Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Will Britain accept Sharia Law?

 

Could a nation, Britain for example, create laws such that Muslims through the institution of Sharia Law could weaken or limit the British legal system as well as its British traditions? Some people think that is going on now. I have mentioned Bat Y’eor and Oriana Fallaci, writers embraced by large numbers of “common” Europeans but not so much by European liberals. And there are others. Witness Hudson New York. I ran across it a moment ago while web surfing. In its archives for April 21, 2011 is an article by Soeren Kern entitled “Britain vs. Muslim Immigration.” The article presents a very different picture from the one British Liberals present; so I wondered what Hudson New York was and found this under “About”:

Human Rights Activists, Moderate Muslims and Expert Investigative Reporters to:

Amplify dissident voices worldwide that stress the need for reforms in rule of law, property rights, free-market opportunities, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other institutions of democracy

Monitor Russia and China's economic and military offensives, evaluating their implications to the West.

Examine the use of oil as a political weapon against the West, and promote the urgent development of alternate sources of energy.

Divest Iranian holdings from pension plans, banks and foreign subsidiaries.

Press for transparency and accountability in non-governmental organizations, The United Nations, and other international institutions.

Counter lawsuits intended to intimidate and silence critics of religious extremism, and combat States which train children to be suicide killers.

Track the funding of terrorist cells and their systems of communication, and disable them when possible.

Under “events” they planned to have the following three speakers: Garry Trudeau, Frank Luntz, Tony Blair.

Just as Billy Blogblather read Jack Sprat’s note and said he didn’t disagree with any of it, I don’t disagree with anything in the “About” section of Hudson New York. One can find Soern Kern’s article at http://www.hudson-ny.org/2056/britain-vs-muslim-immigration

Here are a few excerpts:

“’Islamic jurisprudence is spreading throughout Britain at an astonishing rate. At least 85 Islamic Sharia courts are now operating in the country, almost 20 times as many as previously believed. A recent think tank study titled ‘Sharia Law or One Law for All" found that scores of unofficial tribunals and councils, may operating in mosques, regularly apply Islamic law to resolve domestic, marital and business disputes.

“The study warns of a ‘creeping’ acceptance of Sharia principles in British law, and follows the outcry over remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who had said that Sharia law in Britain is ‘unavoidable.’

“The emergence of a parallel Muslim society in Britain and the failure or refusal of many Muslim immigrants to integrate is troubling millions of British voters.” . . .

“By any measure, the Muslim population in Britain has skyrocketed over the past ten years. Based on official estimates, Britain's Muslim population has grown from 1.6 million in 2001 (when the British Census first began to measure religion) to 1,870,000 in 2004, to 2,422,000 in 2008, to 2,869,000 in 2010. That is an overall increase of more than 1.2 million, according to data compiled by the British government's Labour Force Survey (LFS), which were first published by the Times of London newspaper in January 2009, later confirmed by Hansard, the official report of debates in the British Parliament, and then updated by the Pew Research Center in September 2010.

“In just two decades, the percentage of the British population born abroad has doubled to over 11%, according to the Office for National Statistics. In real terms, that amounts to nearly seven million immigrants, equal to the population of the City of London, or the equivalent of one immigrant every two minutes. This rate of inflow is 25 times higher than any previous period of immigration since the Norman Conquest of England in September 1066. Demographers forecast that at current trends, Britain's population will exceed 70 million in less than twenty years, with almost all of that increase being driven by immigration. This would turn Britain into the most crowded country in Europe. According to a recent "Citizenship Survey," 77% of those polled said immigration should be cut, with slightly more than half saying it should be reduced "by a lot."

“The Cross Party Group for Balanced Migration, a bi-partisan group that is attempting to protect and re-establish a sense of British national identity, has called for all parties in Britain to commit to keeping the population below 70 million. In January 2010, Cameron told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One (here, here and here) that the population of Britain should be kept below 70 million "to relieve pressure on public services." He made those remarks after the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, called for immigration caps to protect Britain's Christian ethos.”

COMMENT: Living in America, I have heard dissidents saying the “American Way of Life” isn’t anything that needs to be preserved. The Constitution was okay in its day, but now, they say, we need something new and more relevant. Are there people saying things like that in Britain? And if so, are they in the minority like they are in the U.S.? As far as I know we aren’t being threatened to the extent that Britain is.

But maybe I’m using the wrong word when I say “threatened.” What percentage of the non-Islamic and Moderate Islamic (as defined by Hudson New York) Brits care if their legal system is replaced by Sharia Law?

I recall that Communists in an earlier era considered their loyalty to be to the Communist cause (aka the USSR) and not to individual Nations. Do non-Fundamentalist-Islamic Brits feel something like that, i.e., that their loyalty is to a European Welfare state system (or the like) and not to the cultures of European nations?

It is hard for me to understand why a nation (Britain if one can believe the writer of the above article) would choose to accept a primitive medieval religious-legal system in lieu of the system that Britain developed on its own. But perhaps it is merely intimidation that is causing the British to accept Sharia law (more and more if the article is to be believed). Well, if the British have created laws that prevent citizens opposing creeping Sharia Law, and the British are the law-abiding folk we have grown to know and love; then . . .

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