SHARIA LAW

Sharia law keeps rearing its ugly head from day to day all over Europe, wherever there are communities of Moslems and a mosque. Radical mullahs preach the coming of the next caliphate and the imposition of this primitive and outdated form of law. Look at France, Belgium, Holland and Britain and there are plenty of examples of these communities that are actually practising forms of Sharia, in contravention of the countries laws, and if proof be needed just turn to You Tube, tap in radical Islam and you will, at least, be surprised if not shocked by the number and virulence of examples.

Sharia law comes from the Koran and the Sunnah and these originated with the prophet Mohammed. Because of that, according to Islam, no part of the contents can be changed. Well, this law may have worked in the wild and woolly seventh century deserts of Arabia but try and explain it to your average Westerner living in secular Europe and it will be seen as a medieval form of law that the West jettisoned centuries ago. Unlike modern western laws, to change Sharia would be a sin akin to sacrilege. It can't be updated or made more user friendly or brought into keeping with modern thought, because that is, in the word of the Moslem, 'haram'

Islam, including Sharia law, is, of course, not just a religion but a political system of government too that sits uncomfortably with democracy. In fact, the two don't get on at all. In the West people who speak out against Sharia law are often branded racist, right wing, fascist or even Nazi, and this by their own compatriots. This shows a real lack on understanding of Islam. There is no more right wing or even fascist ideology than Islam and Sharia law. Within this political system there can be no form of democracy whatsoever. The individual has no say as to the way he or she is governed, especially 'she'. The religious men are the keepers and interpreters of the law and what they say cannot be challenged. I have lived under Sharia law and seen this working in person. A man convicted of a murder on Tuesday was taken to the public square in the town I was living in and beheaded on Friday after prayers, protesting his innocence all the way. This is Sharia justice, there is no appeal because the Mullahs are always right. Just look at the best example, Iran, where the population kicked out a brutal dictator in the Shah and welcomed, with open arms, an even more brutal and humourless cleric in Khomeini. The theocracy that has ruled Iran ever since has killed, maimed and imprisoned far more people than the Shah ever did.

Any system of law that subjects its people to having their hands and feet chopped off for an offence, or allows the stoning to death of women (can anyone imagine what a slow and disgusting death that is), beheading, hanging and whipping, is, in the eyes of civilised people, primitive to say the least. Many of the mullahs who administer this sort of justice in countries where it is practised, are not educated men, they have studied the Koran and have probably learnt it off by heart, they may be well up on all the nuances of the religion and its laws but worldly and educated they are not.

Another big problem with Sharia law, as if the above were not enough, is that no translation of it is acceptable by Islamic scholars and judges. Only the version written in Arabic is accepted as correct in any case of argument. So if you don't read Arabic you have to take the judges word for it and, of course, they are not scrupulously consistent. Anything they don't like can be described as 'against Sharia law' and actually you have no way of disproving it. This is also a problem with converts, particularly women. When being instructed in the tenets of Islam, in preparation for conversion, you are not actually told all the nasty bits, one of the worst being that should you change your mind and revert back to what you were, you instantly attract a death sentence. In fact, Islam has the death penalty for more infractions (many of them petty in the eyes of Westerners) of the law than the USA. One would think that if God is so powerful and all seeing you could let him deal with the sinners instead of allowing hard line, unmerciful and uneducated mullahs to make the decision.