The secretary of the Lawyers’ Secular Society, solicitor Charlie Klendjian, spelled out on Monday what the protest was about:
We know the Law Society practice notes don’t change the law. We know that sharia law hasn’t been “enshrined” into English law. Well not yet, anyway.
… we know and we accept that people can be as nasty, racist, homophobic, sectarian, bigoted and sexist as they want in their wills, as long as they provide for their dependants, because it’s their money and they can do what they want with it. This is what we call in English law “testamentary freedom”. It’s an established and reasonably uncontroversial feature of our legal system. We’re not here today campaigning against testamentary freedom, or to legally force people to give money to people that they don’t like.
So when the Law Society president calls critics of its sharia guidance “ill informed” – in typical sneering lawyerly fashion, I might add – I respond that no, Mr. President, we are not “ill informed”. It is you, Mr. President, that is ill informed: you are ill informed about the harm sharia law manages to do even though it is not part of our formal legal system, and it is you, Mr. President, that is ill informed about the threat sharia law poses to everyone’s fundamental civil liberties.
The Law Society, of which he is a member, should be leading the criticism of encroaching sharia norms, he argued. But failing that
is it really too much to ask that they just keep their mouth shut and not actively give sharia law credibility and respectability? Is that really too much to ask of the representative body for my profession? Is that really too much to ask of a secular Law Society within a secular democracy which has a secular legal system?
I enjoyed his channelling of Ronald Reagan at the end of his speech. That must have been fun to write and to say.
Carl Gardner2014-04-30T00:32:06+00:00
[…] can listen to Charlie Klendjian’s speech here (Soundcloud) and you can read it […]
This is an interesting debate of UKs testamentary freedoms. It all goes awry when the muslims are involved, innit? Let’s see what happened the last time the spotlight was put on the muslim “other”: illegal wars in Iraq AND Afghanistan (as recent revelations show more clearly), violation of the Libya resolution, war porn (Abu Ghraib, etc), normalisation of a state of terror (aka emergency laws), privacy genocide by GCHQ… meanwhile, bankers get away with fraud, theft and deceit while getting bailed out at the expense of the people.
Muslims are targeted so that hard won freedoms of ordinary people can be taken away (obligingly). Easy peasy. Blame the sand [deleted – Carl]* and mainstream opinion will follow.
The remarkable tolerance of diversity that makes the UK is being primitivised, but that is not matter because it is axiomatic in most mainstream circles that the trajectory is toward progress.
None of this should be surprising. Neoliberalism as an economic policy is known and documented to bring out the worst in humanity, and the economic edifice of the UK is still that ‘vice are virtues’, and the rich North is no exception.
Instead of asking muslims to integrate (code for accept our illegal wars, torture, etc), perhaps it is time to look at what de facto liberal secular values are about. If one is being real about muslims then it is important to be real about a usurious rich North.
The point about difference is that diversity is response to uncertainty. And if diversity is killed, well then interconnectedness lets us all go down… respect for diversity would strengthen the legitimacy of the state and its laws, and not necessarily undermine it.
But as Baronness Warsi has said, Islamophobia passes the polite dinner conversation test… so I guess all is as it should be…
*Sorry, Riaz: there are some words I don’t want to appear on this site. – Carl
[…] had no effect on the Law Society. (You can listen to LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian’s speech here and you can read it […]
[…] had no effect on the Law Society. (You can listen to LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian’s speech here and you can read […]
[…] sharia wills guidance” (includes LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian’s speech audio and PDF), 29 April […]
[…] Lane, London, alongside a number of human rights campaigners. Charlie Klendjian’s speech is here (audio) and here […]
[…] In April I spoke/shouted at a large protest outside the Law Society’s offices in Chancery Lane alongside human rights and women’s rights campaigners, including the veteran troublemaker Peter Tatchell. You can read my speech here and you can listen to it here. […]