Wrong, Dr Williams, but the debate is right

[...] Even if we accept, as Dr Williams seems glibly happy to do, that there is no appetite among British Muslims for the more famously brutal applications of sharia as practised in countries such as Saudi Arabia, it is quite wrong to suggest that God's word could be equivalent to parliamentary statute in regulating a diverse society. Dr Williams can believe that if he wants to and the law protects his right to express that view.

But for him to continue enjoying that freedom - and, crucially, for others to be free to disagree - secular law must have unequivocal primacy. Sometimes, religious believers will be forced to choose whom they obey, a religious judge or a civil one. They must choose the latter every time. Democracy and the rule of law demand it.

So Dr Williams is right on some of the detail (working towards a better understanding of sharia to help Muslims integrate) and wrong on the big picture (deferring to God's law over man's). That leaves the third question: was he right to say anything on this subject at all?

The passions unleashed by Dr Williams's intervention prove that the debate is necessary. It is telling that politicians of all stripes hurried to oppose the archbishop, not by rebutting his view, but on the grounds that its mere expression in public was divisive. In other words, the secular establishment is afraid of debating Dr Williams on his own terms. Showing shrewd judgment and cowardice in equal measure, Westminster chose collectively to keep secret its feelings about Islam, God, the church and the state. Politicians running scared from a debate is evidence that it is necessary.

Rowan Williams's position as head of the established church gives him a double advantage in inaugurating that debate. First, he is a Christian. Had a high-profile imam made the same point, he would have been swiftly denounced as a dangerous extremist. No one could make the same claim of the archbishop, although some hysterical commentators have come close. Second, his church enjoys unique privileges in law. The Queen is its nominal head. So Dr Williams is speaking from a position of power. He is not pleading for special favours for his own followers. He can rightly claim to be advancing a purely academic argument from a position of relative neutrality: a believer but not a Muslim, a figure of the establishment but not a politician. For all the controversy, it is perhaps appropriate that the tricky relationship between divine and secular authority in Britain be explored by the successor to Thomas à Beckett. Read more
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