Read the whole article here: Brown slaps down Archbishop's call for Islamic sharia law to operate in Britain| News | This is London

Keep in mind the Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior church official in the Church of England. I for one, am scared and worried.

In other news, the Nethlands just passed a law fobidding religious facial coverage in schools, public transport and workplaces (a total ban appeared incompatible with the constitution).

In parts of Belgium just wearing them on the street is enough to get a fine.

France even banned normal headscarfs from schools (I think that goes a bit too far).

We're gonna solve this problem. Public opinion is on your side. With a bit of luck the secularization of muslims will continue which will help also.

I can only laugh at this... (nervous laugh)

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Isn't this a reality already in Canada, not only for moslems but also for jews? Volontarily, off course. Maybe that is what the archbishop is getting at, it doesn't really tell in the article.

You appear to be misinformed regarding Canada.

Canada does not recognize Sharia Law in any way.

One political group in Ontario suggested the same thing that the Archbishop here stated several years ago but was shouted down pretty quick.

So we in the UK should ban Beit Din Courts? How about the Beit Din courts that operate in the US?

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"You believe what you want
I'll believe what I know"

Kevin Spacey Midnight in the garden of good and evil

Et lucis æterne beatitudine perfrui.

I think a lot of people have got the wrong end of the stick on this-he isn't calling for or approving Sharia Law but syaing that in certain areas-devorce, banking ect.-Sharia law could be used as Jewish Law is in there own devorce courts.

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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Art of War, Sun-Tzu, Chapter 2, Paragraph 6

"An eye for an eye makes everyone blind"-Gandi

I disagree completely with this church apparatchik.

There is no place in a modern secular society for any form of faith-based legal system.

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Saorsainn agus cha robh cho-bhann

As the article clearly says, the Beth Din courts are VOLUNTARY arrangements and only applicable in civil matters between private parties. It seems similar to mediation in American law. There are already similar voluntary Islamic arrangements as well.

But the Archbishop "declared that sharia and Parliamentary law should be given equal legal status so the people could choose which governs their lives." That means that Sharia would be codified as British law! You could chose which you followed in all ways, civil and criminal. There is a huge difference between voluntary mediation and actual legal status. The Archbishop is a downright dangerous man for suggesting that any religion should play a roll in the law. So many of his bishops have called for his resignation or come out against him that he has had to backtrack.

Bottom line for me is that if you choose to live in the UK, or the US or wherever you are choosing to follow their laws. Establishing a religious court system goes against bedrock principles of secular government so much that it would no longer be that same country anymore if it were implemented.

Whew ... the Archbishop really hasn't though this through very well at all.

Societies are formed on core common agreements and bonds of common thought. If people try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement, then there will be no society at all remaining, the result being discord and chaos.

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Around 200,000 Irish immigrants served in the Union and Confederate armies in the American Civil War, often forming their own regiments and, at times, fought each other. At Fredericksburg, the Union’s Irish Brigade faced the Irish McMillan's Guards of Cobb's 24th Georgia entrenched in a sunken road behind a stone wall. Ordered to make a suicidal charge, it became one of the most famous events of the Civil War. The re-enactment portrayed in the movie Gods and Generals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qVCxEupPag

The law should be equal to everyone within the same territory.

In the early Middle Ages, it was not always so. In the Germanic kingdoms that replaced the Roman Empire, those who had been Roman citizens usually got to keep Roman law, while the Germans lived under German law. This did not work out well and it did not take long before the legal systems were unified. It is the same with old English law, where Common law was the King's law and Equity was the chuch's law, but it merged into one legal system.

I would say we have already tried a system of different laws for people of different origin in Europe. It did not work out and was abandoned centuries ago. We should not go back to it.

One of the most important objects of the law is to make life foreseeable. As long as everyone lives by the same legal rules within the same territory, this object is fulfilled. It would not be if the legal rules could vary depending on what religion you would belong to.

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

I think the archbishop is a moron. The idea is ridiculous.

It truly frightens me to imagine a Britain where 'sharia' is considered equal to the rule of law. Interpretation and implementation of 'Sharia' is determined on a case by case basis by clerics. There is no consistency to it, none at all. One cleric can order the removal of an arm for stealing, while another cleric can order an execution for the same crime. It is a lynch mob run by fundamentalist clerics.

It is really a stretch to call sharia "law" at all. It certainly is not law by the western definition.

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"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to
change it." -- Barack Obama

Has anyone actually got the text of the speech anywhere ? so far all we've got is a lot of peope going on about what he is supposed to have said ? But what did he actually say ?

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

Funny - by the way: the turkish government expects from Germany, that turkishspoken schools and turkishspoken universities should be builded, because the integration of the Germans in Germany to the islamistic turkish culture is to slow. Indeed it's in the way, that in Berlin 94% of turkish people that live in the third or fourth generation in Germany are not able to speak german. All went to school, learned german in school, but their children don't speak german because they are never using it.

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Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt, quia ignoratio causae destituit effectum
Sir Francis Bacon

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sharia has nothing to do with christian faith. The idea behind this sytem is it, that a god-created right is directly spoken from people. This rights are not able to be evolved and developed. In democracies this is impossible, because the right is only speaken from men and not from god.

If someone has a good idea for rights he is always welcome - but laws in the democracy are always democratic and not for eternity. Religion is very important in the discussions about "What is right and what's is not right?" in the democracies - but in the end there is only one law for all people because all people are equal in the eyes of god. Cannot be that someone has more rights than others or less rights than others or other rights than others in the same community or nation. If someone likes the sharia then it's not a big problem to find countries like Saudi-Arabia or Iran to live in. There is no way of community between sharia and democracy - that's the problem. This has nothing to do with the christian faith but with a special kind of a muslim lifestyle (that lots of muslims themselves don't like!)

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Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt, quia ignoratio causae destituit effectum
Sir Francis Bacon

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
Antoine de Saint-Exupery