The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has given the first lecture in a series of discussions 'Islam in English Law' as part of the Temple Festival 2008.
In his lecture entitled 'Civil and Religious Law in England: a religious perspective', given at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday, Dr Williams looked at what space could be allowed alongside the secular law of the land for the legal provisions of faith groups.
He started by noting that "the issues that arise around what level of public or legal recognition, if any, might be allowed to the legal provisions of a religious group, are not peculiar to Islam: while the law of the Church of England is the law of the land, its daily operation is in the hands of authorities to whom considerable independence is granted." The issue also arises in relation to Orthodox Judaism.
Dr Williams looked at some misconceptions about the nature and claims of sharia, including the fact that even in predominantly Muslim states there is some recognition of the Muslim's "dual identity, as citizen, and as believer within the community of the faithful".
"Sharia is not intrinsically to do with any demand for Muslim dominance over non-Muslims," he said. "Many Muslim jurists recognise "a degree of political plurality as consistent with Muslim integrity".
He went on to address some of the problems that arise in a secular legal framework when the full scope of social identities is taken into consideration.
"There is a recognition that our social identities are not constituted by one exclusive set of relations or mode of belonging" - either purely secular or purely religious.
"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," he said.
Dr Williams went on to examine three objections raised "when there is a robust appeal to the rightness of law of the land protecting individuals on the grounds of their religious identity and securing their freedom to fulfil religious duties".
The first objection is "that it leaves legal process (including ordinary disciplinary process within organizations) at the mercy of what might be called vexatious appeals to religious scruple". This, he argues, suggests that there "needs to be access to recognised authority acting for a religious group" to help determine "the relative seriousness of conscience-related claims". This would need to hold as much for Muslims, as for other religious groups.
