The adoption of some aspects of Islamic sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable", the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Dr Rowan Williams said there was a place for finding a "constructive accommodation" in areas such as marriage - allowing Muslim women to avoid western divorce proceedings.
Other religions enjoyed such tolerance of their own laws, he pointed out, but stressed that it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen.
He said it would also require a change in perception of what sharia involved beyond the "inhumanity" of extreme punishments and attitudes to women seen in some Islamic states.
Dr Williams told BBC Radio 4's The World At One: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, 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.
"We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justifying conscientious objections in certain circumstances."
He added: "There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law.
"It would be quite wrong to say that we could ever license a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general.
"But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them. In some cultural and religious settings they would seem more appropriate."
He said people needed to look at Islamic law "with a clear eye and not imagine, either, that we know exactly what we mean by sharia and just associate it with ... Saudi Arabia, or whatever".
Rowan Williams is without doubt the worst Archbishop of Canterbery in living memony. We already have a situation in Islamic countries such as Kuwait and Malasya where the decisions of the civil courts on divorce, blasphemy and conversion to a non-Islamic faith have been overruled by the religious courts and that must not be allowed to happen in this country where the law of the land has already been hampered by an unholy alliance of New Labour fascists, EU directives, the PC brigade, European Courts and the loathsome 1998 Human Rights Act.
I am not bigoted against al-Islam in general, but I must also be objective and state that 'modern' Islam as enforced by far too many so-called Muslims is as intolorant, barbaric and inhuman as medieval Christianity and until the Islamic world realises this and makes a real and concerted effort to reform their attitudes towards each other and the 'people of Kuff' (non-believers), we non-Muslims should ourselves be as uncompromising towards their own uncompromising bigotry, violence, racism and intolorance.
I am not bigoted against al-Islam in general, but I must also be objective and state that 'modern' Islam as enforced by far too many so-called Muslims is as intolorant, barbaric and inhuman as medieval Christianity and until the Islamic world realises this and makes a real and concerted effort to reform their attitudes towards each other and the 'people of Kuff' (non-believers), we non-Muslims should ourselves be as uncompromising towards their own uncompromising bigotry, violence, racism and intolorance.
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