I don’t think Rowan Williams should resign as Archbishop of Canterbury. He is certainly a thoughtful, intelligent man who is a far better Christian leader than many we could imagine. I don’t even think he should apologise, because why force someone to apologise for opening a debate? Having said all that, I do think people should feel justifiably angry with what he’s done.
Let’s start with what he actually meant: that civil Sharia law courts (notwithstanding the complexity about what ‘Sharia’ actually means) should receive some sort of official recognition within the British legal system. Naturally, this doesn’t mean a lot of the nonsense which has been talked about in the juvenile press. But it is still fundamentally and absolutely unacceptable. The law must apply to everyone, equally, end of. To the extent that people can unofficially and voluntarily agree to be bound by separate codes, as long as it doesn’t involve a breach of the law, this is already the case. If two Muslims who are divorcing wish to abide by Islamic custom, they already can. To suggest that this needs to be integrated into the national law is just utterly wrong. Not surprisingly, the majority of British Muslims agree.
The real problem, of course, is that through wilful misinterpretation Rowan Williams has now unleashed a tremendous backlash against Islam which will be felt hardest by the British Muslims he was attempting to help. That may not be his fault, but it’s breathtaking that he doesn’t even seem to have considered the possibility.
But the underlying cause of all this nonsense is that the Archbishop – for all his intelligence – is simply incapable of understanding what a secular state means in the 21st century. He doesn’t get that religion does not belong as an arm of government, or the legal system, or anything else that isn’t entirely a private, voluntary association, with no special favours from the law. I suggest the following remedy to help him learn: strip the Archbishop of his legacy role within the secular state, kick his bishops out from the Lords and put the Church of England on an equal footing with everyone else.
The Internet was down yesterday, and so I was forced to turn to more inventive methods of time-wasting. These are very rough and ready, but I’m not a graphics person by any stretch of the imagination, so allow it:
Fight, fight, fight!
Inner turmoil?
This post, with the aid of the simple functional device of moving from the past to the present to the future, will describe events in a wholly narrative manner, lacking in-depth analysis, moving emotion or skillful prose. (As ever, you say…)
Yesterday, I made a gigantic leap forward in the pursuit of knowledge: I now know what Gordon Brown meant by post neo-classical endogenous growth theory. Aside from my tendency to want to substitute in erogenous for endogenous – which, to be fair, would be far, far more interesting – I feel this is a substantive achievement. Free free to grow now, post neo-classical economy. I give you my blessing. The other, rather disturbing feature of yesterday was the following exchange over dinner:
“Did you make it to the party in the end, then?” asks a stranger to my right. I look blank, and confused. “Eh? Party?” (The concept of parties is a difficult one to slot into the weekly essay cycle at the best of time, let alone parties I didn’t know I ever knew about.) “You know, for CUCA…” he says helpfully. CUCA, incidentally, is pronounced as in coo-ca. It’s a soothing sound, but it doesn’t help. “I’m sorry… CUCA? 
” I ask, confusion mounting in a little pile in my brain. The stranger next to me seems to realise the chance of an intelligent conversation is fast fading. “…the Cambridge University Conservative Association?”
I must admit, this threw me, and I may have slightly choked on my drink. Hopefully not rudely. The Conservative Association? How?! Either I have a Tory twin, or I have a rare variant of sleepwalking which also involves night-time political conversions. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
If I was a frequent attendant of the Conservative Association’s parties, of course, I might have been more comfortable with the task that befell me today: buying a bow-tie from Marks and Spencer. Let’s get this straight – I’m not a tie person. The only possible purpose of wearing a suit and a tie, to my mind, is to manoeuvre yourself to a position of power and wealth where you can return to jeans and t-shirts with impunity. Nevertheless, if the History Society dinner on Friday night requires a bow-tie of all things, I will accede. Just. Don’t push this.
Tomorrow’s Utopian Writing class won’t require ties, but I am rather apprehensive about the task as soon as I saw an e-mail with the phrase “two large pieces of coloured cardboard and a couple of large markers”. You just know what’s coming with that, don’t you? Presentations. Visual aids. Group work. All of the things you do in school to make essay-writing seems not so bad after all. You never know, though. It could be great, and the people themselves should be lovely. It just remains to be seen whether we’ll pull together to make good use of cardboard, markers and all the assorted paraphernalia. Maybe we should just wear ties.
Supervision soon! Last week’s essay was on the prosecution of witchcraft, which was fascinating and really good fun to do. To research and write about, that is. It wasn’t much fun to actually be a witch, but then, you already knew that, didn’t you?
Stephen Green is a very hard man to character assassinate: merely opening his mouth is practically equivalent to a character kamikaze already. Suffice to say, he was the main speaker in opposition to the motion that we should ‘separate God from the state’ at the Union last night, and he was on fine form in his self-appointed role as the human embodiment of the Daily Mail on steroids.
It’s slightly pointless to repeat his argument, but essentially:
1) Our society needs a god: either ‘God’, the Christian version, or some kind of man-made god-surrogate, or Allah, the god of Islam. (No, I’m not sure why it can’t be Zeus either.)
2) It’s silly to point out all the bad things in the Old Testament – sure, stoning women who are found not to be virgins on their wedding night might seem a bit harsh – but our society is full of nasty things too, like divorce and abortion.
3) In fact, more than silly, it’s downright dangerous to criticise the Old Testament because ‘it leads to the persecution of the Jews’.
4) We may be laughing at him now, but we won’t be laughing in 20-30 years time “when Islam takes over”. I have to agree that, yes indeed, when fundamentalist Islam takes over our country and re-creates the Taliban in Cambridgeshire, I for one will feel downright stupid for having opposed a religious state.
It goes on in this fashion, interspersed with Bible quotes, warnings about Islam and a very long list of exciting plans for the country, including: the death penalty, the criminalisation of homosexuality, the criminalisation of sex before marriage, repeal of the Human Rights Act, withdrawal from all UN charters, enforcement of blasphemy laws, the banning of abortion… etc.
I sense we might have actually won this debate 
The ’emergency debate’ was actually more interesting in a sense, on whether or not we should abolish inheritance tax. I started talking about this slightly too loudly beforehand, attracting the attention of a guy who promptly came and sat next to me and complained that tax rates were too high. (Even though he’s ‘an American for tax purposes’. Somehow, we ended up talking about unemployment benefit.) Anyway, once the debate started it turned out that after we’ve abolished one of the most conceptually positive taxes there is, we could either make up the money by ‘eliminating waste’ (as always) or ‘increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol’. Oh, so you’d replace a tax on the wealthy with a tax paid equally by everyone and especially burdensome on the very poor? After some enthusiastic shouting the noes won, thankfully.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the Daily Mail (or the Mail on Sunday, which pompous Hitchens should realise is the same damn thing) manages to break out of its never-ending cycle of immigrants, gay immigrants and gay immigrants on welfare to find something really new and imaginative to have a hissy fit about. Whilst dutifully shopping in Sainbury’s, I saw such an achievement on the Mail’s front page today:
Brown banishes 300-year-old tradition by removing Britannia from our 50p coin
Yes, apparently a redesign of our coins is an even more important threat to our lives than those benefit-cheating homo-migrants today. Accepting this, a sensible headline would have been Royal Mint redesigns coinage. But no. Moving on:
Gordon Brown’s campaign to promote British values was exposed as a sham last night after it was revealed he personally approved a decision to remove Britannia from the 50p coin. The patriotic symbol – based on a Roman goddess – will no longer be on any British coin for the first time in more than 300 years, as part of a redesign by the Royal Mint. An overhaul of all coinage in April, being billed as the most significant change to the currency since decimalisation, will see it replaced with a representation of modern Britain.
OK, OK, alright. Maybe it is necessary to spin a redesign of coins into an emotional outburst most befitting a toddler tantrum. In that case, I humbly suggest a different angle…
Gordon Brown’s bold defence of British values continued in earnest last night after it was revealed he personally melted down every last 50p coin featuring Britannia. The symbol – based on an Roman goddess – will finally be removed 300 years after European bureaucrats first insisted on imposing the pagan imagery on British coins. Although Britain’s money will remain decimalised – robbing British shoppers of their beloved shillings, farthings and bartered goods – the coinage will now at least depict a representation of modern Britain: village churches, white people and Henry VIII.
(Apparently, Phillipa thinks this blog has a ‘relaxed’ tone: this should put her right )
In amidst all this, I should really mention the funeral, which felt ‘right’ to me. My dad made a very good speech, there were some brilliant photos and lots of people came. I even learnt that my grandad had had a rather relaxed attitude to health and safety during his working life, which further adds to the feeling that I haven’t received my fair share of ‘practical skills’ genes.
P.S. I think it’s worth mentioning, and I quote from the Beast itself, “the traditional Britannia design and other traditional designs will return in future mint runs.”
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
