UK: "Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain," says UK’s top judge

* It must be something they put in the water over there…

Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips has a friend downunder

Update: Another Bishop backs Sharia law in UK 

*    Beware of  “Men of Faith”

Muslims should be able to live under Sharia

The judge speaks coolly of not allowing stonings and amputations, but how will he keep them out once the principle that Sharia can be applied in Britain is accepted? The next step will be challenges to the principle that whenever British law and Sharia come into conflict, Sharia must give way. And soon enough that principle will give way also.

“Muslims in Britain should be able to live under Sharia law, says top judge,” by Christopher Hope and James Kirkup for the Telegraph, 

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, strongly backed Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over his suggestion earlier this year that aspects of Sharia law should be adopted in Britain.

The archbishop’s remarks sparked a national debate and led to calls for his resignation.

Risking inflaming that controversy again, Lord Phillips has said that Muslims in Britain should be able to use Sharia to decide financial and marital disputes.

• Does Britain have space for Sharia law?
• Islam is real threat to church, says Synod member
• Muslims ‘to outnumber traditional churchgoers’
• Sharia law ‘would undermine British society’
• Archbishop Williams sparks Sharia law row

 

 

The judge did add that only the criminal courts should have the power to decide when a crime has been committed and when to impose punishment.

But his suggestion that different religious groups should run their affairs according to different rules sparked warnings that community cohesion could be undermined.

In a speech at the East London Muslim Centre in east London, Lord Phillips said it was “not very radical” for Dr Williams to argue that Sharia law can be used to help govern issues like family disputes and the sale of financial products.

Lord Phillips said: “It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by law other than English law.”

Therefore, he said, he could see no reason why Sharia law should not be used to settle disputes in this country.

He said: “There is no reason why principles of Sharia law, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.”

He added: “It must be recognized however that any sanctions for a failure to comply with the agreed terms of the mediation would be drawn from the laws of England and Wales.”

Sharia law suffered from “widespread misunderstanding” in Britain, Lord Phillips said.

“Part of the misconception about Sharia law is the belief that Sharia is only about mandating sanctions such as flogging, stoning, the cutting off of hands or death for those fail to comply with the law,” he said.

“In some countries the courts interpret Sharia law as calling for severe physical punishment. There can be no question of such courts sitting in this country, or such sanctions being applied here.”

The judge said Dr Williams had been misunderstood when it was reported in February that he said British Muslims could be governed by Sharia law.

Lord Phillips said that the archbishop was saying only that “it was possible for individuals voluntarily to conduct their lives in accordance with Sharia principles without this being in conflict with the rights guaranteed by our law”.

There is already scope in English law for some communities to use their own religious codes to resolve disputes. Orthodox Jews can use the Beth Din rabbinical courts to decide on matters including divorce.

However some critics say that women marrying under Sharia law do not have the same rights as in English law, and could lead to them being treated as second class citizens as far as divorce settlements, custody of children and inheritance go.

Muslim and Christian politicians expressed fears that at a time of heightened tensions, encouraging Muslims to live by their own distinct rules could make it harder for different communities to integrate.

Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar and a practising Muslim, said that allowing Sharia law in parts of the UK would be divisive.

He said: “This would create a two-tier society. It is highly retrograde. It will segregate and alienate the Muslim community from the rest of British society.

“The majority of British Muslims want to live only under British law and they would reject anything that means they are treated differently.

“What Lord Phillips and the archbishop are discussing is something that is completely outside their area of understanding.”

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said Lord Phillips’ suggestion was “totally unacceptable.”

He said: “It is very unhelpful for community cohesion. This is the sort of thing that builds up tensions in areas like mine, in places like Bradford. Sharia law has got no place in any shape or form in British law.”

Andrew Selous, a Tory MP and chairman of the all-party Christians in Parliament group, said calls like those made by Lord Phillips and the archbishop were “worrying.”

He said: “As far as people of all faiths are concerned, it is important that we are all equal under one United Kingdom law. It will lead to more community tensions rather than less.”

Lord Ahmed, a Labour peer and practicing Muslim, said there was a “big debate” among British Muslims about whether and how Sharia should apply in the UK.

He said: “There is a risk that this would make it harder for communities to integrate — we all need to do more to integrate, and mainstream society has to do more as well.”

“We should have one law for everyone in the UK, but there may be very rare occasions when exceptions have to be made, like for marriage, divorce and food.”

A Muslim lawyer said that raising the prospect of allowing people to live under Sharia law in Britain would “alarm” people.

Mahmud Al Rashid, spokesman from the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said: “There is massive misunderstanding about what Sharia is. It is not a single law.”

A spokesman for Dr Williams said: “We welcome the speech given by the Lord Chief Justice as a positive and constructive contribution to this important and ongoing debate.”

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster and leader of Britain’s Catholics, said that people should live under the laws of the UK.

His spokesman said: “As the Cardinal has consistently said and indeed said earlier this year, was that Britons should abide by and be subject to the law of the land.”

Downing Street said the Government’s position on the issue of Sharia law had been made clear at the time of the controversy over the Archbishop’s speech.

“We think that British law should be based on British values and determined by the British Parliament,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said.

Baroness Warsi, the Conservative shadow minister for community cohesion, backed the judge.

She said: “The Lord Chief Justice’s speech is a very clear and unifying speech for our communities in Britain.

”I specifically endorse the points made by Lord Phillips that with equality of rights come responsibilities. It is absolutely essential that everyone in this country is treated equally by the law but it is important that everyone is equally subject to it, and that the same laws apply equally to everyone.”

Wolf Howling has more:

As Winston Churchill once commented about Stanley Baldwin, Britain’s ineffectual and incompetent Prime Minister in the mid-1930’s, “he will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” His words ring completely true today as to Britain’s Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, who has called for allowing a parallel legal system with Sharia law to be recognized in Britain. And indeed, Churchill’s commentary on Baldwin applies essentially across the board to the U.K.’s socialist elite, all of whom seem to live in a cloistered world of pure fantasy. Unfortunately, in Britain, it is this’chattering class’ of socialist elitists who hold all the reigns of power in government, the judiciary, academia, and even the Anglican Church.

A few weeks ago, Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest priest of the Anglican Church – a man who has praised Islam, damned America as an imperialist nation to a crowd of Muslims, blamed America for Muslim violence against Christians in the Middle East, and who refuses to proselytize for Christianity among Muslisms – himself advocated implementing at least parts of Sharia law in Britain. Today, Britain’s Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips – the man who has overseen thegutting of Britain’s anti-terrorism law, the man whose judiciary has made itimpossible to deport the terrorists and radical Islamists from Britain, and the man who has helped make of the British justice system a joke as a deterrent to crime – has himself now joined this supremely misguided Archbishop in calling for at least the partial enforcement of Sharia law in Britain.

For the past millenium, it has been a foundational element of anglo-saxon law that no person was above the law and that one law applies to all in the kingdom. Yet now Britain’s highest judge, who seemingly should be prepared to defend the ancient anglo-saxon legal system with his very life against any hint of encroachment, is prepared to jettison it as no longer relevant. He is calling for the impostion of two different legal systems in Britian – systems with wholly incompatible values.

One wonders if these socialist elites have a clue as to the nature of Sharia law? Do they understand the harm they are doing to all of British society – not just the majority of Muslims in the UK who wish to live in freedom – by calling for this? Do they understand that there is a war going on at this very moment for the heart and soul of Islam? Do they understand that it is a war between those who wish to live and pursue their faith under Western freedoms versus those who wish to do away with the West and impose Sharia law? All one needs to do to understand what is at stake is listen to Parts II and III of the debate on this issue between the Muslim reformer, Dr. Zhudi Jasser, and a Salafi Imam (see here).

One wonders if these socialist elites understand so little about Islam that they do not know its basic precepts. One of those precepts is that calling for Sharia to be imposed in a non-Muslim country is “actually a violation of traditional sharia, which commands that Muslims living in non-Muslim lands obey the law and respect the customs of the host countries.” The call to Sharia in the UK is not made in respect of traditional Islam, but in the name of radicalization and triumphalism.

One wonders if these socialist elites understand the relationship between Sharia law, the subjagation of women and honor violence? Perhaps they would do well to read the report on it from the UK Center for Social Cohesion that played so prominently in the U.K. papers a few weeks ago.

One wonders if these socialist elites understand that the call to Sharia comes from the fanatics who reject British law and who do not want Muslims to integrate into British society. Do they understand that these same fanatics wish to impose their belief system on all of Britain and precisly what that means? When the head of the Muslim Council of Britain calls for the stoning of adulterers in Britain as part of the country-wide imposition of Sharia law, perhaps that should be a clue to these socialists that they are living in a fantasy world. Or when converts from Islam face death threats and are hunted down in Christian Britain, mayhap there is a need to fully establish the primacy and exlusivity of British laws in Britain.

Britain lives in a tyranny of parliament today. Ancient rights of the British have been taken away at Parliamentary whim over the past century. Labour and Tory offer essentially the same brand of socialism. Democracy is near death in Britain and, with the transer of sovereignty to the EU, it will be in fact be dead in all but name. The socialists are in total control and are imposing their suicidal and destructive values by fiat. They are deconstructing society at an ever increasing rate even as they hold open the floodgates to massive immigration (with corresponding massive emigration(no doubt the socialist elitists retiring to the French countryside, leaving the working class to eventually sort out the mess they leave behind)). The virulent strain of Islam now dominant in Britain and being homegrown on British soil in Deobandi seminaries is, according to the Times, even more radical than the strain animating the brutal Taliban. This is suicidal insanity. It truly is a race to see whether Britain’s socialists will completely destroy what remains of Anglo-Saxon society before the rank and file of Britain revolt and either retake their country or are defeated, ending once and forever the anglo-saxon kingdom.

The Telegraph provides the sordid details of Lord Phillips

I have to intercede here. Absolutely it is possible for parties in the UK and the U.S. to enter into agreements that specify whose laws will govern that discrete agreement. However, it is an equally well settled doctrine at common law that no court will enforce an agreement that contravenes the public policy of the state. There is no question that Sharia law, particularly as to marriage and family, is at odds with the values of Western civilization. See the links discussing this below. To continue with the insanity:

He said: “There is no reason why principles of Sharia law, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.”

He added: “It must be recognized however that any sanctions for a failure to comply with the agreed terms of the mediation would be drawn from the laws of England and Wales.”