The decision overturns a lower court ruling by a lower court, which said the state need not recognise conversions from Islam because of a religious ban.

Translation: Islam forbids apostasy, and many countries impose the death penalty if Muslims convert to any other religion (though see this recent article in the Guardian for a very interesting perspective on recent religious permissiveness in Egypt). However, it is very important to note that what is making the apostasy of these twelve Christians in Egypt possible is the fact that they were originally Christians before they converted to Islam:

This suggests that Egyptians born Muslim will still be unable to convert to other faiths and have those conversions recognised on their identity cards. Many Muslims believe that converting from Islam is wrong, and some believe it is punishable by death.

What a shame. It should be one’s own decision what religion to profess, if one wants to profess any at all, and the state has no business denying people the right to change their minds—and especially should not be allowed to execute them if they do. This issue goes to the heart of free speech and freedom of belief. This particular ruling is worthy of congratulation, but it is worth very little if total freedom of belief is denied.

Pullum’s key opinion is that Dr. Williams is an unsuitable leader for the Anglican church because he cannot ‘do the demanding job of holding this figurehead position without causing his church to fall apart in social and political discord.’ He further points out that Dr. Williams also took a number of positions on homosexuality that caused dissension in various sizable wings of the church. ‘The people who say he lacks the leadership skills for his job are basically right,’ says Pullum:

Dr Williams is a gentle, learned, brilliant, scholarly man, and a bit of a public relations doofus. I hate to say it, but the calls for his resignation are not unjustified. He should be the holder of an endowed Professorship of Theology and Law at some top-ranking university. He should not be a prominent church administrator, and certainly not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Someone duller, more political, less original, and less intelligent must be found for that job.

Absolutely true, but I have a few caveats to add: First, would there really be no controversy if Dr. Williams were a professor somewhere, and not the Primate of all England? Just think of Ward Churchill and the media furor that surfaces whenever he opens his mouth. Furthermore, is it the case that religious leaders should not voice their political opinions? In other words, is it appropriate for a religious leader to use his religious pulpit as a political bully pulpit? (I have a very strong personal bias against this, but from a conceptual point of view I’m not sure what the answer is.)

But finally, this doesn’t address the underlying issue: to what extent should the secular state accommodate religious law? Back in 2004 there was a controversy in Ontario in which it was proposed to include shari’ah law in the Arbitration Act, which would make decisions rendered by shari’ah courts regarding private disputes legally binding. This had some Muslims, notably the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada, worried that this would create a ’slippery slope’ and end up hurting Muslims more than it helped them. What do you do, for example, to prevent people—notably women—from being ‘coerced’ into using a system in which they might run the risk of unfair treatment? And what do you do when your religious law comes into conflict with established civil law? (And it is important to note that this is not just a Muslim concern; Jews, especially of the more Orthodox varieties, have many of the same problems with their own shadow court system, especially with the agunah problem).

Of course, there are no easy answers here: after all, this is one of the central post-Enlightenment questions in the Western world. But hopefully the current case of Dr. Williams can provide another data point and perspective in the current conversation, if we can get past the stupidity and sensationalism brought about by the media.

Today, the Saudi King Abdullah has generously pardoned and set free the woman. No doubt this is being done as something of a goodwill gesture at the beginning of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. There is of course plenty of reason for the Saudi government to want to appease various elements in the Western world, especially at this time (which was, in fact, the actual justification—’serving the public interest’—offered by the king as his reason for the pardon). Yet the king is still being criticized, apparently, by the religious-conservative elements in the Muslim world:

The BBC’s Heba Saleh says the king’s decision to pardon the woman victim is already arousing controversy with some contributors to conservative websites, who say he has breached the rules of religion in order to appease critics in the West. (from the article cited above)

Of course, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is one of the most important in the international community, what with the extensive trading (read oil trading) relationship between the two nations. And of course, who can forget Bush’s hand-holding incident with then-Crown Prince Abdullah?

So Abdullah finally made the right decision, but with a thinly veiled motivation, fearing some sort of recrimination by the West. But—and this is a more general question—what leverage can the West really exert on these oil-producing nations? Do they even really want to? Can the West risk their vital oil supply going ever upward in price, not to mention the threat of it being cut off? Of course not. (History has proven, however, that rising oil prices are not deterring oil purchasing and use, contrary to general economic rules. But this is a different topic.) As long as the relationship between the oil exporters and importers continues the way it currently does, there will be very little possibility in the future to prevent the next Qatif Girl from being sentenced for a ‘crime’ of this nature. We got lucky this time; next time may be very different.