Author: Douglas Knight

New legislation may be needed to curb the activities of informal sharia courts that are operating in Britain, said the organisers of the One Law For All campaign, which was launched at the House of Lords this week. Maryam Namazie, commented that sharia law was undesirable in any form as it sets up conflicts between both human rights and civil law in Britain. â??Even in civil matters, Sharia law is discriminatory, unfair and unjust, particularly against women and children,â?? she said. Of particular concern was whether women were being coerced into using these courts and tribunals against their best interests… Gina Khan, a secular Muslim who has been fighting for justice on these issues, spoke of her own and her familyâ??s experiences at the hands of sharia justice. She spoke passionately about the way extremists within the Muslim community were exerting control through giving the impression that â??real Muslimsâ?? would settle their disputes using only â??Godâ??s Sacred Lawâ??. This, she said, led to injustice to Muslim women, many of whom didnâ??t know they had rights in British civil courts. Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: â??Sharia is becoming a growth industry in Britain, putting growing pressure on vulnerable people in the Muslim community to use sharia councils and tribunals to resolve disputes and family matters, when they could use the civil courts. Sharia â??lawâ?? is not arrived at by the democratic process, is not Human Rights compliant, and there is no right of appeal.â??

Most Western governments appear to have forgotten simple political truths which the Islamic challenge should have reinforced. Among these truths is that the principles of the free society require toleration of the tolerant, but demand that intolerance be shown towards those who not only reject such free society’s values but look forward to the day when they are brought down. If civil society is to be upheld and protected from pluralist dissolution, the obligations of the citizen, whether indigenous or incomer, must also be accorded parity of status with claims of rights and be enforced, in the interests of all.
David Selbourne

For those, like me, who have only recently become aware of the terms, let alone begun to understand them, they refer to the increasing use of the British (and American – though without so much success) law courts, by individuals like Saudi businessman Khalid Bin Mafouz who use libel law to stifle publication of books or articles that investigate the links between gulf oil money and terrorism.

The clearest recent British example of this was the law suit against Cambridge University Press which resulted in the removal from the bookshelves of Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World by J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins. CUP issued a full apology to avoid a suit.

Sean Oliver-Dee at Lapidomedia

We should be clear that you don’t overcome resentment by feeling guilty, or by conceding your fault. Weakness provokes, since it alerts your enemy to the possibility of destroying you. We should be prepared to affirm what we have and to express our determination to hold on to it. That said, we must recognize that it is not envy, but resentment, that animates our foes. Envy is the desire to possess what the other has; resentment is the desire to destroy it. How do you deal with resentment? This is the great question that so few leaders of mankind have been able to answer. But we are fortunate in being heirs to the one great attempt to answer it, which was that of Christ. You overcome resentment, Christ told us, by forgiving it. To reach out in a spirit of forgiveness is not to accuse yourself; it is to make a gift to the other. And it is just here, it seems to me, that we have taken the wrong turn in recent decades. The illusion that we are to blame, that we must confess our faults and join our cause to that of the enemy, exposes us to a more determined hatred.

Roger Scruton The Defence of the West: How to Respond to the Islamist Challenge (downloadable Word doc)