02/07/2008

Archbishop of Canterbury says Sharia Law is Unavoidable in UK

This was a pretty shocking story, but a lot of the points Williams makes are actually important points. The problem, though, is that the kind of pluralism that makes his points at least halfway cogent is going to eventually be a problem for a lot of people. It will force a rethinking of exactly what a culture is, what race is, etc. I'm concerned that this will foment a rise in the popularity of racial supremacy or even racial separatist arguments. At least Muslims know that religion and civil law are inseparable. We have fooled ourselves in the west into believing in this thing called 'secularism' because we have defined Christian culture as "neutral." What is freedom? What is justice? What is vigilantism? What is "cruel and unusual"? What is equality? What is "reasonable" - all of these principles of law that we take to be bedrock are themselves embedded in a cultural and historical context. And as the context changes, there will be more problems with consensus. Democracy only accommodates pluralism to a certain point. A democractic society has to suppress certain worldviews while acting as though it does not. But once sufficient numbers of people embrace those worldviews, they see democracy as the true coercive creature that it is. Look at France. Is it really so easy to classify the ban on headscarves as anti-democratic? Perhaps it is the policy most preservative of democracy - it all depends upon your point of view, upon whether your father expects you to wear a headscarf.