Pat Condell

[Big Sarge]

Redux - if you think Sharia Law only applies in civil matters, then you haven't spent much time in Southwest Asia. I guess the court ordered public gang rapes will be a big hit in the UK.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Redux - if you think Sharia Law only applies in civil matters, then you haven't spent much time in Southwest Asia. I guess the court ordered public gang rapes will be a big hit in the UK.

As barbaric as I think some components of Sharia law may be, what I said was that in western countries, Sharia law has no legal authority if it crosses the line to criminal acts. Sharia law would not be accepted as a defense of gang rape in a court of law in the UK.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Redux - if you think Sharia Law only applies in civil matters, then you haven't spent much time in Southwest Asia. I guess the court ordered public gang rapes will be a big hit in the UK.

As I think I have already said: Sharia law is misogynistic and founded on a deeply troubling interpretation of an outdated religious text. When it is given the force of law, it has the power to be lethal. Thast's not what is being discussed for the UK, nor is it the whole of Sharia that is vile.

In some moslem countries, where Sharia courts provide a similar function to that which is proposed here, but where theyhave no legal right to impose punishments (in other words where they are simply used to arbitrate in civil and domestic matters) they are also the ones, for example, insisting that an absent father properly provide for his abandoned wife and children. What happens in the rural communities of a theocracy is somewhat distinct from what happens in a metropolitan city in a democracy. It is no more appropriate to use a wide brush with Islam as it is with Christianity. How Sharia manifests itself wiothin different societies is as much to do with the cultural distinctions between said societies as it is anything else.

The idea that this is some slippery slope by which we in the UK will somehow begin to allow rape and flogging as appropriate punishments within any community is, frankly, ridiculous. I understand you've seen some appalling things, Sarge, but your experience of 'the moslem world' is in fact an experience of particular cultures. Not all Islamic cultures are the same. Not all interpretations of Sharia are the same. And no religion or sect is ever going to be able to place their own laws above the laws of the land in Britain. There is no parity.

What there is, is an acceptance, by some, that it is innapropriate for a secular/Christian culture to arbitrate in matters which are for many moslems deeply faith-based. It is also a recognition, by some, that there is cuirrently a great disparity between the religious freedoms and levels of acceptance shown to some faiths and those of other faiths.