Academics push to merge Shariah and English Law

Is a clash looming between the laws of the West and Islam? In the wake of 9/11, commentators such as Samuel Huntington have spoken of a conflict between an economically powerful but increasingly amoral West, and a resurgent and moralistic Islam.

There is much at stake. Can a state such as Turkey, overwhelmingly Muslim, join the EU and become party to international human rights provisions? Given that Islamic councils have been established in England, should they be recognised by English family law?

And what of the exercise of human rights in the context of combating terrorism? Is any dilution of human rights norms justified for the protection of the public and of national security? “The rules of the game have changed,” Tony Blair famously said after the London bombs. This seemed to signal a change in policy on human rights, from which Muslims – here and abroad – would be the most likely to suffer.

But everyone can feel victimised and resentful. All religions attach importance to certain rituals and sanctity to certain religious persons. How far should the law go in protecting such religious beliefs and ultimately religious feelings, and how far in protecting free speech? The Danish cartoons raised passions on all sides.

Sharp questions lead to sharp answers. In all our communities there is misinformation, ignorance and fear of that which is little known. Occasional suspicion readily deepens into a rut of distrust, which can lead to anxiety and antagonism; so ends all hope of understanding between communities and mutual appreciation.

Two organisations have come together to generate discussion with a quite different dynamic. The Temple Church in the heart of legal London and the Centre of Islamic and Middle East Law (CIMEL) at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London are sponsoring a series of lecture-discussions on Islam in English law. The sponsors are telling every ticket-holder that an important part of the series is the opportunity for people from different backgrounds to meet. “Please make the most of this opportunity, from this first evening, by introducing yourself to those sitting around you,” they say.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, launches the series this Thursday with a foundation lecture on civil and religious law in England. The discussions are part of the 2008 Temple Festival, a year-long mix of music, art, drama, history and law events to mark the 400th anniversary of James I granting the Inner and Middle Temples freehold of their land.

English law and Islamic law differ in principle and in application. English law has been shaped in large part by the principles and history of Christian culture, but acknowledges no duty of obedience to any revelation, scripture or doctrine ascribed to God. In current practice, it attends closely to the rights and freedoms of the individual and protects them against curtailment from the state or from corporate power.

It is the prime duty of all Muslims to follow, as much as they are able, the traditions of Islamic law, which include the principles imparted by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad. Islamic law has tended to protect and strengthen the community in which, it is intended, the individual can then live a devout, good and ordered life.

The English court system aims to free litigants – and especially, vulnerable litigants – from the pressure that people powerful in a local community can bring to bear; Islamic councils draw strength from the insights that local and personal knowledge can offer.

English family law does not accept the validity of decisions of the many Islamic councils that have grown up; there is vigorous debate as to whether it should. Intolerant actions of militant Islamists have affected the debate on the exercise of human rights – an issue behind the question of the validity or morality at Guantanamo Bay.

At times the two systems have seemed in direct conflict. In 2001, the European Court of Human Rights in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights declared that Islamic law “clearly diverges from convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervenes in all spheres of private and public life in accordance with religious precepts”.

The claim cries out for discussion. We too readily imagine two incompatible and impermeable systems of law squared up for conflict with each other. But it is a matter of genuine disagreement how wide or deep is the gulf between the two systems – and both are evolving.

The series on Islam in English law is not designed to reach clear, prescriptive answers to all the questions that its speakers will raise. It is meant to be a forum for the discovery, on all sides, of people, ideas and ideals that seem alien and threatening.

Last month, when Dr Williams spoke in the House of Lords on religious hatred and religious offence, he talked of an “argumentative democracy” in which, quite apart from the law’s sanction, public controversy should not be debased – or effectively silenced – by thoughtless and (even if unintentionally) cruel styles of speaking and acting.

The setting for the rest of the series is significant. The Temple Church was built in 1185 by the Knights Templar, who were vital in the Crusades to the viability of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. In past centuries it represented the gulf between Christendom and Islam; the sponsors are now using it to help to heal the divisions it was built to foster.

They have just installed a window in the church to mark the anniversary, bearing the motto of James I: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” That is what the sponsors, through honesty and courtesy and without delusion, hope to be.