Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte – A joint activity with the Akademie für Wissenschaften und Literatur, Mainz and the Goethe-University, Frankfurt
John Witte, Jr. / Emory University (Atlanta/Georgia)
Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams set off an international firestorm on February 7, 2008 by suggesting that some “accommodation” of Muslim family law was “unavoidable” in England. His critics charged that England will be beset by “licensed polygamy,” barbaric procedures, and brutal violence against women if official sanction is given to Shari’a courts. But the Archbishop was not calling for the establishment of a parallel system of independent Muslim courts in England, and certainly not for the direct enforcement of Shari’a by English courts. He was, instead, raising a whole series of hard but “unavoidable” questions about marital, cultural, and religious identity and practice in Western democratic societies committed to human rights for all. Continue reading “Sharia in the West? What Place for Faith-Based Family Laws in Western Democracies? – Lunch Talk, Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, 5th December 2014, 13.00”
