Comment (13)
Email
Print
del.icio.us
TechnoratiNo place for Arabia in England’s pleasant land
The verbal stoning meted out to the Archbishop of Canterbury is understandable, says a Nigerian expatriate.
Late last year the British television Channel 4 broadcast a programme about how sharia, the Islamic code of conduct, works in practice. A young female reporter had travelled to northern Nigeria to witness how sharia was being implemented since its establishment there as the highest legal authority in 1999. It was an engaging documentary. The reporter was a British-Asian Muslim woman, and one would have expected her to turn her face towards the East (say, Afghanistan), or Middle East (say, Saudi Arabia), to test the efficacy of sharia. But, as the documentary progressed, it was easy to see why she had chosen to go to northern Nigeria. Although one could see the sharia machine being cranked up here and there, it was hardly the dogmatic steamroller that people had expected. For most of the time the documentary zigzagged from the sublime to the ridiculous, and even the sublime was no more than sub-sublime.
The bestriding presence in the whole documentary was a sharia judge who had invited the reporter to see how he presided over civil cases, most of which had something to do with relationships. A divorce was clinched. An elopement was given a quirky gloss. Even the sight of a number of young men being flogged in a concourse seemed less shocking than it could have been. In a rare moment of black humour, a young man even expressed the wish that his hand be chopped off so that he would not steal again.
Despite the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and July 7, 2005 in London, and the general terrorist threat, Britain remains one of the freest countries in the world, partly because of the separation of church and state.
A couple of mock-sinister moments saw the judge snappily reminding the British reporter of her femaleness, a state that should be a cover for a multitude of virtues. The reporter had been rather modest in the way she dressed and appeared like any decent mum doing the school-run in England. The voluble judge was adamant about putting women in their place, though, and a few self-effacing women that were subliminally shown tacitly agreed that they had their fixed low place from which they must not budge. The judge was convinced that the reporter was not a true Muslim.
From all appearances, the young woman in question was happy not have been a Muslim woman in northern Nigeria. Even if the species of sharia enforced was not as baleful as one would expect, any viewer in the West would have come away with the impression that this style of dishing out justice was less than "modern", to put it mildly. I was born and I grew up in southern Nigeria, where people are predominantly Christians and where the train of modernity - as I know it now -- moves faster than in the predominantly Islamic north. As in the Western world, we in the southern part of the country take our freedoms for granted. The hoopla over how a number of northern Nigerian states had decided to adopt sharia to complement codified state law would have made a lot of people who were not au fait with the complex geo-religious make-up of the country think that there were more Muslims in the country than there really are.
A close encounter with sharia
As someone from the Christian south and with Christian background, long before the introduction of sharia I paid a visit to the northern city of Kano a city in which the spirit of sharia has always been writ. I was almost stoned for holding hands with a girlfriend, a fellow southerner who had gone north for National Service. Within moments of our unwittingly bringing attention to ourselves a small crowd of young male moral policemen had begun to gather, fulminating over how close I had walked with the girl, how I had held her hand. Looking for more sins, they had also pointed at how high the hemline of the young woman's skirt had been, close as it was to her ankles. She was not wearing a burka, either. Since it was not during any of the sporadic outbreak of minor "religious wars", what the young men really wanted us kaffirs to do was apologise. We duly did this and we were sent on our way with a warning, on pain of stoning, that we should not hold hands again. I was about twenty-three and believing, even at the time, that humans cannot survive without tiny doses of liberties, I was miffed.
I was no longer living in Nigeria when sharia was introduced in the north. It gave me pause when I first heard the news in England. I knew there would be fallout. There might even be some disturbances. The lives of Nigerians have become so intertwined that there are millions of people of Christian persuasion living in the north, just as there are millions of Muslims in the south. Although it was emphasised that Christians would not be bound by sharia, would anyone believe this, and even if they believed, would sharia turn out to be as incestuously exercised as promised? A Nigerian does not need to be deeply thoughtful to know that sharia was introduced to the country for reasons more political than religious; after all, Christians in the south have no parallel body of law to impose. As someone who had tasted a small, if bitter, pill of religious extremism in the north, I was at first apprehensive as to how far the enforcers of sharia would go to prove its theo-political clout.
A sign soon came in the shape of a woman sentenced to stoning-until-dead for alleged adultery. Of course, this caught the attention of the world and cast Nigeria as a country stuck in the dark ages. There was no way of explaining to anyone that Lagos is no more or less a city of God than Sao Paulo or even London.
We do not need another Nigeria
To return to the British documentary: Unexpectedly, there were no rave post-mortems in the print media. Although relativists might have defended what they saw on TV as the way other people live, the majority of Britons had shrugged and mumbled that this was not their cup of tea. The Muslim reporter would also rather drink a different kind of tea than one spiked with sharia. Although there were Muslims in the UK who would want sharia placed alongside British laws these have always been isolated tentative voices.
Then a couple of weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, voiced the opinion that it was "inevitable" Britain would come to recognise aspects of sharia law -- and the country was up in arms. Many people believed the Archbishop had weighed in on the side of hard-line Muslims who would be very happy to see sharia sanctioned as part of British Law. The tabloids had had a good time, marshalling Byronic tropes to describe the Bishop: mad, bad and dangerous to British interests. "Archbishop Converts to Islam", announced one of the milder headlines.
Laymen and clergy alike called for his head. The Bishop of Rochester, Most Reverend Michael Nazir Ali, whose father had converted to Christianity from Islam, said the Archbishop's statement was unacceptable. Although the majority of Muslim clerics have chosen to remain silent, a Muslim MP also lashed out at the Archbishop. Most Muslims in the street, especially women, declared that they had rather live in a Britain with its secular laws than under sharia in any form. One wonders why the Archbishop had not anticipated what the reaction to his suggestion would be. Dr Williams, for his part, conceded the "unclarity" of his statement and explained that he was trying to broach the topic of greater accommodation for minorities in British society.
Dr Williams has always been outspoken on issues concerning church and state. Although I am a lapsed Anglican, I still follow issues in the Anglican Church with keen interest and I have often found myself erring on the side of the Archbishop's warmer and more reasonable theology over against the more conservative side. But having lived in this country for some time, even I would say that he may have spoken out of turn. If the Archbishop had made his comment before September 11, there would have been an outcry, but to voice such a thing after the events of the last eight years was careless. What it has done is force out latent resentments and fears, so that some Muslims fear a backlash.
Today if a Christian, in one of his more atavistic moments, describes England as "our country" I will easily pardon him. Despite the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and July 7, 2005 in London, and the general terrorist threat, Britain remains one of the freest countries in the world, partly because of the separation of church and state. Muslims are free to have to own institutions, to build their mosques and even to amplify their calls to prayer. But a British Christian in Saudi Arabia may not even hold a private fellowship meeting with other Christians, let alone build a church.
Let us not build another Arabia, or even another Nigeria, in England's green and pleasant land. I am very happy to live by the British law and life as it is, as I believe the majority of Muslims in this country are also. Why go to the trouble of time-travelling to the fusty Middle Ages?
Adebowale Oriku is a freelance writer living in England.
JonathanR, the arrangements between the Pope and various Crown Heads of Europe grew out of nothing more than a sordid squabbling over spoils. you’re trying to ennoble a Mafia like accommodation about who gets to exploit what. I’m sure you can comb the church record for some small glimmer of light in the gloomy twilight of what was Catholic Europe; but the fact remains, the rights of individuals rose as the stranglehold Christianity had on Europe waned. And the ones who got it right, the people who finally brought sanity to the world, were the founders of American democracy. I forgot if you told me where you are from, but if you live in Europe, Canada, or Australia; then you live in a democracy that exists because of what happened in America 230 years ago.
JonathanR said: “What the Enlightenment tried to do was to separate religion from many of the great ideas conceived within its context.”
So, you’re suggesting that the enlightenment was an anti-religious conspiracy?
JonathanR said: “Liberal democracy can only be conceived by a culture that had undergone a separation of church and state, as it was in the Middle Ages.”
Actually, Liberal democracy was conceived by a culture that was separated from Europe by 3,000 miles of ocean. People in the American colonies got used to thinking for themselves. If Catholicism really was such a wellspring of freedom, as you say it was, then democracy wouldn’t have had to be born so far away from this supposed source.
“JonathanR, there were competing religions all over the American colonies. That was the point.”
Many of the competing religions were there trying to escape the established religions in Europe...established religions that became “established” after the Reformation and Westphalia. My point is that such a condition was not necessary for the separation of church and state, because the separation was the default position in Western Europe for centuries before the Reformation.
“You asked what democracy had to do with the separation of church and state. The answer is, everything.”
No, for the idea of a separation of church and state has proven it can exist without liberal democracy. (BTW, in Greek and Roman republics, religion was still a state matter.) I’m more than willing to wager that it was the other way around. Liberal democracy can only be conceived by a culture that had undergone a separation of church and state, as it was in the Middle Ages.
“Wasn’t it the rediscovery of Pagan philosophers that led to the Enlightenment?”
That was the Renaissance. What the Enlightenment tried to do was to separate religion from many of the great ideas conceived within its context. For example, all these talks of “rights” drew from Christian, not pagan, culture. And de Vitoria, while influenced by Aquinas, came to prominence because his work figured prominently in the conflict between Pope Paul III (and one of his bishops, de las Casas) and Emperor Charles V over the treatment of indigenous populations in the New World.
I would like to commend Adebowale on a nice piece. However, I had restrain myself on commenting on the opinion of the Archbishop which has unsettled quite a number of nerves. Since I have not read his address, I’ll just say that the Archbishop is entitled to his opinion, just like any citizen.
Shari’a is more of a political problem than a juridical one in Nigeria. Mr Obasanjo was expected to be a stooge of the North. However, he turned out to be very independent, with a strong character. The North suddenly felt ‘marginalized’, sought an escape route and Shari’a came in handy. Now that power has returned to the North, Shari’a will no longer be a problem. Although the northern Muslims still practice it, most cases have been turned down on appeal.
Shari’a seems to be selective, at least in Nigeria. Those who have been given sentences seem to be the poor, while the political elites go scoot free. The EFCC, a govt agency, recently arrested some past governors. One of them happens to be a governor from the North. Some of us had expected that since he was one of the champions of Shari’a he would have moved to be tried under that law. Of course we were disappointed, his case is still in the secular court. Shari’a in Nigeria, as Adebowale noted is more of a political issue.
JonathanR. said: “For one thing, “the tendency of established religions to exclusivity” would not be an issue unless there were various competing religious identities.”
JonathanR, there were competing religions all over the American colonies. That was the point. They were trying to find a way to unify 13 states and many different sects. Also, there were two aspects of the church/state question. One was to protect small sects from larger ones. The second was to protect Democracy, and therefore the individual, from religion. The founding fathers weren’t that far removed from the madness of the witch hunts. In his youth, Benjamin Franklin actually spent an afternoon with Cotton Mather. They didn’t agree on much but they were civil to one another. You asked what democracy had to do with the separation of church and state. The answer is, everything.
JonathanR said: “The infighting of Popes and Kings, for example, would produce a Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, whose ideas on rights would make him one of the first to ever articulate the notion of universal human rights”
Francisco de Vitoria was influenced by Aquinas who, in turn, was influenced by Aristotle. Wasn’t it the rediscovery of Pagan philosophers that led to the Enlightenment?
“JonathanR, I think your confused. The idea of the separation of church and state came from the tendency of established religions to exclusivity.”
Not quite. For one thing, “the tendency of established religions to exclusivity” would not be an issue unless there were various competing religious identities. The notion of “established religions” would not come about in Western Europe until the Reformation and Westphalia (cuius regio, eius religio). As such, church-state separation was, by default, the only mode of relations between the temporal authorities and the Church in Western Europe.
“Also, the men who wrote our constitution were products of the enlightenment. I doubt if they took much from the gratuitous infighting of popes and kings.”
An Enlightenment whose best parts were simple re-wordings of past philosophies. The infighting of Popes and Kings, for example, would produce a Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, whose ideas on rights would make him one of the first to ever articulate the notion of universal human rights two centuries before Locke and Jefferson. (His works would be instrumental in the Laws of the Indies, which forbade the enslavement of native colonized populations among other things.)
“And, if the ideas of the founding fathers would be so ‘old hat’ to Gregory VII why didn’t he come up with democracy. “
I thought we were talking about Church and State? Those were the ideas I was referring to. Democracy had nothing to do with it.
“By the way, when do you plan to tell me all the good things about the Middle Ages?”
I was doing just that. But if you cannot wrap your modernist mind around it, well, it can’t be helped I suppose. For an American who cannot look back beyond 1776 without the arrogance of exceptionalism, explaining it would be pointless.
JonathanR, I think your confused. The idea of the separation of church and state came from the tendency of established religions to exclusivity. In those days, in fact, the Evangelicals were the strongest advocates of the separation of church and state. They had the most to lose without it. Also, the men who wrote our constitution were products of the enlightenment. I doubt if they took much from the gratuitous infighting of popes and kings. And, if the ideas of the founding fathers would be so ‘old hat’ to Gregory VII why didn’t he come up with democracy. Just think, we would have had democracy for almost 1,000 years. By the way, when do you plan to tell me all the good things about the Middle Ages?
“Perhaps you could tell us what the good parts of the Middle Ages were.
Separation of church and king isn’t separation of church and state. That required Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Franklin. “
Well, separation of church and king would be the Middle Age equivalent, since there would be no “state” as folks like Madison, Washington and Jefferson would recognize until the Treaty of Westphalia after the 30 Years War (which, by the way, would be another requirement if you are to accord such a narrow definition to the separation of church and state). But even then, the long-running conflict between the Church and the kings of Europe (as opposed to the co-opting of religion by worldly authorities elsewhere in the world from Byzantium to East Asia) would provide the fertile ground from which Washington, Jefferson and Madison would spring from. Heck, if it weren’t for the popularity of “altar-throne” regimes in Western Europe after Westphalia (and the Reformation in general), I highly doubt Washington, Jefferson and Madison’s ideas on church and state would be considered revolutionary. Pope Gregory VII would’ve probably considered their ideas on the subject to be old hat.
JonathanR. said: “Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine when the old cliche of the Big Bad Middle Ages makes an appearance.”
Perhaps you could tell us what the good parts of the Middle Ages were.
Separation of church and king isn’t separation of church and state. That required Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Franklin.
“Why go to the trouble of time-travelling to the fusty Middle Ages?”
Err...the Middle Ages aren’t that bad. Separation of church and state began in the Middle Ages. Why do you think those kings and Popes fought each other to the extent that they did?
Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine when the old cliche of the Big Bad Middle Ages makes an appearance.
I really do not understand why Archbishop should go to that extend of making such outrageous and unacceptable comment. WHY!!! Can someone please share some light in this matter – this comment make me sad within. Why can’t Muslim people in UK embrace there Religion?
I think the Archbishop was out of line. I don’t want Sharia law in America, or in England, or even in my native Iran. As a theologically liberal, but traditional and observant Muslim, all I really want and need is the right to pray, fast, give alms, build a mosque etc. Nothing more than my free American fellow citizens and nothing less.
The Archbishop tried to speak for me, and that was wrong. Nobody has the right to speak “for Muslims”, not the Archbishop, not Bin-Laden, not me. I speak for my self as a free man.
The Archbishops words were perhaps imprudent- considering the response of the media, but they were not unfounded and I cannot condemn him. The media’s response in some cases was very blamable: the media has often been known to quote out of context and to misinterpret quotes, particularly from religious leaders. The misinterpreted quotes from Pope Benedict early last year, as well as in Australia the misquoted (yet somewhat more controversial) Sheik El Halilli. Far from expressing a desire for sharia law to be implemented the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury was merely observing that it ought to be considered, as Jewish people can be judged under Jewish law. I am not an Anglican, but it is not fair to take any one out of context. The whole speech can be seen in on the webpage below: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575
Well said.
Page 1 of 1 :