Geebs wrote:
So why not ditch the whole fucking thing and use a proper legal system? There is NO ROLE for this sort of religious authoritarianism in modern society, not least because there IS NO GOD. We have a perfectly good secular system, thank you very much.
Honestly, your average religious work was pretty handy for advice on what not to eat to avoid food poisoning in the middle east a few centuries ago, but if you claim any intelligence at all, then you'd realize that the interpretation of religious dogma just leaves you with a) more dogma and b) the mass execution of heretics.
I completely agree that religious law is a crock of shit and that a moral philosophy and legal system based on real world constraints and empirical evidence etc is far superior.
That said, a couple of points:
1) the sort of sharia integration that williams is on about has nothing to do with authoritarianism. For one, it's a system which members of a community can participate in voluntarily. Secondly, these aren't laws about how to punish people, but rather on some subtleties of financial and marriage dealings.
2) there are thousands if not millions of muslims, living in the uk, who don't agree with you and I. They actually believe that there is some superbeing up there with a beard and who has dictated certain things to delusional men. They believe this with the core of their being, and it informs a massive part of their identity. This is a reality.
Now if the UK tries to force these people to abide by UK law (when it comes to these small financial/marriage matters), a few things happen:
1) it causes them stress, and further alienates them. Alienation is not a good thing.
2) they start to develop underground systems of arbitration and jurisdiction which are unmonitored (by an enlightened secular governing body).
