February 12, 2008 – 11:59 pm
Phillips shows extraordinary presumption in demanding the sacking or resignation of Dr Williams because of this. Phillips is not a Christian, Anglican or otherwise, and her opinions on what is appropriate for Dr Williams are irrelevant unless it directly affects her community, which this does not. The speech was about the status of another community; [...]
February 12, 2008 – 11:56 pm
Criticism of Islam segues effortlessly with prejudice against black immigrants. “Niggers out” no longer wins many votes, but Muslim-bashing presses the same political buttons. For our rulers, Islam is a doubly-convenient scapegoat for resistance to the West’s “war on terror”. Any discussion of Islam today is therefore a discussion about war and about racism. By [...]
February 9, 2008 – 11:09 pm
The main reason for the adverse and fearful reaction is that Shariah is popularly used as a synonym for penal law with its fixed penalties that can involve capital punishment. However, there is no Muslim representative body advocating Islamic penal law in Britain. Furthermore, the term “Shariah” itself is an umbrella concept that includes criminal [...]
February 9, 2008 – 11:03 pm
There has been a lot of ignorance expressed in response to Dr Williams’s speech. For example, one Baroness Cox claimed on BBC Newsnight last night that Canada once had Shari’ah law, but abolished it under pressure from women’s rights groups. In fact, Ontario (not Canada as a whole) had an Arbitration Act, allowing religious tribunals [...]
February 8, 2008 – 12:29 pm
The problem is that the right, and their fellow-travellers on the Muslim-bashing left, will seize on this. For them, it’s a case of mediaeval misogyny versus western enlightenment. Suddenly, papers that oppose abortion and believe career women will always be unhappy start cross-dressing as feminists. Don’t believe this ruse – they’re just using feminism as [...]
February 7, 2008 – 7:24 pm
As a journalistic shorthand, it’s almost perfect for the theme of the moment, being the suggestion that supremacism among angry young brown people poses an existential threat to the British way of life. Think of the words themselves, as if you were a journalist: “Shari’ah” is an assertively “foreign” word, whose pronunciation includes letters and [...]
