I suppose Ash Wednesday and Lent and all that has been keeping the Pope occupied, so it has been up to the Church of England to fill in with the assorted dumbass remarks this week.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has put everybody’s panties in a wad with his statement that it will be "unavoidable" that Sharia law will have to be accepted in the U.K. As is the case throughout Europe, there are more and more Muslims emigrating to Britain. The Archbishop, Dr. Rowan Williams, told a BBC reporter that he thinks incorporating elements of Sharia into the legal system would help Muslims feel more a part of British society by not forcing them to choose between religion and state.
Well, didn’t THAT set off a shitstorm! I can see where Williams was trying to go with this — he was trying to suggest that private courts using some parts of Sharia law become available to settle business disputes and other intra-community arguments. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in the U.K. and in the U.S., for example, operate their own rabbinical courts that adjudicate divorces, personal disputes, and matters of religious doctrine. But in the process of talking about the idea, what he managed to say was that one should not have to choose between one’s religious beliefs and a "universal" law, and that’s what has everybody pissed off. That he said it in the context of Sharia law, which grants few legal rights to women and is notorious for harsh corporal punishments and death sentences only makes things worse. Oh, and then there’s that whole "multiculturalism" and "PC" argument. AND that he’s talking about freedom-hating bomb-throwing A-rabs. Any way you look at it, he should have kept mum about the whole thing, because he’s got liberals, conservatives, Christians and Muslims all up in arms. His Holiness would be proud.
MEANWHILE…N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham (the #4 guy in the CofE), is trying to bump up his GDI to 100,000,000 with his latest set of remarks about "heaven" Seems he’s more of a Rapture sort of fellow than the sort who think heaven is like those Philadelphia Cream Cheese ads, but sort of in reverse. It’s the "saved" people who will be up and running around when Jesus gets back, and he’ll be putting all of you to work. This hasn’t gone over too well with some of his parishioners, but, as always, what the guy with the collar says is right and they’re wrong…or so says the guy with the collar. The amount of mental energy that has to go in to thinking up all this bullshit is simply astonishing.
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