SHARIA LAW IN ISRAEL (!)

In the wake of the recent brouhaha over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks about the compatibility of Islamic Sharia law with English civil law, politicians and pundits alike united to decry and condemn any such move towards allowing the spread of so-called ‘sharia courts’. This is what the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham MP had to say on the issue on BBC1’s Question Time:

“You cannot run two systems of law alongside each other. That would be a recipe for chaos."

Chaos? Really? I was reminded of his remarks when I came across this fascinating article in the Jewish Chronicle, which points out that Israel (Israel!) has managed to accommodate the sharia – especially in the form of Muslim family law – into its own legal code for the past six decades. The Chronicle notes,

“Not only is sharia law officially recognised by the justice system in Israel in everything regarding the personal status of Muslims, but the judges of the sharia courts are officially appointed by a joint ministerial-parliamentary committee and their salaries paid for by the state. Ironically, this arrangement originates from the days when Britain was the Mandate power in Palestine.

“Most matters of personal status, especially marriage and divorce, are ruled in Israel by religious courts. For three religious groups, Jews, Muslims and Druze, there are official, state-appointed courts, who rule on these matters. For Christians, there are private ecclesiastical courts whose rulings are recognised de facto by the civil authorities.

“The system began with an Act during the British Mandate, under which all recognised religious groups were allowed to deal with matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption in their own courts. After 1948, the system was continued but only in matters of personal status. By law, the sharia courts have exactly the same status as the rabbinical courts.”

I find it most amusing that the inclusion of state-sanctioned sharia courts for Muslim citizens of secular, democratic Israel – as with the application of Islamic 'personal law' for Muslim citizens in secular, democratic India – is a legacy of the great British Empire which had no qualms about “two systems of law” running “alongside each other” (to quote Andy Burnham). Yet, now, more than sixty years since the demise of that Empire, and in spite of an even larger concentration of Muslims living here in Britain, we are told that there is no space, no place, no possibility, of sharia law being incorporated, included or accommodated into our own ‘secular’ English legal system.

Islamophobia anybody?

ONE LAW FOR THE JEWS, NO LAW FOR THE MUSLIMS

I have been deliberating over the weekend as to whether or not to blog on the subject of Sharia law, and the predictable (and predictably nauseating) 'row' generated in our tolerant, thoughtful and reasoned media(!)

The fact of the matter is this: the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of this country’s most serious and interesting thinkers, did not ‘call’ for Sharia law and nor did he advocate a parallel and separate legal code outside of British law for religious minorities like the Muslim community. Given the hysterical reaction to his comments, I am convinced that 99.9 per cent of his critics in the press have not even bothered to read his lengthy, nuanced and erudite speech in full. You can read it here. I urge you to do so, before passing (mindless, uninformed) judgement a la the press pack.

One point, however, I would like to make is this (and forgive the perhaps superficially – yet unintended – anti-Semitic undertones): what about the Jews? I know, I know. Every time something ‘bad’ happens to Muslims, or Islam gets a bad press, we Muslims like to blame the poor ol’ Jews and look for a Jewish cause or a Jewish excuse. In this particular case, I have no intention of blaming them or castigating them but simply drawing attention to the typical double standards of our media pundits, commentators and pontificators. After all, the papers have been full of articles decrying the Archbishop’s comments, on the seemingly reasonable grounds that there should be one British law, which should apply to one and all, in an equal manner – no exceptions, therefore, for those hand-chopping, adulterer-flogging backward Muslims! Yet there has been hardly any mention in this whole debate of the (Yiddish) elephant in the room. What about the Beth Din, the orthodox Jewish rabbinical courts that are in daily use across Britain, and have been for centuries? Why no mention of them in this whole Islamophobic furore?

One rare report that touched on this issue appeared on the BBC website on Thursday:

“British Jews, particularly the orthodox, will frequently turn to their own religious courts, the Beth Din, to resolve civil disputes, covering issues as diverse as business and divorce.

"There's no compulsion", the registrar of the London Beth Din, David Frei, said. "We can't drag people in off the streets."

"Both sides in a dispute must be Jewish, obviously, and must have agreed to have their case heard by the Beth Din. Once that has happened, its eventual decision is binding.”

There is no compulsion but the decision is binding, under English law, which recognizes civil arbitration. So there you have it: if Sharia courts are introduced, it will be the end of the world as we know it, homosexuals will be thrown off the top of Big Ben and adulterers will be stoned in Trafalgar Square, and the Muslims will be free to govern and judge themselves according to their own medieval and backward laws. That’s the current media narrative. The only problem is that Muslims are not calling for the Islamic penal code (if such a thing even exists in a singular, unanimous and agreed-upon form) to be introduced into British law, and nor did the Archbishop even refer to this aspect of the Sharia. Muslims – and I refer here to some Muslims; not all Muslims – are simply, as I understand it, calling for the Islamic equivalent of the Beth Din. If it is good enough for the children of Isaac, why not for the children of Ishmael?

(And there is no point arguing, as 'Mad Mel' Phillips and the rest of the right-wing bloggers and commentators have, that “Jewish participation in Beth Din religious tribunals is entirely voluntary” because so too is Muslim participation in the Sharia courts that already exist in this country. In fact, film-maker Ayesha Khan, writing in the Guardian, correctly points out that many Muslim women in Britain are already “committed to using the sharia system, whether or not it had any recognition in national law” and we must “take seriously their religious and cultural preferences and practices”.)

ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE SUNDAY TIMES

I am not sure how many of you saw this ridiculous headline in the Sunday Times last week:

“Family of teen Muslim invited men to rape her”

The story concerns a poor 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was forced by her mother-in-law into a life of prostitution. Subjected to an arranged marriage, she came to Britain thinking she would be wed to a healthy and handsome young man. Instead, the family who received here in the UK made her marry an unemployed and seriously retarded 40-year-old man, with an IQ of a 5-year-old. According to the paper, the family then "invited" local men to rape her.

To cut a long story short, a horrible and heinous crime has taken place. Horrible and disgusting things are going on within parts of the immigrant Pakistani community. But, my question is this: what on earth has this got to do with Islam or Muslims? Why refer to “teen Muslim” in the headline? What has the girl’s faith or that family’s faith got to do with anything? Islam neither sanctions forced marriages nor marriages conducted under false pretences, and it forcefully condemns, prohibits and punishes rape – especially child-rape!

So, I ask again – why the ‘Muslim’ headline? It is not a Muslim story. But the Islamophobic propagandists who seem to dominate the print media these days have to turn every Asian story, every Pakistani story, every immigration story, every multiculturalism story and, of course, every terrorism story into a ‘Muslim’ story or an ‘Islam’ story. It is no wonder that a recent study commissioned by London Mayor Ken Livingstone found “that in one typical week in 2006, over 90 per cent of the media articles that referred to Islam and Muslims were negative. The overall picture presented by the media was that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west.”

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sunday Times reporter who wrote the article is a man named Abul Taher. Despite his Muslim-sounding name, he has form in this area (of Islamophobia). In fact, blogger Karima Hamdan has compiled a selection of recent anti-Muslim gems penned by Abul Taher.

In addition, tucked away in the fifth paragraph of the article, we see the real source of this ‘story’:

“The case is highlighted in a report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, which has found that policemen, councillors and taxi drivers are turning a blind eye or even conniving in enforcing the Asian community's strict "moral code" on young women.”

Ah, the good ol’ Centre for Social Cohesion! I have already blogged here about this notoriously neoconservative, right-wing and anti-Muslim ‘thinktank’ and the obnoxious, imbalanced and Islamophobic views of its spotty young director, Douglas Murray.

It is a tragedy that the once-great Sunday Times newspaper chooses to now inflame community relations and stoke anti-Muslim prejudice by peddling sensationalist stories with ludicrous headlines from Islam-obsessed journos like Abul Taher and Islam-obsessed thinktanks like the Centre for Social Cohesion.

I urge you all to protest to the Sunday Times over this inflammatory, unnecessary and undeniable anti-Muslim and Islamophobic headline and ask them to change it on their website forthwith.

CHRISTIAN ISLAMOPHOBIA

So, Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter . That's according to the 'Right Reverend' Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and the Church of England's only Asian bishop.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph - the paper which once gave column inches to a writer who described Muslims as "dogs" with "black hearts" - Nazir-Ali claims:

"…there has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism. One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already
separate communities into "no-go" areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.

"Those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work there because of hostility to them. In many ways, this is but the other side of the coin to far-Right intimidation. Attempts have been made to impose an "Islamic" character on certain areas, for example, by insisting on artificial amplification for the Adhan, the call to prayer."

The bishop here chooses not to explore the (political) causes behind the rise of "Islamic extremism", and its associated "ideology", but instead prefers to make extravagant and sensationalist claims without any substance or source. For example, can he name a single city, town, suburb or neighbourhood in England where Muslims have physically prevented non-Muslims from entering, living or working (especially on the grounds of faith)? If so, he conveniently chooses not to mention a single real-life example in his article.

He then outrageously makes a comparison between the criminals, thugs and racists who make up the British National Party and Muslims who want to have the Adhan played on loudspeakers from their mosques on Fridays. How on earth can he justify such a ridiculous analogy? It honestly makes me wonder whether he is a closet supporter of British fascism - otherwise I find it difficult to understand how such an educated man can downplay the far-Right's 'intimidation' (which consists of actual violence, beatings, arson attacks, etc) and equate it with the (admittedly) segregationist yet non-violent tendences of some (note: some, not all!) segments of the British Muslim community.

As for his focus on the Adhan, and its "amplification", I find it deeply hypocritical for a Christian bishop, of all people, to make such a criticism. As an undergraduate at Oxford University, I spent three years being woken up every Sunday morning by the sound of cathedral bells ringing away, one after another, week after week. Why on earth should Christians get this 'right' and not Muslims? In a multi-faith nation, where freedom of speech is a right protected for one and all, either both communities have the right to make religious 'noises' in public (and ruin my sleep!), or they both should be denied it - in fact, this is precisely the point made by the arch-secularist Lib Dem MP for Oxford, Dr Evan Davis, in an interview on Sky News this evening.

What depresses me more than the obvious double standards, however, is the Bishop's woeful ignorance and prejudice. For someone who is of Islamic descent himself (his father having converted from Islam to Christianity), and who was born in a Muslim country (the 'Islamic Republic of Pakistan'), Nazir-Ali shows little understanding of the nuances and complexities of the Islamic faith or the varied views of ordinary Muslims, especially British Muslims. According to his Wikipedia entry, the learned bishop is the author of not one but three books on Islam (two of them unsurprisingly published since 9-11 and the start of the so-called 'War on Terror'), and yet these books - and articles like today's rant in the Sunday Telegraph - suggest someone who is not interested in writing about Islam in some objective, dispassionate and scholarly sense, nor interested in Islam as a prelude to inter-faith dialogue, but someone who has a transparently one-sided, critical and negative agenda; perhaps the result of a traumatic Christian childhood in Pakistan or an ex-Muslim father with a chip on his shoulder. Who knows?

And, despite the attention given to the piece by the various rolling-news channels and all the Sunday papers, none of this vitriol and bombast from the bishop is anything new or novel. Michael Nazir-Ali has a long history of attacks on Islam, Muslims and multiculturalism. In November 2007, he accused Muslims of having a "victim mentality". In August 2006, he accused Muslims of having been "perverted" by multiculturalism. In March 2006, he accused Muslims of not having respect for Christians or Christianity.

He even wandered, purposely and uninvited, into the row over the face veil, denouncing British Muslim women who freely choose to wear a niqab or a burqa. His boss, on the other hand - the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams - showed commendable senstivitiy and balance at the time, and warned the secularists and atheists to lay off both the cross and veil. (Full disclosure: I personally am not a supporter of the veil but I am a supporter of the right of Muslim women, if they so choose, to wear the veil for whatever reason).

For me, then, the Bishop of Rochester thus fits into the category of 'right-wing Christian Islamophobe' - a category inhabited by millions of US evangelical Christians who believe Islam is the religion of Devil, the Prophet of Islam is a paedophile and that the War on Terror is - or should be - a war on Muslims.

It saddens me that in an era of declining religiosity in the West - especially in Britan - some Christians should see fellow monotheists (i.e. Muslims) as a threat, or as enemies, rather than as natural allies and co-believers. So I can only hope and pray that Nazir-Ali's less evangelical, less belligerent and more moderate co-religionists on this side of the Atlantic (led by the wise and humane Archbishop of Canterbury) will disown the Bishop of Rochester's constant Muslim-bashing and naked Islamophobia and instead encourage an alliance of Christians and Muslims against their real and common enemy - the "aggressive secularists and illiberal atheists" (to quote the Right Reverend John Sentamu, Archbishop of York).

HELP! THE TERRORISTS ARE COMING! (OR ARE THEY?)

Four days till Christmas, and the US government’s national threat level is already at Yellow (i.e. “Elevated”) while the threat level for all domestic and international flights is Orange (i.e. “High). Here in the UK, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has warned that the threat of terrorist attacks in public places, including from radioactive dirty bombs (!), is “growing” and has asked the public “to remain vigilant over the Christmas period”.

In the press, New Labour lackeys and laptop bombardiers like Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian and David Aaronovitch in the Times have railed this week in their columns against those who would dare suggest that “terrorism isn't that big a threat”. But – rhetorical sweeps, emotive language and instinctive reactions aside – how big is the terrorist threat to all of us ordinary folks, minding our own business, on the streets of London and Birmingham (or, for that matter, on the streets of New York and Los Angeles)?

Here are some facts and figures – often so overlooked and/or misunderstood by our political and journalistic classes who tend to avoid facts and figures, especially those which don’t fit into their pre-conceived view of the world – courtesy of the very brilliant American academic, John Mueller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and author of the excellent book, ‘Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them’:

“Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in "the age of terror." However…the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism by this definition is generally a few hundred a year. In fact, until 2001 far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning. Moreover, except for 2001, virtually none of these terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Indeed, outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets.

“Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, however, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism over the period is not a great deal more than the number killed by lightning--or by accident-causing deer or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts over the same period. In almost all years the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States--some 300-400.

“Americans worry intensely about "another 9/11," but if one of these were to occur every three months for the next five years, the chance of being killed in one of them is two one-hundredths of one percent: the posited attacks would kill 60,000 which is about .02 percent of 300,000,000. This would be, of course, an extended and major tragedy, but an individual's chances of being killed, while no longer microscopic, would still remain small even under this extreme scenario.

“Another assessment comes from astronomer Alan Harris. Using State Department figures, he assumes a worldwide death rate from international terrorism of 1000 per year--that is, he assumes in his estimate that there would be another 9/11 somewhere in the world every several years. Over an 80 year period under those conditions some 80,000 deaths would occur which would mean that the lifetime probability that a resident of the globe will die at the hands of international terrorists is about one in 75,000 (6 billion divided by 80,000). This, he points out, is about the same likelihood that one would die over the same interval from the impact on the earth of an especially ill-directed asteroid or comet. If there are no repeats of 9/11, the lifetime probability of being killed by an international terrorist becomes about one in 120,000.”

To summarize Mueller: more people drown in bathtubs than are killed by international terrorists, and we are more likely to be killed by an asteroid, Hollywood-style a la Armageddon or Deep Impact, than we are to die at the hands of Osama and co.

Over to you, David and Tim…

ISLAMOPHOBIA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The Guardian’s resident-far-left columnist (and associate editor) Seumas Milne has an(other) excellent article in today’s Guardian, this time focusing his ire on the “neocon attack dogs” at hard-right thinktanks like Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion who seem to take perverse pleasure in fanning the flames of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam hatred here in the UK and whose agenda seeks to (mis)inform people that “jihadist terror attacks in Britain are fuelled not by outrage at western violence and support for tyranny in the Muslim world, but by hatred of western culture and freedoms”. (I have written about Policy Exchange’s fraudulent and fabricated research here.)

Milne has devoted numerous columns in recent months to drawing attention to the casual and often crude Islamophobia that has gripped much of our journalistic and political luminaries, on both sides of the Atlantic – a subject I plan to expand upon myself, here on this blog, in the not-too-distant future – and the right-wing, anti-immigrant, fear-mongering, war-mongering political agenda which underlies much of it.

Here is Milne, at the start of today's column:

“Last Saturday, Ahmed Hassan, a 17-year-old Muslim student, was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths at Dewsbury railway station in west Yorkshire. Two have now been charged with his murder, and police say they are investigating whether there was a racial or religious motivation. In the Muslim communities in Dewsbury and neighbouring Batley, where Hassan lived, there's little doubt about it. In the run-up to today's Eid festival, Hassan's family issued a statement saying they hoped their loss would help "unite the community and all faiths.

“But divisions run deep in the area. The far-right British National party, which has increasingly turned its racist venom against Muslims in recent years, won over 5,000 votes in Dewsbury in the last general election, its highest tally in the country. Its leader, Nick Griffin, has argued that his party must capitalise on the "growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media". It's not hard to see why he sees an opportunity. Since the July 2005 bombings in London, there has been a stream of sensationalised and poisonous stories about Britain's Muslims.

“This media onslaught - often based on research by apparently reliable thinktanks - has clearly fed anti-Muslim prejudice. Combined with hyped terror-plot reports, the point has now been reached where Britons are found in polls to be more suspicious of Muslims than are Americans or citizens of any other major European state. For many Muslims, that heightens a sense of intimidation and alienation. For a minority, it translates into Islamophobic violence on the streets: Asian people are now twice as likely to be stabbed to death as a decade ago, and four out of five convictions for religiously aggravated offences last year involved attacks on Muslims."

Bravo Seumas! Keep it up!

CHEERLEADERS FOR INTERNMENT

The government has announced plans to extend the period that terrorism suspects can be held without charge from 28 days to 42 days – the equivalent of a six-week prison sentence for someone only suspected (not convicted, not even charged) of planning or committing an act of terrorism. If passed, such a law would be the latest in a long, dark and dismal line of relentless New Labour attacks on our once-cherished civil liberties.

The move has been met with opposition from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, criticism from the press and – thankfully – scepticism from the British public. So now, right on cue, the government’s media acolytes have been given the nod to start defending the indefensible, employing rhetorical red herrings and scare-crow arguments.

First out of the starting blocks was Blair biographer (hagiographer?) and New Labour cheerleader, John Rentoul in the Independent, who described the controversial 42-day proposal as “perfectly sensible” and drew attention to comments by Lord Carlile, the ‘independent’ reviewer of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation, decrying the use of the word “internment” to describe the 42-day upper limit.

Then, yesterday, New Labour apologist David Aaronovitch chose to devote his entire column in the Times to debunking the claim by human-rights group Liberty that Britain had, in effect, “the most draconian detention laws in the Western world”. Spain and Italy, claims Aaronovitch, are far worse.

Yet, conveniently, neither Aaronovitch nor Rentoul bother to address the substance of the arguments put forward by opponents of the 42-day proposal. For example, what about the sheer arbitrariness of the number 42? Why 42? Not 52? Or 38? Or 49? As columnist Seamas Milne has written in the Guardian:

“What started a generation ago as a two-day limit on detention without charge, as exists for American citizens in the US, was fixed at seven days in 2000; ratcheted up to 14 in 2003; raised again to 28 in 2006; and is now heading for two months of effective internment. The arbitrariness of this ratcheting-up is obvious: in spite of the fact that we're talking about the country's most basic civil liberties, it has clearly been a matter of think of a number and double it.”

And, since the pre-charge detention period was outrageously increased to 28 over a year ago, have the police had to hold any terror suspect for longer than 28 days? Have any of their investigations been undermined by the current 28-day upper limit? The answer, as the Home Office itself concedes, is no.

What do Aaronovitch and Rentoul have to say about all of this? Nothing. Not even 28 words.

In fact, while lazily focusing their rhetorical guns on the ‘usual suspects’ at campaigning organizations like Liberty, they choose to ignore substantive and widespread opposition to the proposed 42-day detention limit from the more credible likes of Sir Ken MacDonald QC, Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS); Jonathan Evans, the head of the Security Service (MI5); the Home Affairs Select Committee; Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General; and – belatedly – Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

Who should we trust on this? MI5 and the CPS, or Aaronovitch and Rentoul?

BBC EXPOSES “FABRICATED” MOSQUE REPORT

In October, the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange published a report into the selling of “extremist literature” – including books allegedly glorifying terorism and hatred of Jews – on the premises of Britain’s leading mosques. The thinktank, which pretends to be “committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development," described its controversial report in grandiose terms as "the most comprehensive academic survey of its kind ever produced in the UK ... based on a year-long investigation by several teams of specialist researchers."

Predictably, given the Islam-obsessed, jihad-focused media environment we all now inhabit, the report dominated the headlines upon its release. “Lessons in hate found at leading mosque”, declared the front page of the Times. “Hate literature easily found at UK mosques,” proclaimed the front page of the Telegraph.

This week, however, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, accused Policy Exchange of "fabricating" its survey of mosque bookshops after an in-depth investigation of the evidence by its correspondent Richard Watson. Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, takes up the story on his blog:

"Policy Exchange had given us the receipts to corroborate their claim that a quarter of the 100 mosques their researchers had visited were selling hate literature.

"On the planned day of broadcast our reporter Richard Watson came to me and said he had a problem. He had put the claim and shown a receipt to one of the mosques mentioned in the report - The Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in London. They had immediately denied selling the book and said the receipt was not theirs.

"We decided to look at the rest of the receipts and quickly identified five of the 25 which looked suspicious. They appeared to have been created on a home computer, rather than printed professionally as you would expect. The printed names and addresses of some of the mosques contained simple errors and two of the receipts purportedly from different mosques appeared to have been written by the same hand. I spoke to Policy Exchange to try to clear up these discrepancies but in the end I decided not to run the report."

The actual Newsnight report which aired this week on Wednesday night – and which can be seen via Barron's blog – includes expert testimony from a forensic scientist disputing the authenticity of the receipts provided by Policy Exchange. (It is also worth watching the heated exchange afterwards between the Beeb’s rottweiler, Jeremy Paxman, and the red-faced Policy Exchange research director, Dean Godson).

The Newsnight investigation is a rare tribute to the power of public-service current-affairs broadcasting at its best and, dare I say it, the BBC at its very best. I was cheering in front of the television screen. (Let us hope and pray that Newsnight’s budget remains unaffected by BBC budget cuts).

One final point: aside from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Sir Iqbal Sacranie, few have been willing to question Policy Exchange’s undeniably Islamophobic motivations. Its director, former Times journalist Anthony Browne, has claimed in the past that “Islam really does want to conquer the world”. And not a single newspaper or broadcaster, in its coverage of the original Policy Exchange report in October, mentioned this rather pertinent quote from the ‘academic’ chosen by Policy Exchange to write their report, Dr Denis MacEoin:

“I do not hold a brief for Islam. On the contrary, I have very negative feelings about it…”

So, fraudulent evidence and Islamophobic authors. Is it any wonder why British Muslims are so disillusioned, and so disillusioned with the media in particular?