ANNE APPLEBAUM ON ROWAN WILLIAMS:

Many explanations for the archbishop’s statements have already been proffered: the weakness of the Church of England, the paganism of the British, the feebleness of Williams’s intellect, the decline of the West. At base, though, his beliefs are merely an elaborate, intellectualized version of a commonly held, and deeply offensive, Western prejudice: Alone among all of the world’s many religious groups, Muslims living in Western countries cannot be expected to conform to Western law — or perhaps do not deserve to be treated as legal equals of their non-Muslim neighbors.

Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That’s why — if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop — I’m on the side of the Sun.

Yes. At least the tabloids have some standards. Plus, 17,000 “honor” crimes a year in Britain.