Reid Smith seeks to enlighten us
on the question of Sharia law. But curiously he omits one of the
central tenets of Sharia law - that the word of a woman is half
that of a man.
Yet Smith is correct to say that we might be surprised by the
number of countries which use Sharia law. Which brings me to the
United Kingdom. As of 2010,
there were just under 2.9 million Muslims in the U.K.
comprising 4.6% of that country’s population. In less than a
decade, Britain’s Muslim population has increased by nearly
75%.
Thus it should not come as a surprise that there are a network
of Sharia courts in Britain and their rulings
are legally binding. According to a study
released in 2009 by Civitas, a British think tank, there are 85
Sharia courts in the UK. Some of these Sharia courts have issued
rulings which are incompatible with British and European law
including
rulings forbidding marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims,
ordering the removal of children from the custody of Muslim women
who marry non-Muslim men, compelling women to have sex with their
husbands and sanctioning polygamy. This past June,
Baroness Cox introduced legislation in the House of Lords to
rein in the Sharia courts requiring them to uphold the supremacy of
British law. However, even if the bill is approved in the House of
Lords
it is not expected that the Cameron government will make it a
priority in the House of Commons.
And lest anyone believe that women are afforded the same status
as men in Sharia courts in the UK then consider the
opinion of the London based Islamic Sharia council (H/T to
legalpigeon):
The text (Surah Al-Baqara 2:282) which requires two female
witnesses in place of one male witness, gives a clear reason for
i.e. “if one of them forgets, the other reminds her.” Is this
derogatory to the status of women or is it a revealed secret about
the nature of the women? Though much has been said about the
difference between a man’s brain and that of a woman but I would
rather like to quote the latest research made about the issue.
According to a survey, as published in Los Angeles Times (U.S.A.),
made involving fifty men and women for quite a considerable time,
the out come was as follows:
Man’s mind is uni-focal while the women’s mind is multi-focal.
In other words, a man would be fully occupied with the task he is
involved with; he may not be distracted by anything else while
being engaged in his activity. On the other hand, a woman may be
busy in kitchen work and she will be easily alert to a phone buzzer
or her infants cry from the cradle. In a way she is found to be
more sensitive and active in her dealings. Thus she has got a
praise worthy character but that is not so good for a case of
testimony which requires more attention and concentration. What is
wrong then, if a second woman is needed, only to remind her is she
fails to deliver her testimony completely. So it is a case of
verification of the testimony, not that of degradation to the
status of women at all.
I mean when Larry Summers spoke about
the innate
differences between men and women (an assessment with
which he did not personally agree) he was
forced to resign as President of Harvard University because of
it. Yet it is part of the intellectual underpinnings of Sharia law
and any lesson in Sharia 101 would incomplete without imparting
that information.
