As millions of Muslims flow into Europe, some from Syria, others from as far away as Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa, several countries are already experiencing high levels of social breakdown. Several articles have chronicled the challenges posed in countries such as Sweden and Germany. Such challenges are socio-economic in nature: how to accommodate such a large influx of migrants; the rising costs of providing then with housing, food, and benefits, and the expenses incurred by increased levels of policing in the face of growing lawlessness in some areas. If migrants continue to enter European Union countries at the current rate, these costs are likely to rise steeply; some countries, such as Hungary, have already seen how greatly counterproductive and self-destructive Europe’s reception of almost anyone who reaches its borders has been.

The immediate impact, however, of these new arrivals is not likely to be a simple challenge, something that may be remedied by increasing restrictions on numbers, deportations of illegal migrants, or building fences. During the past several decades, some European countries ­– notably Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark — have received large numbers of Muslim immigrants, most of them through legal channels. According to a Pew report in 2010, there were over 44 million Muslims in Europe overall, a figure expected to rise to over 58 million by 2030.

The migration wave from Muslims countries that began in 2015 is likely to increase these figures by a large margin. In France, citizens of former French colonies in Morocco, Algeria, and some sub-Saharan states, together with migrants from several other Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, form a population estimated at several million, but reckoned to be the largest Muslim population in Europe. France is closely followed by Germany – a country now taking in very large numbers of immigrants. There are currently some 5.8 million Muslims in Germany, but this figure is widely expected to rise exponentially over the next five years or more.

The United Kingdom, at around 3 million, has the third largest Muslim population in Europe. Islam today is the second-largest religion in the country. The majority of British Muslims originally came from rural areas in Pakistan (such as Mirpur and Bangladesh’s Sylhet), starting in the 1950s. Over time, many British Muslims have integrated well into the wider population. But in general, integration has proven a serious problem, especially in cities such as Bradford, or parts of London such as Tower Hamlets; and there are signs that, as time passes, assimilation is becoming harder, not easier. A 2007 report by British think tank Policy Exchange, Living Apart Together, revealed that members of the younger generation were more radical and orthodox than their fathers and grandfathers – a reversal almost certainly unprecedented within an immigrant population over three or more generations. The same pattern may be found across Europe and the United States. A visible sign of this desire to stand out from mainstream society is the steady growth in the numbers of young Muslim women wearing niqabs, burqas, and hijabs – formerly merely a tradition, but now apparently seen as an obligatory assertion of Muslim identity.

In Germany, the number of Salafists rose by 25% in the first half of 2015, according to a report from The Clarion Project. Salafism is a form of Islam that insists on the application of whatever was said or done by Muhammad or his companions, brooking no adaptation to changing times, no recognition of democracy or man-made laws. This refusal to adapt has been very well expressed by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:

“Islam is not constrained by time or space, for it is eternal… what Muhammad permitted is permissible until the Day of Resurrection; what he forbade is forbidden until the Day of Resurrection. It is not permissible that his ordinances be superseded, or that his teachings fall into disuse, or that the punishments [he set] be abandoned, or that the taxes he levied be discontinued, or that the defense of Muslims and their lands cease.”

The greatest expression of this failure to integrate, indeed a determined refusal to do so, may be found in the roughly 750 zones urbaines sensibles in France, Muslim-dominated no-go zones, which the police, fire brigades, and other representatives of the social order dare not visit for fear of sparking off riots and attacks. Similar zones now exist in other European countries, notably Sweden and Germany.

In the UK, matters have not reached the pitch where the police and others dare not enter. But in some Muslim-dominated areas, non-Muslims may not be made welcome, especially women dressed “inappropriately.” According to the 2011 British census there are over 100 Muslim enclaves in the country. “The Muslim population exceeds 85% in some parts of Blackburn,” notes the scholar Soeren Kern, “and 70% in a half-dozen wards in Birmingham and Bradford.” There are similarly high figures for many other British cities.

Maajid Nawaz of the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation has spoken of the growing trend for some radical young Muslims to patrol their streets to impose a strict application of Islamic sharia law on Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in direct breach of British legal standards.

In Britain “Muslims Against the Crusaders” have recently declared an Islamic Emirates Project, in which they are seeking to enforce their brand of sharia in 12 British cities. They have named two London boroughs, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets, among their targets. Little surprise then that in these two boroughs hooded “Muslim patrols” have taken to the streets and begun enforcing a strict view of sharia over unsuspecting locals. The “Muslim Patrols” warn that alcohol, “immodest” dress and homosexuality are now banned. To add to these threats, all this is filmed and uploaded onto the internet. Now, in East London, some shops no longer feel free to employ uncovered women or sell alcohol without fear of violent payback.

Nawaz goes on to write: “[T]he Muslim patrols could become a lot more dangerous and, perhaps willing to maim or kill if they are joined by battle-hardened jihadis.” Muslims have been beaten up for smoking during Ramadan; non-Muslims have been forced to leave for carrying alcohol on British streets.

A recent report by Raheem Kassam cites British police officers who admit that they often have to ask permission from Muslim leaders to enter certain areas, and that they are instructed not to travel to work or go into certain places wearing their uniforms.

Here is the fulcrum around which so much of the problem turns: the belief that Islamic law has every right to be put into practice in non-Muslim countries, and the insistence that a parallel, if unequal, legal system can function alongside civil and criminal law codes adhered to by a majority of a country’s citizens. More than one non-Muslim has been ordered to leave “Islamic territory,” and some radicals have attempted to set up “Shariah Controlled Zones,” where only Islamic rules are enforced. Stickers placed on lampposts and other structures declare: “You are entering a Shariah Controlled Zone,” where there can be no alcohol, no gambling, no drugs or smoking, no porn or prostitution, and even no music or concerts.

And that is not all. Soeren Kern wrote in 2011:

A Muslim group in the United Kingdom has launched a campaign to turn twelve British cities – including what it calls “Londonistan” – into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence.

The Islamic Emirates Project, launched by the Muslims Against the Crusades group, names the British cities of Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as Waltham Forest in northeast London and Tower Hamlets in East London as territories to be targeted for blanket Sharia rule.

All of this is, of course, illegal. The illegality could not be clearer. Here we see self-appointed disaffected Muslim entities, who take action to exercise the power of imposing law on the streets of European cities, and in practice the writ of Islamic law runs in many towns and cities. Not long ago, considerable numbers of Muslims from Paris and the surrounding region would enter the city and take over entire streets in order to perform the noon Friday prayer. Traffic was blocked, residents could neither enter or leave their homes, businesses had to close because customers could not reach them; and all the while, the police stood by, watching but not interfering, knowing that, if they acted to preserve the law a riot would ensue. Videos of these incidents are available online. In places where gangs of radicals operate as if they are a mafia, crimes such as honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM), expulsion or worse of individuals considered apostates, and more, are known to take place. More commonly, many Western states are powerless to prevent forced and underage marriages, compulsory veiling, polygamy, and more.

The police, afraid of charges of racism and “Islamophobia,” are reluctant to take action: In 2014 and 2015, the police and social workers turned a blind eye for years to Muslim gangs grooming, prostituting, and raping young white British teenagers in cities such as Oxford, Birmingham, Rochdale and Rotherham. Professor Alexis Jay’s report on the situation in Rotherham alone showed serious failings on the part of several bodies from the police to social services. The offenses in these cases were, of course, a breach of sharia law, not an enforcement of it.[1] Yet there seems to have been an attitude, too, that Muslims are entitled to behave as they wish, and that British law enforcement is irrelevant. In the trial of nine men in Rochdale, Judge Gerald Clifton states in his sentencing that “All of you treated the victims as though they were worthless and beyond any respect – they were not part of your community or religion.” This statement alone seems to illustrate the heart of this problem.

But the clash between Islamic law and national law in several European countries has focussed more than anything on the establishment of sharia councils or sharia courts. These have provoked a wider debate than even Islamic finance, now well situated within the international banking system even though it is as if Germany under the Third Reich had its own banking system in which all transactions would go exclusively to strengthening the Third Reich. In the UK this year, it has been revealed that, in order to finance extensive repairs to the House of Lords and the House of Commons, a deal has been done to use Islamic bonds. One result of this is that peers and MPs will not be allowed to have bars or to consume alcohol on their own premises.

The Sharia court debate has been particularly intense in the United Kingdom, where attempts (some successful) to introduce sharia within the legal system have been made since 2008. Speaking to the London Muslim Council in July of that year, Britain’s leading judge, Lord Chief Justice Phillips, declared that he believed the introduction of sharia into the UK would be beneficial to society, provided it did not breach British law. It is that stipulation which has not been adhered to. Not many months earlier, in February, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain’s leading churchman — also, as Phillips, with a seat in the House of Lords — expressed the view that it would be appropriate for British Muslims to use sharia. He argued that “giving Islamic law official status in the UK would help achieve social cohesion because some Muslims did not relate to the British legal system.” He went on to say,

“It’s not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival system; we already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land … There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some kinds of aspects of other religious law.”

That is where the debate began. Williams’s call for the introduction of sharia was rejected at once by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and by the Conservative peer and shadow minister for community cohesion and social action, Sayeeda Warsi. Warsi, herself a Muslim, argued as follows:

“The archbishop’s comments are unhelpful and may add to the confusion that already exists in our communities … We must ensure that people of all backgrounds and religions are treated equally before the law. Freedom under the law allows respect for some religious practices. But let’s be absolutely clear: all British citizens must be subject to British laws developed through parliament and the courts.”

One year before, however, sharia had already entered the country. An organization called the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal had set itself up on the basis of the 1996 Arbitration Act. It allows individuals and businesses to enter into mutually agreed consultation in which a third party decides between their competing arguments. Mutual agreement is, of course, the central plank on which the legislation is based. Muslim tribunals are limited to financial and property issues. They use sharia standards for intervention, not just between Muslims, but even between non-Muslims who wish to settle disputes using sharia standards. Since 2007, the MAT has opened tribunals in Nuneaton, London, Birmingham, Bradford, and Manchester. They are all considered legal, and their rulings can be confirmed by county courts and the High Court.

Acquiescence to the regularization of sharia within UK legal processes received a major boost for a short time when, in March 2014, the Law Society issued guidance to permit high street solicitors to draw up “sharia compliant” wills, even though these might discriminate against widows, non-Muslims, female heirs, adopted children and others. When the debate grew more heated and the Law Society was severely criticized, some months later it withdrew the guidelines and apologized for having introduced them at all. It was a healthy expression of the way open debate in democratic societies achieves results.

By that time, however, there were around 85 sharia councils operating — most of them openly, some behind the scenes, across the UK. They had all been granted recognition by the establishment. These councils are often confused with the arbitration tribunals, but are, in fact, quite different. A council (sometimes termed a court) functions as a mediation service — also legal in British law. However, the decisions of these councils have no standing under British law. They are usually composed of a small number of elderly men with varying degrees of qualification in Islamic law, and they generally issue advice or fatwas [religious opinions] based on the rulings of one or another of the main schools of Muslim law.

It is these councils that are the greatest cause for concern, especially the limited range of matters on which they issue judgements: marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. In all of these areas, the concerns rest principally on the treatment of Muslim women. Among the leading critics of Sharia on these grounds is one of the most visionary members of Britain’s House of Lords, Baroness Caroline Cox.[2] The first thing she did after her elevation to the peerage was to set off in a 32-ton truck for Communist Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, to bring medical supplies behind the Iron Curtain. She was one of the first Western politicians to take the threat of Islamism seriously, setting out her arguments in a 2003 book, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism. Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? .

This concern with Islamism and its incompatibility with secular democratic norms focuses especially on the application of sharia law within countries such as the UK, where all citizens are considered to be equal under the law. Speaking about sharia courts in 2011, Baroness Cox declared,

“We cannot sit here complacently in our red and green benches while women are suffering a system which is utterly incompatible with the legal principles upon which this country is founded… If we don’t do something, we are condoning it.”

Recently, she authored a report entitled, A Parallel World: Confronting the abuse of many Muslim women in Britain today, published by the Bow Group. In it, she not only describes the problems faced by many Muslim women before Sharia councils, but provides extensive testimony from women who have been discriminated against and abused by these “courts.”[3]

In May 2012, Baroness Cox introduced her first Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill in the House of Lords. The bill had its second reading in October that year, but went no farther. It was backed, however, by a considerable body of evidence presented in a document, Equal and Free?, from the National Secular Society. In June, 2015, Cox introduced a modified version of the bill. It had its second reading in October, and in November it reached the committee stage. It still has to pass a few stages before it may possibly move to the House of Commons, one day perhaps to receive Royal Assent and become law. It received a very warm reception from members of the Lords, with only one dissenting opinion, that of Lord Sheikh, a Muslim peer who sees little or no fault in anything Muslims say or do. However, the government minister, Lord Faulks, argued that current civil legislation is all that is needed to guarantee justice for Muslim women.

Matters are far from as simple as the government would like them to be. Sharia law is not a cut -and-dried system that can be easily blended with Western values and statutes. There is no problem when imams or councils hand out advice on the regulations governing obligatory prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, alms-giving, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of following this or that spiritual tradition, or even whether men and women may sit together in a hall or meet without a chaperone. For pious Muslims, those are things they need to know, and although the advice they may receive on some rulings will differ according to the school of law or the cultural practices of their specific community, that has no bearing whatever on British law.

But much more goes on beneath the surface. One problem is that it is difficult if not impossible to reform sharia. Legal rulings are fossilized within one tradition or another and given permanency because they are deemed to derive from a combination of verses from the Qur’an, the sacred Traditions, or the standard books of fiqh or jurisprudence. It is, therefore, hard to restate laws on just about anything in order to accommodate a need to bring things up-to-date within terms of modern Western human rights values. Many Muslims today may be uncomfortable about the use of jihad as a rallying cry for terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State, but no single scholar or group of scholars is entitled to abolish the long-standing law of jihad. Innovation (bid’a) is tantamount to heresy, and heresy leads to excommunication and hellfire, as has been stated for centuries. The growing influence of Salafi Islam is based precisely on the grounds that any revival of the faith means going back to the practices and words of Muhammad and his companions, not forwards via reform.

In the sharia councils there appears to be no formal method for keeping records of what is said and decided on. There is next to no room for non-Muslims to sit in on proceedings, and, as a result, neither the government nor the legal fraternity has any regular means of monitoring proceedings. Even Machteld Zee, whose forthcoming book, Choosing Sharia? Multiculturalism, Islamic Fundamentalism and British Sharia Councils, will be the first academic analysis of what happens in the councils, only spent two afternoons at a council in Leyton and an afternoon at one in Birmingham. Unannounced spot checks by qualified government-appointed personnel are not permitted. There is nothing remotely like the government schools inspection body, Ofsted, which has periodically (albeit not always correctly) gone into Muslim schools. So there is really no way of knowing just what happens, apart from the testimonies of women who have reported abusive or illegal practices.

Magistrates’ courts, county courts, and crown courts are all entirely transparent (except for matters dealt with in camera), full records are kept, and members of the public are free to visit and observe. The risks of allowing councils to pass judgements without there being an inspectorate to observe them are obvious. And if full records of proceedings are not kept, it will always be difficult to go back to examine a case in full should legal issues arise at a later date.

Furthermore, the British legal system has no say in the appointment of sharia council panels. There appears to be no agreed mechanism for appointments, and the source and identity of candidates remain causes for concern in several ways. There is no single range of qualifications for Muslim scholars (‘ulama) or jurisprudents (fuqaha’). Most will attend some sort of madrassa [Islamic religious school], and many will sit at the feet of a particular sheikh to obtain an ijaza from him: usually this means he is given permission to teach from a book written by that sheikh. Some will finish a course of study, but there may be little coherence. Growing numbers have qualifications from UK-based madrassas, notably from the Darul-Uloom in Bury or the higher standard equivalent in Dewsbury, although there are other Darul-Ulooms in the UK. In London, the junior classes are inspected by Ofsted, others not. Bury and other madrassas belong to the radical Deobandi form of Islam (based in northern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan). The Pakistani madrassas from which the Taliban emerged were and are Deobandi in belief. Many Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan have been used to recruit for jihad.

The Wahhabi-influenced Deobandis control a majority of mosques in Britain, but they are far from the only group with mosques and other institutions.[4] There are also smaller numbers of Salafi imams and scholars, many of whom come from Saudi-funded madrassas.[5]

This situation grows more complicated when one adds the larger numbers of scholars and jurisprudents emerging from colleges in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. These tend to be very conservative and still play a major role providing imams and members of Sharia councils.

In sum, these variations in training, qualifications, linguistic abilities, and so on mean that there is no level playing field for expertise, but that there is considerable latitude with regard to the interpretation of sharia law. Very often, scholars with adherence to one branch of Islam will violently disagree with others. It is generally reckoned that sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are conservative, with few advocates for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in sight.

Finally, there is a less-known feature of modern sharia theory that impacts on Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the West. In classical Islamic theory, the world is divided between the Realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam), territories ruled by Islamic governments, and the Realm of War (Dar al-Harb), regions under non-Muslim control. Strictly speaking, a Muslim who finds himself living in a non-Muslim country is obliged to leave it and return to a Muslim state, usually somewhere within a Muslim empire. Strictly speaking, it is proper, even obligatory, for Muslims to live in non-Muslim countries when those countries are under Muslim rule, regardless of the size of the two populations. All the early Islamic empires had a majority of non-Muslims. Muslim expansion and imperialism meant that Muslims controlled territories where, at first, they were not in a majority. These territories were considered as Dar al-Islam. Later, when Muslims were expelled from places such as Portugal and Spain, those countries became Dar al-Harb and in the view of many Muslims, it became necessary to fight them in order to return them to Islam, as is happening with regard to Israel today.

When, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, non-Muslim forces took control of Muslim lands, compromises became necessary. However, during the late 20^th century and increasingly in the current one, large numbers of Muslims came to live in Western countries. With the 2015 influx of refugees into Europe, Muslims living outside Islamic territories have been faced with dilemmas about the application of sharia, especially where it conflicts with the civil laws of their host countries.

The response of many Muslim scholars has been to develop a new form of Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh al-‘aqaliyyat, “jurisprudence of the minorities.” This began in the 1990s, mostly through the efforts of two Muslim scholars, Shaykh Taha Jabir al-Alwani and Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Alwani is president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Ashburn, Virginia (now part of the Cordoba University), and is the founder and former president of the Fiqh Council of North America, an affiliate of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA itself has, of course, long been identified as a front organization for the hardline Muslim Brotherhood. That connection becomes more visible when one looks at Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the leading ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi’s television program, al-Sharīʿa wa al-Ḥayāh, attracts an international following of some 60 million, and his comprehensive online fatwa site, Islam Online is consulted by millions.

The Muslim scholars Yusuf al-Qaradawi (left) and Taha Jabir al-Alwani (right) developed a new form of Islamic “jurisprudence of the minorities,” which partly concerns whether non-Muslim countries with large Muslim minorities are still considered the “Realm of War.”

The principles under which the jurisprudence for minorities operates are somewhat complex. Part of the debate concerns whether non-Muslim countries with large Muslim minorities are still the “Realm of War;” the notion is generally rejected. If Western states are not in a state of war with Islam, then Muslims are not obliged to leave them to seek refuge in an Islamic country. In that event, it is necessary to interpret sharia rulings to make it possible for Muslims to live in territories to which they have migrated, or in which they find themselves for limited periods, as in staying abroad to study. However, adjustments to Western ways do not permit actual change to sharia.

In 1997, the government of Qatar provided funding to establish an institution known as the European Council for Fatwa and Research, based in Dublin, Ireland. The council, whose president is Qaradawi himself, was set up under the auspices of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, another front for the Muslim Brotherhood, with close associations to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas. The ECFR has 32 members, roughly half from European states, the rest from North America, North Africa, and the Gulf. Its fatwas do little to integrate sharia norms within European societies. One fatwa declares:

“Sharia cannot be amended to conform to changing human values and standards; rather, it is the absolute norm to which all human values and conduct must conform; it is the frame to which they must be referred; it is the scale on which they must be weighed.”

The true significance of the ECFR and its international cast of member jurists is that it is an extra-territorial body that passes judgements, provides legal solutions, and adjudicates on all aspects of Islamic law. Its impact on national sharia courts, such as the British Muslim Arbitration Tribunal and the UK Islamic Sharia Council, cannot be calculated easily, but is certain to play an important role. If one reads the fatwas of the ECFR and the many online fatwa sites, it is clear that national sharia bodies in Western countries are operating outside the confines of British, French, and other legal systems. No European or American state can exercise full control over who serves on such councils, who influences them, and which rulings inspire their judgements.

Although the ECFR is the leading fatwa body in Europe, several other national organizations — in France, Germany, and Norway, for example — issue fatwas in other languages. Everywhere, the approach is much the same. Whether through conventional jurisprudence or the jurisprudence of minorities, there seems no clear path to improved assimilation of Muslims into European societies, and no accommodation of sharia law alongside Western, man-made law.

Unless reform enters the thinking of the Muslim clergy, Salafi Islam will continue to beckon Muslims to the past. Under strict sharia, the question remains: what is to become of the growing millions of newcomers for whom Western law codes are of secondary value — for whom they are, perhaps, just an obstacle in the path towards an ultimate goal of total separation from host societies?

In Sharia Law or One Law for All, I drew attention to another level of sharia rulings that provide fatwas for numbers of British Muslims, in particular of the younger generation. These are online sites: “fatwa banks.” Individuals or couples send questions to the muftis who run the sites, and receive answers in the form of fatwas that are considered authoritative. The questions and answers are preserved in galleries of rulings, which can be browsed by anyone seeking advice. The sites are by no means consistent, differing from one scholar to another. But they do provide an insight into the kinds of rulings that may be given in the sharia councils.

For example:

• a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam (such a woman’s children will be separated from her until she marries a Muslim man)
• polygamous marriage (two to four wives) is legal
• a man may divorce his wife without telling her about it, provided he does not seek to sleep with her
• a husband has conjugal rights over his wife, and she should normally answer his summons to have sex (but she cannot summon him for that)
• a woman may not stay with her husband if he leaves Islam
• non-Muslims may be deprived of their share in an inheritance
• a divorce does not require witnesses (a man may divorce his wife and send her away even if no one else knows about it)
• re-marriage requires the wife to marry, have sex with, and be divorced by another man
• a wife has no property rights in the event of divorce (which may be initiated arbitrarily by her husband)
• sharia law must override the judgements of British courts
• rights of child custody may differ from those in UK law
• taking up residence in a non-Muslim country except for limited reasons is forbidden
• taking out insurance is prohibited, even if required by law
• there is no requirement to register a marriage according to the law of the country
• it is undesirable to rent an apartment belonging to a Christian church
• a Muslim lawyer has to act contrary to UK law where it contradicts sharia
• employment by driving a taxi is prohibited
• it is allowable to be a police officer, provided one is not called upon to do anything contrary to the sharia
• women are restricted in leaving their homes and driving cars
• an adult woman may not marry anyone she chooses
• sharia law of legitimacy contradicts the Legitimacy Act 1976
• a woman may not leave her home without her husband’s consent (a restriction that may constitute false imprisonment)
• legal adoption is forbidden
• a man may coerce his wife to have sex
• a woman may not retain custody of her child after seven (for a boy) or nine (for a girl)
• a civil marriage may be considered invalid
• sharia law takes priority over secular law (for example, a wife may not divorce her husband in a civil court)
• fighting the Americans and British is a religious duty
• recommendation of severe punishments for homosexuals
• a woman’s recourse to fertility treatment is discouraged
• a woman cannot marry without the presence and permission of a male guardian (wali)
• if a woman’s ‘idda (three months, to determine whether or not she is pregnant) has expired and she no longer has marital relations with her husband, he is excused alimony payments
• an illegitimate child may not inherit from his/her father.

Some of these fatwas advise illegal actions and others transgress human rights standards as they are applied by British courts. They show vividly just how questionable it is to permit a parallel system of law within a single national system.

Denis MacEoin is the author of “Sharia Law or One Law for All” (London, Civitas, 2009).

[1] See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Umdat al-salik, trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller as Reliance of the Traveller, Beltsville MD, 1991 and 1994, p. 595, o7.3: “As for when an aggressor is raping someone whom it is illegal for him to have sexual intercourse with, it is permissible to kill him forthwith,” based on a statement from Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, the famous Shafi’i jurist (972-1058).

[2] Baroness Cox was made a peer in 1982, and since then has made an astonishing contribution to humanitarian causes worldwide, travelling to far-flung zones of conflict and human rights abuse, even at great personal risk.

[3] Similar views had been expressed two years earlier, in a 2010 report by Maryam Namazie’s One Law for All organization, Sharia Law for Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights. That report, in turn, had been preceded by a book, entitled Sharia Law or ‘One Law for All’?, written by the present author for the independent think tank, Civitas (the institute for the study of civil society).

[4] Other Muslims of Pakistani origin have a Sufi-influenced Barelwi orientation, which, although it adheres to the same Hanafi law school, is constantly in conflict with the Deobandis. There are certainly more young Muslims training in the UK, and many of these experience difficulty with courses taught in Urdu, as at Bury.

[5] For fuller details, see Innes Bowen, Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam, London, 2014.

The issue of parallel Muslim societies has sparked renewed debate in Denmark after a three-part television documentary, “The Mosques Behind the Veil” was aired at the beginning of March on Danish TV2.

The documentary consists of an undercover investigation into claims that Muslim imams are working towards keeping parallel societies for Muslims within Denmark.

The filmmakers had two young Muslims — brought from outside Denmark — go undercover in Gellerupparken, an area best described as a predominantly Muslim ghetto in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city. For three months, the two lived as a fictitious couple, Fatma and Muhammed, while visiting eight different mosques in Aarhus, Odense and Copenhagen — the three largest cities in Denmark — with hidden cameras. The goal was to hear what imams say behind closed doors about Danish law and authorities, gender equality and general contact with Danish society, such as Muslim women participating in the Danish job market. There are approximately 140 mosques in all of Denmark.

The film is similar in concept to the British BBC Panorama documentary, “Secrets of Britain’s Sharia Councils,” which aired in April 2013. The BBC went undercover to document the discrimination practiced in British sharia councils against Muslim women. (The existence of British sharia councils were no secret to the British; the Danish film, it turned out, documented a Danish sharia council for the first time).

For the purpose of the documentary, Fatma was given a personal cover story — based on real-life dilemmas — for which she would seek advice from the different imams: Her husband is violent, and she does not wish to have sex with him. She cannot get pregnant and his family has found a second wife for him. She consulted with a Danish girlfriend about the violence, which has left her bruised, and the girlfriend told her to go to the police.

What do the imams think she should do?

The series begins in the Grimhøj mosque. The mosque has been in the Danish headlines for years, especially since police statistics in 2013 showed that 22 out of the 27 Muslims from Aarhus who left to fight with Islamic State in Syria had frequented it. The head of the mosque, Oussama El Saadi, has, in fact, said that he hopes the Islamic State will win and that there will be an Islamic world government. The imam of the same mosque, Abu Bilal, was sentenced last year in Germany for inciting hatred against both Jews and non-Jews, and fined €10,000.

Abu Bilal, imam of the Grimhøj mosque in Denmark, was fined €10,000 last year in Germany, after being found guilty of inciting hatred against both Jews and non-Jews. (Image source: MEMRI video screenshot)

Fatma, during her visits to the mosque, learned from imam Abu Bilal that married women who commit infidelity should be stoned to death, and that Muslims who leave Islam may be killed. He makes no reservations about these teachings. She also learned that young children who refuse to pray should be beaten (a woman asks the imam specifically, how she should conduct those beatings). Fatma was also informed that a woman may not take a job without her husband’s permission.

Abu Bilal further says that her husband is entitled to take another wife. Fatma is not allowed to deny her husband his “sexual rights,” even when he is violent. When she asks the imam if she should involve the police, the answer is an emphatic “no.”

Officially, the spokesman of the Grimhøj mosque, along with spokesmen from three of the eight mosques, professes that the mosque respects Danish law. But behind closed doors — on hidden camera — he advocates polygamy and beating children. He also instructs Fatma to go back to her abusive spouse and to let him commit what amounts to rape.

Fatma attended three other mosques in Aarhus, one of which publicly claims to be “moderate.” All of the clerics gave her the same answers. Some told her that violence is not allowed, but made it clear that there is nothing she can do. The imam at the Fredens mosque added that she might be able to obtain a divorce, if necessary, from their sharia council.

Muhammed, reporting what he experienced in the mosques, told TV2 news that he had been warned in the mosques against the Danes; informed that they were kuffar (unbelievers), and that he should avoid them and their social functions, such as birthday parties. One imam told the couple that they should “not melt into Danish society,” but simply surround themselves with other Muslims.

In Copenhagen, Fatma consulted the leader of the female section of the Islamisk Trossamfund mosque, Umm Abdullah. The claim at Islamisk Trossamfund is that it is in contact with several thousand Muslims every week, and thus among the biggest mosques in Denmark. Umm Abdullah tells Fatma that she must not go to birthday parties; there would be, she says, alcohol and mixed male and female company — and she should only meet with Danish people in order to tell them about Islam. This is necessary, says Umm Abdullah, to save the Danes from hell, and the only reason why Muslims should interact with Danes. When Fatma asks her about her personal problems, Umm Abdullah tells her that she must not contact the police about the violent husband. “Why should you become a laughing stock in front of the infidels?” she rhetorically asks.

Fatma also went to see the imam at the Hamad Bin Khalifa mosque in Copenhagen, better known in Denmark as “Stormoskeen” [“the big mosque”]. Named after the former emir of Qatar and fully sponsored by him, it opened in 2014. The organization behind the Hamad Bin Khalifa mosque, the Danish Islamic Council, has claimed that the people who operate the mosque have chosen a moderate interpretation of Islam that is compatible with Danish society.

On camera, the spokesman from the Hamad Bin Khalifa mosque confidently assured the journalists from TV2 News that the mosque thoroughly respects Danish laws. He even assured them that women enjoy even better rights than men.

When Fatma spoke to the imam of the Hamad Bin Khalifa mosque, however, and filmed it with a hidden camera, she was given the same answers she had received in all the other mosques: She must not take a job without her husband’s permission, and even if her husband continues to beat her, she must not contact the police. This most “moderate” of all the Danish mosques also advocated polygamy, and the right of the husband to his wife’s body, even when she might prefer to refuse him.

One of the questions Danes are asking themselves after viewing the documentary, is whether Danish Muslims actually listen to the imams and do what they say. According to a poll conducted in October 2015, 40% of all Danish Muslims believe that the law in Denmark should be based solely on the words of the Quran and 77% believe that the Quran should be followed to the word. Ten years ago, the figure was 62%. The poll showed that 50% of all Danish Muslims pray five times a day; ten years ago, the figure was 37%.

While the working assumption has been that with time, Muslims would become less, not more, religious, these numbers fly in the face of the wish that Muslims might be comfortably assimilated into Danish culture.

At the end of the documentary, Fatma and Mohammed visit the sharia council — which, since the documentary aired, has been dismantled, but others are believed to exist — at the Fredens mosque in Aarhus. Here, Fatma pleads over ten times for a divorce from her violent husband, but the council refuses, telling her to go back home and try again.

These were exactly the same responses as those given by the imams of the British sharia councils in the BBC Panorama documentary from 2013. Genuinely abused women pleaded in vain for divorce, and sometimes had to wait for ten years to obtain it. The answers they received from the imam were identical with the answers that Fatma heard from the eight different imams in Denmark: Go back to your violent spouse and try to work it out.

TV2 presented the secret recordings to all the mosques that had been investigated, but the mosques refused to comment on them.

Instead, 31 Danish mosques and Islamic organizations decided to react to the exposure of their goings-on by collectively condemning the way that TV2 had portrayed the Islamic organizations in the documentary. The organizations held the TV station responsible for the “way that it was destroying the integration that the organizations had worked on for the past 30 years in Denmark” and claimed that “Danish Muslims are an integral part of Danish society and play a positive role in integrating Muslims into Danish society.” They also reaffirmed that “Muslims have a right to seek advice about Islam, Islamic rules and Islamic sharia in Denmark.”

The ongoing public debate that has followed the broadcast, shows — unsurprisingly — that neither politicians, opinion makers nor so-called “experts” have any workable plans for how to deal with what the TV documentary revealed. Some have suggested that imams get a special university education or go through a licensing process. Others have suggested closing the Grimhøj mosque — an act that would doubtless be regarded as provocation, and one that would not solve anything in other, similar, mosques. Still other observers have suggested looking more closely at possibilities in the Danish constitution for dealing with the problem. One thing is clear: Denmark is as far away from solving this problem as the rest of Europe — and it is not going to get any easier.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

It is considered a fundamental principle in liberal democracies that individuals should have equality under the law, with equal access to justice, despite race, gender, or religious belief and that the same laws of a single legal system should apply equally to everyone.

To have two simultaneously functioning rules of law, applied on differing judicial bases, would create a challenge of which precedents to follow, or why individuals from different groups should be treated differently. How long before people form one group would claim to be from a different group to be exempt from the first group’s laws? Such a system invites abuse.

Dealing with minorities by differing legal systems rather than creating a more pluralist utopia simply leads to a divided society in which minorities and majorities have justified mutual distrust.

Sadly, these principles which have sculpted a strong judicial system in the United Kingdom for so long are now facing a significant threat.

In Britain, the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) recognises and protects women’s rights to equality, and not to be discriminated against in legal proceedings. But the rule of law in Britain is being eroded by the legitimisation of sharia councils. This has occurred under the Arbitration Act (1996), even though their operation in the Britain has been recorded since 1992.

There are valid reasons why sharia councils and sharia itself should not be given any legitimacy under British law.

First, these alternative judicial systems can mislead Muslim women to believe that sharia, and the fatwas pronounced by clerics, are binding and that such a marriage is recognised under UK law. In fact, it is estimated that 70-75% of all Islamic marriages in Britain are not recognized, according to the findings in the Dame Louise Casey report.

Islamic women also might be misled into believing that they have more marital rights than they actually have – a cruel deception that must end. And they further seem misled into believing they are compelled to approach a sharia council, rather than a UK civil court, for a divorce.

Second, these sharia councils often offer themselves as “an alternative,” to people seeking a civil law judgement, but the elders who hold the proceedings do not use juridical standards compatible with existing British legal ones. In cases arbitrated by sharia councils, as opposed to British law, for example, women lack the legal ability to initiate any divorce proceedings without the explicit agreement of her husband, and often women have no legal representation at these trials.

With little ability even to mount a legal defence, there is always the probability that Muslim women are not receiving equal justice under the law.

A report by Machteld Zee, a Dutch Academic raised the issue that sharia councils “frustrate women in their requests [for divorce], especially if the husband is unwilling to co-operate” and she also suggested that women are treated as “second-class citizens.”

sharia councils can also fundamentally attack the rights of women in arbitration, a device meant to be facilitate resolving issues. sharia councils, however, can demand that the parties involved in a dispute sign contracts beforehand, demanding that women agree to the results of the arbitration. To force a woman, who has been denied rights to any legal representation, to agree to an illegal or wrongful contract before trial, is a travesty that the British justice system cannot allow to continue.

Is it really acceptable that these sharia councils are granted authority under the Arbitration Act of 1996 when they treat women in such a way?

Dr Taj Hargey, Imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation argues, “Sharia is not divine law, it is just medieval opinion.”

The right of a woman to be free from abuse should be a paramount consideration. Therefore, a parallel legal system that declines to recognise the law of the land on the abuse of women is fundamentally incompatible with our legal system.

Third, which law? A trial can be considered just in terms of sharia law might well not be considered just under another form of law. Even if women are allowed to attend sharia councils in Britain, their submissions in sharia law are considered worth half of the submissions of a man — not exactly fair.

Fourth, a recent report compiled by Dame Louise Casey suggests that the growth of sharia councils in Britain have increased division and segregation in communities.

What if a woman wishes to appeal the verdict? There is no right to appeal. What if she feels there was irregularity or corruption in the process? As there exists no regulator, Muslim women seem trapped in a system the outcome of which they have to accept, even when there may not even be fleeting chance of justice.

Read this ruling from a British sharia council:

1) Adultery is one of the most heinous crimes in Islamic law, the punishment for which is death by stoning. But as Britain is not a Muslim state such a punishment may not be carried out here. This punishment can only be administered in a Muslim state after due process.

This is cause for concern. This ruling actually reveals to the husband the process required to have his wife stoned to death. It arguably even encouraging men to have their wives taken abroad and have them murdered.

Is Britain really agreeing to allow women to be sentenced in England then to be stoned to death elsewhere? The ruling should instead be considered incitement to violence and reckless endangerment.

The judgement continues to state that, “Allah will punish her for her immorality.” This presumes that the wife is guilty without even hearing her testimony. The court has therefore condemned someone to murder solely the words of her husband without allowing her a chance to speak. This sort of trial has no place in a modern democracy.

It is also hard to hold sharia councils accountable: they do not record their judgements, or transparently display a record of council rulings. Why would an organisation wish not to make its rulings publicly available unless it I trying to hide something?

If cases are arbitrated on any basis that that withhold full transparency or that promotes inequality for women, it is the duty of the state not only to criticise these trials, but to withdraw any legislation that gives these laws legitimacy.

Sharia councils have been known completely to disregard the decrees of civil British courts; some councils are even suggesting that women comply with abusive husbands. More dangerously, sharia councils have even made private statements, supposedly hidden by court decree, concerning individuals in abusive relationships, public. Sharia councils have put these statements on court documents and sent them to the abuser – a practice that has led to death threats, children kidnapped, and even to women being violently raped in retaliation for seeking justice.

Haitham al-Haddad is a British shari’a council judge, and sits on the board of advisors for the Islamic Sharia Council. Regarding the handling of domestic violence cases, he stated in an interview, “A man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because this is something between them. Leave them alone. They can sort their matters among themselves.” (Image source: Channel 4 News video screenshot)

To add insult to injury, these unaccountable courts that offer judgements which sometimes incite violence and often disadvantage women, are often registered charities that charge around £800 for a divorce. How can these groups that not only fail to protect the rights of women but actually undermine them be considered charitable organisations, funded by British taxpayers?

Even more problematic is this excessive fee, when Islamic women often coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and who perhaps have been discouraged from earning a living outside the home and may therefore have no funds to buy her freedom? Muslim women within abusive marriages can therefore be imprisoned by a process that is unattainable. One might even deduce that perhaps that is the purpose of the fee?

Elham Manea, author of the book Women and Sharia Law, argues that the first Sharia councils were established by Islamists. She also notes that Sharia councils have “been working with a kind of a tacit approval of British establishment. There is a certain kind of hesitancy from British institutions to interfere in what they consider is internal affair to the Muslim community.”

We can no longer be afraid to speak out against a legal system that disadvantages women because of the religion of those who run it, or that criticism may be perceived as hateful.

More alarming is that views on Sharia amongst the UK Islamic community are favourable towards this judicial practice. Sharia is now even being promoted as a solution that should be considered by the British Government. In polls conducted for the Police Exchange: 43% said they supported “the introduction of Sharia Law.” And 16% of British Muslims “strongly support” the “introduction of aspects of Sharia law into Britain”

What aspects of the Sharia do they support? How you can support only “aspects” of Sharia, when Sharia is designed to be followed in its entirety, without concession. Even then, which aspects do they support? Those that instruct that “women are restricted in leaving their homes and driving cars”? Or that “a man may coerce his wife to have sex”? Or the “recommendation of severe punishments for homosexuals?”

48% of the respondents said they would not turn someone they know with links to terrorism in Syria over to the police.

As Denis MacEoin illustrates, Sharia even justifies jihad:

In Sharia Law or One Law for All, I drew attention to another level of sharia rulings that provide fatwas for numbers of British Muslims, in particular of the younger generation. These are online sites: “fatwa banks.” Individuals or couples send questions to the muftis who run the sites, and receive answers in the form of fatwas that are considered authoritative. The questions and answers are preserved in galleries of rulings, which can be browsed by anyone seeking advice. The sites are by no means consistent, differing from one scholar to another. But they do provide an insight into the kinds of rulings that may be given in the sharia councils.

Among the rulings MacEoin details is that “fighting the Americans and British is a religious duty.” Such a ruling, sadly, could be delivered on British soil.

Sharia councils and Sharia both clearly restrict the rights of women, homosexuals, Christians and Jews, and are therefore incompatible with a diverse and tolerant society. They should be granted no legitimacy by the state.

The cessation of Sharia councils in the UK is not Islamophobic, or an “attack on Islamic rights to freedom of expression or belief”. It is the defence of a just legal system that respects diversity but judges all equally. If we are to have a society in which all are equal, then all law must be derived from a single system that applies to all.

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.

The most recent scandal surrounding the sexual exploitation of Muslim women by Islamic religious leaders in the UK is yet further proof of the way in which Britain is turning a blind eye to horrific practices going on right under its nose.

A BBC investigation into “halala” — a ritual enabling a divorced Muslim woman to remarry her husband by first wedding someone else, consummating the union, and then being divorced by him — revealed that imams in Britain are not only encouraging this, but profiting financially from it. This depravity has led to many such women being held hostage, literally and figuratively, to men paid to become their second husbands.

This ritual, which is considered a misinterpretation of Islamic sharia law even by extremist Shi’ites and Saudi-style Salafists, is practiced by certain Islamic sects, such as Hanafis, Barelvis and Deobandis. When a husband repeats the Arabic word for divorce — talaq — three times to his wife, these sects consider a Muslim marriage null and void. For such a woman to be allowed to return to the husband who banished her, she must first marry someone else — and have sex with him — before the second husband divorces her.

These divorce rites, despite the laws of the land, are common in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other Asian countries, where a majority of the people belong to the Hanafi, Barelvi or Deobandi sects. Nevertheless, local seminaries, mosques and online services openly advertise and promote halala with impunity; it is accepted by society and rarely monitored by state authorities.

In Britain, halala has emerged as a booming business, with websites and social media sites offering to provide women with second husbands for exorbitant sums of money. As bad as this is, there is an even darker side to the story: Under sharia law, the second husband is under no obligation to give his wife a quick divorce — allowing him to keep her as his virtual sex slave for as long as he wishes.

One Muslim woman, who changed her mind about going through with halala after looking into the process, told the BBC that she knew others who did undergo the process, and ended up being sexually abused for months by the second husbands paid to marry them. According to a report in The Guardian, the Sharia Council of Britain says it deals with hundreds of divorce cases annually.

This infamous council is indirectly responsible for what essentially has become a rape pandemic, since it does nothing to stop or refute halala. In fact, it declares that the practice is completely legal under sharia law. The only caveat, the council states, is that the imams presiding over it are not following the proper guidelines, according to which the second marriage and divorce should not be premeditated, but rather happen naturally.

If one asks how all of this jibes with British law, the answer is that it does not. But young Muslims in the UK are discouraged by their communities from marrying through the British system, and are told to have imams perform their weddings and sharia councils register their marriages. Couples who comply end up being at the mercy of Islamic authorities in family matters, including divorce.

Due to its often unethical practices conducted in the name of religious law, the Sharia Council has come under scrutiny a number of times. Last November, for instance, the UK-based NGO, Muslim Women’s Network, penned an open letter — with 100 signatories — to the British government and Home Affairs Select Committee demanding that the Sharia Council be investigated to determine whether its practices adhere to British law.

In response, the Sharia Council declared the letter to be “Islamophobic” and accused the Muslim Women’s Network of being an anti-Muslim organization. In addition, Labour MP Naz Shah jumped to the defense of the Sharia Council, rejecting the idea of an inquiry, on the grounds that shutting down such councils could mean that more women would be stuck in abusive marriages.

While acknowledging that these councils could be used as a tool to deny women their rights, Shah said that they also serve as valuable arbitrators in marital disputes.

Her claims are totally baseless. It is British law, not sharia, law that protects Muslim individuals and couples, as it does any other citizen.

Haitham al-Haddad is a British shari’a council judge, and sits on the board of advisors for the Islamic Sharia Council. Regarding the handling of domestic violence cases, he stated in an interview, “A man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because this is something between them. Leave them alone. They can sort their matters among themselves.” (Image source: Channel 4 News video screenshot)

Had the British government addressed Sharia Council malpractice when it was first revealed, we would not be facing this pandemic today. Contrary to what apologists for this travesty say, the plight of Muslim women should be treated as an issue of human rights.

It is time for the British government to wake up and take a tough stand on such unethical, and probably illegal, system. And the sooner the better, lest the whole sharia council system go “underground” and out of reach to protect thousands of women from abuse.

Khadija Khan is a Pakistan-based journalist and commentator.