By IRNA
London : The Islamic Center of England has welcomed the statement by Archbishop of Canterbury on need to accommodate some aspects of Sharia law for the country’s two million Muslim population.
Like Rowan Williams, the center said it agreed that there is one single body of law that applies equally to all citizens in the United Kingdom.
“We share his concern that the law is not always sensitive to how it may impact Muslims and we also maintain that certain aspects of Islamic law could be constructively accommodated with the law of the land,” it said.
As an example, the London center said informal Sharia courts have been one of the tools to reclaim the rights of the downtrodden women in the traditionally male-dominated communities in the UK.
“In the past, the secular courts have proven unable to reclaim the rights of these women, which explains why so many women continue to lodge their cases at informal Sharia councils, despite the fact that their rulings are non-binding,” it said.
On Thursday, the archbishop spoke of the need “to tease out some of the broader issues around the rights of religious groups within a secular state” and was used sharia as an example.
But his call provoked a wave of hysterical misinterpretation in the media and elsewhere, with the popularist Sun newspaper going as far as describing the spiritual leader of the Church of England as a “dangerous threat to the nation.”
The Islamic Center, established to cater for the growing needs of the Shia community, reiterated that Muslims respect the laws of Britain and “do not plan to impose Islamic law on the non-Muslims or even on Muslims who do not wish to observe such laws.”
“Legal systems that are alien to Muslim culture have proven inadequate and impotent in dealing with such matters as divorce and financial disputes among Muslims,