Archbishop of Canterbury GOES OFF THE DEEP END

I always thought that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the head of the the Church of England. But the more I read about Rowan Williams the present Archbishop I get the feeling I might have been wrong, because he sounds more like an Ayatollah than an Archbishop. This "man of God" is constantly taking the side of Radical Islam over western thought and progress.

Now this nut Job has suggested that Britain should introduce Shara law? Which parts I wonder....the laws about the "dhimmification" of other religions? Maybe he means more Honor Killings..or stonings and amputations maybe its just the way countries who follow Sharia law feel about terrorism and Israel? It is clear that this guy has gone off the deep end:

A batty old booby, but dangerous with it Dr Rowan Williams likes to give the impression that he is a liberal-minded Archbishop of Canterbury.

Who would have guessed that there lurks beneath that genial, bearded exterior a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary who wants to take Britain back to medieval times?

His amazing suggestion in a BBC interview yesterday that sharia law should be adopted in Britain marks a gigantic step backwards.

We have one law in this country. It may be based on Christian values, but it is a secular law upheld and interpreted by secular judges.

To have produced a single body of law, observed and respected by the great majority of people, is one of the triumphs of our civilisation.

Many centuries ago the Church had to accept that it should play no part in the administration of worldly justice. Its role is to appeal to our consciences - not to arbitrate in our everyday disputes, or to apportion guilt and pass sentences.

Yet it is exactly such powers that the mild-mannered and apparently rational Dr Williams envisages sharia courts enjoying in this country.

Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in sharia courts.

There would, he suggests, be a "right of appeal" to a secular court if those involved did not like sharia justice.

Really? Would a young Muslim woman who had been refused a divorce in a sharia court be able to seek a second opinion?

How can a reputedly highly-intelligent man and self-proclaimed liberal hold such antediluvian opinions?

Let us try to follow his batty logic. He starts from the position that we live in a "fragmented society". That is sadly true, after four decades of multiculturalism.

In Dr Williams's view, one of the reasons for this fragmentation is that some Muslims do not relate to the British legal system - or, to put it in Rowan-speak, which is like wading though cold porridge with a lead weight attached to one's feet: "What we don't want is a stand-off where the law squares up to people's religious consciences."

But there are lots of non-Muslims in this situation, and they are not encouraged to set up their own courts.

For example, many Roman Catholics regard abortion as a form of murder.

This belief entitles them to abjure abortion themselves, but not to treat women who have abortions as though they are murderers.

They are free to try to change the law if they wish, and some are doing so, but they are not at liberty to create courts in which Catholic doctrine replaces the law of the land.

Many of us in fact object very strongly to various laws - I certainly do - but we do not suggest we should set up courts that embrace and propagate alternative measures of right and wrong.

When Dr Williams says that the argument that "there's one law for everybody ... I think that's a bit of a danger", he is talking dangerous, reactionary nonsense.

One secular law for everyone, evenly applied and without discrimination, is the mark of a fair society.

And, of course, his prescriptions would have exactly the opposite effect to that which he says he wants.

Far from increasing social cohesion, separate sharia courts would be resented by the non-Muslim majority, and they would encourage Muslims to entrench themselves further as a distinct social and cultural group, not only with their own religious values but also with their own legal means of enforcing those values.

Sharia law, in fact, would be liable to deepen the kind of "hostility" which Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, recently suggested Christians encounter in some Muslim areas.

It would almost certainly exacerbate divisions, not lessen them.

Dr Williams tried to suggest in characteristically convoluted language yesterday that he and the Bishop of Rochester are on the same side of the argument.

They are in diametric opposition. I accept that for many Muslims in this country sharia offers a code for living, just as, for some Christians, "the Christian way" shows them how to conduct their lives.

But it is one thing to use sharia - the teachings of the Koran and the practice of the prophet Mohammad - as a kind of personal guide, quite another to employ it as the basis of what would soon become an alternative legal system.

Dr Williams was good enough to say that he does not recommend sharia law where it might lead to "intensifying oppression inside a community."

He is not in favour of women being stoned to death for adultery, as happens in a few Muslim countries where sharia law is applied in its most extreme form. I suppose we should be grateful for that.

But once sharia courts were set up here, it would be difficult for the archbishop or anyone else to ensure that judgments were not handed out that were at odds with the concept of justice enshrined in our secular legal system.

We could write off Dr Williams as a silly old booby who, like some other supposedly clever men, is in the habit of digging a hole in the wrong place, and then of continuing to dig all the way to Australia.

But he is the Primate of the Church of England, and will be taken seriously in some quarters, even though politicians from Gordon Brown to the LibDem leader Nick Clegg have already taken exception to what he said.

Muslims of an extremist hue will draw comfort from his prediction that sharia law in Britain is "unavoidable."

Moderate Muslims who had not expected that there would ever be sharia law in this country may think the idea practicable now that it has been endorsed by no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Raised as I was in an Anglican vicarage, it pains me to have to write about the senior cleric of my Church in such terms.

It pains me even more that the senior cleric of the Established Church should be advocating sharia courts, which would deepen the already serious cultural divisions in our country, besides discriminating against women and undermining the authority of secular justice.

Can he really have intended to do this? Who are the idiots advising him? What has happened to him?

He is right to respect Muslims for their devotion and their high moral standards, and I can understand that he wants to defend the rights of religious people in an irreligious age.

No doubt he means well, but history teaches us that good and well-meaning men who misuse their power can do a great deal of damage.

The Church accepted hundreds of years ago that it is not the proper role of religious figures to administer worldly justice and uphold religious law in place of secular law.

Dr Rowan Williams may think of himself as a progressive, liberal figure, and he has often been criticised for being a parody of a trendy archbishop, but the measures he proposes would take us back to the Middle Ages.