Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Sharia Law in Britain

Yesterday, the BBC produced an article about Islamic Law in Britain which tried to compare it to Jewish laws. The Telegraph has the same report but properly written, devoid of any spurious comparisons.

No one has any problems with Islamic or Jewish law being used for purely civil cases. After all, nobody is forced to go to those courts. The problem here, and this the BBC did not make clear, is that Islamic courts in Britain seem to be judging criminal cases too.

One example is a case involving the stabbing of a Somali youth. The suspects were also Somali and the case was judged not by a British Court but by an Islamic one. This is the big problem. We cannot have two different legal systems for dealing with crime. The Government needs to investigate and act on this before we start seeing one handed people walking around. Just one more thing to add to the long list of things the government needs to do.