Archbishop of Canterbury advocates sharia for Britain.(UNITED KINGDOM)(Brief article)

LONDON -- On Feb. 7, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Church, said that Britain should allow Muslims to use sharia law alongside the British legal system. He said the introduction of sharia in family law was "unavoidable." Williams said Jews and Catholics also should be allowed to uses "plural jurisprudence" in matters of religious conscience; for example, Catholic organizations should be able to avoid laws banning discrimination against lesbians and gays.

There was a great outcry in the press and on the Internet denouncing the archbishop's idea. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the prime minister did not "welcome or support" the idea and that people in Britain would have to live according to British law.

There are 1.5 million Muslims in Britain, which has a population of 60 million. The archbishop said he wasn't advocating "extreme punishments" or "the attitudes to women" in some states that practice sharia.

Presumably Williams didn't want Muslim men to be their wives' guardians or to be able to divorce them by saying "I divorce you," three times, but what indeed did he mean?

--info from The New York Times, 2/8

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