CIP International Director Al-Alawi, Executive Director Schwartz: "Our survey shows British Muslims don’t want sharia," The Spectator [London], July 9, 2008
Our survey shows British Muslims don’t want sharia
Irfan al-Alawi & Stephen Schwartz
Wednesday, 9th July 2008
Don’t believe the Lord Chief Justice any more than the Archbishop of
Canterbury, say Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi
A senior establishment figure has once more raised the question of
whether sharia law should be introduced as a parallel system of justice for
British Muslims. Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, was
following in the footsteps of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who
in February suggested that the institutionalisation of unspecified aspects of
sharia law is ‘unavoidable’.
Rowan Williams gave the appearance of mere cluelessness; discussing
sharia in a vague, multiculturalist manner apparently intended to project warm
feelings toward British Muslims. But Lord Phillips, in attempting to move from
nebulous clichés to specifics, has done far more damage than the Archbishop.
For non-Muslim authorities to propose the introduction of sharia as a
legal standard for Muslims in any non-Muslim land is not only absurdly
patronising and discriminatory, but also violates the canons of traditional
sharia law. Sharia has always held that Muslims emigrating to non-Muslim lands
are obliged to accept the laws and customs of their new homes, and must not
attempt to change them in an Islamic direction. Precedent for this goes back to
the counsel of the Prophet Mohammed himself, when his followers, persecuted in
Mecca, sought a temporary refuge in the nearby Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.
Iraqi Shia Ayatollah Ali Sistani, one of the world’s preeminent sharia
authorities, teaches that, ‘If [a Muslim] has given [a non-Muslim government] a
commitment — even if indirectly (as is implied in the immigration documents) —
to abide by the laws of that country, it is necessary for him to fulfil his
commitment.’ If they cannot do this, they should return to Muslim territory.
Soon after Archbishop Williams’s gaffe the Centre for Islamic Pluralism
conducted a field survey of attitudes towards sharia in the main Muslim
communities in Britain. We visited Birmingham, Manchester, Bolton, Bradford,
Sheffield and Leicester, in addition to ongoing and extensive investigations in
London’s East End. Interviewees included imams, muftis (legal authorities),
spiritual shaykhs, British Muslim barristers and solicitors, social workers and
rank-and-file mosque attendees. The full results will be published, with similar
data from Germany, Holland, France and Spain, next year.
Our survey was made easier by Muslim debate over the Williams affair.
The overwhelming majority of our sample — we estimate a minimum of 65 per cent —
brusquely repudiated the imposition of sharia in Britain and even expressed
resentment at the interference of individuals like the Archbishop in British
Muslim affairs.
Unfortunately, the real beliefs of British Muslims are unlikely to get
sufficient attention either from non-Muslim leaders or from most of the British
media. For the elite, multiculturalism is the order of the day, and sharia must
be offered, notwithstanding the utter ignorance of it among the non-Muslims who
advocate it. In the tabloids, sharia is identified with such punishments as the
stoning of adulterers — an issue Lord Phillips ineptly tried to address. Little
sensible commentary may be expected from the public prints.
At the Madina Mosque in Bolton it was pointed out to us that tens of
thousands of British Muslims practise as solicitors and barristers, and have no
interest in surrendering their positions to sharia advocates. A parallel system
of sharia law would be a disaster for the British Muslim community, producing
legal chaos, according to the barrister Aseid Malik. British Muslim legal
professionals observe that Islamist radicals prefer to enter the scientific and
medical professions, because there they can avoid participation in the British
‘unbeliever’ state required of solicitors and barristers.
Maulana Mufti Ayoob Ashrafi, a leading British Muslim traditional
jurist, opposed the introduction of sharia, asking why Islamic law must be
introduced in non-Muslim societies when it does not function in the majority of
Muslim countries. At present, only Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and some remote
areas of Africa and south-east Asia grant precedence to sharia over
European-originated civil law — another surprise, no doubt, to most
non-Muslims.
We conducted a significant part of our survey in Bradford, the city
widely known as ‘Little Pakistan’. Sayyid Irfan Shah, a jurist known as ‘the
Lion of Bradford’, who maintains a girls’ school, also rejected the intrusion of
sharia in Britain. He declared that Muslim opponents of the introduction of
sharia are much more sophisticated in their understanding of the distinctions
between private and public law than many non-Muslim critics of Islam in Britain.
Tasleem Ahmed, a Muslim woman employed at the Bradford Advice Centre,
administers community programmes to assist Muslim women with economic and social
problems. She observed that women seldom attend mosque services or apply at
mosques for help with their problems, and that, failing to gain support in their
families, homes, and local communities, they may go to informal sharia courts
for assistance in marriage and divorce cases, even though the latter tribunals —
the most notorious functioning in east London — charge thousands of pounds for
decisions that are almost always improvised and may not even conform to
traditional Islamic law. Ms Ahmed said that because British Muslim women do not
know their British civil rights, they have an incentive to turn to sharia.
Lord Phillips sought to mitigate the fear of the British non-Muslim
public regarding sharia punishment for moral and criminal offences by arguing
that it would be limited to the financial and marital areas. But the experience
of British Muslim women with the sharia divorce courts demonstrates just how
dangerous this seemingly anodyne proposal is. The sharia divorce courts are in
the hands of radicals who use them to promote extremist ideology while making
money. The same outcome would be likely if sharia courts were granted authority
for mediation of financial disputes.