onsdag 17. september 2008

Other things ahoy

Unfortunately this is no parody.
ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
While I do not for one second believe this will be abused in the short term (it may even lead to some good consequences), the question is how in the long term to avoid moving in the direction of the following pitfalls as mentioned by a perhaps not too friendly commenter:
1. Abuse against women will grow since the Qur'an allows men to beat their wives and divorce them easily and unilaterally.
2. Polygamy will be allowed.
3. Muslim men will rarely be prosecuted for rape, since sharia law makes this nearly impossible.
4. Muslim violence against infidels will be excused.
5. This "parallel law" will become a beachhead for establishing sharia for the entire country. Islam always aspires to be a civilization, not just a religion (in the Western sense).
A lot of people will watch England closely in the years ahead. And not only the football matches.

Update 12:20: Read Damian Thompson's comment.

6 kommentarer:

Peter sa...

Is there really any difference between Shari'a wife violence and Christian gay discrimination?

Of course the difference is vast. But they share the wish that religious law is above public law.

Bjørn Are sa...

The vast difference is rather prominent as Christian "gay discrimination" is not part of a Religious Law.

There is in short a wide gap between Islam and Christianity as the latter have no religious laws at all...

However, Christian ideals of brotherly love and commandments like "Keep the Sabbath", are of course something most Christians do think to be above the public law, or something that should be part of it.

In the same way as other people have ideals that they put higher than the present laws and want to implement. Like Gay Rights some decades ago (or even now in some places).

The danger IMHO is not ideals above the law, it is implementing seperate spheres where some people have different laws than the rest of society.

And of course, we should watch out for anyone wanting to implement laws that others find fearfull and destructive, like Sharia.

And strive by democratic means to make ever wiser and better laws that matches our ideals of love, compassion and justice.

Peter sa...

But when the ideals are turned into rules, for example in a chruch, it's not far from law, is it.

Including SOME sort of consequense for they who don't follow the rules.

Bjørn Are sa...

Religious rules can be made into laws, and indeed have.

However, Church rules are still something else than Sharia.

Anonym sa...

Actually, I support the right of Muslims (and other religious groups) to live in polygamy to some extent. This is not because one of my goals in life is to have two wives but because according to my knowledge - which might be wrong - immigrant and refuge families with more than one wife arriving in Europe are faced with a society that do not recognize more than one marriage as valid. The result is that "the second wife" loses all her legal rights connected with the marriage.

Bjørn Are sa...

Perfectly understandable, Snirky!

One has to recognize the reality, and not damage lives and relations just to upheld a historical principle, however good and wise we think it is.