Sharia in Great Britain

Abstract

In Western states with a sizeable Muslim community the introduction of the sharia – at least partially, in certain fields – is being raised again and again. In most cases it is not a question of the Sharia overtaking the local legal system or of establishing a parallel legal structure, but rather the implementation of some elements of Islamic law and the applicability thereof. The Sharia councils/courts, authorized within the Muslim community to interpret Islamic law, deal primarily with family law (marriage and divorce, inheritance, etc.). It should be noted, however, that this is not about the Muslim minorities and their host communities only, but on a more general level has a wider relevance in every religious-cultural community. Namely, how can religious law/rules operate and what is its relation to the official law of the state. In the past few years, wherever this question was raised (mostly in Great-Britain and Canada), it was followed by hot, emotionally charged debates, in which emotional considerations often suppressed rational arguments. Such debates usually did not focus on the operation of the religious courts per se, but rather on the applicability of Islamic law and/or of certain elements of the Sharia. Even more so as the question, besides its legal consequences, has a symbolic relevance over and above the concrete cases. This could serve as a further argument in the debate over the wide-spread narrative of the ‘Islamization of Europe’ and the (forced) expansion of Islam. There are several topics for debate, even if emotions are put aside/left out of consideration. The question is not only if jurisdiction on a religious basis can coexist with the local ‘official’ state law, or if the danger of a ‘parallel’ legal system is realistic, or what happens if religious councils/courts pass a resolution in contradiction with the official legal system of the state. Yet, if the values of a minority culture clash or are different on certain points from the established Western values, this may cause not only a threat to the existing domestic order but may even result in erupting violence. (Among European/Western circumstances such an ‘ignition’ could be the situation of women in Islam and the legal consequences thereof.) Another question is how the introduction of only some elements of Islamic law would affect the protection of human rights of the individuals – yet again a very frequent topic for misunderstanding between the European/Western individual concept and the community-related thinking of Islam.