(Includes a look back at the aborted sharia movement in Ontario from a few years ago.)
Violent crimes, too, have fallen under the purview of Sharia courts. Last month, the Evening Standard revealed that “a teenage stabbing case among the Somali community in Woolwich had been dealt with by a Sharia ‘trial’” instead of by the secular justice system.
Incredibly, after the victims told police that “the matter would be settled out of court,” officers released the suspects in the violent attack on bail.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is Patrick Sookhdeo’s assertion in his book, Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam, that the “Sharia Council of the Darul Uloom London even appears to assume the possibility of child marriages, as there are instructions on its website for how to deal with the divorce of a girl who has not yet reached puberty.”
Surveying these developments, it seems that Britain has failed to heed the warnings of a 2005 study on “Islam and World Domination” by the U.K.’s Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, which monitors the advance of Sharia in England.
Back then, said the ISIC, Sharia was “already practiced unofficially.” The institute warned that, “Muslims find it difficult to assume minority status in a majority non-Muslim society. More than other minority communities, they constantly, sometimes subconsciously, strive to redress the balance and assume an expanding and dominant position in their host countries.”
PLUS: EU to recognize sharia divorce?
PLUS:
There’s something creepy about the way the police allow sharia “courts” to persuade women to withdraw allegations against their husbands. I use inverted commas because, of course, these are not real courts: they are assemblies of community leaders whose prime concern is Muslim propriety rather than civil rights.
