The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowlan Williams, recently proposed the United Kingdom to establish separate courts, based on Sharia Law, for British Muslims. He says it will promote “social cohesion” and will free Muslims from being forced to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty."

The archbishop’s rogue proposal and subsequent rationale should serve as a warning for all Western countries, including the United States, where immigration influx is challenging cultural identity.

In an interview with BBC News, Archbishop Williams nuanced his proposal by saying religious courts could limit themselves to civil judgments about marital and financial disputes, for example, and would not necessarily fall into human rights abuses. "Nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well."

His caveat is unconvincing on more than one level.

Apart from my incredulity regarding a Western country successfully moderating Sharia Law (especially given the contradicting interpretations of its various forms even among Muslim scholars), I find particularly disquieting the archbishop’s implied thesis that society cannot create a secular justice system that respects religious plurality and the rights of all of its citizens. It would seem the archbishop gives his blessing to the idea that a Western state is incapable of creating just laws applicable also to Muslims.

Archbishop Williams explained his view in this way: "[In the United Kingdom] there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts — I think that's a bit of a danger."

What? The very purpose of civil law is to order society for everyone. This order always implies freedom of religious practice. When civil law and religion are both based on truth, they are not in conflict. Good law makes possible the practice of good religion. If they clash, one is disordered, and should be amended.

Archbishop Williams is correct in alerting us to the danger of civil law that infringes on religious liberty, including a church’s right to regulate its internal affairs. But in the absence of such liberty, the solution is to rectify the civil system, not to set up separate religious courts.
Perhaps we can best understand the archbishop’s preference for parallel courts if we accept a Muslim worldview that Islam should control every aspect of society, including the courts and the halls of government. The archbishop’s implicit support for this Islamic tradition is consequence, I would suggest, of a false understanding of cultural inclusiveness. We should never accept traditions, even religious traditions, as good simply because they are different from ours, or because they have long been attributed to God’s will by some people.

Even further, if a cultural tradition is in conflict with the dictates of reason — like this example of suppressing a state’s right to certain independence from religious authority — it can’t be in accordance with God’s will and we do a disservice to its adherents by pretending it may be.
The object of true faith is one and the same as the creator of human reason.

When we deny this, or forget this, we open the door to fundamentalism and are left with nothing with which to defend against radical, pseudo-religious propositions.

Here is the crux of the issue, as I see it: if a Muslim in the United Kingdom is being forced to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty," as the archbishop has suggested, it is fair to conclude either a sector of Muslim culture in the United Kingdom or the British state itself is intrinsically flawed and should be changed.

Moderate Muslim scholars should be the first and loudest voices to reject the Anglican archbishop’s proposal as bad for Islam, bad for the United Kingdom and as a terrible precedent for the prospects of cultural integration worldwide.

God bless, Father Jonathan
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As soon as politics, for the sake of politics, becomes a society’s principle passion — its object of hope, its pearl of great price — that society has already subjected itself to a type of totalitarianism. Unwittingly, it has relinquished a citizen’s and a people’s privilege and responsibility of self-determination. It has bet the outcome of the common pursuit of happiness on the eventual good actions of chosen elite.

In this context of moderating, or of channeling, our expectations of politics and politicians, I find it helpful to remember often that Adolph Hitler was elected democratically. By force of personality, and by a sordid alignment of the political stars, he was able to manipulate the German electorate to put their trust and their fortune in him. On that fateful Super Tuesday, of sort, voters chose the easy way out of difficult times. They crowned an earthly messiah who in the subtlest of terms — at first — promised salvation here and now.

Then, as now, “change” and “hope” were in the air, and the effect on the voting public was hypnotic.

Our best defense against political hypnosis of this type is “contemplation.” This is the uniquely human activity of silent — yes, silent — reflection on existential questions including who we are (as individuals and as a nation), where we are going, and the best way to get there. Contemplation prepares the soul to recognize messages of real beauty, goodness, and truth. It also enables us to pick out the impostors along the way.

Contemplation and politics are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the contemplative man or woman is usually the most interested in social wellbeing and the most engaged in its pursuit. He sees politics as a means to prepare the human soul for more important activity (like loving and being loved), instead of as an end in and of itself. He sees the politician as a man or a woman called to collaborate in the ordering of society for the good of the human person, such that every citizen, buoyed first by the family and then by community organizations, may pursue and achieve his natural and supernatural ends.

The contemplative soul knows the answer to society’s ills will never be found in a single, earthly messiah. Instead, he looks for statesmen with a plan to assist people in helping each other.

I’m not making this stuff up, at least not altogether. A glance back at the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, of 2400 years ago, puts my thoughts into perspective. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that moral education should be the main purpose of the political community, as part of the broader ideal of an ordered society: “The main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions.”

To the Western ear, this political philosophy may evoke fears of government intrusion, of the legislation of morality. But understood properly, it is an invitation to flee from any politician who promises to build a society based on anything but the virtue and enterprise of its citizens. A candidate, who promises to make us happy by freeing us from moral restraints, by doing all the work for us, by being the biggest and best administrator of a nanny state, is in fact, promising “change” and “hope” that the contemplative person would reject instinctively as contrary to the recipe for human flourishing.

Contemplation brings peace and serenity in the face of political uncertainty. If politics is about the creation of an ordered society, where people can be good and moral, where families can flourish, and where local communities can solve their own issues, our job on Super Tuesday is less daunting than it may appear. We are simply looking for a candidate who can best remove obstacles on our path to finding our own solutions.

If that candidate doesn’t exist, the contemplative soul chooses the lesser of two, or three evils, and goes on with life, happily. After all, he knows no politician will answer for him the most important questions life poses, like who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there.

If this Tuesday is “super” because we can choose a president, then every day is “supreme” because we can always choose to love and be loved, to build a life on solid rock from the Supreme Father of the universe.

Let’s allow ourselves some silence – this Wednesday. We may end up with a better president for it, and even if we don’t, we will at least have scribbled on our souls the first draft of the virtue of contemplation.

God bless, Father Jonathan