Another senior UK figure – one of the most senior judges in the land – has argued that some aspects of Sharia law should be permissable when it comes to settling certain disputes between Muslim couples. This re-ignites the controversy sparked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who argued for the same.
Once more, the bedrock principle of a liberal order, that men and women should be treated equally before the law, is potentially at odds with a code that, by definition, does not accept this equality as part of its essence. The inherently anti-women bias of Sharia is not a bug, it is a feature. Take cases where, for instance, a young English guy who is an atheist or Christian tries to take a Muslim girl out on a date and the latter gets physically intimidated by her family (this is not a hypothetical situation, it has happened). To what authority should the woman or man appeal in dealing with such cases? Unless the judge is able to answer that sort of hard question, which goes to the heart of why sharia is considered unworkable in a liberal order, the judge would be well advised to focus on his core responsibility, of seeing that justice is done under the laws of this land. This is one of those examples of why I do not think that a polycentric legal order can really work unless it is possible for its members to elect to choose under which code they wish to be treated. Muslim women would not have that choice if sharia law was incorporated. More importantly, they do not have the key right of “exit”, the right to choose no longer to be treated under a specific code of their families.
The judge, like the Archbishop, is proof to radical Islamists that some of the most senior figures in what might pass for the British Establishment lack the intellectual or moral fibre to defend the core values of this nation.
As I said when Dr Rowan Moonbat poked his scary head up to say this previously- we’re being softened up because it is going to happen. This is the stage at which various figures who are outside the government proper “daringly” say it’s time to “think the unthinkable”. They’re creating the dialogue in the public sphere, the faux debate which invariably precedes the doing of the unthinkable. It tests the waters to see how upset the opposition (i.e. normal people) will be and what arguments need to be used to silence them.
There will be official recognition of sharia and official recognition of Islam is a distinct community with its own specific
rightspriveleges, and there’s nothing we can do to stop that short of making London Bridge impassable due to the forest of heads on spikes. When it’s time for it to be implemented, anyone disagreeing will be dismissed as “far right extremists”.I’m sorry to be so negative again, but IMV this is a foregone conclusion.
What I find curious (if I were cynical enough I probably would not, but…) is that those same people who utter these odious comments later complain that the BNP vote is rising.
I have said, many times here in these comments, that there’s nothing as tragic as watching a once proud nation committing protracted suicide.
All the indicators, and there are many, suggest that IanB’s miserable summary is likely to be correct.
Failing the appearance of a ‘redeemer’ we can do nothing except weep….weep for the countless thousands who fought in vain for this country’s freedom; weep in righteous anger at the duplicity of traitorous Britons, still, even now, selling out our country & heritage to an imported hostile alien culture.
Weep for the fact that our Law, built up wisely over countless generations, can be flippantly influenced by one of mediaeval barbarity.
Weep that this country is prepared to give up its sovereignty to an unelected & deeply corrupt European bureaucracy.
Weep that it is we, and we only, who are responsible.
The Judge’s comments refer to contracts negotiated between two parties both of whom consent to Sharia arbitration. He is quite explicit on this point:
There is nothing in the judge’s comments from which one may infer that Muslims must arbitrate their disputes under Sharia law, that those provisions of Sharia law which impose duties or prohibitions (for instance, concerning alcohol) will be applicabe to anybody other than those who choose to obey them, or that Sharia law will form a component of criminal legislation whatsoever (so your example about a man being physically intimidated is rendered useless – there was no voluntarily agreed contract that was being arbitrated, so no aspects of Sharia law apply.)
Further, it is a shocking generalisation for you to claim “Muslim women do not have that choice [of not electing to participate in Sharia courts].” If X wishes to marry Y, the latter of whom will only do so if it is done under Sharia law, then X is perfectly free not to do so if they object to the arbitration process. As to your claim that “they do not have the key right of “exit,”” this is plainly false: exiting may have high costs for them (social ostracism and so on), but kidnapping is still illegal. There exists no automatic right to others’ respect.
“The core values of this nation” used to be the right to associate with whomever you liked, on whatever mutually acceptable terms you could agree to, under whatever arbitration was mutually acceptable. Only with the interference of the state as a third party to every contract has this monolithic culture emerged, where the state considers itself righteous in poking its nose into every familial and financial contract. Marriage is a private affair, and should be no business of the state whatsoever. “Recognition” of such a contract should be entirely at the individual’s discretion.
Andrew Roorcroft, your naivete is inexcusable, as is that of the judge. Do you really imagine, for a nanosecond, that once sharia is allowable as a system of legal arbitration, that its advocates will not want to force people born into Muslim households to abide by it? What do you think will be the position if a Muslim decides to abandon such a faith?
This is not like refusing to eat pork or something like that.
As for my remark about the unequal treatment of women, I stand by that; it is not a “shocking generalisation”, it is a fact of life. Go and Google “honour killings” to see what I mean.
The advocates of sharia law are not going to be content with a sort of a la carte approach to the code, which means that Muslim women who choose the English Common Law face a very unpleasant problem if their families object. Try putting yourself in their shoes.
The law has to be monolithic Andrew. It’s the only way a law can have any meaning. Part of the reason it works is that you don’t get any choice in who arbitrates it. The very basis of liberal society is equality before the law, and that implicitly means equality before the same law for everyone.
I’ve read many libertarians talking in a happy-clappy way about having competing legal systems and private courts and so on, and it all sounds wunnerful, but the implicit assumption underlying all those views, in my view, is never stated, which is because they haven’t thought about it. They’re fixated on a western mindset and presume all these competing systems would be broadly equivalent in values. Well, sharia, as with other theocratic systems (e.g. a system based on the Old Testament, perhaps) are not in the least compatible with western liberalism and I personally feel no shame in saying that (a) I find sharia repugnant and (b) I don’t want it anywhere near me, thank you very much.
Libertarianism only works in a liberal value system. You simply can’t apply it outside that. There’s nothing in libertarian philosophy that specifically states it’s “western” but that is implicit throughout; libertarianism is a product of western liberalism (indeed until the left swiped the word “liberal” libertarianism literally meant western liberalism) and it can only apply within a western liberal mindset; the two are entirely entwined.
And, yes, that means a western liberal law, equally applied to and by all citizens. Sharia doesn’t fit in with that.
I think maybe some people are stuck in a narrow interest in property rights etc and just see sharia as being some different rules about property etc. Sharia isn’t that. It’s a total regime in which the person is not an individual, they’re a little bug whose only purpose is to figure out what a mediaeval cult leader would want them to do, and to do that. It has no concept of individualism or the individual. It’s something that should never get within spitting distance of being acknowledged by law in a western liberal nation.
Sadly, western liberalism is being dismantled brick by brick, and this is a part of that.
In mediation, as it currently stands, it is possible for the parties to choose the rules under which the mediation occurs. Provided that they do so freely, what is the problem with it?
As to enforcement, provided the result is within the powers of the courts of England & Wales, the result can be enforced, as a contract. No more than that.
As a lawyer who acts in commercial disputes between parties, I have to say that I don’t see a problem here.
Might I turn the question around?
“Do you really imagine, for a nanosecond, that once halakha is allowable as a system of legal arbitration, that its advocates will not want to force people born into Jewish households to abide by it? What do you think will be the position if a Jew decides to abandon such a faith?”
I’m firmly with you, just consistent: no third party should be allowed to force onto another person a particular arbiter for their disputes. This includes the state.
Your argument is the same as that used by those who advocate the outlawing of prostitution: that violence is used by pimps, and so were prostitution legalised one would be legalising violence. It is a deliberate obfuscation: the threatened violence has nothing to do with the intrinsic features of prostitution, just as intimidation has nothing to do with the intrinsic features of Sharia arbitration. I find the ease with which some otherwise libertarian people are willing to hysterically indulge in collectivist generalisations with regards to Islam phenomenal, whilst at the same time having the temerity to insist that they are defending “the core values of this nation.”
Honour killings are crimes, and should be punished accordingly. There is nothing intrinsic in the use of Sharia arbitration by two consenting adults that implies honour killings are justified.
Of course they do. Their unpleasant problem is social ostracism. So? There is no law insisting that you are entitled to your family’s respect.
If a person (whether they are a woman is irrelevant) is physically abused against their will, it is a crime regardless of whether Sharia law has been proposed in a particular dispute. The point is that we cannot assume that in every case the participants have been coerced; it must be done, as with every crime, on a case-by-case basis, penalising only those who have committed aggression. Collective punishment (by prohibiting voluntary contracts which the participants want arbitrated under Sharia law) of the type you favour can have no legitimate basis if we respect individual rights.
It isn’t “being acknowledged as law,” except insofar as two adults consent to it being so, and only for their particular contract. This isn’t talking about Sharia being imposed on others – that’s plainly incompatible with the principle of individual rights. The judge is not talking about “a total regime” which is incumbent on people from birth; he is talking about specific contracts made between adults.
It is incompatible for one to be in favour of individualism, and then deny that consenting individuals can make a contract on whatever terms they mutually agree to. In financial or marriage arrangements, one ought to be entitled to make any peculiar arrangements which meet the consent of the other parties. To deny this is to reject, in principle, the right of individuals to set the terms of their own contract. To say, “this contract will be arbitrated under Sharia law” is equivalent to appending the body of Sharia law to the contract; it is just another clause, which it is none of the state’s business to interfere with.
Andrew, are you aware of the fact that once a person is a muslim, they are not allowed to leave Islam, punishable by death? They don’t face social ostracisation you damned idiot, they face significantly more reprisal than that.
If sharia courts are brought in, muslims will have no choice but to use them. Stop thinking like a westerner. Islam is not a lifestyle choice about which the adherent can pick and choose.
Ian, are you aware that murder is illegal and will continue to be so even if sharia contracts by consent are allowed?
I’m a bit confused. Perhaps someone can help.
As I understand it, Lord Phillips said that it should be acceptable for Muslims to settle disputes under Sharia law provided that it doesn’t contravene English law.
OK fine. But that has always been the case, hasn’t it? Any two parties in dispute might choose not to take it to law but to ask a third party to arbitrate. Provided that the result of the arbitration does not break any law, and that both parties abide, as agreed, by that arbitration, then the thing is settled.
That arbitration, then, could be undertaken by an imam, who makes his judgement according to his understanding of Sharia.
Therefore, surely, Lord Phillips might well have said “I believe that everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want without any restrictions whatsoever … provided that the activities they choose don’t break any laws”.
Phillips seems to have said nothing of any moment, or offered anything of any significance.
Why then did he say it? Presumably to suck up to Muslims, which is a popular activity among the chattering classes. But then why didn’t the Muslims reply “We already do undertake such arbitrations. Since they do not contravene the law they are of no interest to the authorities. So don’t patronise us”?
I fear there’s more to this than meets the eye.
“If sharia courts are brought in”
This is where there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding. That parties to a disagreement will (indeed are) able to use the facilities of mediation to resolve that dispute will not (and does not) mean that the facilities they use will comply in all respects with English and Welsh law. Mediation is a non-legal process in which the parties are assisted to find a non-legal method to resolve their legal dispute.
In the event that the parties cannot agree, the law of England & Wales will be the final solution to the dispute.
Lord Phillips has not said that Sharia courts should replace the Courts of England & Wales – it would be very surprising for him to do so. What he has said is that, so long as the parties to a dispute consent, he can see no reason why sharia principles should not be used to resolve to assist the parties to resolve legal disputes by mediation and even arbitration (non-legal means). He goes on to say that ultimately, the law in England & Wales will continue to have primacy.
So: the Sharia laws of marriage that conflict with English legal principle would, for example, never be able to be enforced and could not displace the English & Welsh law on marriage. The physical penalties that can be found in Sharia law would never displace English & Welsh law. Even the Sharia laws relating to the disposition of an estate can only operate in so far as they comply with English & Welsh law AND the parties to any dispute regarding that disposition agree to their application.
“Do you really imagine, for a nanosecond, that once halakha is allowable as a system of legal arbitration, that its advocates will not want to force people born into Jewish households to abide by it? What do you think will be the position if a Jew decides to abandon such a faith?”
That does not work. As far as I know, Jews who abandon their faith are not threatened with death. Yes, there may be social pressures, there may even be the risk of ostracism, but as far as I am aware, apostates from the Jewish faith are not threatened.
Ideally, in a minarchist/anarchist situation, you point would be valid, but it is not. The problem is that individuals born into Muslim families would not have the same choices as non-Muslims. Now, many moderate Muslims may allow such choices, but they are not the problem. The demand for such sharia courts comes from those who are fundamentalists, with all that implies.
You have also to consider the context in which such requests/demands are made. We have, in the UK and parts of the West, an aggressive group of people wishing to put themselves at a remove from mainstream Western society. The demand for sharia arbitration is not like some cuddly, let’s all-get-along libertarian utopia where different groups get to shop around for the rules they want to live by. This way of looking at the world ignores what happens when some people are effectively captured by the groupus they are born into.
Sharia Law is alien to this country.
Some of those commenting here would appear to have a legal background…I do not.
The judiciary (and Parliament) has already done more than enough in reducing this country to a politically correct nightmare of curtailed & denied freedoms without speciously flirting with alien mediaeval legal concepts.
Our Law has stood us in good stead for many years & it’s time those responsible for its prosecution did just that.
A threat of violence for apostasy ought, of course, to be punished by law. But we can’t simply assume that this threat occurs in every household, and hence impose collective punishment on all Muslims for those who carry out these threats. As I said, it would be no more sound for us to infer that every pimp threatens his prostitutes, and hence to ban prostitution.
As to the Jewish point, there is at least one example of which I know, the extermination of the Amalekites, where a sacred instruction led Saul to wipe out the entirety of a nation. This included children who could not possibly have been responsible for the acts perpetrated by their parents against the Jews, and the justification for this came from divine instruction based on the failure of the Amalekites to worship God. Indeed, the Jewish law (to my very limited knowledge – I’d be happy to be corrected) contemporarily includes several instructions to destroy various nations, wipe out descendants and so on – we don’t therefore deny Jewish people the right to own weapons, because some people professing the same beliefs at some point in the past did something immoral with them.
The first point you make is irrelevant: people who are raised in a family where the parents are religious will have different opportunities to others, regardless of the religion. This applies equally to an infinitude of possible variables, so it makes no sense to forbid private Sharia courts on this ground.
Now, so long as the demand for private Sharia courts respects individual rights not to participate, I can see no reason why you should object. It seems to be the case that you’re arguing ‘fundamentalists want Sharia courts, fundamentalists are bad, so Sharia courts are bad.’ This makes no sense: mutatis mutandis, the same justification could be used for a denial of free speech by neo-Nazis. People can use Sharia courts peacefully. That some want to impose them does not make them intrinsically evil.
Mightn’t it be argued that this is already the case with every religion? You’d have to argue against the rights of parents to send their children to private religious schools, or to attend church services, if you were to be consistent. Indeed, it sounds like a rather Spartan model, in which the state dictates what is the correct ideology for child rearing.
I yield to very few in my loathing of Islam (and I don’t just mean Islam-ism, I mean the whole evil shooting match). I think that Islam as a whole should be subjected to ferocious propaganda barrages, and where appropriate, armed attacks, until, in the affairs of the world and its many nations, it is a shadow of its present self. That may take a while. So be it. “Moderate Muslims” who say that they believe only nice things have a moral obligation to stop saying that they also believe in Islam. They should abandon this vile religion. And they should of course have the perfect legal right to do that. Any Muslim who tries, in Britain, to deny them that right by force or the threat of it should be dealt with, with the full rigour of the British law. How far that principle can also be inserted into what are now Muslim tyrannies is a matter of tactics.
BUT, and I’m sure you could hear that coming a mile off, I agree with Andrew Roocroft about this, and disagree with my good friend Johnathan Pearce. Assuming that AR is correct in his exposition of what the judge said.
Johnathan’s argument, under pressure, seems to be our old friend the “slippery slope”. But we are already on the slippery slope in this argument. The question is not, will this lead to bad things? The question is: is this a point at which to try to stop the bad things? I say not. If two parties contract in a way that I might regard as misguided, and agree to have any arguments settled by some evil bigot in a religious uniform, then British law should go on saying: so be it.
I don’t think we defend our own way of life, against what is quite cleary a concerted attack on it, by surrendering its basic principles, in this case freedom of contract. On the contrary, I think we defend it best by holding fast to such principles, and using the techniques against the attackers that we are comfortable with, and good at, and can achieve widespread (never universal, that’s not how we free people do things) agreement about.
Would we side with a robber against a Muslim householder in Britain, just because the householder was Muslim and the robber not?
We can widely agree about our right to think what we like and say what we like about Islam, even if many of “we” might abhor the loathing of Islam expressed by the likes of vulgar old me, see above. We can also widely agree that Muslims who defend their religion by imprisoning ex-believers in it are not just wrong, but criminally so. If we merely enforced those principles thoroughly that would really do some good. Denying freedom of contract to Muslims in our midst will do no good at all, and just prepare the way for further restrictions on contracts of other kinds, made by other British citizens.
Oops, there goes another slippery slope argument. Time I stopped.
Before we start pandering to these murderous lunatics, how about we make a tentative start by allowing law-abiding UK citizens to enter into legally binding pre-nuptial agreements?
UK divorce law is an outrage and a foul excuse for The State to interfere in people’s lives.
Other countries recognise pre-nup’s, so why not us? (It’s partly because this country is run by lawyers, whether MPs or in practice, for their own benefit, that’s another topic).
Agreed.
No such assumption is needed. That is why everyone is treated under the English common law. Problem solved.
Bad analogy. I tolerate prostitution precisely because how a woman choose to use her body is her business, not the State’s. Pimps operate as a result of the criminalisation of such activity.
Go to the families of fundamentalist Islamists and put that point to them. Go on, I’d pay to watch.
I would not object in principle, but as I have said repeatedly, in the context of where we are now, this would not be taken as a sign of the wonderful liberalism of Britain; rather, it would be taken by radical Islamists as a step in their direction. So in that sense I think, like Brian says I think, that this is a slipperly slope argument.
Of course, if a sharia arbitrator said, as part of a condition of his work, that no client must use such a service under duress, and that people had a right not to be treated under sharia courts, but revert to the normal UK ones, then maybe my worries would be unjustified. But be honest with me, Andrew: do you honestly think that is what the Islamists want? If it were just a matter of getting together to deal with issues without coercion, do you think this would have surfaced as an issue at all?
Well, since you raise the issue of children, I’d mention that I am in favour of lowering the compulsory school-leaving age; I am also against parents brain-washing their kids with any kind of ideology, although in practice I regard attempts by the state or others do prevent this as likely to cause more harm than good. Being a libertarian, I accept that people will be heavily influence by their families, mostly in a good way. Muslim mums and dads love their children as much as anyone else; my problem is, however, with the way in which pressures for sharia are part of an ongoing attempt to Balkanise this nation and by the attempts by radical islamists to cut themselves off from mainstream UK society.
For that reason I think Ian B’s first comment on this thread is dead accurate.
Brian asks:
no, because we would treat the victims as equal before the law and would reject identity as having a bearing on the case. Come on Brian, that was easy.
You’d have to be a fool to think that replacing English Common Law with Sharia Law on a regional basis is a good idea. Thankfully, no one is suggesting that. Sharia Law is not being proposed as a legitimate legal code in criminal courts; instead, Sharia mediation in ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ is the idea in question. These are voluntary arrangements that are well within the law as it stands, which would usually be enough to satisfy a libertarian…
This is a simulacrum of your argument, and it rings with a little of the sound of the Guardian. The fundamental principle of our (as libertarians) understanding of politics is individual agency. The state is there to establish a skeletal framework of law, not to look after people who make bad decisions. If you think the right to consent to arbitration should be withheld from Muslims (Jews already do it) because they might do it badly, do you believe similar considerations should be made regarding the, say, eating/working/social habits of poor people? Make sure drugs/bad foods are illegal because you reckon some people are likely to misuse them? Consensual, legal mediation on civil matters seems to be outside the remit of ‘our business.’
yes.
If this is all it is about, which I find hard to believe, then I am not clear why the judge raised the matter at all. If it is no more than “lete’s sit down, fellow Muslims, and sort this out over tea and crumpets” then I doubt it would ever have arisen at all. As a libertarian of long standing, I know all about things like private arbitration in the civil sphere, for instance (I am actually a friend of a guy who does this for a living). I also have been sympathetic to the whole idea of how laws can and do arise from negotiation and contract.
But……that is not the reason for my queasyiness, and I am afraid that some of the commenters here are being at best, naive, and possibly disengenuous, in not realising that is would be just one step in a process that would lead to sharia law being accepted as valid under the UK legal system. The push for this is quite clear; numerous opinion polls attest to the fact that a body of Muslims want sharia law introduced into this country, not just to have their practices bound within some libertarian minarchist structure.
I have heard the comments by the Judge – Andrews description is accurate, although I believe he used the term ‘alternative dispute resolution’.
Alternative dispute resolution is a factor in all civil law in England and Wales. I am currently taking action against a surveyor for negligence. There is a clearly defined ‘pre-action protocol’ which encourages all parties to seek mediation or other ways to resolve the matter before going to court.
Both the CofE and Judaism have their own versions of this. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Muslims doing similarly. Indeed, since these forms of mediation are voluntary, they don’t need the approval of the state – or the judge – to exist. Of course there will be pressures and attempts to manipulate them – but does anyone really think this doesn’t happen in other areas? Look at complaints against members of the various professions. Try getting a lawyer to sue another lawyer. Try changing doctors
Arguments against the principle don’t stand up. Concern about the practice is valid, but should be addressed by taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure that anyone using ‘sharia’ mediation is doing so entirely freely and without coercion.
I am a lawyer – a barrister who practices from Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. I participate in litigation and other forms of dispute resolution.
The results of mediation or other forms of dispute resolution are contracts. To be enforceable in England & Wales, these contracts must be lawful and entered into by parties who consent to them. Unlawful contracts would be rejected, contracts entered into by reasons of coercion or other unlawful means would be rejected.
It appears to me that the press is misunderstanding and misrepresenting both what Lord Phillips said and what mediation is. I have already explained what I understand Lord Phillips to have said, as have others. In essence he has said that where there is ADR, he can see no reason why Sharia principles should not be applied so long as the agreement reached by ADR does not offend English law – to which all here are ultimately bound. There is no legal relativism here; no trying to establish parrallel systems of law; in my view, there is nothing really new here or worrying. The extremes of Sharia law – as practised in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere would be unlawful here and could never be enforced.
As to mediation – it is a non-legal process where legal and non-legal ideas can be used to draw parties together so that they can find a solution to their legal problem. Only where they agree can a contract be drawn up and that contract is then attached as a schedule to an order (known by lawyers as a Tomlin Order) which is then enforceable in the courts here. Mediation is particularly good where disputes are not strictly defined to legal disputes – as where families fall out. It is not about forcing parties to accept a prescribed solution but helping them to find a way through to their own solution – that may include remedies that no-one would be able to obtain in court due to the limitations and harshness of the law. That Sharia law should be available as a tool to assist this process is not exceptional; I have been invovled in cases where it has been used in mediation.
Evan, perhaps you could, without divulging confidential facts, give us some examples of how a sharia-based mediation worked.
I can imagine disputes between Muslims over financial transactions, for example, involving things like commercial contracts where the specific sharia features – prohibition of interest, etc – are involved. This seems fairly straightforward; after all, investors can and do buy “ethical” funds that screen out holdings in things like weapons, booze, whatever, and I can imagine lawsuits where investors find out that their investments were not as ethical as they thought, and so on. But that is not really the core of the problem, is it?
The problem comes when you start to deal with things like divorce and other breakdowns in relationships between Muslim couples where the rights of the man are typically regarded as far superior to that of the woman. I do not see a whole lot of consent involved here. I am really unsure of how a sharia arrangement can pass muster within an English Common law structure which bars any form of duress. Duress is the key thing here, of course.
I’d be interested to know, for example, whether in future it would be possible for a Muslim couple to get divorced and have that sanctioned by a sharia court of some kind. If the answer is yes, well, then I find it hard to see what is the need for such sharia arbitration at all.
The cases in which I have been involved where mediation has invovled consideration of Sharia law have included disputes between family members as to the disposition of a deceased’s estate and how property should be divided between family members in disputes.
The Jewish divorce scenario is one that has troubled the courts – where unscrupulous Jewish men have refused to complete the Jewish divorce after the civil (English divorce) has been obtained – leaving their wives (ex-wives as far as English law is concerned) in a Jewish limbo. This has been resolved by use of Beth Din and arbitration/mediation. A similar result could be achieved using the Sharia ‘court’ as arbitrator/mediator. Rather oddly, I understand (I am not a divorce lawyer) that the only divorce recognised by the English and Welsh Courts is the civil decree (nisi and then absolute). Thus a religious ‘divorce’ has no status in English law at all!
The issue of consent becomes live if someone then seeks to enforce the contract. If the woman, on reflection, considers that she has been coerced into a contract, then on English law principles, the consequences of that contract can be avoided. It would be messy and difficult, but the consequences of the contract could be avoided and strict legal rights according to English principles would be enforced.
In the situation of a family, Muslim families of Indian/Pakistani origin tend to have rather odd (to this English lawyer’s eyes) and unwritten agreement about ownership of land. Culturally, these are understandable. If the parties agree, should they not be permitted to retain their arrangements as between themselves?
Evan,
Surely if everybody agrees on the mediation rules and consents to the result, then there isn’t any dispute to resolve?
That may be what is confusing people. The concept of there being a dispute suggests that people’s claims are in conflict, and that one (or both) has to ‘lose’, in some sense. So the idea that this is OK because everybody consents to it is one in which you have to define your terms carefully.
What it presumably means is that you start off consenting to submit to the Sharia court’s judgement before you know what that judgement is – the consent is indirect.
The concern with Sharia particularly (besides its inbuilt unfairness to the fairer sex, unbelievers, etc.) is the potential for pressure to be applied to give that initial consent. It might be entirely unspoken, and unprovable in court, but well known to everyone involved. Even without death for apostasy, the community perception that one is not ‘properly Muslim’ by refusing the Sharia court’s jurisdiction has all sorts of personal costs, especially for the vulnerable. It could lead to ruling that while entirely legal under British law, wouldn’t normally be considered just. There is also concern that in making a special point of its legitimacy, something Islamists want to do as a step in their campaign to bring about its eventual dominance, that it further reduces the excuses a vulnerable person might have for resisting submission to Sharia.
For a judge to comment that people can appeal to out-of-court arbitration of whatever sort they like is one thing. To specifically single out Sharia for mention sends an entirely different message. It gives the impression that Sharia has a special legitimacy and recognition under British law. Even if that impression isn’t strictly true, a lot of people (on both sides) will see it that way.
I agree that legally speaking this is a complete non-story. People can already submit their disputes to clown-school rules, or Tarot cards, or the rules of any religion they like. But it’s still an unfortunate thing to have said.
Pa Annoyed:
“”Pressure” does not constitute coercion.”
There is no sharp dividing line.
“It may not be nice, but it certainly ought not to be illegal to ostracise somebody who doesn’t conform to the norms expected in a particular community.”
I didn’t suggest it should be. So long as you apply the same principle to all those minorities beloved of the multiculturalists as well, the principle is sound.
I’m not saying that the law should be other than it is. I’m saying that in pointing it out in a way that will be perceived to give considerable legitimacy and authority to Sharia, and give the impression of ‘official’ recognition by the British legal system, the judge’s statement is making things worse for a lot of vulnerable people.
It’s like saying there’s nothing illegal about playground bullying, since children are below the age of criminal responsibility. Technically it’s true, and I’m certainly not in favour of little kids being hauled up in court, but it’s the sort of irresponsible comment that when dropped into the public debate about bullying, will make thousands of bullied children cringe.
There is clearly no solid objection in principle to the proposals regarding Sharia Law and arbitration. What there is, is great unease that this represents a growth or solidification of social power or importance of muslims as a faction in British society. I think it does, indeed, represent just that. Muslim societies in the UK are large enough, cohesive enough, and confident enough to want to have more formal recognition for their cultural traditions of dispute resolution.
That’s kind of tough. You could be up-front and vote for state restrictions on immigration on the grounds of preserving cultural identity, but I struggle to see any libertarian stance on that – you’d end up wanting state restrictions on people using Americanisms or listening to rap music on the grounds of preserving cultural identity.
I guess I’m vulnerable to a certain sadness when fewer and fewer people I meet have the same cultural values and references as me. But that’s just change, it happens.
To build on what Pa Annoyed said earlier, if any matters ends up in a UK court, the ADR can have no bearing or meaning whatsoever unless a contract between the parties stipulating it in lieu of UK law exists.
‘Consent’ based dispute resolution has no place in courts of law. If a contract did not stipulate Sharia or any other dispute resolution protocol, then there is absolutely no place for it in any government supervised resolution. This cannot be a negotiable point. The only place for the courts of law is to determine if a Sharia (or other) dispute resolution contract exists, if so does it violate the law, and if does not then what are the UK law based mechanisms for enforcing the contract.
The way I see this playing out is that at some point a Muslim wife will approach a civil court for a civil divorce at which point this judge would accept the argument that by virtue of being a ‘Muslim marriage’ that ‘mediating’ it with Sharia law is by advance consent agreed to by both sides. The marriage will then be interpreted under Sharia law (as per the ‘contract’) and enforced with the civil court’s powers. No it won’t start out that way, but I think that is the goal.
When UK law demonstrates its ability to enforce UK law everywhere including in every ‘no-go’ zone, then maybe it is okay for the justices to be making outreaches to other voluntary arbitration systems. But, like Mark Wadsworth points out, if UK law does not recognize secular prenuptial agreements, it should not be selectively recognizing Islamic ones.
And why is the UK justice system making these outreach gestures to Sharia leaders when so many of the UK’s moderate, assimilated Muslims think these gestures are a really bad idea?
J,
There’s an important distinction between tolerating something and being seen to support it or seeing it as right. I don’t want any state restrictions. The law is ok as it stands. But I also don’t want state authority figures to be making public statements in support of such immoral values (from the point of view of our own value system).
Legislatively, this is a complete non-story. There is no “formal recognition” of Sharia. It’s just that you’re allowed to come to an agreement out of court, so long as it’s legal, and if you happen to do that by means of Sharia law, British law offers no objection. As I indicated above, it is as much a formal recognition of the magic 8-ball’s jurisdiction as it is of Sharia. This is no change, and nothing is hereby permitted that was not always permitted. Nothing has happened. But by making a public statement about it that is Sharia-specific, it has had a powerful and undesirable political effect.
People ought to support Enlightenment values voluntarily, but if they don’t, they’re just wrong. You can’t make people do the right thing.
Maybe and maybe not.
In the US, there is an ethnic/cultural minority that takes a view of male-female relations which is at variance with the US mainstream. That is, they assume that a husband has certain rights over a wife that, in extreme cases, approach Sharia-lite.
My first-ever domestic violence arrest was in such a household. The husband decided to fatten his wife’s lip for reasons that I never got a straight answer about. He then claimed that my hands were tied because she was his wife.
It did not work out that way. However, in the ~10 years since then, there’s been a lot of pressure for the criminal law in this part of the country to be more understanding of different cultural attitudes.
Bear in mind that this is in a country that historically has not been as ‘tolerant’ as our European friends.[1]
My point: if Sharia is merely being raised as a form of alternative dispute resolution and nobody has any intent of trying to supplant English law with it, then why are we even having this discussion? The fact that the subject even came up leads me to think that someone is carrying an alternate motive that he won’t admit to.
[1] Remember the recent case of a man charged in Scotland with driving on a suspended license. His defense: he had multiple wives (authorized by his religion) and needed to drive in order to visit them both. ISTR that the judge bought it and tossed the charge, even though polygamy is illegal in Scotland.
Amalekites? Really, Andrew. If you wanted to go all historical on us, you didn’t have to go that far back. How about the inquisition forcibly converting Jews under threat of torture and death?
Your knowledge is indeed very limited. When was the last time you have heard of a Jew who has been threatened with violence for apostasy? Or, for that matter, for adultery, or homosexuality, or for writing a book critical of Judaism?
I am not a Brit, and as such I am not familiar with the situation first hand. So as I was following this discussion, I could actually see the merits of both yours and Jonathan’s arguments. And yet, seeing as religion is an important part of this discussion, you appear to be astonishingly ignorant about it, or at least about its contemporary practices and implications.
It is things like this(Link) that make this government official’s ‘outreach’ so very suspicious and threatening.
And question for Pa Annoyed (or any one else who knows the answer), under a fundamentalist’s interpretation of Islam, could or would the children who did participate in this ‘practical demonstration’ be considered to have converted under the laws of Islam? Or is this strictly frog-pot warming with no other possible consequences?
Mid,
Reliance of the Traveller, u2.2:
There is also a hadith in Sahih Muslim (Book 1: 177 (see also 176, 178)):
I.e., even if someone is quite obviously only saying it at sword point to save their life, it counts.
Similarly one of Khalid ibn al Walid campaigns is described in Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah:
Muslims consider them Muslims as soon as the words are said, even before they know anything about Islam.
I’ve found a number of references to Islam having spread by them forcing the conquered to recite the Shahada without meaning it, but then holding them apostate if they try to recant, and there are numerous historical and contemporary examples of forced conversions which are thereafter sometimes taken seriously and sometimes not. Certainly, Muslims make no great efforts to stop it.
I haven’t found any exact parallel in the historical orthodoxy to this situation in Western schools, though. The technique is a common aspect of Da’wa that has been practised in schools for quite a while now, but for fairly obvious reasons, they’re coy about openly discussing exactly what they believe the theological consequences would be. They’re evidently aiming more for genuine conversions than trying to claim them by trickery, anyway. I think that any other interpretation would be very hard to justify scripturally, but I also see no profit in them making such a claim without either a convert, or the ability to apply pressure to make the ‘conversion’ stick. I’m sure it’s done for pure propaganda purposes.
By the way, the traditional penalty for apostasy is only applied to those who give it up after puberty, so it depends on the age of the children too.
That seems a pretty definitive answer. I guess I’m less trusting than you are. 🙂
Thank you for the (very) informative reply.
The problem we have here is one of fundamental disconnects between what we generally call ‘Western’ (or Judaeo-Christian, if you’re a semi-troll like me) jurisprudence and ‘Shariah’ jurisprudence.
From the article,
Shariah law is very simple in terms of financial and marital disputes. The husband gets everything except
Taken from http://www.cfr.org/publication/8034/#15(Link). Simple.
In terms of inheritance, the man gets 2x of what the woman gets. Simple.
From the article further,
What the heck was My Lord smoking and where can I get some of that?
I mean, can I now, based on this (admittedly not quoted in context) statement, now draw up a marriage contract allowing me to marry a 9 year old? Really? Sign me up!
/sarc
Seriously, what kind of hash was he on? The whole point of a *legal system* is that it is based on *coercive* power. Make no mistake, Shariah is not some frilly *principles* but an all-encompassing *system of law*.
Speaking of which, it’s about time the Beth Din rabbinical courts were stripped of official standing, if they ever had it. Not knowing the specifics, I can only hope that these ‘courts’ are officially unrecognised by the British legal system.
The laws of Great Britain have been developed over several centuries, and have adapted to better fit the society they are implemented upon. For example, the laws in relation to child working hours, theft, marriage, and abortion have been adapted to better fit the ever-changing society. In this instance, Sharia law should not be segregated but adapted and integrated into the existing laws giving those who implement them a degree of flexibility, this in turn would better reflect our current society.
That said, however, some people (not me you understand) might suggest that so-called “Western” law, secular government, democracy and “freedoms” are relatively new things in the history of Man, and could well be blown away by the winds of time and change. Sharia law is about 1,400 years old, has withstood the test of time, and may be the remaining constant to hold changed British and other Western societies together in the future. These people might add that, with Sharia law comes the Islamic religion, and that these two things could unify society in a way which other legal systems and religions may previously have been unable to do.
Slarti,
I’m not sure what to make of your comment.
First, you can’t adapt Sharia. Change not sanctioned by God in the Qur’aan is regarded as Bi’da or ‘Innovation’, which is strictly forbidden by Sharia law itself. In fact, the concept of changing God’s law by replacing bits of it with man-made laws is Shirk, ‘to put others alongside God’, and the worst of sins in Islam. It is a form of apostasy, and is thereby punishable by death.
You could develop something that has a resemblance in places, of course, but it wouldn’t be ‘Sharia’ and it could not be considered in any way to be in accordance with orthodox Islam. Anything you attempt along those lines the fundamentalists would simply say wasn’t Islamic Sharia, but a lying attempt by the West to corrupt Muslims, and they have the unarguable scriptural and historical authority to hand to prove that they would be right. You might fool some, but so long as you have believers who strive to become ‘better Muslims’, the problem of them discovering the truth will remain.
When you talk about Islam being stable and maybe unifying Western society in the future, I’m not clear on whether you think that’s a good or bad thing. It reminds me of what George Orwell said: if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
Personally, I don’t think it is stable. It’s hard, but brittle. The true believers can see it decaying around them and are getting desperate – hence all the trouble. Their only hope is in near total isolation from Enlightenment values, or to induce us to abandon them ourselves.
Pa Annoyed: Well, Midwesterner thanked you for “your (very) informative reply“, above, thus saving me the trouble. Your response to my comment illustrates a thinking response, which I find pleasantly surprising on this website.
In response:
In my first para.: Yes, absolutely, as you say:
What I was suggesting was that British Law had evolved, through inclusion.
In my second para: By referring to the implementation of Sharia law, the unspoken implication is that it would be implemented in totality – as it must be (QED) – i.e., through the implementation of Islam (the Quran) and Sharia law.
The points I would now make are:
1. What you are likely to get if you adapt British law by the inclusion of Sharia law is exactly what the Islamic “guile” approach to Islamic conversion recommends. The drifting in of the thin end of a large wedge into the legal institutions and laws of society.
2. Whether I am for or against this “drifting in” process or whether I think this is a good or a bad thing is largely irrelevant.
3. This process has already commenced (years ago), and it is proceeding remorselessly in incremental steps, often covertly. A more visible example could be these latest statements by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, and, earlier this year by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury – i.e., the latter’s suggestion that aspects of Sharia law should be adopted in Britain.
4. What stands to get blown away are the modern so-called “Western” law, secular government, democracy and “freedoms”.
5. As far as I can see, there is no way in which Western society can stop this, because as it changes and adapts to the growth of Islamic communities in its midst, that society will necessarily become more accepting of Islam. Islam means a rigid, fascist and hegemonic religious ideology.
6. If people who love this relatively free Western society and culture of today say “We don’t like the sound of that! We won’t stand for it!”, then my response would be “Then what exactly are you going to do about it that does not destroy that selfsame culture in the process?”
7. We should question whether there is some purpose in anyone wishing to preserve this relatively free Western society and culture for future generations. After all, we will be dead and gone before Islam is fully established.
8. If it is worth preserving, then we must use our democratically elected leaders and the lawmakers, to help us preserve the cultural status quo from Islamism.
Hang on – wasn’t it Britain’s most senior judge who said that Muslims in Britain should be able to live according to Sharia? Oh dear, erm…
I think you have totally misrepresented what the judge has said.
Quote: (emphasis mine) “THIS IS ONE OF THOSE EXAMPLES OF WHY I *DO NOT THINK* THAT A POLYCENTRIC LEGAL ORDER CAN REALLY WORK.”
What he is saying (from my reading), is that IF the Muslim women do not have the right of choice (i.e., the right of “exit”, the right to no longer be treated under the code of their familes), then polycentric legal order (i.e., realizing the legitimacy of Sharia Law), CANNOT work in a society/culture/legal community such as the UK.
What am I missing?
I understood that the gist of what has been said this time is not much different from what Williams actually said.
In simple terms, as other groups in this country are free to adopt civil arbitration under codes that they find morally acceptable, which their consciences can better live with, there was no reason why Muslims should be treated less favourably than, say Jews and others groups, who already exercised such opportunities.
it was clear that, at all times, any choice exercised to be ‘subserviant’ (for want of a better word) to some code in this way would still be absolutely ‘inferior’ to the otherwise settled law of the land, which would take precedence should any party involved wish to exercise their rights under that, to which there would be no bar.
My recollection is that Williams said that he was referring to civil issues only, did not encompass the whole of Sharia, and that the more primitive parts, especially those relating to its criminal provisions, had no place in our society
I don’t see how what Lord Phillips, or Williams said, in any way suggests anything other than making people equal under the law as it is practiced at present
And I echo the sentiments expressed above, about the dangers of having one monolithic, absolute, set of laws with no provision whatsoever for individual conscience
A terribly cynical argument. Do you have any kids or plan to do so? Whatever happened the idea of wanting to preserve and progress one’s civilisation for the benefit of future generations?
Doricloon writes:
Individual conscience? I don’t really see how your arguments work. If Sharia law does not clash with the existing law of the land as you think Lord Phillips and Rowan Williams claim to say, then there is no debate here. But that is not what I think is going on here. So long as there is no duress involved, I have no problem with Muslims making whatever kind of contracts they want, such as sharia mortgages and the like. But that is not the issue, and you must surely realise this. The issue is that with things like arranged marriages, there is a clear breach of the freedoms of the rights of people to make consenting relationships.
The naivety of some so-called libertarian commenters on this site is truly worrying. Don’t you guys get it? With every move by the legal establishment to widen the space for sharia, the fundamentalists out there perceive a victory, a chance to push for more.
Johnathan Pearce: Was I being cynical? Well, certainly it may seem cynical of me, but it was not intentionally so.
It seems unlikely that even America’s founding fathers could have had the foresight to anticipate and mitigate for the compulsion of Islam – i.e., to make itself the dominant religion in any society where it found itself.
History shows that nation states (with the evident exception of Turkey) seem to have refused or otherwise been unable to see this one coming. For example, only in 2007 did the US DoD belatedly wake up to the “threat” of the Islamic Brotherhood’s documented plans of 1991 to Islamicise the USA (“threat” is what the DoD called it in their report). Thus I do not hold out much hope that the liberal British will be able to avoid it in our lifetimes – after all, the Islamicisation has already progressed to the point where even the country’s leading judge seems to be suggesting taking the country down the slippery downhill slope of Islamic concession.
Of course I sincerely believe in the rightness of preserving and passing on the great and hard-won freedoms of Western society to my children and future generations, but, quite frankly, there’s a huge gap between that belief and evidence of a feasible, effective action plan. As I wrote above:
This is a defined societal problem that needs solving. It is not a debate.
Turkey’s General Ataturk likened Islam to a cancer, and he was right, insofar as Islam becomes systemic and then cannot be removed without destroying the society (the patient) – and look where Turkey is now, starting to become non-secular by degrees, again – despite their civil war solution (NOT) to the problem.
I am currently unable to see how ranting on about beliefs, freedom, liberty female equality and so forth, or exclaiming “Don’t you guys get it?” is going to achieve much more than warming up the air a bit – even though it might feel very satisfying to blow off steam verbally on this sort of blog, and there are enough redneck intellectuals doing that already. However, whilst we are busy self-actualising or emoting all over the carpet in this manner, Islam has a clear road home, and lots of time – because nothing is happening or being done to stop it. No-one is able to come up with any decent ideas or plans to effectively stop the compulsive hegemonic, systemic growth of Islam in Western society.
I could be wrong of course, and maybe the Islamic compulsion (under command from God/”Allah”) to be dominant is not a threat to society as we know it at all, and the US DoD have it all wrong too. Or maybe the Quran is indeed the word of Allah, which could provide an explanation of Islam’s success – the word of Allah, after all, must be infallible, which is what an Islamist must believe. Some people (not me you understand) might compare such belief to horse’s excrement, but this would make not one iota of difference to the fact that there is an absence of a solution to the problem defined. The last time someone came up with a solution to a perceived major societal problem, 6 million Jews had to be murdered in horrific manner. Let’s hope that we don’t select a similar approach to this problem, otherwise we would not deserve the enlightened culture that our forefathers fought for and died to pass on to us.
There’s plenty of thinking and maybe a glimmer of hope in John David Lewis’ article – adapted from a lecture he presented at the Ayn Rand Institute’s OCON conference “The Jihad Against the West,” in Boston, MA, on October 21, 2006.
Here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp
The article is heavy going and may make one’s brain hurt. One general suggestion seems to be that we could consider doing it to the Muslims like the US did it to the Japanese and their toxic Shinto state religion. Maybe a case of “Let’s drop the big one now”? Trouble is, it was easy with Japan, as they were a distinct and isolated target. With Islam, the target is becoming, or has already become, ourselves – it’s already systemic, remember? Oh dear.
JP
‘I have no problem with Muslims making whatever kind of contracts they want, such as sharia mortgages and the like. But that is not the issue, and you must surely realise this. The issue is that with things like arranged marriages, there is a clear breach of the freedoms of the rights of people to make consenting relationships’.
Are you saying that you can’t have what you seem to accept as being a ‘right thing’, because their other is a ‘wrong thing’?
I never heard Williams et al advocating that we accept and accede to the adoption of ‘wrong things’ as part of allowing/accepting ‘right things’.
What sort of principle would I display if I said that I would give a man freedom to write a political blog, but not if he was a libertarian? Prevent the good, to deny the possibility of evil? It’s more akin to doing evil, that good might come from it.
As for saying ‘no’, you act rightly when you say ‘no’ to the unacceptable, not when you say it preclude the acceptable in fear of allowing the unacceptable.
You see the same contortion of principle at work in some of the evangelical non conformist churches. Runs a bit like this……never mind that this man from ‘whatever church you care to mention that he goes to’ is our brother in Christ, we can’t accept him to worship with us in case he brings some doctrinal error as regards the practice of ‘whatever church you care to mention that we go to’. The right thing would be to accept him as he is, and exercise proper governance when, and if, he stepped off line. And if he can’t or won’t tow that line as part of the quid pro quo of being with you, he should be told to sling his hook. Politely, of course.
Same goes here
Some pretty lame responses to me, I am afraid. Let’s go a’fisking:
Of course. This was before the age of mass travel, although if you look at the career of Jefferson and the founding fathers, they went to immense lengths to constrain the role of religion, to prevent intolerance, etc. And I am sure their suppression of the Barbary pirates educated them about the Islamic world’s less attractive aspects.
Then one of the things we need to do is to prevent the likes of senior UK judges from pushing to allow a coercive system of law to be incorporated into the established law of the land, no?
Don’t try to shout debate or commentary down. What do you want, for us to say nothing, not point to the dangers, the risks, the issues? Who is served by these matters not being aired, exactly?
Really? Unlike you, I think that if the indigenous populations of the West held their nerve, resisted things like calls for sharia, blasphemy laws, etc, then the tide could be turned. I also think that at least in the short run, there needs to be a block on immigration into the West from the Islamic world, at least until the existing Muslim population has been Westernised enough.
I don’t buy your analysis that there is anything inevitable about the march of Islam, or that we should put our hands over our eyes.
I am also particularly unimpressed by this paragraph:
Oh dear, indeed. I don’t think that outlawing a religion followed by a quarter of the world is going to work, but I do think that in the West, we can and should insist that Western norms in law etc be followed, that would-be immigrants support these laws, or leave.
Doricloon, your judgement is lousy. The reason why I have no problem with a Muslim signing a sharia mortgage with a bank is that there is no duress on either side. On the other hand, if a Muslim man enters into an arranged marriage as a result of the orders of his and his wife’s parents, there is duress. QED. That is a “wrong thing”. Duress is the key to my whole dislike of parts – only parts – of sharia as a code of law and ethics.
Or to put it another way, I only object to sharia where it violates the crucial principle of consent as is protected by the English Common Law. And yet my fear is that the supporters of sharia want to push the boundaries all the time. To claim that this process is harmless is disengenuous.
Johnathan Pearce:
1. You say:
I say: Yes; sounds great, but, how exactly are you going to do that? Is it happening now? Is there evidence that something is preventing senior UK judges from “pushing to allow a coercive system of law to be incorporated into the established law of the land”? I thought we had just seen evidence to the contrary – no? Or would you prefer to ignore that evidence, and if so, then why?
2. You say:
I say: No, I do not want those things. I apologise if I was seeming to shout debate down, though I agree with De Bono that debate it is a curse on mankind’s development. No, my thought here was – as I wrote:
3. You say:
I say: You may think what you will (and it all sounds great, by the way), but, how exactly are you going to do that – i.e., get the West to “hold their nerve”, “resist this and that”, etc.? Is this happening now? Is there evidence of this? I would suggest not.
4. You say:
I say: I am unaware that “outlawing a religion, etc.” was being suggested – it wasn’t by me, at any rate; quite impractical. No, it seem to have been annihilation that was being suggested, by John David Lewis, with outlawing a religion on the side. As far as what you don’t think or do think, (and it all sounds great, by the way), how effective do you think it will all be? Who is this “we” who is going to do the insisting? Is it happening now? Is there evidence of this? If there is, then what effect – if any – is it having or likely to have, especially given past experience? As I wrote above:
5. You say:
I say: I am unable to see how you arrived at this as a valid conclusion.
And then you go on:
I say: I do not wish to argue, and I do not wish you to feel obliged to rationalise your responses, but these last statements of yours would seem to demonstrate that:
(a) You do not seem to understand the Quoran, and thus do not appreciate that Muslims are forbidden to take the word of Allah (the Quoran) or Shariah law in parts. It must be taken in whole, otherwise you commit a blasphemy. Allah’s word is infallible, and so too is Allah’s last and final true prophet – otherwise Allah would not have chosen him as he did, to recite Allah’s word to the people. Ergo, any laws prescribed by Mohammed have to be accepted too, and we must all try to emulate him (that includes decapitating unbelievers).
(b) You do not seem to understand the Quoran, which mandates that Muslims are obliged to “push the boundaries all the time”, because Allah has commanded that they must use every endeavour to ensure that Islam is the dominant religion in whatever society/culture it finds itself. Allah further directs that, though it is a sin to lie and deceive, guile is perfectly acceptable where and only if the objective is the implementation of this Islamic dominance. From a Muslim’s perspective, you are quite wrong when you say “To claim that this process is harmless is disingenuous.” Muslims understand that the process is indeed harmless – it is for the benefit of mankind’s souls that Allah’s will be implemented. So then how could it be anything but harmless for the true believers? (The non-believers will burn in hell, or so we are advised by Allah.) Furthermore, any disingenuousness is perfectly acceptable if the objective is Islamic dominance.
Part of the power of Islam: I could suggest that you need to appreciate, if you do not already, that when an Imam (a Muslim cleric) stands up holding the Quoran above his head and recites from the Quoran, he is holding up the absolute and infallible word of Allah, and he is reciting it. The Quoran tells him what to think and how to think, and all responsibility for action necessary to implement the word of Allah is thus abrogated to Allah. No other religion has this – the word of the one true God. All other religions have scriptures which are just books produced by different human authors – e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the Christian New Testament.
Slartibartfarst, writes:
So what? I personally have no problem with Muslims following those parts of the sharia that are compatible with a free society but if they demand anything more, we say no. Fairly simple argument, really.
You are starting to sound like a troll. You raised the example of what happened to Japan after WW2, which involved the actions of banning shinto and the like.
As for whether my views or those like me will prevail, I have no idea. But you sound like one of those Eyeores who constantly attack those for raising these issues, then moan that “no-one is doing anything about it.”
Well get up and make some suggestions. Go on, have a go.
Oh, let’s remember what Slarti said about Islam, which does rather contradict his/her coment to the effect that any good Muslim must accept the whole of sharia law:
If you believe that Muslims must accept all aspects of sharia, including its most brutal aspects, then it is frankly a nonsense to argue that sharia “should not be segregated but adapted and integrated into the existing laws.”
In fact, if this is true, my original thought that the judge is an ass would seem to be true after all. Argument over.
Johnathan Pearce: You are starting to call me names like “Troll” or “Eyeore”. Argumentum ad hominem. If I were your tutor, I would suggest that this sort of approach, even though it may make you feel more comfortable, does nothing to your credit in terms of your apparent ability to engage in sound critical thinking.
To respond to your “Well get up and make some suggestions”:
Let us assume that it is given that the problem is a societal one of the sort described.
History shows us the 3 methods that other, non-Muslim societies have generally applied to solve the problem:
(By the way, these have pretty much been done to death elsewhere on this site.)
(i) Convert (submit) to Islam.
(ii) Accept/negotiate dhimmitude.
(iii) Fight the bastards to death or submission.
For Western society, method (i) and (ii) would presumably be anathema, and thus are not acceptable solutions.
The last to try method (iii) was Turkey, and it has not worked, so it is not in fact a solution, and it seems at best to be just a delaying tactic. QED.
Nevertheless, method (iii) is popular with redneck intellectuals (including some on this site) who persist in ignoring the supposed given that – due to Islam now being systemic in society – method (iii) would probably damage/destroy that selfsame culture in the process.
I have no original suggestions of my own, having exhausted my thinking on this. However, I would suggest that John David Lewis’s approach (http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp) is the best that we might be able to produce at present. I think this is a frightening approach.
The trouble is, as suggested by Lewis, the longer Western society delays in taking that approach, the more difficult it might be to win the battle. If left too late – by endless dialogue or appeasement or conciliatory mouthings similar, for example, to what happens on this site, or what UK judges and archbishops are saying – then the less chance of there being any effective resistance to the Islamicisation of society.
Musims realise that Western society has all these things flowing from the Age of Enlightenment – like law (e.g., a fair trial; innocent until proven guilty), and concepts of “freedom”, “liberty” and “human rights”.
These are considered to be weaknesses and corruption, and must all be swept away by Islam. However, whilst they exist, they can be, are being and will be used by the guile method, in an increemental Islamicisation process. After that it will be, as demonstrating Muslims’ posters declared in London in 2006, a case of “Freedom Go To Hell” and “Islam Will Rule the World”.
I consider that, currently, there are only two choices:
(a) method (i) and/or (ii) will prevail.
(b) adopt a variant of (iii): dismantle Western culture – suspending many of the laws and freedoms held most dear – in order to selectively weed out the Muslims and send them packing back to Arabia, regardless of whether they were born in that country or not. Then take the Lewis approach.
However, I cannot see (b) as being very likely, as – even if the relevant treasured laws could be suspended – it would likely entail a massive pogrom, which would be unnacceptabe to most members of Western society, post-Holocaust.
Thus, by default, I would suggest that (a) will occur, by default, as a kind of non-decision by society.
The Magna Carta was a marvellous invention, and so was the American version. I sometimes wonder if so many Americans would have fought for freedom if the Declaration of Independence had NOT been written first.
No, I use these terms if feel they are accurate and justified. Your vast slabs of text, which often state the bleedin obvious or are irrelevant to the points in issue, are evidence of trollish behaviour. And your pessimism about the situation vis a vis Islam is evidence of youur being an Eyeore. I used the terms because they fit.
And however many words you try to write about this, I do not accept the march of Islam in Britain to be inevitable. For a start, they make up less than 10 per cent of the UK population and given the influx of folk from Christian parts of Eastern Europe, it may even decline in relative terms.
Some people talk about Islam as like some inevitable, unbeatable force. I beg to differ.
You rang?
Chemotherapy is damaging to the body. Leaving a granuloma untreated far more so.
Because it didn’t work in Turkey a century ago means what, exactly?
No wonder, after you did your 180 on “Let’s all submit because they’ll outlast us” your posts haven’t had any discernable point.
Jonathan Pierce and Sunfish: Maybe you are both right. Why change the habits of a lifetime? Maybe it is better to just sit around slagging off someone whose points you don’t agree with but are unable to logically refute, rather than addressing the issues they raise. I guess it is probably easier to do that than it is to have to think critically about things.
Happy days.
Wrong. We have refuted your views. Completely.
I am always willing to learn new things and to be fair to you, you have raised some interesting points here, but you have, as Sunfish said, contradicted yourself quite hugely in the course of your comments.
Johnathan Pearce:
Refuted my views completely?
Eh? I am mortified if you are using the word “refute” to mean “Prove (a statement, accusation, etc.) to be false or incorrect; disprove.”
However, if you are, then (and I could be wrong, of course) I do not see any views – mine or others – put forward on this page that have been properly refuted by critical thinking. Denied or argued strongly against using the usual logical fallacies, yes – there seems to have been quite a lot of that. For example, “I think that such and such…”, or “I don’t agree/believe that…”, or “Doricloon, your judgement is lousy”.
Those sorts of statements do not “refute” anything – though they can sometimes tell us something about the speaker’s thinking habits and ego states (e.g., I’m OK, You’re not OK”.)
Contradiction?
Now, I know that I am only human and therefore prone to making mistakes, but where have I contradicted myself “hugely”, or even a little bit for that matter?
Sunfish said no such thing as far as I can see. I think he was referring to my taking the Devil’s advocate approach (though he and some others had not appreciated this) on another part of this site (same/similar subject), then my turning 180 degrees to put the opposing view. Nothing wrong in that – it can be a useful exercise to stimulate critical thinking, though it was not so effective in that case.
Furthermore, I have not here been putting my opinions forward, but putting forward instead legitimate and opposing viewpoints that I have been trying to understand. Sunfish seems to have an endearingly youthful but hasty energy, and sometimes seems to deny the legitimacy or validity of others’ viewpoints – especially where they might cut across his paradigm and opinions. He has evidenced a strong dislike for such, even intimating violence towards a writer whom he considered held opposing opinions. Sort of intellectually “trigger happy”, I suppose – but then he would probably not deny this, being a self-confessed “redneck intellectual” (per the words in his signature line).
The only proper reference to contradiction was really Pa Annoyed, who – though he did not use the term – rightly picked up on a point that I had made sloppily, and which I later clarified and said:
You seemed to pick up on the same point as Pa Annoyed latterly, saying that I had contradicted myself – probably missing the “inclusion” clarification in your haste to be right. An easy enough mistake to make – as was misspelling your name. Anyway, if you go back and look at the item, reading it carefully in context, I think you might be able to see what I mean.
If it might be of use, here is what I have always found to be a really useful thought to help me to prise my mind open and try and keep it open: “Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.” – Karl Weick.
Whatever. You make the assertion that the march of Islam is inevitable; I contest that statement, by, among other things, pointing out that basic statistical fact that Muslims make up less than 10 per cent of the population. I also tend to get very bored by people who keep going on about how X or Y is inevitable, there is nothing we can do about it, so shut up and enjoy the ride, blah, fucking blah.
If you really were making a Devil’s Advocate argument, you plainly did not make that point at all clear. In any event, I am sure Sunfish – one of this blog’s most astute commenters – would have spotted that fact. He clearly did not. Which suggests that you are dissembling.
Let’s remind ourselves one more time of something you wrote:
So, on the one hand, you point out that a Muslim has to accept sharia in its entirety, but you also argue that the UK should adapt its laws to integrate said sharia into the law. How the heck is that going to be done without violating the principles of consent that lie at the heart of the English Common law, which is precisely the point that I put in my original article?
I have had enough of this anyway, so enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
Amazing. Slarti, if I were you, I’d get out whilst the going was reasonably good. You are about to look a fool. You should know when you are outclassed by intellects greater than yours.
I bear witness that the all-powerful “Whatever” argument – which can instantly turn a gerund into an imperfect epsilon adjective (something which cannot otherwise exist in the metaphysical universe) – has been invoked, along with the hallowed name of The Sunfish – which can vitiate a syllogism at the speed of light whilst simultaneously validating all arguments that the invoker has uttered.
Though it is a well-known fact that either one of these invocations on their own is powerful enough, it is not so well known that when they are used jointly (as here) they can stop an Oxford Union debate in its tracks, rendering all logically valid conclusions invalid and vice versa within a one-mile radius.
Get out of here and take your ideas about that filthy, stinking fascist religion with you. You are both unwanted and we decidedly do not wish to think upon them. Also, before you go, you should apologize – to JP for making him spit the dummy, and to all in general for not letting on that you were pulling the old Devil’s advocate trick. That was just plain unfair and it tended to induce motion sickness and a bad headache from spinning us through 360 degrees.
After you have finished apologizing for being a cretin, shut the f#ck up and go and drink five Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters before breakfast.
This worthless thread in the comments is to be closed.
Lastword, that was priceless. You guys are quite mad, aren’t you? Remember, sarcasm has to be finely judged to be actually funny.
Fuck off.
Oh, I thought that I had had the last word, but it appears that I was mistaken.
That Johnathan Pearce chap seems to be a bit rude doesn’t he? I wonder if either of his parents taught him to speak in such ill-mannered terms, or if he learned the behavior elsewhere?
My mother used to say that people who swore a lot and used expletives did it to compensate for having a limited vocabulary, being correspondingly constrained in their ability to articulate and communicate what they were thinking or feeling. She also reckoned that this was probably a constraint on their ability to think.
Lastword, I was rude, because you were tediously sarcastic. Civility is a two-way road, matey.
I am not normally rude to strangers but as Simon Cowell likes to say, I’ll make an exception in your case.
bye
Pointless trolling deleted by Samizdata Admin.
Like I said, civility cuts both ways. Rather than dish out pompous lectures, I suggest you first take your own advice.
[Troll… deleted by the management… get lost]
Though I read Samizdata.net with interest, I am unsure if my religious views as a secularist and a Christian will be liked, and so I rarely make comment, but I would like to state that I and all my Christian friends are becoming increasingly concerned at the concessions to the Muslim religion creeping into our society. It does look like a one-way movement, rather than a temporary swing.
A general trend of discussion in the comments here seems to be that:
For example, take Ian B’s pessimistic comments:
There are other comments expressing the opposite view or hope this might not happen, but public statements by leaders like the archbishop and the judge do seem to contradict them – it is already happening. And we are becoming used to it. For how many years have there been Muslim prayer-rooms in Heathrow airport, but yet no Christian chapel? Equality before the law may already have become a negotiable principle quite some time ago, whilst we were sleeping.