Sharia Courts: What about the United States?

Jonathan, an Anglican priest at St. Francis, Anglican Church in Newcastle Upon Tyne, in his blog, The MadPriest, quotes from the Scotsman: 

Secret talks are under way to bring Islamic sharia law courts to Scotland. Qamar Bhatti, director of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT), which runs the courts, admitted discussions were taking place with lawyers and Muslim community groups in Scotland. The group is believed to be aiming to set up courts in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In September it emerged that five sharia courts, ruling on civil cases from divorce to domestic violence and financial disputes, had been operating for more than a year in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and at MAT headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The courts have legal powers, with their decisions enforceable through the county courts or high courts.

He then adds his own comment:

I am 100% against the setting up of such judicial systems.

Why?

For exactly the same reasons that I would be against a return to the separate church and state legal systems that existed in England for hundreds of years, where priests literally got away with murder.

Religious people need to be subject to a strong, secular law to protect them from each other. Just imagine a legal system in the States based on fundamentalist, Christian practices.

Oh, right, you don't have to imagine it. You already have one.
Well, you see what I mean then.

In March of this year, Noah Feldman wrote a very informative piece in the New York Times about Sharia law in England. It begins:

Last month, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture in London about whether the British legal system should allow non-Christian courts to decide certain matters of family law. Britain has no constitutional separation of church and state. The archbishop noted that “the law of the Church of England is the law of the land” there; indeed, ecclesiastical courts that once handled marriage and divorce are still integrated into the British legal system, deciding matters of church property and doctrine. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.

The entire article is worth reading to understand why this is such an emotional issue.

I think we must realize, and the controversy over Sharia brings this into focus, that secular law and secular jurisprudence is best. Even so, we must recognize that religious norms of a population has an effect on how laws are written and how courts interpret those laws. And I'm inclined to think this is appropriate in a democratic society, even if I disagree with the results (and this is another subject). And, yet, when I see the effects of Sharia in some parts of the world, I have serious questions about this.

Except for over-characterizing the U.S. legal system, Jonathon is mostly right and the Archbishop of Canterbury is wrong.