Sharia Courts in Britain

[Griff]

I didn't know Britain had such a system in place. It may allow minorities to preserve their culture, but the potential for coercion and abuse of the weak are too great. It just seems strange for immigrants to bring their law with them, from an American perspective, many of our ancestors came here to divorce themselves from old world power structures. It is too easy to extrapolate the eventual failure of Western Civilization from this. Reactionaries would have us revert to our old oppressive power structures in response to theirs, but I'd rather see some respect for what we've built over the last couple hundred years with a focus on identifying the big ideas that cannot be subverted. We need to look for the values Westerners find universal.

[glatt]

I would have no problem with Sharia courts for civil law, if both parties agree without coercion to enter into that arbitration, but for criminal law, that should be left up to the government.