Phillip Davies MP: "they should be closed down and a crime created for impersonating a court. It is completely unacceptable that people do not abide by British law - there is no excuse for not doing so."
The Daily Express broke the story of Sharia courts in an article, 'Muslims Get their own Laws in Britain':
Daily Express: 'Controversial Sharia courts have been set up in major towns and cities to impose Islamic law and enable Muslims to shun the legitimate British legal system.'
Following publication of the story, Inayat Bunglawala of radical pressure group the Muslim Council of Britain, fired off an angry letter to the Express:
"Contrary to your incendiary headline and 'news' story the Shari'ah courts that exist in the UK deal entirely with civil matters such as marriage and divorce. Under English law people are free to devise their own way to settle a dispute before an agreed third party. The Shari'ah courts do not - at all - deal with criminal issues which are a matter for the British courts."
2 comments:
...they should be closed down and a crime created for impersonating a court...
An extreme and intemperate view, not unlike those I posted today, which had Tom Paine up in arms.
The thing is, I agree with the above.
There is one thing that always seems to be missing from this issue when it gets raised; there are already parallel Jewish courts operating in the UK dealing with certain civil matters within UK Jewish communities. Now the scope of these courts might not be the same, but the principle certainly is.
Personally I think that as long as these courts are voluntary affairs, restricted to civil matters only, and acknowledge that they can be overridden by UK law at any point then they may serve a useful function be it as a arbitration service within communities taking the pressure off the regular legal system. Of course there is the danger they could be abused by dominant individuals with nutjob agendas, but then the British legal system contains its own fair share of perversity.
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