FactCheck: is sharia law a 'recipe for chaos'?

The background

The Archbishop of Canterbury ignited headlines yesterday with a lecture in which he called for aspects of sharia law to be adopted in Britain. "What a burkha," screeched The Sun.

Dr Rowan Williams' speech took a far more measured tone, talking of the uncertainty about what "degree of accommodation the law of the land can and should give to minority communities with their own strongly entrenched legal and moral codes".

This wasn't a call for sharia law - which at its extremes can include stoning and whipping - to be adopted wholesale, but as Williams told the BBC yesterday: "Certain conditions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system."

The government was quick to quash the idea, however, saying that British law applied to all people equally and that two systems of law couldn't run together.

But England has a common law system, with rulings and principles created over the ages, rather than a rigid, enshrined constitution.

Is there really no room within this for alternative law systems?

The analysis

Religious councils already exist in Britain - there are a number of sharia councils and Roman Catholic ecumenical councils that make judgements on religious matters.

The Beth Din, or Jewish courts, have existed for centuries.

David Frei, Registrar at the London Beth Din, stresses that the court operates within, and according to, UK civil law rather than as a replacement.

The court performs around 130-140 Jewish divorces a year. These are necessary if either of the parties wants to get remarried in a synagogue.

But the couple must also get a civil divorce to legally dissolve their marriage, and would be free to remarry in a civil ceremony without the Jewish divorce.

As well as advising on rituals and conversions to Judaism, the court can also offer binding arbitrations in civil disputes.

There are other examples of British law comfortably accommodating aspects of other religious laws, such as the ruling in the Seventies that Sikhs could wear turbans rather than motorcycle helmets.

More recently, the government has altered stamp duty regulations to avoid sharia mortgages - which involve two transfers of property - being liable for the tax twice over.

Russell Sandberg, at Cardiff University's Centre for Law and Religion, said the idea you couldn't run two systems of law was "completely wrong".

"It's been the case for more than a hundred years that voluntary and religious groups are able to operate their own laws as long they're not incompatible with the laws of the country," he said.

This isn't to say that all aspects of sharia law could be incorporated into British law (something the Archbishop acknowledged).

As the prime minister's spokesperson pointed out yesterday, the government's general position was that sharia law "could not be used as a justification for committing breaches of British law".

In addition to the common-law tradition, the likes of the Human Rights Act, which enshrines principles such as freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, can throw up further issues of interpretation with regard to religious or existing laws.

Last year Catholic adoption agencies were denied an opt-out from anti-discrimination rules that would force them to consider gay couples as adoptive parents, although they were given 21 months to adapt to the new rules.

FactCheck rating: 4

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The sources

Archbishop's Lecture - Civil and Religious Law in England: a religious perspective, Thursday 07 February 2008
Question Time
Afternoon press briefing from 7 February 2008, 10 Downing Street
Centre for Law and Religion
Hansard: 18 Dec 2006 : Column WA231

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