First check out this article from the Telegraph:
...the BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action produced evidence yesterday that it [sharia] was being used by some Muslims as an alternative to English criminal law. Aydarus Yusuf, 29, a youth worker from Somalia, recalled a stabbing case that was decided by an unofficial Somali "court" sitting in Woolwich, south-east London.Mr Yusuf said a group of Somali youths were arrested on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager. The victim's family told the police it would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail.
A hearing was convened and elders ordered the assailants to compensate their victim. "All their uncles and their fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf. "So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing.
That's just wonderful, but how does a country get to a point where it allows alternative systems of justice to operate freely within it's own borders? And what happens when those alternative systems come into conflict with the existing system? What happens when this same community decides to stone a woman for showing her ankles?
More importantly, why should we even care? It's England, not the good old US of A, right?
Not yet, at least.
But remember the flap in Minneapolis a month ago, where Muslim cabbies wanted the right to refuse to carry passengers carrying alcohol because according to the cabbies, it would be a violation of sharia for them to carry those passengers? In that case, the Metropolitan Airports Commission actually proposed an idea to allow the Muslim cabbies to refuse the fares without consequence. Once word of the MAC's proposal broke, the public outrage quickly put an end to that specific proposal, but the idea of "accommodating" Muslim beliefs hasn't.
Check out this article from the Tennessean:
"We need to forsake the Christendom model," Camp said. "The most basic Christian commitment … is that we say we believe in the Lordship of Jesus. But, if we claim that, how can a Muslim or Jew trust us, if we say Jesus is the Lord of all Lords?"Co-sponsored by the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, the daylong conference was prompted by a desire to begin a dialogue about global religious conflict.
After five years of rising gas prices, disturbing privacy issues that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and the fear of terrorism, it became apparent that everyday life in Nashville is directly affected by religious conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, conference organizers said.
"We felt like the larger community is calling for this," said Larry Bridgesmith, executive director of Lipscomb's newly established Institute for Conflict Management.
Oddly, there's no similar call for Islam to give up it's central tenet of enslaving all those who refuse to accept Allah as God and Mohammed as his prophet.
How accommodating of us.
Posted by Rich at November 30, 2006 12:48 AM | TrackBack