they might be both Welsh and Jewish.
In the case of the great world religions, then these have usually also historically served not just as a private religious faiths, but as a social ideology, and have underpinned legal systems.
People can therefore have complementary or conflicting allegiances, and those allegiances can carry with them different cultural approaches to private affairs like divorce, marriage, probate and succession. The archbishop recognises that the Church of England has a particular relationship with the state, and that particularity should not be mistaken for universal validity, and therefore the claims of other particular religions, like Judaism and Islam need to be accommodated as well.
Islamic sharia law is already recognised in Britain since the recognition of the Islamic Bank of Britain by the Financial Services Authority in 1994, and changes in stamp duty legislation to accommodate Islamic mortgages. The Islamic courts already give advisory judgements on other matters, but these are non-enforceable, and have simliar status to any other arbitration service.
Jewish law already operates the Beth Din courts (battei din), that can hear civil cases. Over a hundred years ago the Battei Din were incorporated into English law so that their judgements are enforceable. A particular area of advantage is for example in divorce, where it is important that the state recognises the divorce, but also important for the individuals involved that the divorce is recognised within their religious community, particularly if they wish to marry again. As the Beth Din judgement is recognised as an English court, only one procedure is necessary. If the divorce had to go through two separate tribunals, this would give added advantage to the dominant party in the divorce – usually the man.
If a dispute is over a contract under English law the Beth Din can “incorporate” some of the rules of the civil law into Jewish halakha law. In reality, the proceedings are a form of arbitration. The majority of Beth Din awards that are contested are enforced by courts in the UK, although they can be overruled. English common law is particularly suitable for incorporating such subaltern jurisdictions, as the principle of equity can allow an appeal to the spirit of justice even where the letter of the halakha law has been followed, and what applies to halakha could equally apply to sharia.
Dr Williams is aware of the dangers:
A very serious one, is that recognition of ’supplementary jurisdiction’ in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women. … It is argued that the provision for the inheritance of widows under a strict application of sharia has the effect of disadvantaging them in what the majority community might regard as unacceptable ways. A legal (in fact Qur’anic) provision which in its time served very clearly to secure a widow’s position at a time when this was practically unknown in the culture becomes, if taken absolutely literally, a generator of relative insecurity in a new context (see, for example, Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights. Tradition and Politics, 1999, p.111). The problem here is that recognising the authority of a communal religious court to decide finally and authoritatively about such a question would in effect not merely allow an additional layer of legal routes for resolving conflicts and ordering behaviour but would actually deprive members of the minority community of rights and liberties that they were entitled to enjoy as citizens; and while a legal system might properly admit structures or protocols that embody the diversity of moral reasoning in a plural society by allowing scope for a minority group to administer its affairs according to its own convictions, it can hardly admit or ‘license’ protocols that effectively take away the rights it acknowledges as generally valid.
The Jewish legal theorist Ayelet Shachar, in a highly original and significant monograph on Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (2001), explores the risks of any model that ends up ‘franchising’ a non-state jurisdiction so as to reinforce its most problematic features and further disadvantage its weakest members: ‘we must be alert’, she writes, ‘to the potentially injurious effects of well-meaning external protections upon different categories of group members here – effects which may unwittingly exacerbate preexisting internal power hierarchies’ (113). She argues that if we are serious in trying to move away from a model that treats one jurisdiction as having a monopoly of socially defining roles and relations, we do not solve any problems by a purely uncritical endorsement of a communal legal structure which can only be avoided by deciding to leave the community altogether. We need, according to Shachar, to ‘work to overcome the ultimatum of “either your culture or your rights”‘
This question of how a judicial system can cope with conflicting rules while still defending the rights of weaker members is important to the Archbishop’s argument, but before we deal with it, let us look at what he specifically says about Sharia law.
It is important to begin by dispelling one or two myths about sharia; so far from being a monolithic system of detailed enactments, sharia designates primarily – to quote Ramadan again – ‘the expression of the universal principles of Islam [and] the framework and the thinking that makes for their actualization in human history’ (32). Universal principles: as any Muslim commentator will insist, what is in view is the eternal and absolute will of God for the universe and for its human inhabitants in particular; but also something that has to be ‘actualized’, not a ready-made system. If shar’ designates the essence of the revealed Law, sharia is the practice of actualizing and applying it; while certain elements of the sharia are specified fairly exactly in the Qur’an and Sunna and in the hadith recognised as authoritative in this respect, there is no single code that can be identified as ‘the’ sharia.
when certain states impose what they refer to as sharia or when certain Muslim activists demand its recognition alongside secular jurisdictions, they are usually referring not to a universal and fixed code established once for all but to some particular concretisation of it at the hands of a tradition of jurists. In the hands of contemporary legal traditionalists, this means simply that the application of sharia must be governed by the judgements of representatives of the classical schools of legal interpretation. But there are a good many voices arguing for an extension of the liberty of ijtihad – basically reasoning from first principles rather than simply the collation of traditional judgements.
That is, while some conservative scholars regard sharia as a set of codified judgements, more liberal Islamic jurists regard the law as fundamental principles that must be referenced when dealing with the specific and changing particularities in society. Indeed as the eminent sociologist Ernest Gellner explained in his key textbook “Islamic Societies”, the criticism of Islam that it has “never had a reformation” unlike Christianity are misplaced, because the lack of central and hierarchical authority is a defining feature of Islam, indeed as Gellner argues “the cultural history of the Arab world and of many other Muslim lands durng the past hundred years is largely the story of the advance and victory of reformism, a kind of Islamic Protestantism with a heavy stress on scripturalism and above all a sustained hostility to spiritual brokerage, to the local middlemen between man and God”. The liberal tradition of interpreting Islam in the context of the issues of contemporary society is at least as strong as that of the primativists, and there is constant and shifting debate among that loose trans-political and trans-ethnic network of scholars, lawyers and theologians who comprise the ulama.
The mythology that Islamic society is intolerant of pluralism is based upon a comparison with particularly obscurantist exceptions, like Taliban Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. This is not true of more mainstream Islamic thought. The Archbishop explains:
A significant number of contemporary Islamic jurists and scholars would say that the Qur’anic pronouncements on apostasy which have been regarded as the ground for extreme penalties reflect a situation in which abandoning Islam was equivalent to adopting an active stance of violent hostility to the community, so that extreme penalties could be compared to provisions in other jurisdictions for punishing spies or traitors in wartime; but that this cannot be regarded as bearing on the conditions now existing in the world. Of course such a reading is wholly unacceptable to ‘primitivists’ in Islam, for whom this would be an example of a rationalising strategy, a style of interpretation (ijtihad) uncontrolled by proper traditional norms. But, to use again the terminology suggested a moment ago, as soon as it is granted that – even in a dominantly Islamic society – citizens have more than one set of defining relationships under the law of the state, it becomes hard to justify enactments that take it for granted that the only mode of contact between these sets of relationships is open enmity; in which case, the appropriateness of extreme penalties for conversion is not obvious even within a fairly strict Muslim frame of reference.
There is some community of understanding between Islamic social thinking and the categories we might turn to in the non-Muslim world for the understanding of law in the most general context. There is a recognition that our social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging – even if one of those sets is regarded as relating to the most fundamental and non-negotiable level of reality, as established by a ‘covenant’ between the divine and the human (as in Jewish and Christian thinking; once again, we are not talking about an exclusively Muslim problem). The danger arises not only when there is an assumption on the religious side that membership of the community (belonging to the umma or the Church or whatever) is the only significant category, so that participation in other kinds of socio-political arrangement is a kind of betrayal. It also occurs when secular government assumes a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity.
This is an interesting point. The assumption that a religious authority should not prevail over people who do not accept its values is a fundamental one for secularists. But why should the authority of a secular society prevail over people who do choose to self-identify with a religious faith, and its entailed values? Secularists who are also atheists even recognise that both the secular and the religious laws are both the product of human thought, so why should one be privileged over the other? We should accept that in reality the content of religions and religious observance is not static, but changes wiith time as infleunced by the changing values of society and by political pressure, so the political battles should not be between secularism and religion, but to shape the values of both wider society and the religious communities. In modern British society organised religion is not a structurally conservative social force, although it can be conservative it can also be progressive, - for example those Catholics who are both conservatively opposed to abortion, and yet deeply opposed to nuclear weapons and social injustice. Such people are not simply “bigots” even if they do take illiberal positions on some social issues. The task is to work with them on the political issues we agree with them over, and via the democraic process we seek to minimise their influence over those issues we disagree with them.
As Dr Williams ably argues:
There is a bit of a risk here in the way we sometimes talk about the universal vision of post-Enlightenment politics. The great protest of the Enlightenment was against authority that appealed only to tradition and refused to justify itself by other criteria – by open reasoned argument or by standards of successful provision of goods and liberties for the greatest number. Its claim to override traditional forms of governance and custom by looking towards a universal tribunal was entirely intelligible against the background of despotism and uncritical inherited privilege which prevailed in so much of early modern Europe. The most positive aspect of this moment in our cultural history was its focus on equal levels of accountability for all and equal levels of access for all to legal process.
But “Universality” is a socially created myth. It was the particularity of the specific form of the French Revolution to seek to establish a single collective and communal identity through promoting universality of the French language (spoken by only 10% of the population in 1789) and a single political authority and legal system. The limits of universality could never extend beyond the protection of the bayonets of the Grand Armee, and couldn’t really be universal even within France for those who chose a different allegiance. This was the political sub-text of the Dreyfus case, that while the mythology of French society was universal social inclusion based upon the French language and citizenship, there remained distrust about anyone who has a simultaneous loyalty to another identity. Today the principles of universality oppress Muslim women by excluding their choice to wear a hijab to school.
We must recognise that people who choose to self-identify with a religious community, and its associated laws and ethics have a right to do so. The actual, and so far relatively successful, experience of multi-culturalism and convergence towards consensual liberal values in British society has not been on the basis of any campaign for secularism, but has succeeded by offering choice and empowerment.
As the Archbishop says:
It would be a pity if the immense advances in the recognition of human rights led, because of a misconception about legal universality, to a situation where a person was defined primarily as the possessor of a set of abstract liberties and the law’s function was accordingly seen as nothing but the securing of those liberties irrespective of the custom and conscience of those groups which concretely compose a plural modern society.
So what does this mean about social cohesion?
Well by ending the situation where people need to choose between wider society and their culture, we engineer a situation where individuals can choose which code to adopt. Of course any choice to use religious arbitration would have to be mutual and based on free and informed consent. This encourages the secular legal authorities to respect the plurality of our society, and recognise people’s different senses of identity; and simultaneously it puts pressure on the religious communities to evolve towards the wider norms of society. Recognition of Jewish, Islamic or other religious arbitration by the law of the land means that communities do not rely upon extra-judicial pressure. At the same time, recognition and incorporation of religious courts means that the state’s civil courts institutionalise their right of supervision over those religious courts to ensure natural justice, and that their use is consensual.
The Archbishop has given a very thought provoking and sensible argument, and the left should engage with it, and not posture with toy-town secularism that doesn’t recognise the real issues in our multi-cultural and inclusive society.
Worth reading Osama Saeed on this subject. And this piece from Richard Seymour is worth reading, and read the comments which are quite good.
The Archbishop of Canterbury unites Evangelical and liberal wings of the Church of England in condemnation of his views. Other critics include the government, the leader of the Lib Dems, senior Tories (wet and dry), the New Statesman, and the vast majority of the public.
So far, I have only heard of 2 sources that are outside of the consensus, and these are Socialist Unity and Lenin’s Tomb.
The Archbish brings unanimity between SU and LT. Hallelujah! No wonder your respective political traditions are so popular with the electorate.
Comment by An Amateur Anthropologist — 15 February, 2008 @ 11:23 am
There is so much confusion entangled in this post (not to mention William’s tortured prose) that it’s hard to know where to begin.
To start with the French Revolution, its central principles, and laicite (roughly secularism). The Declaration of des droits d’homme was, according to Williams, about ‘accountability’ and securing ‘abstract liberties’ regardless of such cherished values as ‘custom’ and the ‘conscience’ of groups that make up society. In one of Voltaire’s contes (tales) there is a remark that the antiquity and acceptance of a custom does not justify its right to exist. Now it’s hardly odd that the ABC thinks that regardless of their merits, that no-one should touch the faiths, the encrusted prejudices of the ages, provided of course that they are religious. It’s rather strange, in the light of this observation, that anyone on the left would be so reactionary as to believe that in this instance allegiances to customs are *in principle* part of the rightful plurality of society that was violated by the pretentions to Universality of the French Revolution. I never thought that the time would come when the arguments of Burke, on the immortal contract between the living and dead, the humus of social custom, and its desecration by the cruel ideologues, and killers of the delicate Marie Antoinete of the Revolution, would be pitched by anyone claiming to be a socialist.
The French language was indeed the basis of the Declaration des droits d’homme. Well, it was written in it. The argument to which you refer, about its universality, in fact was most clearly expressed by the Abbe Gregoire, who stated, amongst other things that ‘la reaction parle Breton’ (which some of it did), and led a campaign for the French of the Ile de France being taught and imposed across the land. Gregoire was also the first anti-slavery camapigner in Europe to have had any practical impact - in the abolition of slavery (rescinded by Napoleon and never fully implemented) and founder of the Societie des amis des noirs (who in turn influenced strongly Thomas Clarkson and the UK anti-slavery campaign). So that charge, that the Revolution’s unviersality is pretty feeble in important respects. Or indeed a downright lie. One could also note that the human rights’ campaigner, Jean Jaures, who strangely defended Defrus precisely because he stood for universal human rights, was equally a defender of his native language: Occiton, not French. Here of course we have not Burke but another more contemproary reaction: Furet as the inspiration for these charges.
So, having begun an argument against unviersality, human rights, and the fight against oppression on ‘cross-cultural’ grounds, we find it quickly descending into a line of thought whose inspiration is swiftly a well-known one: conservatism.
Poor Marx, he made rather ‘universal’ claims as well: against such well-entrenched social and culturally diverse pratices as exploitation, slavery and oppression. Why couldn’t he have just got round to accepting them and incorporating them in a multicultural multi-custom all-embracing plural society?
Comment by Andrew Coates — 15 February, 2008 @ 11:26 am
Andrew
Ideas have a social context, you have said nothing here that contradicts my argument about the French revolution.
The whole bluff and bluster you wrote there about the French language is of historical interest, but you concede my point by arguing about it only with the details of France and French history. The language of universality derives from the French revolution, (and were not followed, for example in Mitteleuropa), we no longer live in nineteenth century France, and the social task facing us is not opposing the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Sorry to break that news to you. Unless I am much mistaken Karl Marx also lived in the nineteeth century, and despite the divine status you seem to ascribe to him was a man in his time and context.
Jean Jaures was an Occitan speaker, Karl Kautsky was Czech, so what?? Kautsky was clearly wrong that the Czech language would be superceded by German and wither away and only be used in the private home.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 11:38 am
Marx was also a fierce critic of the abstract liberties embodied in the French Revolution. He constrasted the fictional citizen with the actual embodiement of people in class societies. In ‘On the Jewish Question’ he attempted to link the disengenuity of liberal values in a class society and the way they masked exploitative social relations with the position of religious minorities in such societies. Its only briefly sketched in his account but its surprising that Marxists have not paid more attention to the relevent passages in the light of current controversies.
My difficulty with the Archbishop is that, like most communitarians, whilst he’s right about the disengenuity of liberal individualism, its not rooted in an account of the disengenuity of combining political equality with social inequality, a disengenuity which masks both exploitation and the lived experiance of different kinds of oppression (the connections between the two being something that Marxists should spend much more time thinking about).
I also disagree with him on the broader territory he shares with liberal individualists: social cohesion essentially equated with national cohesion (a faultline which in my view explains why discussions about social cohesion are usually discussions about excluding people). Its important to remember about the Renaissence is that it was part of a longer process of ‘nationalisation of the Church’. It was on this basis that discussions of secularism then proceeded. This explains how a discussion about religous identity turns out to have nothing to do with theology (this is why people like Andrew Coates missed the boat) but about ‘national’ identity.
Andrew Coates attempt to ignore the exploitative and oppressive dimension of modern state building and the ideologies associated with it are most unmarxist, and actually, rather surprising. But Andy Newman, whilst he raises these issues, I think similarly has a tendency to confuse social and national cohesion, something which he may have to confront if he wants to take his argument further.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 11:51 am
I completely disagree with this article. Religion should be an entirely private matter. If an individual or individuals want to enter into private arrangements such as religious marriage then of course they should be free to do so.
But the point of law is to have a framework where disputes arise and here there should be complete equality- whether a person is self-defined as Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian atheist, agnostic whatever- should not in any way change their rights.
“Recognition of Jewish, Islamic or other religious arbitration by the law of the land means that communities do not rely upon extra-judicial pressure. At the same time, recognition and incorporation of religious courts means that the state’s civil courts institutionalise their right of supervision over those religious courts to ensure natural justice, and that their use is consensual.”
Why? Those are entirely private matters. Andy earlier argues without apparent awareness of contradiction
“Of course any choice to use religious arbitration would have to be mutual and based on free and informed consent.”
Sure- and consent should be withdraw-able at all stages. So in no sense should religious or any other non-legal arbitration be recognised legally.
What the socialist left should be arguing is for the complete disestablishment of religion from state. Why should the head of the church of England i.e. the queen be the person or in reality, the office associated with her person be used by the ruling class, to ratify governments go to war etc
Why should bishops like Williams sit in the unelected house of lords?
Instead we should be for the abolition of monarchy, lords, for complete disestablishment of religion for the right of all to worship or not as they see fit, for complete political, legal and social equality.
The archbishop should resign from the house of lords - as for the church that’s up to its members.
For the complete separation of church and state.
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
John is absoultely right in respect of the French Revolution. I would also add that there is no reason why Marxists shouldn’t engage with - and indeed use - some of the argument of Burke, who is pretty fascinating. Burke is a brilliant critic of liberalism (and by extension liberal capitalism) whose critique dovetails to some extent with a good deal of Marxist work. Obviously, that doesn’t me we adopt his political positions wholesale, but I don’t think it can be used as a brush to tar people as ‘unMarxist’.
Again, however, Marxists have to recognise the limits of both individualism and communitarianism.
Comment by Rob — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
One thing made me chuckle on the Radio was some self-proclaimed fundamentalist Christian saying that Jesus would be turning in his grave if he heard about Rowan’s proposals.
er, I thought the whole raison d’etre of Christianity was that Jesus wasn’t in a grave! Resurrection and all that jazz
Comment by Adamski — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
Jason argues #5: “in no sense should religious or any other non-legal arbitration be recognised legally.”.
This is very confused. Lots of forms of arbitration are recognised legally.
Are you arguing that there should be no arbitration except through the civil courts? So you wuld force people to court rathet than accepy arbitration?
Or are you arguing that arbitration outside of the courts should be non-enforceable? Or are you arguing that people who submit to arbitratioon should always be able to change their mind, even after judgement, and seek arbitration thorugh a different tribunal.
The whole civil law, familly law and contract law would collapse.
Basically you haven’t understood the argument. recognition of religious courts doesn’t take anyone’s rights way, they still have them and could choose to exercise them. But for some people the values and judgement of their religious community is more important to them, and they may make an informed choice to accept that arbitration instead of through the civil courts.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
I didn’t quite understand John’s point- is it that having abstract rights is one thing, having real social and political rights another?
And that in turn helps foment a sense of religious identity based on oppression and being left out of the power of society?
That at leas was my attempt to translate John’s points- may be I’m wrong.
However, I’m not sure putting our arguments in the abstract language of academe is that useful.
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
I didn’t understand JOhn’s point either.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
The big problem with Burke is that he contrasts ‘tradition’ with ‘Reason’ in the time honoured fashion of both post-enlightenment liberals and conservatives. Hence arguments between people who think societies grow like tree’s and on the other hand people who think societies can be moulded according to the precept of Reason. This later generates familiar oppositions between ‘authenticity’ and ‘rationality’, the warm values of communitarian life in contrast with the cold logic of contractual relations: a staple of both romantic anti-capitalism and German conservative thought.
This contrast between tradition and reason, central as Coates points out, to the quarrels of conservatives and liberals in the drama of the enlightenment, is not a good basis for Marxist theorising about capitalism, liberalism, identity or anything much else in my view (MacIntyre has pointed out that it even distorts discussion in philosophy of science, Kuhn’s account in particular). If that view was correct I’d side with Coates. Its not correct, and thats why Coates, like Don Quixote, tilts at 18th century windmills rather then engaging in a debate about modern capitalism, the oppression of minorities and national identity, and perhaps most significantly, you will not find a single reference to Socialism in anything that people like Coates write about this particular question.
He’s still fighting the capitalist revolution. Trouble is its capitalism we’re fighting against, in theological or secular garb. There has not been a feudal threat to the British State since the Jacobite rebellion in the mid-18th century. All thats over.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
#5 back to what you wrote Jason:
So when entering into a private contract, for example, house purchase, do you think that people should have excatly the same rights whether the house is in Scotland or England?
How would you reconcile that with the fact that property law is different in these two countries? There is not complete equality. Are you going to ignore the sense of national identity and extend English law to Scotland? Or are you going to accept different legal traditions within the same state.
Currebtly two individuals in Scotland can elect that their contract should be under the terms of English law. If we follw your argument about equality they shoudl be denied that right? Or is it OK for Scots and not for Muslims?
I am not just teasing you, there are difficult areas, and once you abandon the idea that there is universal law, then it is hard not to approve every exception.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
The problem I find with the Archbishop’s lecture (which I have read in full) is rather different.
It is clear existing law that parties can choose to have their disputes arbitrated, whether by Jewish law, sharia, or any other body of rules. Once they have agreed to arbitrate on those terms, the existing judicial system will if necessary enforce the arbitration decision.
It is also existing law that if, for example, parties married by sharia law in Pakistan, an English state court will recognise the consequences by sharia law.
Further, English courts can (and have since the 1670s at the latest) taken account of aspects of sharia as part of the general common elements of law shared by all peoples, as an argument that a debated issue of English law in some matter should be decided consistently with sharia and other laws - e.g. (one 1670s example) allow non-christians to give evidence in court.
So what does Williams think needs to *change*?
The answer, somewhat obscured by the slippery verbiage and the attempt to intervene in the academic debate, is that he is actually saying that membership of a religious “community” should have binding effects irrelevant of the individual’s consent to be a bound.
The argument is immediately addressed to the case, currently awaiting appeal, of the arranged marriage (backed by sharia scholars) of a man allegedly too mentally disabled to consent. Should the English courts recognise a marriage without the consent of one of the parties if, by an interpretation accepted by (some, not all) sharia scholars, the consent of the person having parental authority under sharia is obtained?
But this has much wider-ranging implications.
Should the children of muslim parents be bound by sharia, or the the children of Anglicans by Anglican (i.e. medieval) canon law?
E.g., it implies since I was certainly born and brought up an Anglican (and baptised and confirmed in the Anglican church) I should be subject to the Anglican canon law of marriage, etc.. In spite of my professed atheism, I cannot ‘leave’ the Anglican community.
This is, of course, true of *cultural references*: I am far more likely to use a Bible story or proverb in speaking or writing than I am to use a Koranic or Confucian story or proverb.
But that is very different from saying that this *cultural* ‘community membership’ should be given legal effect against my wishes …
Mike
Comment by Mike Macnair — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
Jason,
Sorry no. Its about the way in which attempting to combine a language of political equality (ie centrally one person one vote) with justifications for economic inequality (ie freedom), does little else but mask exploitative social relations. The most famous text in which Marx deals with this is a pamphlet called ‘On the Jewish Question’. Here he suggests (though the argument is not fully developed) that there are parrallels between the way radical liberal thought obscures exploitations and the way it obscures the oppression of religious minorities. In other words the realities of oppression of minorities is concealed by the doctrine of liberal secularism in the same way that it conceals the reality of exploitation between bosses and workers. He actually ends the piece by suggesting that the working class says to oppressed religious minorities ‘your chains are our chains’.
As stated not much has been done with THIS part of this famous text, but it strikes me as potentially fascinating for those of us confronting a similar argument in 21st century Britain.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
once you abandon the idea that there is universal law, then it is hard not to approve every exception
Emphasis added. That’s precisely my problem with Williams’s speech. He does say at one point “of course there would still be a single overarching framework of law with which these community-based jurisdictions would have to be compatible”, or words to that effect, but if that were the case how would greater recognition for religious law make any difference? And if the universalism of the law were to be qualified - which is certainly the drift of his argument, even if he disclaims it - how could universal rights be guaranteed? He opens up this question, but seems to think it’s philosophically fairly trivial and can be sorted out with a bit of discussion in good faith. I think it’s huge and unresolved, and possibly irresoluble.
Comment by Phil — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
On arbitration I’m no expert- in fact know little.
But as it is a process that takes place outside the courts then I presume that any party has recourse to the courts of they so choose at a later date?
Surely any individuals can if both agree by mutual consent to use any kind of outside mediator including religious figures if they so choose. I see no reason to give religious aithorities any special recognition in law.
As stated there should be complete equlity before the law.
As for the Scottish house buying law it’s entirely different- if two people want to voluntarily offer into a contract then fine presuambly. You write
“Currebtly two individuals in Scotland can elect that their contract should be under the terms of English law. If we follw your argument about equality they shoudl be denied that right? Or is it OK for Scots and not for Muslims?”
This is I think misleading- if two individuals elect to make their contract in that way then there is no threat to equality. Ther may or may not be arguments to simplify the system and have on rule for selling houses but this has nothing to do with your argument.
Are you saying that if someone is Muslim then they should have to follow sharia law? Or if they at one point decide they want to then they can’t have a gert out later?
If individuals want to follow religious traditions whether Muslim or not then fine but they should not be compelled to do so or keep doing so.
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
I’ve yet to find any reference in his speech to the notion that English law should be over-ridden by Sharia. If anyone can find any such reference I would be grateful.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:26 pm
Mike your argument falls apart with your example:
“E.g., it implies since I was certainly born and brought up an Anglican (and baptised and confirmed in the Anglican church) I should be subject to the Anglican canon law of marriage, etc.. In spite of my professed atheism, I cannot ‘leave’ the Anglican community. “
But of course you can leave and have left that confessional identity, and Dr Williams argues that you should always have the choice to use the civil courts and follow vanilla flavoured English law. Ii find nothing in his speech that suggests that “he is actually saying that membership of a religious “community” should have binding effects irrelevant of the individual’s consent to be a bound. “
The only people who fall into your category are those minors and others who cannot give informed consent. In which case is anything new being argued? We all have the misfortune of parents we cannot choose, and in extremis the state can step in.
You are of course correct that arbitration already exists, and this was the point I argued to exhaustion with the islamophobes of the Worker Communist Party of Iran on the UKLN list a few years ago when the issue of Sharia law being recognised in Canada was in the news.
You miss the point of the Archbishop’s speech which is a political and not a legal one, that the religious identities and their entailed values are as equally valid as the so called “universal” national identities and values of the state, which are themselves ideological constructs. By definition if people in religious communities don’t share the “universal” values, then they are not universal. Giving recognition of that in the legal system is making a political gesture of defining our society as it is actually constituted, rather than on the basis of liberal mythology of how it idealists imagine it is constituted.
Our society is very good at pointing out that rights and obligations under sharia are conditioned by unequal wealth and power relations, but much less good at recognising that the same is true of the values of our wider secular society.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:27 pm
Jason: you ask
“Are you saying that if someone is Muslim then they should have to follow sharia law? Or if they at one point decide they want to then they can’t have a gert out later?”
For example, commercial contracts under sharia have marked differnces with English contract law. that is no prooblem already under English law, if that is the set of terms they choose, then it will be enforced by an English court.
Should Muslims use sharia law for commercial contracts rather than English law? That is up to them - they should have the choice. But if they choose to use sharia law, then why should they not be able to get their commercial contract enforced by an Islamic court rather than the state’s civil court. Giving islamic tribunals legal powers of enforceablity, which already exists for Jewish courts, is all this is about.
Of course if two people choose a contract under one set of legal proinciples they cannot chose another one half way through, becasue that would be renegotiating the contract.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
The universalism of the law is already compromsed in the UK with the various exceptions granted to the established Xian state sects. And as a rule those exceptions do not impinge on the daily lives of the majority of the population who do not share the views of the various god bothers, which as a general rule is messy but workable.
The problem with the views of the head of the state cult in England is that if they were to be passed into law, which is by no means impossible, they would open the gates to the freezing of communal identities in exactly the way that Mike McNair describes in his post above. They would also, given that many of the Muslim clerics currently working in this country belong to the more reactionary currents within Islam, lead to the replication of deeply reactionary patriarcal attitudes in their courts that would effectively see the coercion of many women.
For Marxists I would suggest that the best way to respond to the quasi-feudal views of the likes of Williams and the dafter Islamists is to stick to the classical arguments for the seperation of church and state. A viewpoint that the SWP for one came very close to abandoning completely when it endorsed the Racial and Religious Hatred Act that opened the door to the denial of free speech on this issue. That the editor of SW has now largely reversed this stance speaks only to his and the SWP CC’s hypocrisy.
Comment by Mike — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
Andy wrote “Should Muslims use sharia law for commercial contracts rather than English law? That is up to them - they should have the choice.”
The problem here Andy is that it might well work if both contracting parties are Muslim. But what if there is a dispute or one party abandons that faith? Or if one contracting party is not Muslim?
Rather amusing really that Marxists are debating which code of law contracts ought to be given legal status.
Comment by Mike — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
Mike #21
These are really very standard issue, if for example a company is trading between Scotland and England, they need to decide which laws the contract is under, and which courts have jursidiction.
if they subsequently wish to change that can be done by renegotiating the contract.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
At present Andy the companies concerned would decide which national legal code they wished to accept. If we were to accept a version of sharia law for commercial purposes then they would also have to decide which communal law they would function under. Which I really could not care about one dot or iota with regard to commercial law. But I do have very real concerns about with regard to a reform of civil law that would effectively divide the populace thereby aiding the boss class in dividing the working classes aginst ourselves.
Comment by Mike — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
#20 Mike, do you think those whipping up hysteria over Rowan Williams’ speech advocate separation of Church and State and other progressive things?
Shouldn’t a socialist intervention into the debate take these things into account rather than just engaging in abstract polemicising?
Comment by Adamski — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
Andy, you write
“You miss the point of the Archbishop’s speech which is a political and not a legal one, that the religious identities and their entailed values are as equally valid as the so called “universal” national identities and values of the state, which are themselves ideological constructs.”
Unfortunately, the Archbishop *is* making a legal point. This was a speech to lawyers about the law and the literature he relies on is *about law*. I could perfectly well prescribe the speech to students taking the Jurisprudence (philosophy of law) course here as a modern example of conservative communitarian arguments of a type which were made against the reformation, against the revolution of 1688, and in defence of the right of states to maintain slavery.
You write that
“We all have the misfortune of parents we cannot choose, and in extremis the state can step in.”
but the Archbishop’s argument is precisely against the state’s right to step in in a case of this sort. In the case of children and hence in relation to child maintenance and property division on divorce, the current law does *not* allow any variant of religious law to override the general law. The reason is that if it is allowed to, costs will be imposed on the general taxpayer through the welfare system.
On the more general point, problem is that the argument from ‘community identity’ and ‘community rights’ to legal pluralism cannot be restricted to the case of children and the mentally disabled. If ‘Anglicans’ are to have the right to observe their religious law in a way not subordinated to state law (which they have not had in this country since 1689, and arguably which catholic christians have not had since the settlement between Henry II and the Pope in 1176), they must have the right to punish heresy and atheism. Less than that is not freedom of religion but subordination of religion to the secular state.
Our ancestors lived through around 300 years of the “persecuting society” formed in the 13th century and functioning down to “Saint” Thomas More’s argument in the 1530s that without the right to use torture against heresy suspects, “heretics wouuld swarm the streets” (true) and around 150 years of wars of religion, both civil wars and international wars, to get rid of it.
With this background, the fact that liberalism is just as much an ideology as religion does not move me one iota. I am for the separation of church and state, and the *subordination* of religious practice to state rules which that involves. However much I hate capitalism. I am not going to prefer feudal theocratism to it - even when the feudal theocratism is dressed in liberal and multicultural dress.
Mike
Comment by Mike Macnair — 15 February, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Mike
Go and read his speech again. and look at the calendar while you are at it, we live in 2008 and not 1708. (well Ok you live in Oxford, so perhaps it does seem like 1708 there sometimes)
the spectre of feudal theocratism is utterlley absent from this discussion, it is about the relationshipoop between cultural and religious identities with national identities.
I look forwrd to you quoting the passages from Dr William’s sppeech that show he argued for this:
Of course he argued nothing of the sort.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
Parts of Sharia Law is already recognised by the state. Muslim children are not offered for adoption but for fostering as Sharia does not permit children to be adopted but to be looked after by foster families who if they take the responsibility on treat the fostered child like their own child by birth.
Sharia law does not permit forced marriage or female genital mutilation or honour killings or crimes, these crimes are pertetrated as violence against women and use religion as permission to commit them. Now there may be issues about women’s rights being eroded particularly property etc under Sharia Law in Britain and that needs to be discussed - what we are not discussing women’s hard fought rights about marriage, divorce and property here or women’s rights to live free fro violence and abuse. As socialists we can debate about the rights and wrongs of religion and the bourgeios state but for me it is about the reaction that this is about Islam and the irrational fears we have about people who practice the faith,
Comment by cat — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
Adam the only thing genuine socialists can do at present on this issue is to engage in polemic and guard our principles from those who would sell them for the chimerae of electoral gains that are soon lost.
Comment by Mike — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Thanks cat, for bringing some sense back into the discussion.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
I just thought people might be interested in what Osama Saeed has to say on the matter (speaking as a member of the SNP and devoted Scottish-Muslim living under Scots Law) -
Williams and Shariah
Rolled-up Trousers blog
11 Feb 2008
Which gives me a chance to let folks know about developments involving the farcical stitch-up involving the great Tommy Sheridan, which I know folks on the great SU blog are very much interested and involved in (aren’t we all!)
Sheridan ally charged in perjury probe
The Herald (Glasgow)
15 Feb 2008
Former MSP charged with perjury
BBC Scotland
15 Feb 2008
all the best everyone!
ps
I enjoyed Tony Greenstein’s recent articles and comments - brilliant stuff!
Comment by joe90 — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
I think this argument is getting too tied up in legal niceties. I generally agree with Jason’s views. Freedom of religion means that religious people should be allowed to follow their own customs and regulate their relationships as they see fit, provided this is not done through coercion.
If there is coercion, the party involved could leave the relgion and its jurisdiction, and/or the state will have to step in, as it is meant to at present. This should apply to commercial as well as personal relationships.
The corollory of this is that the state should not recognise religious institutions, because by its recognition these institutions then become civil, not personal concerns. The state should not recognise marriage (a classic socialist demand), or privilege married people or their children over those who are not married.
One consequence of Williams’ intervention, is that there have been calls for the recognition of polygamy (although, curiously (?), not polyandry). It is possible that this could happen, although you may have to become a muslim for your polygamy not to be illegal. As far as the state is concerned, polygamy/andry should be no different from a menage a trois, quatre, cinq, six…..
I don’t think that freedom of religion, as an individual matter that does not impinge on the rights of the non-religious, or on members of other religions, is compatible with state recongition of any religious institutions or customs.
In many ways, I think Williams was special pleading for the continued privileged status of the Anglican church, behind the backs of an argument for the recognition of some aspects of sharia law.
Comment by PhilW — 15 February, 2008 @ 2:44 pm
I agree with Phil agreeing with me! And in fact putting it far more clearly and comprehensively, so thanks for that, too.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
“As far as the state is concerned, polygamy/andry should be no different from a menage a trois, quatre, cinq, six…..”
except that one involves marriage and consequently civil and legal questions whilst the others do not. I think the difficulty with these discussions is a failure to acknowledge that the State intervenes far more in social life then assumed by Phil W, and that liberal theory is not an accurate reflection of social reality (ie social life is not comprised of a bunch of autonomous individuals entering into voluntary contracts with each other). Sorry to bring liberal theory into it, given not unjustified complaints about abstraction, but Phil W’s assumptions in this particular matter justify it.
The assumption that we are in fact just a bunch of autonomous individuals occassionally entering into voluntary contracts with each other, and that its the states function to ensure that contracts are properly drawn up on the one hand, and adhered to on the other, and little else, is the true abstraction here, and its what lies behind the picture of the citizen which this kind of a legal framework is supposedly concerned with. The former is a fiction and the latter is a lie.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
Yes John you are correct, the state involves itself hugely in all sorts fo areas.
For example, even seemingly autonomous organisations like Toddler groups run by committees of parents are subject to Offsted, and from 2010 will need to employ a graduate. This is state regulation, and questions of state recognition of qualifications, etc all come into it.
this is an illustration of how civil and religious society are interconnected with the state, as some toddler groups are also organisd through church, temple or mosque.
And of course it is not just the state that mediates the realtionship between individuals. There are also questions of religious belief and structures, ethnic and cultural identities, not to mention class and economic categories.
If we look at how people actually live their lives we can see the social issues that are of concern here, that for example religious believers, or individuals who self identify with religiously oriented communities choose to conform (to some degree or another) to the ethics and cultural and social norms of that community. And for example, the issue for a woman gettig divorced under Jewish law or English civil law is not only a question of which legal code will protect her financial interests best, or her children, but also which one protects her standing and status within the community that she chooses to live within.
Nor are these issues unique to religious people, as many of us who have children and been seperated know, one or other party will often accept a worse deal with regard to child access than their legal rights might entitle them to, for the sake of reaching an amicable arrangement - and not upsetting the children andcreating additional friction with friends and extended familly. To argue in the abstract that you have to exercise your full legal rights would be stupid - so a Muslim or a Jew should be able to take similar considerations into account by deciding not to use the civil courts which will have certain ebenfiets but perhaps certain social demerits, and should instead be able to accept resolutioon within the community with which they self identify.
These issues don’t just go away by insisting on an abstract view of people as the bearers of legal rights. The question is a difficult one, of how to give equal standing to different moral and cultural codes, while still allowing everyone the choice to assert their full legal rights of they wish to do so.
By the way, I am mystified that Mike MmcNair, as a full scale academic lawyer, can read into the Archbishop’s speech content which is not only not there, but which Dr Williams speciically argues against.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 3:42 pm
I am mystified that Mike MmcNair, as a full scale academic lawyer, can read into the Archbishop’s speech content which is not only not there, but which Dr Williams speciically argues against.
IANAL, but I am an academic criminologist working in a Law School, and my reading of the overall drift of the speech is quite close to Mike’s. I think there’s a certain amount of well-meaning hand-waving and cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it in the speech, and people who deal with the law are perhaps more likely than others to ask what it actually means.
Comment by Phil — 15 February, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
Liberal theory is a kind of distilled version of the common sense of capitalist societies. But its a common sense that is highly misleading about social reality as Andy points out. Our rights are to be protected insofar as we are autonomous individuals entering into voluntary contracts with each other. But of course our society is not made up of autonomous individuals entering into contracts with each other, a fiction designed to conceal exploitative social relations between bosses and workers, which defence of our contractual or individual rights doesn’t even touch on. Society is made up of social classes, its also made up of different kinds of oppression, many of which are bound up with social relations which the dominant common sense doesn’t even recognise. That we are all ‘equal’ before the law conceals the fact that whilst we might be ‘equal’ before the law, we’re not actually equal at all, and therefore seeing the world entirely in terms of this ‘formal’ equality, conceals substantive inequalities. Its this dimension, so basic to a Socialist understanding of capitalist society, that some socialists just drop in these discussions.
On the other hand, forgetfulness about these really very basic things, can lead to too uncritical an approach by some to modern communitarians who re-invent the wheel but subtract discussion of the relationship between formal and substantive inequality, and replace it with equal respect and recognition (not that I’m against these things). Its possible that most of what we call the politics of identity is in reality the result of people frustrated by the indifference of the formal codes of our society, and their irrelevence to, actual social realities, and that recognising this might provide a new way of understanding the relationship of politics of identity to the social and political relations which constitute our society, as well as explaining Marx’s early essay on identity politics, were he referred to religious minorities and workers as ‘carrying the same chains’. Not reducing exploitation to oppression, or indeed stigmatising identity politics as ‘false consiousness’ but explaining that the unhappy consiousness of both the exploited and the oppressed have a common origin, despite surface appearences.
Sorry if thats too abstract. To explain what I mean:
These ‘common origins’ led on HP to the wonderful conclusion that in any given situation, if Muslim’s feel they are being unfairly treated, after all, they always have the right to stop being Muslims. Similarly if you don’t like your current job your always free to get another one. There is a rather similar sentiment and a rather similar contempt underlying both statements. Are they by any chance related?
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
As I said in a blog a few days ago, Williams’ fundamental suggestion (as I understand it) is that aspects of Sharia law may be given the same formal recognition as, say, Beth Din judgements, on the following premises:
1. under English law people may devise their own way to settle a dispute before an agreed third party
2. settlements don’t have to be based on English law, but must be reasonable and agreed by both parties
3. once someone voluntarily agrees to settle a dispute (eg) in the Beth Din, he or she is bound in English law to abide by the court’s decision.
It’s reasonable for Williams to suggest that we have a debate on whether people should be encouraged to voluntarily take their matters in front of localised religious (or even non-religious) courts whose judgements are binding under English law, provided they do not undermine people’s human rights. Nevertheless, I would disagree with such a view. I don’t think “voluntary” third party agreements should be fostered or encouraged, as it would really only make the formal pursuit of equality and justice more convoluted and suseptable to informal peer/familial pressure than it already is.
Comment by D.B. — 15 February, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
Phil
Well, I have read it again (Willaims is never going to win any prizes as a prose stylists, that is for sure), and I think you have to see that he is not arguing this as jurisprudence, but as the politics of identity. And it is informed by something rather wise, a recognition that for the individuals involved in religious faith, life and community, their rules are as valid as the wider rules of society; and that the social demand for universalism was a context driven one when faith and tradition were used to sanctify tyranny.
No where does he come close to arguing that members of a religious community will be forced to accept that identity against their wishes. BUt for people within a religious community there could be a free choice of tribunal, each of which has equal status.
One thing that it could mean, for example, might be the establishment of an official Islamic court in England, that was the state recognised authority on Sharia law
Comment by andy newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
“one when faith and tradition were used to sanctify tyranny.”
Yes, thank goodness that never happens nowadays. I mean, the Catholic Church closed down the last Magdalene laundry - which was basically bonded slavery for women, with _their_ consent - in 1996. I mean, that’s soooo LAST CENTURY, isn’t it, so gosh, it’s old hat really. Yawn, like, ho-hum. I mean, the Catholic Church runs LESBIAN DISCOS and everything now. I hear.
There’s absolutely NO WAY that patriarchial religions could misuse the state allowing them their own parallel legal systems to oppress women anymore and, honestly, we’re right-wing bigots (no, worse, Nazis!) for even considering it. Thanks for putting us straight, Andy, chum.
Comment by Anon — 15 February, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
Well no because in Britain whilst we have an odious government, we don’t (as yet) have a ‘tyranny’, and the chances of having a ‘feudal’ tyranny are next to zero. We are discussing matters in the social realm. In the social realm, yes there are many tyrannies, some sanctioned by religion, some not. The question is whether these are best confronted by pretending we live in a society governed by a bunch of autonomous individuals entering into voluntary contracts with each other, or whether we begin with society as it actually is, oppressions as they are actually experianced etc.
Just as when you go to an appeal court over an employment matter you have to pretend that your an individual whose entered into a contract with your employer, as opposed to a worker enmeshed in relations of exploitation, so to if you happen to be someone with religious views, you confront a law which refuses to recognise who you actually are, and in order to get justice you have to pretend to be someone else. We all have to do this. It doesn’t behove socialists to pretend that this is a set of practices that is ever likely to seriously address questions of oppression, let alone bring human liberation.
I know those mullahs of liberal capitalism, lawyers, have an interest in this matter, and I’ve turned to a few of them in times of need, but they can hardly be treated as experts on anything pertaining to our authentic social existance. Surely not.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
The concrete proposals that the Archbishop offers are hard to discern amongst the mist of his writing but they certainly do seem to offer scope for inegalitarian communitarian laws within communities - hence the ambivalence about ‘over-arching’ alw versus private arrangements. Either works with the universal’ founding principles of Sharia (a ‘way’ whose abstraction supporters of the AOC seems relucatnt to criticise), or any other divine code, however many ways they may be interpreted, or for the dominance of secular law’s universality.
Marxists, criticise the pretended universalism of liberal law, and human rights, in terms of how they are practised within capitalist societies, or international Tribunals. They may *explain* their origins through their social basis. The model of Marx’s early writings (which are riddled with the abstract idea of alienated human essence, which will be freed and transformed under communism), but in the concrete terms of their relation to exploitation and justice - the model being that of unpaid labour, and oppression in the workplace. To fight this Marxists have fought capitalism on ethical, chosen, grounds as well as because of the sheer force of class struggle (since the theory of capitalist production and surplus extraction would simply be an explanation of how capitalism expands). Saying exploitation and oppression are wrong is a universal statement. Marxism puts into concrete form the claims of the Declaration des droits d’homme. Its truth can be verified in the influence the French revolution had on the slaves’ own movement in Haiti, led by Touissant d’Ouverture. It forms the basis of our own labour movement’s fight, as the enduring impact of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (not Edmund Burke’s Reflections) illustrates. Political freedom and socialisation combined form the basis of a democratic Marxist programme - and universal human rigths are the ground of communism.
Support for communitarian law, as shown by the Archbishop, is not a step towards this, it is ten leaps back.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 15 February, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Andrew, even within the terms of your own argument that is wrong.
Sharia law is not claimed as “universal” it is only universal within the Umma - or community of beleivers.
English law is likewise not universal, it doesn’t even apply in Scotland. A distinct (and not entirely at random but topical) example being the different laws of perjury in Scotland and England. So someone’s right not to be defamed is different depending on where the defamation takes place.
To argue that we should base our arguments on books about France two hundred years ago, rather than the living reality for people today seems a bit abstract to me.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
Sorry I meant to post only this bit- please delete above as it unwiitingly reproduces my first comment on this- or just read this bit
On adoption and sharia. Cat argues
“Parts of Sharia Law is already recognised by the state. Muslim children are not offered for adoption but for fostering as Sharia does not permit children to be adopted but to be looked after by foster families who if they take the responsibility on treat the fostered child like their own child by birth.”
This I think is different from what Cat is arguing. Currently, adoption and fostering practice means that children are placed with foster carers and adopters reflecting the religious background of the child. This is assumed to be in the child’s best interests and certainly for a child of an age who can express an opinion this is the case- arguably less of an issue for younger children but whatever the case it is not a matter of adopting sharia law but the current legal practices surrounding fostering, adoption and child care quite rightly respecting children’s cultural background. So it is in my opinion a different matter altogether.
(I know a little but about this because as it happens I was adopted and am in the process of becoming an adoptive parent)
“I don’t think “voluntary” third party agreements should be fostered or encouraged, as it would really only make the formal pursuit of equality and justice more convoluted and suseptable to informal peer/familial pressure than it already is.”
Good comment.
Also on the sate and marriage socialists should argue, I’d argue, that a person’s private arrangements are their own but there are of course cases where wider society and the law has to intervene e.g. relationship break-up, division of assets, custody and so on.
But none of this should depend on what religion the people have or had.
It is understandable why an archbishop would think these things. The bishop I think is trying to defend the role of religion in the state and because he’s a liberal (and a confused one at that) advocating other religions have equal rights in the state or if not equal some rights- would he advocate Muslim law lords for example? Possibly. But should we?
No. We should be against all privileged places in the legislature for all priests of whatever religion. All such positions should be open to election. Socialists should be also for equal rights vis a vis religion and the state i.e. for no confusion of religion and state, religion and law.
It is less understandable why some on the left should advocate these things.
We should be very clear. Absolutely for the right of anyone to worship in any way they please and to not worship and for no discrimination in the law on the basis of faith allegiance or non-allegiance.
The attempt of the archbishop to bring up this matter was I feel an ill conceived attempt mixing good intentions in terms of equality and an essentially reactionary defence of the role of religion in the state. A fair few people from ‘Muslim’ backgrounds I have spoken to, including people at work (i.e. not just people I know through socialist and antiracist politics) are worried by what he has suggested.
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
“Sharia law is not claimed as “universal” it is only universal within the Umma - or community of beleivers.”
Wrong, since Sharia law _does_ affect “unbelievers”.
One example: inheritance laws. According to Sharia, a non-Muslim cannot inherit the property of a Muslim. And if a man converts to Islam, his wife and children cannot inherit his property. This is implemented in “liberal” Sharia legal systems such as Malaysia, where in this instance, Sharia takes precedence over civil law.
So we have, in future, our civil English/Scottish/whatever law, and our religious Islamic Court of Britain. In the above situation, either the civil or religious law takes precedence. If the former, what is the point of the Islamic court in the first place?
Comment by RR Hotline — 15 February, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
I take the liberty of copying over here a comment by JohnG at Lenin’s Tomb on this, which I think is quite good.
Comment by Andy Newman — 15 February, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
“I’m entirely unsure that a correct response is simply to call for the State to stay out of religous life incidently. Not because this is not a desirable aim, but because it understates the reasons for the hostility to the possibility of an accomodation between an ‘alien religion’ and the British State, which translates very rapidly into straightfoward racism (as we have seen).”
I don’t think anyone on here for example has shown hostility to an alien religion and the British state- I don’t think so though some response have been too opaque for me to understand.
Certainly, tabloid reactions are racist but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying treat some people differently because of their religion.
We should be clearly antiracist and clearly for the democratic demand of seperation of state and religion like the socialist posiiton on religious schools- against all religious schools
e.g. this quite good socialist worker article
“Religious schools foster divisions
The main report into the riots reflected the concerns of the majority of people in Britain that “faith”, or religious, schools increase divisions in society. Yet the government dismissed its limited recommendation that all schools, “whether faith or non-faith, should limit their intake from one culture or ethnicity. They should offer at least 25 percent of places to reflect the other cultures or ethnicities within the local area.”
Tony Blair, who sends his own children to selective religious schools, is evangelical about the idea. He has the support of the Daily Telegraph, the Tories, the right wing former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead, and assorted crackpot opponents of comprehensive education.
Most parents and teachers are opposed to more religious schools-and rightly so. Blair tries to wrap his campaign in the wishes of some Muslim parents for Muslim schools. But most of the new religious schools planned have nothing to do with addressing the feelings of a minority of Muslims. They are about extending the hold of the Church of England over education and further undermining comprehensive state education.
The figures for existing religious schools are staggering. There are about 26,000 state schools in England. Of those, the Church of England-the established church in Britain-runs 4,716, almost one fifth. That is more than twice the number run by the Roman Catholic church, which has 2,110.
The Methodists run 27. There are 32 Jewish schools and 13 run by what the Department for Education calls “minority faiths”, including just four Muslim schools. In Scotland the entire education system has historically been dominated by churches, and split between Protestant and Catholic schooling.
The same is obviously true of Northern Ireland, where there is also the 11-plus. The images of Catholic parents escorting their children past Loyalist mobs to Holy Cross Primary School in Belfast recently brought home how religious-based schooling reinforces sectarian divisions.
The report into Oldham highlighted how religious schools in England also foster division.
There are four Christian secondary schools in Oldham, two Church of England and two Catholic. That itself is a product of the division between Protestants and Catholics whipped up by bosses in the 19th century to undermine working class solidarity. The schools now serve to segregate whites from Asians. The two C of E schools restrict entry to Anglicans, though one allows a small number of other Christians.
To qualify as an Anglican a child has to have attended church “with a parent for a period of years”. There are no Asian children from Oldham in those schools. One of the Catholic schools has a limit of 10 percent of pupils from non-Catholic families. The other is 100 percent Catholic. The biggest scandal is the Blue Coat C of E school. It is located right next to the main concentration of Asians in Oldham. But none of them can go there.
The main reason parents give for sending their children to religious schools is that they believe they produce better results. That is Blair’s justification too. But that is true only because such schools are often in a position to select pupils from better off families who are already likely to do well in exams.
There are some C of E and Catholic schools in inner cities which have an intake of children from poor families and have virtually no religious ethos. But religious schools on average take fewer pupils receiving free school meals. When that is taken into account, religious schools actually perform worse than comprehensives in raising children’s attainment.
But the existence of so many Christian-run schools, and the pro-Christian bias in many non-religious schools, has led some Muslim parents to demand Muslim schools on an equal footing.
It is only a minority. Most Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents say they want an ethnic mix for their children’s schools. The argument that Muslim parents should “have the same choice as C of E parents” sounds like equality, but is being used to increase division and fuel the drive for more religious schools, mainly C of E.
So the reorganisation of schools in Bradford this year has created three religious schools-one Muslim and two C of E. There is racism in the education system. But separate schooling does not challenge that racism.
Tory and New Labour attacks on comprehensive education have already produced a polarisation in education, with increasingly selective schools in middle class areas and poorer schools for working class children.
Improving children’s education would mean reversing the government’s policies, and ending the privileges of the C of E schools. Every school should provide facilities for children of all faiths. But to do that no one religion can be prioritised over the others.
Instead the government is creating future divisions where poor and oppressed groups blame each other, and those most oppressed suffer the most.”
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=12727
(unfortunately some in the SWP are less clear on this now!)
Comment by Jason — 15 February, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
I can’t believe I’m seeing all this reactionary tosh about an archbishop and his ridiculous views on a “socialist” blog. Really, I despair of the left these days.
Basically, what’s happening is that the Xtians are hoping to capitalise on the political capital Muslims have gained as a result of some of their number (not representative of the overwhelming majority, I know) indiscrimately bombing people in tube trains and buses.
What did the self-imposed “community leaders” propose when the government met with them to find ways of stopping Muslim youth being corrupted by the Islamist extremists?
“More holidays and sharia law, please”… What a bunch of chancers! Should have been shown the door there and then.
With church attendance in terminal decline as people recognise xtianity to be an outdated pile of superstitious nonsense, the archbish needs to find new ways to fill the empty pews.
The “faith school” racket is a good one, as middle-class parent can feign religious conversion to slip Nigel and Chloe into the best school with none of the common or minority ethnic kids, but basically anything that boosts religious involvement in public life is going to help. Imho the beardy old goat is not as unwordly as people are claiming.
Socialists should be fighting for a secular society - free of religious discrimination, yes: but religion should be a private matter to be practiced at home.
Anyway - that’s the view from toy town. That last paragraph but one has a true Blairite ring to it. How easy just to reword it slightly:
“…the left should engage with the market, and not posture with toy-town socialism that doesn’t recognise the real issues in our globalised economy.”
Ho hum. I take it the revolution’s been postponed indefinitely. I’m not surprised SWP members are jumping ship and joining the Tories; at least the beer’s cheap at the Con Club.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 15 February, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
Oh of course. These questions are all the result of a terrorist campaign. We are discussing Muslims after all.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
“Certainly, tabloid reactions are racist but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying treat some people differently because of their religion”
The trouble is Jason that the people are NOT treated equally by the existing state. And for some reason you react to a discussion about this problem (even if misguided) as an attempt to ‘treat people differently’ because of their religion. The whole official discussion about the Archbishops speech relates to the idea (outlined above) that Muslims and ethnic minorities are being ‘pandered to’. This is what is meant when the Archbishop is accused of being ‘too liberal’. I am not in favour of religious schools per se, but I am not going to argue that the reason why there are divisions between children is because Muslims have been given ‘privilages’. That is the whole basis of the current national debate and discussion, and whatever the nuances, there is something terribly, terribly wrong when Socialists don’t even mention this and proceed straight to having politically utterly irrelevent discussions about the ’seperation of church and state’, as if we’re supposed to be frightened of an Anglican-Islamic plot to overthrow the British way of life.
Do me a bloody favour. The slogans this week have been no better then those heard in the Smethwick by-election of 1964, and the accompanying speeches no different to ‘rivers of blood’ speeches. This should be a cause for alarm and not re-fighting the battles of two hundred years ago. Some socialists have a real problem with this stuff and they need to buck their ideas up. Seriously.
Comment by johng — 15 February, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
>Oh of course. These questions are all the result of a terrorist campaign. We are discussing Muslims after all.>
Neatly sidestepped. My post made it explicit where the connection lay. Unlike your reference to Smethwick.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 15 February, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
47 says ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing all this reactionary tosh about an archbishop and his ridiculous views on a “socialist” blog. Really, I despair of the left these days’
Actually, it is the role of Socialists above all to fight for democratic rights because of the failure of the bourgeoisie to liberate most people throughout the world, instead we saw capitalism become colonialism. Marx recognised this in 1848 and it was Trotsky first in Resultas and Prospects, later Lenin in the April Thesis who recognised that only the working class could carry through the democratic reviolution. Perhaps you might ponder why the slogan of the Russian Revolution was ‘Land, Bread and Peace ‘. Thiese were not socialist demand.
Trotsky articulated this best in Permanent Revolution and I recommend it to anyone till this day.
In essence, Socialists jave to be the best fighters for all democratic rights and this includes religious tolerance. (It also includes other democratic rights, of course).
The bourgeioisie are incapable of securing historic and lasting change - they are tied to imperilaism first and foremost and ally with the most reactionary sections of society.
Socialists ideally want a secular society - but not by repressing religion. What use to Socialists was Stalin’s ’secular society’? We don’t want Mr Brown’s secular society either.
Sure, we want secular schools - but realisically, this is not going to happen now. Whereas we do not want faith schools, but in a situation where every other faith is allowed to have their schools, denying Muslims their own schools is in essence, racist. (sorry, but there’s no other way to describe that).
Socialists have to consider all the aspects of society, how the rights and beliefs of every community is included and fight for the democratic rights of those communities. Or Socialists can stand on the side giving out leaflets explaining how a secular society is better for all , keep conscience intact and have no effect whatsoever.
In this respect, the comments by Johng above that refer to the practicalities that Socialists have to deal with rather than abstract principles that cannot address any real questions that the masses (not the far left, note) have to face.
Comment by Ray — 15 February, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
I hoped I’d made it clear I’m not in favour of repressing religion. Just of not encouraging it.
I think the whole Sharia law thing may very well put secular schools back on the agenda.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 15 February, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
Charles - (52) has clarified how he feels in the first sentence.
However, it is a bit optimistic to think that the current debate will advance the secular. ‘Britishness’ and ‘our way of doing things’ is more to the fore. ‘This is a Christian country after all’. Muslims feel even more threatened and will feel even more the need for Muslim schools. I went to a Jewish school, though many years ago. Jews didn’t want Jewish schools simply to practice religion mid-week, or even to extol the virtues of Zionism, which of course they did. It was a re-action to anti-semitism - the threat of Oswald Mosley, the Nick Griffin of that era, in the post-holocaust period.
That’s the reality Muslims face now and it is our duty to champion them, not their religion and defend their rights - whatever we think of their beliefs.
Comment by Ray — 15 February, 2008 @ 9:25 pm
“Basically, what’s happening is that the Xtians are hoping to capitalise on the political capital Muslims have gained as a result of some of their number (not representative of the overwhelming majority, I know) indiscrimately bombing people in tube trains and buses.”
Actually, that is really a disgusting remark if you think about it. Muslims (as a whole) have ‘gained political capital’ from terrorist bombings. Despite the qualification about the bombers not being ‘representative’, this says that all Muslims have benefitted from terrorism. An incredibly bigoted statement if you think about it, only slightly a cigarette paper away from saying that all Muslims are terrorists.
This is far right politics.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 15 February, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
And that is why #53 in Scotland it is a right within the law that a Catholic has the right to attend a Catholic school. This was hard won and happened because of discrimination against Catholics in Scotland at the time particularly Irish Catholics. However that is no longer the case in Scotland and in reality we don’t need Catholic schools or schools of any denomination but suggest that to a Scot’s Catholic and it pricks their sense of history, prejudice against Catholics would be very rare today however it happened not that long ago and Catholics get worried about “why are you taking away our schools when we had to fight so hard to get them?” .
Whilst there is active prejudice against Muslims then they will fight for “rights” to protect themselves and others who are worried about Islamophobia will suggest certain changes in legislation etc. These are the times we are in. If comrades really want a step towards secularism perhaps they need to reflect how their attitudes towards muslims might be in the way to that step.
Comment by cat — 15 February, 2008 @ 10:16 pm
“I think the whole Sharia law thing may very well put secular schools back on the agenda.”
Well whoopee doo. Let’s ride on the anti-Muslim backlash to ’secular’ politics.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 15 February, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
54 - > Despite the qualification about the bombers not being ‘representative’, this says that all Muslims have benefitted from terrorism. An incredibly bigoted statement if you think about it, only slightly a cigarette paper away from saying that all Muslims are terrorists.
This is far right politics.>
Utter bollocks, really. I was talking about the self-appointed “community representatives” who push demands for legal separatism. Actually, I should add the proviso that these have also been selected by New Labour, and are not representative of the Muslim population of Britain, the majority of whom are Sufi and a world away from political Islamism.
Muslims as a whole have not benefitted from this debate at all, and the archbish’s commments have only fed into the stereotyping.
I sincerely apologise for any lack of clarity in my first post by referring to “Muslims” en masse (as has become the fashion), but if the left are going to adopt this type of knee-jerk reaction to any dissent from what are after all fairly extreme religious views then we are sunk without trace. Honestly, who are you trying to appeal to?
If you tar anyone who disagrees with religious separatism as “far right”, then it is only the far right who will benefit. They are out there and waiting, I assure you. I despise them utterly and I resent your comments Mr. Ian Donovan.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:15 am
“I resent your comments.”
Tough. Most Muslims would resent the inference that they have earned ‘political capital’ from terrorism. This is half-withdrawn with one hand, only to be restated that we are talking about ‘fairly extreme religious views’. No we aren’t actually. Nor is there any ‘legal separatism’ being advocated here, in fact the opposite. And what on earth makes this person think that the majority of Muslims in the UK are Sufis?
There are many Sufi (mystic) orders, spanning both Sunni and Shia Islam, but the number of actual practicing Sufi mystics is only a small fraction of practising Muslims anywhere. The UK is no exception.
One thing is clear - the so-called ‘Sufi Muslim Council’ that the government tries to present as the ‘acceptable’ face of Muslim community representation is not at all representative, and really is pretty much a creation of the government. Unlike the mainstream Muslim organisations our friend smears as extreme separatists. He is both ignorant and a crudely sterotyping Islamophobe following the government’s reactionary agenda, which does also involve appealing to far right sentiments against Muslims.
Comment by Ian Donovan — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:34 am
I *think* CDW (post 57) meant Sunni (in terms of the majority following a strand).
A long time ago I attended an SWP meeting at Skegness (a sort of “Colditz” on the sea) which was frighteningly large. The theme, “Marxism and religion”.
It was a riot, there was absolutely zero consensus or idea of “what should be done”, or clear *line* in terms of “dealing with” religious types and their associated demands. Sociologically, those folk having attended any type of ‘church schooling’ were among the most amdamantine “secularists”, those who hadn’t were more prone to point to Marx’s tender, softer tones during his early Feuerbach days…
Not much has changed. In terms of confused orientation, not circumstances (more later).
Let’s face it, on a whole series of profound fronts a “transformative” engagement has taken place over the last few decades (no need to invoke Voltaire) that make many of its moral precepts (deliberate choice of words there) unrecognizable to activists who were around in the ’60s and ’70s.
It is now very hard now to imagine how “identity politics” were dismissively treated as ‘bourgeois ideologies’ only a couple of decades ago. The “transformative” engagement was a reactive one by the Left as a whole. Groups like the SWP did not “lead” the changes in tone toward women’s liberation, LGBT struggles, or anti-racism (the notable exception being the best thing they ever did: the ANL). They did marvellous things once the issues had been brought to political focus by others.
Once ‘engaged’, groups like the SWP (I’m using them as an example ‘cos I’m an XSWP member), always had a tendency toward “stick bending”, both internally with those who were perceived to lack conviction or full “understanding” and externally with those who “failed to understand” the latest imperative.
I’m beginning to hear the stick creaking a little here. Not for the first time I’ve seen johng compare last week’s Islamophobic shite with precursors to ‘modernised’ communalist bloodshed and ideological justifications in India (from ostensively “progressive” parties and individuals). Unfortunately, countered with calls for an updated Napoleon Code — which go quite far in reinforcing john’s legitimate concerns.
I think Richard Seymour’s article in Socialist Worker this week does a great job of locating the “furore” in terms of straightforward racism. It does a fine job of linking the reaction to the Archbishop’s speech to the real “alien” culture in our midst, that of the ruling class, without ceding ground to religious conservatives.
If we don’t continue to follow that model then I’m afraid we will lose any purchase on our intended audiences. After all, for many of us, the transition from our old “identities” to our new found socialist ones were sometimes painful, certainly full of paradox and often confused.
Last week wasn’t about the Englightenment under assault, or about the defense of secularism, it was about demonising all Muslims (not that the Archbishop intended that but he *is* politically savvy enough to know how it would be picked up). Another dab of super-glue on the ailing notion of English identity.
I’m so glad Andy posted this, because it raises a fundamental question: Is there such a thing as an ‘ethical’ basis to Marxism, and if so what, and if not how so? Is there a ‘universal’ law for socialism - there’s an obvious one for the Archbishop?
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 16 February, 2008 @ 1:38 am
One would think that a Christian leader would be more corncerned with the far worse conditions that face Christians in the middle east. Last week on C4’s Unreported World they showed how Christians even in supposedly secular states like Egypt live in rubbish dumps and face terrible discrimination.
Indeed, why would the left not focus more on this than proposing laws that nobody wants in Britain and are clearly unhelpful given the context of the Islamist extremist problem?
Comment by Ed D — 16 February, 2008 @ 1:45 am
Muslims already have the worse intergrational record of any other minority group, leaving them well behind Indian immigrants and other non-Islamic Asians. The last thing they need is more division.
There are already informal Sharia courts if that’s what they want to; the state doesn’t have to recongise it.
Comment by Ed D — 16 February, 2008 @ 1:49 am
Ed D should answer the following question: why on earth should Muslims, or anyone for that matter, *integrate*? And what does he propose they integrate into and who, by the way, would decide? Him? The National Secular Society?
Surely it is enough that they live here peaceably and lawfully. Why should people not be able to live on these shores according to their own custom so long as they obey the law?
Comment by Startled Fawn — 16 February, 2008 @ 5:50 am
>He is both ignorant and a crudely sterotyping Islamophobe following the government’s reactionary agenda, which does also involve appealing to far right sentiments against Muslims.>
You’re a poo-brain smelly-bum yourself. Crude insults are so much easier than reasoned arguments. I am starting to see that all this has become an orthodoxy among certain people. There’s no point arguing against that, is there? Heretics will always be burnt at the stake. I’m off. End of Socialist Unity.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 16 February, 2008 @ 7:26 am
By the way, Charles, I don’t think your post 63 is at all helpful.
#62
“why on earth should Muslims, or anyone for that matter, *integrate*? And what does he propose they integrate into and who, by the way, would decide? Him? The National Secular Society?
Surely it is enough that they live here peaceably and lawfully. Why should people not be able to live on these shores according to their own custom so long as they obey the law?”
Absolutely. Back in 2000 the trade union branch I was in, Oldham NUT, then, made common cause with antiracist groups against a book published by Oldham council that among other things called on Asians to assimilate, integrate, stop wearing their own clothes and speaking their own language.
We condemned it for the racist claptrap it was.
Within a free antiracist society- one that will only come about through antiracist and class struggle- of course people may wish to negotiate and change cultures more than they do now- and of course many people do do this even in a society that continues to be institutionally racist and with widespread racist and or prejudiced ideas.
If let’s say Bangladeshi people or Ethiopian or Somali (or Muslim if people self-identify by religion) want to live together, study together, socialise together then fine. We should be against though Muslims for example being excluded from certain schools as they are currently because of the state privileging some religions only nib having religious schools-overwhelmingly Christian in fact. That is prejudiced.
#49 ““Certainly, tabloid reactions are racist but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of saying treat some people differently because of their religion”
The trouble is Jason that the people are NOT treated equally by the existing state. And for some reason you react to a discussion about this problem (even if misguided) as an attempt to ‘treat people differently’ because of their religion. The whole official discussion about the Archbishops speech relates to the idea (outlined above) that Muslims and ethnic minorities are being ‘pandered to’. This is what is meant when the Archbishop is accused of being ‘too liberal’. I am not in favour of religious schools per se, but I am not going to argue that the reason why there are divisions between children is because Muslims have been given ‘privilages’. That is the whole basis of the current national debate and discussion, and whatever the nuances, there is something terribly, terribly wrong when Socialists don’t even mention this and proceed straight to having politically utterly irrelevent discussions about the ’seperation of church and state’, as if we’re supposed to be frightened of an Anglican-Islamic plot to overthrow the British way of life.”
You conflate various things here, John. Given my first point was a condemnation of racism it seems unfair to say I don’t even mention this. Of course a lot of the official media reaction was racist (to reiterate)- I was reacting not primarily to that, though of course mentioned it as one of my first points- but to a socialist website publishing an article defending the point of view of an establishment figure to bring more religion into the state and to treat different sections of the community differently. I have spoken to several Muslims who feel aghast at this not to use your words because of “an Anglican-Islamic plot to overthrow the British way of life” but because they don’t want to be treated differently- because they are antiracist.
It is not “politically utterly irrelevant” to discuss matters of church and state- unfortunately- certainly not if you are a member of a socially excluded group, the target of mainstream and institutional racism. Why do you think some middle class parents spend tens of thousands of pounds either on school fees or buying houses in the ‘right’ area- for access to exclusive elitist education that in many cases systematically excludes Muslims (and other religions not judged correct) under the name of Christian schools.
The establishment bourgeois culture is still surprisingly religious. Why do prime ministers parade their faith? I don’t read the tabloids as much as I’d like on one level (on the basis of know your enemy) but they are a good example of nationalistic ideology that still is bound up with religion at least subliminally and sometimes explicitly- which is why they obsess about Islam. But you say these debates are utterly politically irrelevant. Not if you’re a Muslim, I’d guess.
It is surprising that socialists should support this at all.
Comment by Jason — 16 February, 2008 @ 9:59 am
I’m going to tell my mum about how nasty people here about secularists and Marxists.
Let’s be concrete then: the British state, which is not secular, and British political parties, which have never defined themselves in secular terms, passes legislation which is applicable within its jurisdiction on the basis of equality before the law. This principle applies equally to Scotland and other parts of the land. This is backed up by the UK incorporating the European Declaration of Human Rights and accepting judgements from the European Human Rights Court and the EU’s own tribunals. The Universal Declaration of the Human Rights (the basis of the former) was explicitly written to encompass the world’s different cultural and philosophical traditions (and was intentionally *not* Western, although you may dispute its results). These principles, for all their faults in a capitalist society, and for all the influence that countries and blocs like the US and the EU have over International Tribunals and so on, are ideals which, if implemted would have have the effect of vastly improving the lives of every person on the planet: from abolishing torture, to holding fair trials, and so on.
Particular religous codes are based on giving different categories of people (believers, non-believers, women, LGBT people) different rights and recognition. They from Manu’s code to the various forms of Sharia law, to Canon law, to Talmudic based law, are inegalitarian. They do not reocognise the status of all human beings to equality before the law, equal punishments, redress and so forth.
It would be better to aim for universal human rights, even if they could only be fully existent under communism (or whatever we may call it), than to accept and accommodate religious law under the species name of multi-cultural pluralism.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:01 am
I want to defend myself (post 31) from the charge that I was abstract and unrealistic. What I was trying to do was state that when we try to take a position on things like “should the state recognise sharia law (in some form or another)?”, we need to keep in mind the traditional socialist view on religion and the family. Otherwise, we confine the debate to: the question above vs. the status quo or vs. some form of “liberal secularism” (i.e. an idealised status quo, and not secular either).
Of course I know that the state “intervenes… in social life” (post 33) and a good thing too, in some circumstances (child abuse etc.), but what I am arguing is that it should not use essentially religious forms (e.g. marriage), as distinct from “real” ones (e.g. parenthood - I know this is complicated too, but religion wouldn’t be much help in deciding who is or is not a parent) as a basis for the decisions it takes - which it does now.
I agree with those who think that the main effect of this whole episode is a massive increase in Islamophobia. Another important effect is a general attack on mutliculturalism, something which can also come about under the banner of “secularism” as well. I find the views of A Sivanandan informative: http://www.irr.org.uk/a_sivanandan/index.html
Comment by PhilW — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:10 am
“I’m beginning to hear the stick creaking a little here. Not for the first time I’ve seen johng compare last week’s Islamophobic shite with precursors to ‘modernised’ communalist bloodshed and ideological justifications in India (from ostensively “progressive” parties and individuals). Unfortunately, countered with calls for an updated Napoleon Code — which go quite far in reinforcing john’s legitimate concerns”
I should say that I’ve spent about twenty years looking at Indian politics, with particular reference to Hindu Nationalism. It just *is* creepy how much the arguments which have been going on since 9/11 fit with the kinds of arguments which took place in India in the late 1980’s and 90’s. Of course as with the Indian case these things have not just emerged out of thin air and are rooted in local realities (in Britain a long history of anti-immigrant racism, as well as wider shifts towards ‘cultural’ racism over the last few decades).
What is particularly striking (and this is coming back at Jason) is the notion of Muslim’s as somehow privilaged and the State as somehow “pandering”, and a wider sense of a victimised majority, this, as in India, related not just to Muslims but to other issues as well (political correctness gone mad etc), creating a whole reactionary commonsense about Britain being a ’soft touch’, a state of affairs connived in by woolly liberals and cultural relativists, behind which lurks the ‘ticking bomb’ of demographic realities.
If you are familiar with “Hindu Nationalism” and associated majoritarian populism in India you cannot but be struck by the parrallels. When Jason talks about the defensive reaction of many British Muslims he is of course right to say that many would not have any truck with the substance of the Archbishops comments. But the fact that they are placed on the defensive by his comments are utterly unrelated to the Archbishops comments but to the reaction to them. That reaction has not only been in terms of populists in tabloids, but also been seen in quality broadsheets, and many who call themselves liberals who have couched their arguments in terms of an attack on secular and hence British values.
Andrew Coates claim that Britain is not a secular state raise questions about definitions of secularism and why socialists are interested in secular values. It reminds me of the debate about whether the existence of the monarchy and the house of lords means that britain is not a bourgoise democracy or is in some sense still in need of a bourgoise revolution. I don’t think this is true at all and don’t think our current problems are an expression of an unfinished democratic revolution: they are a product of that revolution. This is particularly clear in France, which, if any country in Europe is to be considered to exemplify secularism, would surely qualify.
These problems and these arguments are worse there, and if anything the situation is considerably more reactionary. This is because, as Marx understood and wrote, secularism in itself not only doesn’t abolish religion (in America secularism went handinhand with a vast increase of religiosity as is well known) it does not abolish social inequality been people or indeed forms of oppression based on race, nation, exclusion, and indeed religion itself.
Battersea is right to point to the way in which a certain generation of activists have found it hard to adjust to changes in the nature of oppression and resistance, new kinds of success and failure in global movements, and new kinds of problems. But its wrong to suggest that these problems are wholly novel. They represent older arguments coming up in new ways, they do not represent nor suggest, the need to tear up everything we know. I remember those meetings in Skegness. They were pretty good actually. They laid the basis for the arguments around Islamic movements and their significance in the Middle East, which first appeared in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, later to the nuanced position that was taken on the Rushdie controversy, which later was more then borne out by reality, and finally by our ability to intervene effectively in arguments around these questions in the anti-war movement, as well as to overcome bigoted opposition to the Respect project itself.
Some here will feel that the SWP failed when translating these principles into practice but accept that the principles were important, whilst others will feel that all of this was just a departure from ’secularism’ or ‘opportunism’ (a standard argument they share with armchair opponents of the anti-war movement). I think they’re wrong. The arguments around the nature of oppression (which involved wider arguments distinguishing exploitation from oppression) around issues like race and gender (much lampooned by some here as simply opportunism) laid the basis for discussion of other forms of oppression.
In that sense the most advanced sections of the anti-war and progressive movement in this country are children of, or on the other hand close cousins, to the SWP. Like it or not.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:43 am
I find it rather difficult to see this question in the terms in which it has been posed in the article viz: a battle between ‘right-wing’ secularist Islamphobia versus ‘left-wing’ multiculturalism.
Rowan Williams is a well meaning liberal and his proposals are aimed at developing some consistency into the state’s policy towards religious and ethnic minorities.
For various historical reasons, both Catholics and Jews in Britain have been able to carve out a niche within the legal system and education since the 19th Century.
It’s also the case that the measures of autonomy they were granted were administered via various influential community leaders, Catholic peers and bishops, wealthy Jewish philanthropists etc. The intention was to assimilate the Catholic working class and Jewish immigrants into being loyal citizens of the state, not into the oppositional working class movement.
But there was always a tension between the left wing socialist elements in these communities and the chosen “community leaders”
Jewish socialists always tended to be critical of these leaders, organised in support of the striking workers in the sweatshops and developed links with the Socialist League and International Socialist Movement.
For example, a meeting in 1889 which attempted to set up an East London federation of Trade Unions was addressed by Ben Tillet, Tom Mann and various Yiddish Speaking Orators.
Some people are misled into thinking that, because there is a stratum of Muslims who express anti-Imperialist sentiments in religious language, that increasing the powers of religious courts and the number of religious schools is “progressive”.
But religion is not just a question of “self-identity”, it can be a powerful form of social control.
It’s not a question of secularism versus religion.
Secularism without democracy is meaningless and can even be reactionary.
But granting more powers to religious courts and schools is not a democratic measure.
Despite William’s liberal intentions it opens the door to the legal enforcement of religious law by unaccountable religious leaders and the increased segregation of society.
Socialists should support freedom of religious practice, respect those who wish to observe religious festivals, follow dietary laws, religious dress codes, and participate in voluntary religious education.
We shouldn’t get involved in demands for new religious schools.
It’s not our issue.
We should support a fully integrated system of state education, end compulsory acts of worship within it.
We should be for the democratisation of the legal system to reflect in the interests of the majority in society, not property owners.
The current legal system is not democratic.
It’s dominated by rich lawyers, middle class magistrates and unelected judges. It needs to be brought under democratic control by the working class.
Comment by prianikoff — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:51 am
“Catholic bishops”
Do I mean Cardinals?
Comment by prianikoff — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:53 am
Primarily though Priankoff, in terms of ‘democratic demands’ we have to oppose a mindset which see’s Muslims as a threat to the nations integrity. Simply advocating secularism and being ‘balenced’ in our condemnation of “religious interference” does not do the job. Just as bourgoise rights do not tackle exploitation so secularism does not tackle social realities involved in the oppression of religious minorities. These involve the relationship between social groups as well as simply the relationship between the state and a dominant religion.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Prinikoff:
“…..participate in voluntary religious education.”
This is an interesting issue. My closest experience of this is in the predominantly Muslim community I live in and have worked in (in schools). This means I don’t know what happens in other religions that well. I know my niece had to sing vast slabs of the Torah for her batmitzvah: I don’t know if she understood it, or if she learnt it in a school context under any form of duress. Also, I presume some christians have to (or did have to) learn various latin texts that they did ot understand.
“Voluntary religious education..” has come up, for me and my kids (in the sense that they discuss it with their friends) due to corporal punishment in one madrassa. The local state is aware of the issue, but avoids it. At some point this will be taken up by the Islamophobic media, probably on a national level, so avoidance is counter-productive, as well as doing nothing for the kids involved - and those parents who (secretly) object.
But also, does the state have any right to intervene in madrassas requiring children to learn the Qu’ran (very often by rote)? Some school teachers and heads will argue that this interferes with their secular education. This includes the amount of time spent on it, so the kids are knackered in school. The “learning style” may also be an issue: presumably little emphasis on analysis.
Comment by PhilW — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:18 am
Marx’s early writings on the Jewish Question etc related to the ‘abolition’ of religion, or secular liberal reforms in 19th century Europe. His argument was that humans’ ’species being’ would not be freed from alienation but furtehr individualised on the basis of private property which underpinned the illusory form of an egalitarian secular republican state. I take it then Johng, that, if you are serious about this argument, then absolutely anything that aims to change the form of a liberal capitalist state is a waste of time since only its abolition will truly liberate humanity.
So we might as well ignore democratic reforms. Or human rights - more bourgeois illusions I suppose.
And why defend Rushdie? Just a bourgeois individualist making trouble (Btw: I was the person who moved, I think, the first leftist resolution defending Rushdie, at the Socialist Society AGM, right as the threats began. So this goes back a long way).
Your present argument about laws of variable geometry seems mixed up with some stuff about how Muslims are treated in the UK. As they say, hard cases make bad law. If thsoe professing Islamic beliefs are badly treated, that is they don’t get equality udner the law, then you seem to think that special arrangements must be made to accommodate their religious conceptions of legal codes (hestitate to call Sharia law, since it patently does not fulfil the criteria of equality, though it does claim universality, as derived form the universality of ‘god’).
This opens up the way for the use of religious criteria in state policy, on how to treat people (and parallels a massive expansion, not normally registered on the left, of the use of faith-based voluntary bodies to replace state services). A better answer would be to implement equal justice, make the state a no-go area for religious preference. That is the lesson of the last years, not more multicultural communal distinction, but greater efforts for real equality.
As for Napoleon - he brokered a famous deal with the Catholci Chruch restoring its privileges.
I’m still going to tell my mum about how nasty you’ve been about secularist Marxists.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:21 am
But Priankof is quite right to point to a history of tensions between community leaders and left wing socialists. These relate to the way in which oppression, whether of Catholics or of Muslims or of Jews, create a situation where many members of such communities look to leading and succesful members of their community to provide a kind of protective umbrella for those who bear the brunt of that oppression. The resulting forms of clientalistic and sometimes communal politics need to be understood both in terms of the realities of oppression in a capitalist society (rather then that oppression being dismissed as a figment of community leaders imagination, invented for the purposes of political manipulation) and as a barrier to socialist consiousness. The way you overcome this problem is by fighting every instance of that oppression and linking reactionary forms of politics internal to such communities to the cowardness and equivication displayed by such leaders whenever the interests of their constituents clash with the wider states. As I put it earlier, often such politics issue in nothing grander then a sonerous editorial by Roy Hattersley.
But you can’t do this simply on the basis of parroting about ’secularism’, given that it is the limitations of bourgoise (for which read legal) equality which lay at the heart of the generation of such politics in the first place. Part of the critique some members of Respect had of some leaders, was not that they in fact were such ‘official’ community leaders, but that political pressures resulting from the failure to make a breakthrough were resulting in falling back from challenging such networks as opposed to seeking to utilise them, in many ways understandable given frustration after the initial euphoria of advance, but we thought, a mistake.
Both because such networks previously depended on access to large amounts of patronage from established parties, and because, as a consequence, such leaders, whatever their intentions would very quickly find themselves dependent and imprisoned by those they hoped would short circuit those problems. The attempt to argue that the (real) political principles of individuals, or on the other hand earnest attempts to ‘develop’ such individuals would guard against these mistakes are unconvincing for Socialists who have seen what material realities do to even the best of trade union leaders.
In my view much of the debate about Ken Livingstone and the need for a broader realignment of politics then originally envisaged are responses to these real problems and attempts to escape them. But I don’t think they are solutions and believe they will lead us further away rather then towards a solution to these problems.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:22 am
“And why defend Rushdie? Just a bourgeois individualist making trouble (Btw: I was the person who moved, I think, the first leftist resolution defending Rushdie, at the Socialist Society AGM, right as the threats began. So this goes back a long way”
No that was not the position. We defended Rushdie but also recognised the way in which the affair was used to marginalise and attack a whole community. Walking and chewing gum at the same time. I am certainly not against fighting for democratic reforms in a bourgoise state, even liberal reforms, but the best fighters for such reforms are Socialists. Part of the reason for this is that they understand the limitations of bourgoise freedoms in a way that liberals do not. Its a sad thing to see a socialist lampooning such an understanding rather then promulagating it as widely as possible.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:27 am
PhilW,
I think in some ways you answered your own question. The left has to build its base in such areas (noting the possible pitfalls and recognising the neccessary ‘tensions’ outlined above) so that it gains the respect of many activists involved in such communities who do raise such issues. This is not the same thing as the State intervening (which as you recognise will be used by the media and indeed the State to further marginalise and attack people who are oppressed as well). Socialist teachers also need to factor these politics into the way they raise these issues, as for Socialists, education has never been regarded as a politics-free zone, unconnected to wider problems in society. Of course after such a campaign becomes hegemonic its quite possible to demand legal intervention in such things. But the logic has to be bottom-up and not top-down (unfortunately a neccessary distinction lampooned here by some). One issue that was raised by Ralph Russell, an old Communist who was radicalised whilst in the army in British India, but who went on to become a leading and respected commentator on Urdu literature, was the way in which Urdu was declining in the British Asian population because of the teaching methods in the Madras’s and the fact that British teachers were “nicer” (!) not as “boring” and didn’t slap you round the head if you made a mistake. He had won the right to say things like this, and no-one objected, as he was seen as an insider, and moreover someone who was deeply concerned with an issue (in this case the fate of Urdu) that many in the community were also concerned with (although some might not have shared his concern with progressive teaching methods!). As an individual of course his intervention, whilst respected, could make little difference. But it is a model of how, given appropriate sensitivity and a recognised commitment to fighting racism and valuing real people, as opposed to sets of abstractions, it is possible to make headway. Here is his sometimes somewhat abrasive, but well recieved intervention:
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/10/20russellInterview.pdf
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:44 am
“What is particularly striking (and this is coming back at Jason) is the notion of Muslim’s as somehow privilaged and the State as somehow “pandering”, and a wider sense of a victimised majority, this, as in India, related not just to Muslims but to other issues as well (political correctness gone mad etc), creating a whole reactionary commonsense about Britain being a ’soft touch’, a state of affairs connived in by woolly liberals and cultural relativists, behind which lurks the ‘ticking bomb’ of demographic realities. ”
This is completely unsubstantiated- I’d like you to withdraw it- the coming back at Jason bit. I NEVER (sorry can’t find how to make italic) said anything like that and yet you either assume or wilfully misinterpret it as such.
Where have I said Muslims are a privleged group? What a ridiculous, offensive assertion.
On that at least I’d like you to make clear that I never said that.
Anyway, that over- there are people who may say this racist claptrap and I’d agree with you on much else- though not on religious schools- on which I agree with the swp at least in 2001 http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=12727- or possibly on religious laws (i’m not quite sure what you are saying here).
But please don’t misrepresent people’s views- the media is Islamophobic, some even on the so-called left might be but I find your comments utterly offensive.
Muslims are oppressed- often as Muslims- not privileged! I guess you agree with this but then lie about my position.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
I did’nt mean to suggest that you did - and if you got that impression I unreservedly apologise. I meant to suggest that because of this I think your emphasis is all wrong. In particular the implication that entering into such discussions involves ‘treating Muslims differently from other religions’, a statement that to me demonstrates a failure to understand the issues involved. But I certainly would not suggest that you yourself are someone who regards Muslims as privilaged. Again, if I expressed myself badly here, I unreservedly apologise.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:24 pm
#76 By the way that was in response to #67
#74 On Rushdie- fight racism not Rushdie seems a good approach.
#75 “. The left has to build its base in such areas (noting the possible pitfalls and recognising the neccessary ‘tensions’ outlined above) so that it gains the respect of many activists involved in such communities who do raise such issues.”
Agree completely.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
‘Priankoff’
‘Priankof’
‘Prinikoff’
Yeah, very multicultural.
It’s Prianikoff, as in “Prianik”, Russian for “Cookie”
Or maybe Ukrainian, as the name comes from Galicia in the Western Ukraine.
Comment by prianikoff — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
#77 OK thanks.
“treating Muslims differently from other religions’- that was how someone I know, from a Muslim background, saw it. And if the archbishop is only saying that individuals can if they want make voluntary arrangements following religious codes if they want then fine. But then so what? I think it’s naive to suggest that that is all he is saying-
Other people I have known from a variety of backgrounds have also reacted against his comments from a strongly egalitarian antiracist background- of course any public statement on this should probably include solidairty wiy all fights against racist opporession. But arguing that some Muslims should be subject to Muslim law against their will I think that is in effect racist- if the bishop is not saying that it’s not clear what he is saying.
Comment by Jason — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
John G # 70 “..advocating secularism..does not do the job.”
Quote from #68: “Secularism without democracy is meaningless and can even be reactionary.”
Comment by prianikoff — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
I did just apologise unreservedly to Jason explaining that I had’nt meant that. For some reason its not coming up.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
#71 Phil W
“Voluntary religious education..” has come up, for me and my kids (in the sense that they discuss it with their friends) due to corporal punishment in one madrassa. The local state is aware of the issue, but avoids it.”
Exactly the point I’m making. You can’t have a situation like that in a democracy where corporal punishment is outlawed in schools. The vast majority of Muslim kids would oppose it too.
Such practices existed in traditional Hebrew Schools (Cheders) long ago too.
I used to learn Hebrew in one every Sunday morning, from the age of 8, but it absolutely never occurred once.
Whereas it certainly did use to in state schools at the time!
Perfect example of the need for consistent democracy and that the idea that religious institutions are necessarily more reactionary than state ones is simply wrong, and even racist.
“my niece had to sing vast slabs of the Torah for her batmitzvah”
Well that’s not an illustration of mindless religious orthodoxy, since traditional Judaism doesn’t even practice bat-mitzvahs, it’s purely for males.
You also don’t learn “vast slabs” only the portion that will be recited in the week of your birthday. Whether people understand it or not is down to the method of instruction. I always found that the people doing it were very kind and understanding, although they aren’t doing it like a language teacher.
Either way, in almost all cases it will happen in a voluntary part-time school, outside of normal hours.
BTW Madrassa is just the Arabic version of the Hebrew Beit HaMidrash (House of Study)
Comment by prianikoff — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
Oh now its up. I apologise unreservedly for spelling prianikoff’s name wrong as well. On Jason’s points about people reacting differently, well of course. But my point is that, as Socialists, we have to work out what we say about the debate. As with schools its not that I don’t prefer the outcome of all children being educated in the same sort of school. Its just that part of what makes socialists different from liberals is that we understand why such problems exist, and how we argue about it, and how we move foward, is connected to such understanding. As opposed to ‘just parroting about secularism’ and reacting with huge indignation to the idea that for real social reasons which its our job to tackle, many don’t see the world quite as we do. Thus the way I respond to the problem of ‘community leaders’ outlined above, is different to a liberal who just thinks communities are wrong, and thinks that therefore the whole phenomenan is about a bunch of backward liars and manipulaters who just happen to be more predominant in one community then another. At the centre of my account would be the existence of considerable injustice and marginalisation and the kind of structures this throws up in local politics. This requires a particular kind of response which fights the injustice and marginalisation but at the same time points away from those structures which just re-enforce the situation. These can be complicated questions and how you respond at a given time and a given place can vary. Exactly the same thing is true of the schools question. There is a great line in Ralph Russells interview (he’s some charecter you should read it) where he says ‘there is no point in trying to make people do things they won’t do’. Some of those things they won’t do because they’re stupid and pointless, but other things they won’t do because there are real social conditions which need to be challenged before its reasonable to expect most people to do so.
Whilst modern states have a long history of moulding their populations in their own interests, amongst the most advanced capitalists states there is a recognition for a certain amount of hegenomic dialogue to achieve this. The approach to minorities, particularly immigrant minorities, has always been strikingly different however. In this situation that looms larger then anything and the reaction to the Archbishops speech is a striking aspect of this.
If anyone saw the Guardian recently they might have been surprised to discover that Tony Blair ‘backed down’ and ‘appeased’ the Saudi’s over BAE because a prominant Prince threatened a bombing campaign in mainland Britain if they didn’t. None of this of course connected to the vexed question of how many cups of tea the archbishop has with a local ulema, but its surprising the absence of outrage about this in comparison.
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
#28 Mike seems to be determined to imitate Isaac Deutscher’s position of retreating to The Watchtower.
Comment by Adamski — 16 February, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
“But arguing that some Muslims should be subject to Muslim law against their will I think that is in effect racist- if the bishop is not saying that it’s not clear what he is saying”.
Er Jason, having a prose style EVEN more obtuse then mine notwithstanding, how ANYONE could possibly have thought that this is what he’s saying is quite beyond me. What on earth justifies you in suggesting this?
Comment by johng — 16 February, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
[Andy- can you delete the first version of this … some stray sentences!]
The UK has incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into the law. This would prevent enforcement of the decisions of a tribunal applying religious law which was in breach of the ECHR, and in particular Article 14, which secures the enjoyment of fundamental rights “without discrimination”, including gender discrimination.
Article 14 doesn’t require states to enforce gender equality, generally: simply in the enjoyment of other protected ECHR rights. There are also EC laws which provide for antidiscrimination in employment, good and services, and so on; and these have been implemented in the UK under the Sex Discrimination legislation.
Not all discrimination is outlawed. However, there are likely to be parts of Sharia which are simply incompatible with the law, as it stands. Remember, also that the ECHR has declared tranches of Sharia incompatible with the Convention, in the Welfare Party case.
Now, not all requirements of religious law breach the ECHR or anti-discrimination law. This sort of stuff, for example, is pretty uncontroversial and unobjectionable:
http://www.sistani.org/local.php?modules=nav&nid=2&bid=59&pid=3050
http://www.sistani.org/local.php?modules=nav&nid=2&bid=59&pid=3049
(Although I would have thought that a Marxist might have some issues with its conception of personal property rights!)
However, when it comes to family and child custody laws, the issue is very different indeed.
Make no mistake - that the groups which favour Sharia are principally concerned with the status of Sharia family law:
Here’s Dilwar Hussein of the Islamic Foundation:
Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7233000/7233335.stm
I strongly recommend that you read the campaign literature produced by the Canadian Council of Muslim Women who successfully mobilised to prevent the use of religious (including Sharia) arbitration in Canada. Their main objections were, in summary, as follows:
http://www.ccmw.com/activitites/act_no_religious_arb.html
Now, in Canada, the argument was advanced that “the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms will protect women’s equality rights”. However, the CCMW argued that “The Charter applies only to state actions and not disputes between private individuals such as the arbitration agreements or awards.”
A similar argument would apply in the United Kingdom. Some decisions of Sharia tribunals on family law would be struck down by the ECHR. In other cases, there would be no remedy.
Now you have to decide.
Would you go for State enforced private Sharia arbitration on uncontroversial, non-family law business arrangements only?
Or would you allow individuals to “agree” to binding family law arbitration?
Would you allow judgements to be struck down as breaching the ECHR or anti-discrimination law? Would you be happy with the proliferation of Sharia awards which could not be struck down, but which nevertheless offended against the principle of gender equality?
What do you think is better? To directly engineer a conflict between Human Rights (and UK) law and Sharia, in which the validity of parts of Sharia are specifically ruled upon by British courts? Or to enforce none of it, and dodge the conflict?
(Of course, you can ignore all these arguments if you think that human rights law is a bourgeois and artifical construct, and that equality is a principle that can easily be ignored)
Comment by David T — 16 February, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
When jason writes:
We see the problem with this debate.
Not only did the archbishop’s speech say the exact opposite quite clearly, and I have given a link to his speech; but I explained that he had not said that - quoting his own words from his speeech to prove it, and several people have commented here supporting the view that he did not say that.
Comment by Andy Newman — 16 February, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
Ed D should answer the following question: why on earth should Muslims, or anyone for that matter, *integrate*? And what does he propose they integrate into and who, by the way, would decide? Him? The National Secular Society? Surely it is enough that they live here peaceably and lawfully. Why should people not be able to live on these shores according to their own custom so long as they obey the law?
What an absurd comment. If we want to continue living in a multi racial, multi cultural society then it is absolutely vital that we all have a common threads that bind us, and that the state isn’t overly subsidising one particular group thus causing huge resentment. It’s also especially important for minority group themselves if they want to succeed in this country.
There is a particular problem with Muslim integration at the moment - who do far worse than other Asian groups - and they also have an extremist problem that has cost many innocent lives, so obviously that needs to be addressed.
A great example of how things can go wrong if we don’t promote intergration is the case of Oldham where things got so bad the majority of racist attacks were committed by Asian gangs against whites, and English often wasn’t spoken in the family home at all, meaning it was much harder for them to get a job and move up. Women were also trapped in their homes.
Anyone who says this is okay, and it’s fine for people to live in their own separate, racist ghettos, which are unemployed slums, is the enemy of minority groups. They are very cruel and lacking in compassion. We wouldn’t say: “oh, my kids should be free to play on the railway tracks if they want to”, and neither should government pretend that segregation is okay for minorities. It certainly is not.
Comment by Ed D — 16 February, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
Whenever the question of Islam or race emerges, we’d expect the backwards people in the media, politicians etc. to come forward with their bigotry. What is always evident, although seldom realised is how sections of the left capitulate whilst explaining in the usual abstraction how ‘we’re secular and we’re for Socialism’ and other ‘working class’ responses.
This reflects the historic backwardness of the Labour Party as being the party of British Imperialism - ‘we know what’s best for the uncivilised, non-Christian people from Asia and Africa’ is the approach.
#89 falls right in to the trap of blaming Muslims, as people from the Caribbean were blamed before - the reason that any community are in ghettos is because of poverty, discrimination. The reason why town centres such as Brixton, Peckham New Cross in South London are predominantly black is because the white racist couldn’t get away from them quick enough! BNP fascists exploited the apartheid housing policies of rotten Labour councils who ghettoised black people.
Muslims are the worst integrated? Well, I would doubt that, but because they ahve another language which is widely spoken, their own community centres as do every other religiion, this does not mean they are not integrated. Of course, the state sees they are not integrated into society - they are not prevelant among High Court judges, high ranking police officers, army brigadiers, members of the Carlton club and I’m relaibly informed that there are no Masters of the Hunt with Muslim parentage.
Which still leaves the question of Sharia law, that needs to be got into perspective. Anyone would think that the Archbishop was calling for beheadings in market squares every Friday at noon. That the islamaphobes have had a heyday as a result shows how ill-thought out the speech was, but the substance is another matter.
Other religions, Jews and Sikhs have their cultural traditions taken into account. Sikhs do not have to wear crash helmets on bikes. I think that’s a reasonable exemption. Jews can get married on Sundays, legal and all.
Of course, reactionary elements have to be fought against - but by whom? Not the white knights with shining armour, please. The Canadian example shows the rejection of Sharia Law was because moslem women were against it. One contributor earlier refers to the bar-mitzvah only being for men in the orthodox synagogue. True though that is, the liberal reform synagogue insists on equality of the genders, has women as rabbis and girls have a Bath Mitzvah, equal to the Bar Mitzvah. In each case, this is the women in the community, not the ’secular left’ outside deciding the agenda and, if desired, asking for outside help.
Get it the other way round and you encourage reaction, which unfortunately our archbishop friend did as it doesn’t seem that the Muslim representatives were asking him to say anything on their behalf.
Comment by victor allen — 17 February, 2008 @ 9:42 am
David T makes some good concrete points.
I would like to add one, which came to me as I wandered through the local woods looking at the effects of global warming (daffodils out already). This debate really centres on what is in effect a proposal to privatise law. The UK non-secular state, but a largely secular society (that is one where religion doesn’t really enter most people’s daily lives), is being asked whether it should hive-off parts of the legal system to faith-dominated parts of civil society. How far this should go, and what specific problems it raises, are really beside the point. What we are dealing with is an assertion that a certain class of beliefs and culture should be recognised as part of the legal system in some sense differently to others. Yet another flock of privateers, this time believers, have stakes in this far beyond any abstract issues of pluralism and justice.
More fundamentally, this privatisation of parts of the state has already seen functions being delegated to faith groups (a whole range of Welfare bodies; it would be worth looking, to take a notorious case, at how much the YMCA is now state-funded to promote its version of all-embracing Christianity). Religion has also been given increased importance in a range of government advisery bodies, and quangos. This is happening in municipal government as well: in the GLA’s case for example, influence far in excess of its real importance.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:48 am
I will simply ignore the contribution which first of all talks about ghettos in the UK when there are none (go to the US if you want to see real ghettos, co-incident as it happens with probably the most advanced bourgoise constitution in the world) and then seeks to blame Muslims for the existence of these non-existent ghettos.
I don’t understand why David T or Andrew Coates are incapable of responding to any of the points made in the long discussion above. In particular the extent to which this is a debate about national identity rather then about secularism, and the extent to which this has supplied most of the heat in the discussion, and how socialists ought to respond to this.
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 11:08 am
johng, if this is not a debate about secularism, then why did you express solidarity with Andy Newman when he began this thread by arguing that Rowan Williams was right? If this is not a debate about secularism, then why is one of the two articles on this subject in the on-line edition of Socialist Worker calling for the state to keep out of religion? This IS a debate about secularism, and you know it is. Either you support the rights of everyone of all religions and none to be free to establish their own personal relationship with their god (if they have a god) or you insist on the right of believers in one religion to impose their beliefs on others by means of legislation. Secularism is the antidote to religious oppression be it of a Jewish, Islamic, Protestant, Hindu variety, or whatever. It is also the alternative to a system of apartheid that divides the working class into a set of arbitrary categories, depending on the ideas that their parents may or may not have held: in other words an accident of birth. People have the right to change their attitude to the religion of their parents, grandparents etc. Rowan Williams attempts to foist on all of us an ideological straightjacket. This is an attempt at divide and rule that no socialist could possibly support. Muslims cannot win anything bar an Islamophobic backlash by leaping to Williams’ defence. They only play into the hands of those who misrepresent Muslims as wanting additional rights over and above what the rest of us have. Socialists of all faiths and none have to unite to fight for better laws in the here and now. Better laws for all of us, regardless of our religion, if we have a religion, and most of us don’t. However, the core of law under capitalism remains to safeguard the property of those who own and control the means of production, distribution and exchange. Socialists need to fight to a different state, one that is run for and by those whose labour keeps society running. Defending a regime that allows the ruling class to divide and rule is anathema to socialists. It is not only wrong in principle; those who support this would indefinitely postpone the day when the working class will become sufficiently united to sweep away the parasites. If they have their way, working people will never be in a position to create the kind of society where the people won’t need opiums of any description. Relgious groups won’t be persecuted under a workers’ state. Religion will simply wither away, along with the workers’ state itself.
Comment by Red Flintstone — 17 February, 2008 @ 11:44 am
Johng, there is a debate about national identity in this. No doubt about it. There is equally more profound and complex debate about national identity, secularism and republicanism, crystalised in France. The fact that neither David T nor I respond to the whole question of the reaction to Islam is because it is obvious that far more is at stake here than the response to one religion, or even the nature of British phobias and identity.
For example, Olivier Roy in Laicite face au Islam (2005)(which has been translated into English) makes the distinction between secular societies and secualr states. He suggets that France, which has a political secular state, suffers from a myth about Republican unity and an inability to deal rationally with what exact religious space Muslims should have in politics and society. Or even acceptence of Muslism *as Muslims* in terms of Citizenship. That is very similar to issues raised by this present furore about Sharia: whether to be indifferent to personal codes, and the importance of ‘community’, or whether to institutionalise them when they are religously based. Roy also states that there is a growth generally in world-wide religious identities which are not communal but abstract and which claim universal validity. Sarkozy at present is trying to reintegrate religous identities of all kind into the the French state, and privileging religion en bloc (making for instance recent distasteful comments about the Gulag and the Shoah being caused by atheism).
The real problem lies there: how to deal with this when states themselves have less legitimacy faced with a much wider internationalisation of power, culture and the economy.
I have argued that the non-secular British state has not responded progressively to the same issue. It has tended to further communalise, parcel out, power to religiously based groups. Under the guise of defending British values it denigrates universalism. The ABC as some have remarked, is defending the rights of all religions: once having got Danegeld the faith-based leaders want more and more.
Perhaps an answer is to find our own globalised socialist values and movements which unite people.Based on human rights that is.
Comment by Andrew Coates — 17 February, 2008 @ 11:46 am
#88 “When jason writes:
“But arguing that some Muslims should be subject to Muslim law against their will I think that is in effect racist- if the bishop is not saying that it’s not clear what he is saying”.
We see the problem with this debate.
Not only did the archbishop’s speech say the exact opposite quite clearly, and I have given a link to his speech; but I explained that he had not said that - quoting his own words from his speech to prove it, and several people have commented here supporting the view that he did not say that.”
As this is directly addressed to me, I will answer it.
I’m well aware that you assert in your opening post, Andy, that “Not only did the archbishop’s speech say the exact opposite quite clearly, and I have given a link to his speech” but having actually (for my sins) read the archbishop’s speech- which can be found in its entirety here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_02_08_islam.pdf- (quotable versions here http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
I could either conclude 1) that you didn’t read it or 2) that we have different interpretations of an extremely oblique speech.
Actually it is clearly the second scenario, as the first would be extremely arrogant – though I note you without any evidence assume that I haven’t read the bishop’s speech. But actually I have.
For example Williams argues:
“But this does not guarantee an absence of conflict. In the particular case we have mentioned, the inheritance rights of widows, it is already true that some Islamic societies have themselves proved flexible (Malaysia is a case in point). But let us take a more neuralgic matter still: what about the historic Islamic prohibition against apostasy, and the draconian penalties entailed? In a society where freedom of religion is secured by law, it is obviously impossible for any group to claim that conversion to another faith is simply disallowed or to claim the right to inflict punishment on a convert. We touch here on one of the most sensitive areas not only in thinking about legal practice but also in interfaith relations. A significant number of contemporary Islamic jurists and scholars would say that the Qur’anic pronouncements on apostasy which have been regarded as the ground for extreme penalties reflect a situation in which abandoning Islam was equivalent to adopting an active stance of violent hostility to the community, so that extreme penalties could be compared to provisions in other jurisdictions for punishing spies or traitors in wartime; but that this cannot be regarded as bearing on the conditions now existing in the world. Of course such a reading is wholly unacceptable to ‘primitivists’ in Islam, for whom this would be an example of a rationalising strategy, a style of interpretation (ijtihad) uncontrolled by proper traditional norms. But, to use again the terminology suggested a moment ago, as soon as it is granted that – even in a dominantly Islamic society – citizens have more than one set of defining relationships under the law of the state, it becomes hard to justify enactments that take it for granted that the only mode of contact between these sets of relationships is open enmity; in which case, the appropriateness of extreme penalties for conversion is not obvious even within a fairly strict Muslim frame of reference. Conversely, where the dominant legal culture is non-Islamic, but there is a level of serious recognition of the corporate reality and rights of the umma, there can be no assumption that outside the umma the goal of any other jurisdiction is its destruction. Once again, there has to be a recognition that difference of conviction is not automatically a lethal threat.”
The writing is admittedly very unclear- a problem in itself as access to the law should be very clear, not dependent on matters of arcane interpretation.
What he seems to be saying is that if a Muslim widow (the example is his) thinks she has a better chance under secular law than sharia law then she should be able to argue her case to be heard under secular law. But the very fact that she has to argue this case, rather than as at the moment have an absolute democratic egalitarian right to be treated as anyone else is to put her, if we followed Williams’ advice, in a different position because of her background.
It is therefore racist and discriminatory. I have no doubt that Williams is intending to be the oppositie and is caught up in a confused liberal stance as indeed are some on the left who for some reason support Williams on this. But he is wrong and despite his protestations to the contrary he is arguing that Muslims (in this case) should be treated differently.
To end his argument by saying “what we want socially is a pattern of relations in which a plurality of divers and overlapping affiliations work for a common good, and in which groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty… any aspiration towards social harmony and understanding is that they bring communal loyalties into direct relation with the wider society and inevitably lead to mutual questioning and sometimes mutual influence towards change, without compromising the distinctiveness of the essential elements of those communal loyalties…” is again to argue (fairly opaquely!) that change is best served by bringing religious laws into the state in some way.
No it isn’t. If people want to voluntarily follow religious laws, fine. But in situations of conflict- where the law comes into play- resolution and arbitration should be on the basis of equality not on the basis of religious or ethnic affiliation.
The bishop’s last words are perhaps most revealing:
“If the paradoxical idea which I have sketched is true – that universal law and universal right are a way of recognising what is least fathomable and controllable in the human subject – theology still waits for us around the corner of these debates, however hard our culture may try to keep it out. And, as you can imagine, I am not going to complain about that.”
He wants a place for religious obscurantism because it gives people like him power. Socialists by contrast want a society based on freedom, equality and democracy- something at loggerheads with the archbishop’s view (and seemingly Andy’s as well!)
Sorry for the long quotes- but I don’t like being falsely accused of not having read something. I imagine we may continue to disagree about this matter but please try not to imply (without evidence) that I haven’t actually read the piece to which we are referring. Surely, that’s basic manners in a debate?
Jason
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
When I say ‘oblique speech’ I probably meant opaque!
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
Jason - I think his speech is perhaps both opaque and oblique.
But even in the passage you quote he does NOT argue that a widow would have to argue her case to go a civil court. All along the ABC says that a case could only be heard in a sharia court if all parties agree . So if any party disagrees, then it would have to go to the civil courts.
He explicitly says the opposite of what you are saying he did:
Comment by Andy Newman — 17 February, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
Well we can certainly agree it’s opaque! Perhaps, then, he is saying that a Muslim widow can of her own choice either go to a rleigious court or a secular court.
But- and here’s the rub- in a case of conflict, -and surely we have to judge law’s (or laws’) effectiveness precisely in cases of conflict- then Williams approach is far more complex than even current law.
Where, for example, other relatives make a claim on the estate, then there are two possibly conflciting rules to take into account.
I do acknowldge- and perhaps we should all be clearer on this- that a lot of the tabloid reacion and may be even some of the left’s reaction was based on an interpretaion of what they thought the bishop said.
But even on the closest reading of what Williams is saying there is at least th edanger that allowing religious law to to have a place in the state at least risks on occasions certain people- defined or even self-defined as Muslim (in this case) unequal access to the law. I acknowledge Williams doesn’t want this and comes up with some theoretical ideas about how this conflict can be avoided. But the bes way to avoid it is to have a simple clear egalitarian universal law and of course social working class movement to fight for the equal rights that the bourgeois state normally gives- equal rights the bishop is in (however well-intentioned muddled manner) effectively arguing to undermine.
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
There are already informal sharia courts operating where the many wives of some Muslims can seek some sort of justice if they want - so they don’t become a prostitute, as the head of one of these courts told Newsnight. But whatever the archbishop was trying to say, we can all agree that the state should not encourage or recognise this. That would be a bad step for Muslim integration - a very important issue for wider society and their success in it.
As I keep saying, the last thing we want is guettos like Oldham developing else where. To their credit, the government has taken good steps on this issue - such as cutting the translation budget and intoducing citzenship tests, cracking down on sham marriages and limiting unskilled immigration. They are definitely going in the right direction, but they could do a lot more to speed up this process.
Comment by Ed D — 17 February, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
ED D is a racist. Could he be banned?
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
Whether or not he’s banned he certainly has unpleasantly racist views.
It’s probably not worth responding excpet to say his views are racist, unhlepful and probably deliberately so.
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
Could you explain in what sense these factual remarks - shared by the government and most people in society - are racist?
I think those people who believe Muslims - a communtiy already facing huge problems - should be encouraged to segragate are racist.
Comment by Ed D — 17 February, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
This is what Oldham was like before the independent report sensibly made recommendations to solve the huge problems of communities leading parallel lives, too scared to go into each others areas.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1296007.stm
That was unacceptable.
Comment by Ed D — 17 February, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
Frankly Ed D I really can’t be bothered. Your the class enemy. Go away.
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
I guess Jason, my worry about your position is that you attribute a universal egalitarian system in some way to the existing set-up. We’re agreed about the idiots on here, but I think revolutionary socialists need to be a bit more careful about attempts to equate bourgoise secularism with egalitarianism or justice. If it did we would not be facing these difficulties. The extent to which these difficulties are confusing is the extent to which bourgoise secularism is confusing.
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 5:19 pm
Andrew (@94), I think the nature of serial blogs is such that many arguments and positions are generated at once (think: “I Love Lucy” as the chocolates are sped up on the assembly line…).
As far as I can tell, johng, spends an unhealthy amount of time with academics
His perfectly proper reaction to William’s argument is to see the furore as a racist one. Not one opening up a reasoned analysis of how to fight for improvements in the legislature.
He then, just as rightly, goes on to warn socialists that the imperative is combatting nationalist exclusivity FIRST. And that the best way to do that is to point to those other parts of the ruling ideology that are completely inconsistent; that bourgeois justice is a cover for one class locking up another class.
I don’t *think* he’s therefore committing us to an abandonment of ‘bourgeois’ laws - he’s probably sensitive toward things like the length of the working week, trade union “rights” and even the miscarriages at Guantanamo and the subsequent “hearings”.
But I do hear you on the call for the development of a socialist charter of human rights. And agree with you that this would be most useful. Funnilly enough, I was just thinking about the Canadian Muslim Women’s Council case before sitting down today. Another aspect of the Canadian Supreme Courts movement over recent years is to introduce the notion of “harm” into decisions concerning the most private endeavours. The source of their modernism being slightly odd (Swinger’s clubs), they are no less progressive having to deal with national identity and native people’s rights, bilingual languange and provincial vs. state rights etc.
But introducing the notion of “harming” one another as a principle seems to be something we could write into an international socialist charter of rights - and I bet we’d get agreement on it far faster than say, how to build an alternative to New Labour… But that’s another story.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 17 February, 2008 @ 5:47 pm
#105 “I guess Jason, my worry about your position is that you attribute a universal egalitarian system in some way to the existing set-up. ”
Not at all- my point is that equal rights as a legal concept have been won by class struggle- first that of the bourgeois against the fuedal system and then the organised working class against the capitalist state.
Winning those rights in law is only the beginning- which is why I said we need “working class movement to fight for the equal rights” (#98).
The working class should take the bourgeois law with its declarations of universal rights and say if everyone is equal then we assert our right to run production for ourselves- we oppose your ‘right’ to fire us from our jobs, to evict us from our houses, to deport us, to rule over us, to steal our labour. Or as Marx said “The weapons with which the bourgeois felled feudalism are now turned against the bourgeois itself.”
But trying to say that religious courts should be brought into for minorities as the archbishop, a relic of feudalism kept by the modern bourgeois in Britain, argues and some on the left seem to think is egalitarian is not an advance!
What we need is an antiracist movmeent as part of the wider class struggle so working class people can run our own affairs democratically in a society based on freedom and equality- which will mean overthrowing the current bourgeois state, including its rligious leaders such as the archbishop who in their unelected positions in the house of lords make the laws of capitalist society.
Rather than fight the racism of bourgeois society by demanding the rights of priests or imams or any other religious leaders to be part of the state we should instead for a radical working class action programme against racism as part of an overall action programme for workers’ control and the fight for socialism.
The precise details of course should be worked out by the mass organisations of the working class with the rigt of black workers to caucus within unions and political parties
- be for election of all judges and courts, with the right of black and Asian people to have a jury of their peers, at least 50% black, to help eliminate the racism that young people, particualrly Asians and Muslims face
- be for the rights of all minorities to practice their own culture and religion
- be for the rights of black communities and other oppressed communities such as Muslims to organsie self-defence against racist attacks, with full labour movement support
- fight all deportations by mass demonstrations, direct action, strikes and any other means- deportation or the threat of it keeps many people living in fear and often horrendous oppressive conditions
- the combatting of all racist ideology and racists, fighting for workers and working class communities to have full democratic control over how resources are allocated
That at least would be a beginning rather than joining in the archbishop’s confusion
Jason
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
Oh and by the way unless some of that seems a bit abstract allow me to share a quick anecdote about Oldham.
In 2000 going into 2001 Oldham police routinely made misleading comments, enthusiastically picked up by the local paper, leading to racist hysteria about no go areas, which mainstream media, including the BBC picked up on. It was complete and utter rubbish. One of the so-called no go areas Glodwick I spent many days in, as I worked nearby and became heavily involved in campaigning against the fascists both NF and BNP.
We held a big 1000 strong counter-demo to the NF- a demo banned from holding a march but we held it anyway shouting “Whose streets? Our streets! Black and white unite and fight!” while the police protected the fascists.
Background here http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/archive/1745/sw174511.htm, http://www.marxist.com/britain-oldham-mobilises-vs-fascists150601-4.htm
That spring and summer white antiracists spent many evenings and afternoons in the so-called no-go areas, and we helped organise Socialist Alliance meetings. The first got about 50 people; another only about 30; and one after the uprising of Asian youth when we’d delivered leaflets supporting the right of self-defence, we got more than 200 to a meeting.
We had many debates during those times and certainly not all the antiracists we met were socialists but they were prepared to take common action with us against racism and listen to our ideas, as we listened to theirs. We had a good chance to stand an SA candidate but it was bureaucratically blocked at the time despite a meeting in Oldham voting for it and a local Asian and socialist candidate prepare dot take it on.
We made good contacts and had a good dialogue and because several of us were prepared to spend night after night organising practically against the racists I think we gained the ear of activists within the community- though we didn’t always agree. It can and should be done again- perhaps this time more in response to state racism than fascist provocation and for a joint black and white united working class struggle for better housing, better resources, against deportations, against privatisations and cutbacks, as part of a wider project to revitalise and re-orientate the left.
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
the sw link should be http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/archive/1745/sw174511.htm
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
Let us look at another way of making this less abstract.
Think of a number of people who have been expelled from the SWP over the last few years, for example, Andy Wilson, Karen o’Toole, Nick Wrack, Rob Hoveman and Kevin Ovenden. Indeed in the case of a party full timer being expelled, it woould cost them their job. (Was Andy Wilson still a full timer when expelled, and Karen o’Toole?)
In theory, these comrades could have taken the SWp to court over the fact that the nature of their expulsions did not follow natural justice, or over procedural irregularities that the Control Commission did nt follow the SWP’s own constitution. the case of people actually employed by the SWP, they could have taken the party to an industrial tribunal.
Why don’t they?
Because the sub-culture of the far left is such that people are expected to forgo “bougeois” concept of justice and due process, and socialists do not use thr “bourgeois courts” against each other. This means in fact that in order to conform to the shared values and ethos of the community of the far left, individuals forgo their rights under the law of the land. To do otherwise would make them outsiders from the community of the left.
Exactly the same sort of considerations apply to members of religious communities. And normallising the situation where individuals have a free and infomred choice whether to elect to use the state’s civil courts or the sharia or Beth Din court would recognise the real social pressure.
Comment by Andy Newman — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
“But I do hear you on the call for the development of a socialist charter of human rights”
Oh please god no, deliver us from liberation.
(sorry, whilst the general satire of me as a communitarian islamofascist is wrong, just before about 7.15 on a Sunday night, thought of Monday at the front of my head, I go all Spanish partisan against the Napoleonic armies. You’ll just have to forgive me. Its too much Leviathan in one day).
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
Actually Battersea some of it is too much time with academics some of it is too much time with the factory inspectors of globalisation: NGO’s and their trainers. Hunt them down like mad dogs and force them to live in authoritarian communities. Its the only way foward.
Comment by johng — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:15 pm
Was Andy Wilson still an SWP full-timer when he was expelled? My memory is that he was doing something in the IT world, but I might be mistaken.
Comment by cameron — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
#113
It is possible my memory is at fault over that and Andy may already have ceased to be a full timer, Was karen o’Toole employed by the SWp when she was expelled though? I think she may have been.
Anyway my argument in principle still stands
Comment by Andy Newman — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Andy, whether Andy Wildon was or wasn’t “employed” by the SWP seems to be a bit beside the point. Your point as to the “communal” pressures of the left is the key one. There are legions of folk who quietly (and AW certainly didn’t go quietly) “went into the wilderness” while either picking up a pay packet or certainly having built their entire life around party work.
And there’s another rub. The Left’s history at “policing” itself isn’t something I recommend to my children as the best counterweight to “bourgeois” justice. Projects like RespectR are colliding with this reality now - in terms of trying to figure a way into this while remaining ‘principled’.
In no small way is it linked (the Left’s inability to apply anything resembling “natural justice”) to the heralding of bodies like the European Courts. It really does tell you something when these institutions (in some cases rightly) are held up as examples of where the left needs to go, culturally if not programmatically.
It’s also why so many posts here are (again rightly in this aspect) suspicious about a culture that can allow “free” choices to be made once recognition is granted to religious methods and practices.
PS. I hear johng’s exasperation at my call for a socialist charter. I know I sound like a wanker but, writing down these things, all the way down to describing ‘disciplinary’ proceedings will need to be done. Part of the new kulcha.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Jason, the bit that some of the media got wrong was that there were signs up saying whites out, but what is true is there were effectively areas where both whites and Asians wouldn’t go for fear of being attacked. Whether you want to call them ‘no go areas’ or not is really semantic.
And this certainly wasn’t a one community issue. Whilst the BNP’s attempts to cash in on the situation were of course unacceptable and deeply unhelpful, before they were even on the scene, police statistics showed that the majority of racist attacks were commited against the whites - around 60% to 40% - and subsequent reports into the area backed up that general theme.
Those people who dishonestly wanted to pretend the problems were all the fault of the white community - many of them coming from outside of the area as well - and say everybody was living in peace and harmony until the BNP showed up are as bad as the BNP themselves.
We need to learn the lessons of Oldham, not lie about it.
Comment by Ed D — 17 February, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
#107 Jason sets out the framework for justice in a workers’ state. That’s fine, but even then you have to deal with the rights of cultural minorities, religious freedom etc. (Unless you happen to be Joseph Stalin).
The problem is that we are not going to have a workers’ state just now and we have to use the framework of the other major class as best as is possible to advance the interests of the working class. Even Marx at times found himself having to do that. If the bourgeoisie are prepared to grant more rghts to the oppressed - be they religious minorities, black people, women, LGBT or disabled people - I’m all for that.
Whether we like it or not, as Socialists, 0.0001% of our time is actually spent constructing workers’ justice. 99.9999% is spent fighting for justice within the bourgeois framework. That doesn’t stop you being a revolutionary.
Comment by victor allen — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
Andy #110- socialists quite rightly shouldn’t use the bourgeois courts or police- why? Becuase at least ideally the workers’ movement should police itself. Of course under very extreme circumstances one could imagine exceptions but it wouldn’t be ideal.
However, your attempt to make this somehow analagous to sharia law is I think quite misguided. It may work as an analogy in the sense that some Muslims may avoid secular courts like we try to avoid bourgeois ones- there the analogy may even be a good one. But the bishop’s argument that you either support or think is worth raising at least (I get the impression you actually support it) is that the state should accept sharia law whilst giving people an option of choosing between the two (problematic for reasons already gone into).
Socialists don’t demand that the state give legal legitimacy to the workers’ movement- we do of course fight to overthrow the bourgeois state and replace it with the democratic rule of the workers but we don’t ask for support from the bourgeois courts in the meantime.
#116 As you are being specific I’ll briefly engage and reply.
Police statistics were highly misleading. They deliberately classified Asian crime against white people as racist even if the white targets didn’t e.g. burglary with Asian suspects- not a nice crime, not defendable but almost certainly not racist. Oldham police was run by two people who made inflammatory comments on a regular basis. Eric Hewitt the chief of police was one and the other was Dick Crashaw who made the incredible comment to The Guardian
“A local police officer reciprocated the ill-feeling yesterday. Told that Asian locals thought claims of no go zones were empty rumours, Superintendent Dick Crawshaw replied: “You must have spoken to the only 12 people in the area who can read and write.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/apr/20/race.world
As already said I went to the so-called no go area of Glodwick on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for six months or so. So did many other white people. For various reasons including council racism but also other factors Glodwick was largely Asian some 90% plus. But a no go area for whites? Never. I worked in Oldham for six years. It was complete crap.
I never said everyone lived in peace and harmony. Oldham had its share of problems- racism included and anti-white prejudice may well have been a factor as well- almost certainly. Though I do have to say I never once witnessed it- some teenagers at school would say Asians are racists but on closer examination it often came about “because my mate called one of ‘em a P….” However, having made the highly relevant I feel point that as someone who worked there for six years I never directly witnesses anti-white comments from Asians (as opposed to many white racist comments)I have little doubt that there would have been some of it now and again.
As some estates were near on 100% white with neighbouring estates near on 100% Asian there were sometimes fights between local youth gangs- some Asian youth were no doubt chauvinist to white youth and vice versa. In both cases it should be completely condemned. But the media and police hype was complete misinformation and quite often deliberate lies.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
#117- agree we should be for more rights for minorities including fighting for them in th courts (bourgeois though they may be). I would actually say go beyond the courts and have social movements to fight for the rights.
But thids is completely different from saying ethnic or rleigious minorities should havce religious courts backed up by the state- I think that would give more rights to some at th eexpense of others and minorities would end up having an inferior deal as far as justice is concerned- more so even than now.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
Stalin of course was a complete and utter counter-revolutionary monster/ mass murderer. Just thought I’d add that before retiring for the night! Perhaps that’s off topic though
Comment by Jason — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
It is simply an assertion that the police somehow rigged the race crime statistics. There is no evidence for this. You may well be aware of several brutal racist attacks which finally attracted the attention of the national media.
Anecdotal evidence from yourself doesn’t collate with the police and government reports into problems in the area.
Comment by Ed D — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:44 pm
Jason:
Err … which socialists don’t demand legal legitimacy?
You oppose the proposed Trade Union Freedom bill then? You don’t care whether or not the Tory anti-Union laws are repealed? You oppose legally enforeable trade union recognition agreements?
Comment by Andy Newman — 17 February, 2008 @ 10:48 pm
#122 ok I may have expressed myself badly- at least one thing in common with the archbishop!
I think you know the point I was trying to make though- but that’s not much of a defence.
I meant we are not asking that the police or courts enforce workers’ movement rules. For example, if we vote to go on strike we don’t demand th epolice shut down the workplace. We demand that they don’t interfere. As the police are not our police they do of course interfere- on behalf of the bosses.
On the so-called racist crime it is worth pointing out that Walter Chamberlain sickening though it was was not racist and his family never claimed it wa- this was an invention of th epolice and media.
Comment by Jason — 18 February, 2008 @ 9:03 am
“hear johng’s exasperation at my call for a socialist charter. I know I sound like a wanker but, writing down these things, all the way down to describing ‘disciplinary’ proceedings will need to be done. Part of the new kulcha”
MacIntyre has written of the way that institutionalised versions of enlightenment values function as parodies of ordinary peoples expectations (as well as of much academic discussion):
1) Rights. The plain persons understanding of rights bears no relationship to its institutionalisation in modern bureaucratic organisations, and to pursue their actual rights they have to re-translate everything into a different alien language which they often do not understand and bears no relationship to their every day concerns. Typically, if it’s found that your rights have been breached, you might get given some money. Very often trade unionists, and indeed lawyers, have to advise people that standing up for your rights is’nt ‘worth it’ as well as explaining to them that the kind of restitution one might want is simply unavailable.
This is a parody of the things that Kantian philosophers talk about in seminars, although such talk might today be used as an ideological aroma around such practices.
2) Virtues, held to be aspects of character which should be cultivated and lead to having a good life, now largely reduced to the sort of thing you might learn on job training and utterly removed from any kind of coherent view of the purposes of human life without which any such discussion loses its point. These people can be found discussing ‘the ethics’ of this or that, in professions of various kinds, such discussions, again, being both a parody and an ideology. What preport to be virtue based discussions are usually discussions about how to construct the bureacratic apparatus’s referred to above and ensuring compliance. In development there is much talk about utilizing ‘indigenous values’ in order to achieve this end, much less talk about what this ‘end’ actually constitutes: the only thing which might give such ethical discussion their point.
3) Utilitarianism, might be seen as an option to muddle through difficult questions posed by the degeneration of the other two great ethical traditions confronting us in day to day life, but if in seminars people raise big questions about what is to count as happiness, and how one is to count as one and no more then one, outside of the seminars utilitarianism functions as cost/benefit analyses and therefore is utterly irrelevant not only to any ethical discussion, but also to any discussion about how ethics might be related to cost-benefits. A parody of a parody.
These three kinds of discussions are the great achievements of bourgeois civilization, and the only acceptable languages in which those tasked with running the modern state and its related public and private corporate organisations discuss ethical dilemmas. Integrating such discussions into progressive thought are considered by some to be the key task of left wing intellectuals. This recalls another parody: that of the flea and the bullock. Look how much of the field I ploughed says the flea. This seems to me the big achievement of most of the Marxists writing on ethics over the last two decades.
Comment by johng — 18 February, 2008 @ 10:47 am