[Update: wondering if the whole things is an attempt to help us meet our Kyoto targets?]

I wasn’t planning to revisit Archbishop Rowan until tomorrow, however Mr Sticky Carrot (aka Garry Smith) comments:

If you felt a slight tremor sometime yesterday afternoon, it’ll have been caused by an enormous number of knees all jerking at the same time.

Bearing in mind that a story this morning is about a Knee-Powered Dynamo:

US and Canadian scientists have built a novel device that effortlessly harvests energy from human movements.

Are the green people combining the two?

Also - I just realised that I’m doing the Britblog this weekend. How the hell (oops!) am I going to summarise this little lot?

Latest Thoughts

There’s a lot of humbuggery going on in political circles, bearing in mind that this was in the briefing documents for Mr Gordon Brown’s 2005 Budget Speech:

New measures increase fairness for Muslim banking products

Shari’a compliant financial products were given a boost by two new measures announced in yesterday’s Budget:

* Corporation Tax, Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax rules will be changed. This will allow the Islamic equivalents of loans and deposit accounts - based on Murabaha and Mudaraba contracts - to receive the same tax treatment as equivalent banking products.

* The removal of multiple payments of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) will be made more accessible in Scotland and will cover a newly available Shari’a compliant product, known as Diminishing Musharaka. This will help house-buyers who want to finance their purchase without taking an interest-bearing mortgage.

The new measures – designed to increase the choices available to consumers – follow a number of prominent developments in the UK Islamic finance, including a significant increase in the number of providers and the range of available Shari’a compliant products.

Changes to UK Law to accommodate Sharia are already in, gents. “OMG Go-away Go-away Go-away” won’t drive Sharia law away. We have to be a lot more subtle and a lot tougher-minded than that if we want to have a proper debate with a resolution at the end.

If this explosion (?) is going to clear the air and move us beyond (caricaturing) “all Muslims are the same and they are all aiming to turn our society into a Western Saudi Arabia”, then there will be some benefit forthcoming.

Wrapping Up

I wonder if he was expecting such a reaction to the Radio interview. On the other hand, I wonder if it would be possible for him to say this in the privacy of the loo at Lambeth Palace without a newspaper getting hold of it.

More tomorrow.

Tags: archbishop of canterbury, rowan williams, sharia law[tags]archbishop of canterbury, rowan williams, sharia law[/tags]