Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and leader of the Anglican Church in England, said yesterday that Islamic rules are incompatible with Britain’s laws, which have developed over 500 years on the principles of a different culture.

He added that high levels of immigration from Muslim countries can “have an impact on the accepted pattern for choosing a partner, on assumed ages of maturity and sexual activity, and especially on issues of polygamy.”

Archbishop Welby’s comments, reported by Steve Doughty Social Affairs Correspondent for The Daily Mail, follow the release earlier this month of a highly critical Home Office report that said all couples marrying in mosques should also have to go through a legally-binding civil marriage ceremony to shield wives from injustices under sharia.

They also reverse the position taken by his predecessor Lord Williams, who, observed Doughty, backed incorporating sharia into the British legal system. Archbishop Welby set out his reasons why sharia should not win official status in a book, Reimagining Britain.

Archbishop Welby said in advance of publication that British law has “underlying values and assumptions” that come from a clearly Christian tradition. “Sharia law is not just about punishments,” he added. “It is something of immense sophistication, but it comes from a very different background of jurisprudence to the one from which British law has developed over the past 500 years.”

This is the law that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was referring to when he spoke of the Anglo-American legal heritage. From this heritage our colleague Mark Fitzgibbons noted, "it is the 17th century English experience of the tyrannical reign of Charles I, followed by clearer articulation of these principles in the 18th century, which made America what it is.

From the Puritan migration to America for religious liberty to the English Bill of Rights in 1689, we can see nearly all the core American principles that we might take for granted..."

The Archbishop said in his book that the arrival of large numbers of Muslims in Britain – there are thought to be 3.3 million there – has led many to challenge the values of the majority population. Among these are the right of people to choose their own husband or wife, and the need for monogamous relationships.

There are thought to be around 85 sharia tribunals in the UK. They settle disputes including divorce and business arguments among those willing to accept their jurisdiction.

“The problem is reimagining Britain through values applied in action can only work where the narrative of the country is coherent and embracing.” The Archbishop said: “Sharia, which has a powerful and ancient cultural narrative of its own, deeply embedded in a system of faith and understanding of God, and thus especially powerful in forming identity, cannot become part of another narrative.”

“Accepting it in part implies accepting its values around the nature of the human person, attitudes to outsiders, the revelation of God, and a basis for life in law, rather than grace, the formative word of Christian culture.”

While Archbishop Welby was sympathetic to the cultural confusion of Muslims living in the U.K., it was refreshing and frankly unusual to find a western Christian ecclesiastic who understands the role Islam and Sharia play in undermining Western Culture and the Enlightenment – and is willing to stand-up publicly for his own Judeo-Christian culture, heritage and values.

All too often this courage is lacking in American pastors and priests who have been blinded by what our recent article on the subject called The Dangerous Folly Of “Interfaith Dialogue” Between Christians And Muslims.

All too many American pastors, priests and ministers are like Texas pastor Bob Roberts, who came to Washington before for the National Prayer Breakfast to meet with one of his closest interfaith collaborators: Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah an 85-year-old Islamic scholar visiting from Abu Dhabi.

Roberts helped organize four hundred faith leaders to meet to “forge ties” between Muslims and evangelicals, but apparently chose to ignore the teachings of his friend the Sheikh.

As our friend Patrick Poole pointed out in a February 6, 2018 article for PJ Media, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah's past is no mystery to the State Department. For example, the Obama administration's State Department had to repeatedly apologize in May 2014 for promoting Bin Bayyah as a moderate. However, the Obama administration then implemented a full-court press with the U.S. media and the D.C. foreign policy "Smart Set" to rehabilitate the image of the Mauritanian cleric.

Clearly, as a senior cleric of International Union of Muslim Scholars, Sheik Bin Bayyah is either a Muslim Brotherhood operative or is ideologically aligned with Muslim Brotherhood, whose objective is the Muslim subjugation of all peoples of the world.

The Obama administration's attempts to rehabilitate Bin Bayyah were not without controversy noted Poole. Most embarrassing for the Obama White House was Bin Bayyah's approval of a 2004 fatwa authorizing the killing of Americans in Iraq and endorsing the Iraqi "resistance." This information was raised in June 2013 after it was reported Bin Bayyah had been escorted into the White House to meet with senior members of Obama's National Security Council reported Poole.

The 2004 fatwa was issued by the IUMS while Bin Bayyah was serving as vice president. It called for "resisting occupation forces," stating this was a "duty" for all able-bodied Muslims inside and outside Iraq. The official Iraqi "resistance" site posted the IUMS fatwa.

Archbishop Welby is right, Sharia, which has a powerful and ancient cultural narrative of its own, deeply embedded in a system of faith and understanding of God, and thus especially powerful in forming identity, cannot become part of another narrative.

Archbishop Welby’s strong statement that Sharia and Muslim culture are incompatible with western laws, which have developed over 500 years on the principles of a different culture, is a strong and courageous counterpoint to Pastor Bob Roberts’ Saudi-inspired apostasy and efforts to “forge ties” to mitigate the supposed anti-Islamic behavior of American evangelical Christians. We urge pastors, priests and ministers across America to heed the Archbishop’s words in this matter and echo them from their own pulpits.