Controversy has raged in the English press over what the media and some church members thought the Archbishop of Canterbury had said in a foundation lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice.
The lecture was to set the scene for a series, addressed to judges, barristers and other legal scholars. A response to a question posed by a BBC presenter in a lunch time interview earlier in the day of the lecture sparked a furor over what the Archbishop was suggesting in relation to Shari' a and English Civil law. The series entitled Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective was intended to offer a space for serious and considered discussion on what it means to have within society "the presence of communities which, while no less 'law-abiding' than the rest of the population, relate to something other than the British legal system alone." The text of the actual speech can be found here
A subsequent statement from the Archbishop's office seeking to correct misconceptions and picking up on aspects of the BBC interview can be found here In the light of the hostile reaction NIFCON contact, The Revd Yazeed Said, offers an interesting non English perspective in defense of the lecture.Finally the Archbishop referred to the controversy in his Presidential Address to the opening of General Synod