As someone who read Dr Rowan Williams's controversial lecture, I was interested to see that Mahmud Al-Rashid has taken up the challenge of attempting to  tease out what might be required to reach a respectful accommodation of Sharia law within our system without compromising the overall principle of a single legal jurisdiction for all (see [2008] Gazette, 14 February, 4).


The suggestion of a regulatory authority for Sharia councils appears sensible and attractive, but still leaves us with major problems.



The Archbishop said that 'one of the most frequently noted problems in the law in this area, is the reluctance of a dominant rights-based philosophy to acknowledge the liberty of conscientious opting-out from collaboration in procedures or practices that are in tension with the demands of particular religious groups'.



To my mind a regulatory body would surely be required to apply equality legislation, some of which Sharia councils might find unacceptable. We would then have to either give up on the project, or negotiate privileges and immunities to accommodate the particular cultural/religious individuality.



That could scarcely be accommodated within the Archbishop's objective of promoting inter-faith and inter-community tolerance and understanding, unless one were also ready to cede to other groups a similarly individualised status. Thus, Catholic adoption agencies might again seek to exclude same-sex placements on grounds of conscience, and evangelicals opposed to 'Jerry Springer: the Opera' might have to be offered an acknowledgement and protection in relation to their honestly held convictions.



To refuse them would provoke precisely the kind of outrage at selective privilege that was widespread and at the heart of the tabloid response to the Archbishop's lecture.



The core problem, as the Archbishop rather obscurely identified, is that universal truths and universal rights are uncomfortable bedfellows (my analogy, not his). 



Martin Sewell, Gravesend