Shariah in the West

Still, there is no doubt that Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and France have experienced atrocious crimes such as so-called honor murders, forced marriage, and, in France, female genital mutilation. These horrific practices, while not specifically based in Shariah, have been vocally supported by fundamentalist clerics as well as by common practice in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. In this way, whether or not they are Islamic in essence, they have been assimilated into Islamic culture.

The Shariah debate in Western Europe has been badly complicated by the incompetent intervention of non-Muslim politicians, who, in their desire to appear tolerant, have offered opinions in favor of the introduction of Shariah into their countries. Such individuals have included, most notoriously, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion, who in 2008 called for establishment of some (unspecified) aspects of Shariah alongside existing civil law in the United Kingdom. Williams commented that some form of official recognition for elements of Shariah was "unavoidable." His capitulatory gesture was soon echoed by a similar appeal from Britain's Lord Chief Justice, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers. A leading Dutch conservative politician, Piet Hein Donner, had already declared, in 2006, that the Netherlands could adopt Shariah as law if two-thirds of its parliament voted to do so.

Late in 2007, a family court judge in Frankfurt caused a sensation when she (unnamed in media according to German practice) ruled that the Qur'an supported the right of husbands to beat their wives. The opinion was delivered in a case brought by a Moroccan woman against her Moroccan husband. The judge held that issuance of a protective order would be sufficient relief for the plaintiff, who withdrew an earlier demand for a divorce. An outcry against the opinion followed, from all German political parties of the right and left. After widespread debate on the case, the judge was threatened with professional sanctions.

In July 2008, another controversy began when German authorities announced that a new marriage law, to take effect at the beginning of 2009, would permit religious weddings to be solemnized without civil registration. But marriages in churches and mosques, if not registered civilly, would exclude the parties from recourse to the courts for divorce, rights of inheritance, and other civil remedies -- and might thus produce complaints by Muslim women before Shariah tribunals, as in Britain.

These problems were underscored late in 2008 when a politician representing the Free Democratic Party, Georg Barfuss, opined that Shariah could be established in his home state of Bavaria, if compatible with the Constitution.

And even in France, where one would expect that strong traditions of secular governance and the acceptance of it by most French Muslims would be a barrier to such developments, the authorities have so far failed to adequately resolve a court decision upholding the alleged Shariah-based right of a Muslim man to repudiate his wife on their wedding night when he perceived she was not a virgin.

In all these instances, from the remarks of Archbishop Williams to the controversy over a bride's virginity in France, non-Muslim public figures seemed motivated by ignorance and a patronizing attitude in "offering" Muslims a Shariah the believers themselves did not necessarily or uniformly desire.

Extreme critics of Islam have analyzed such events -- attempts to impose Shariah on non-Muslims, so-called honor murders, and the naïveté of Western politicians in embracing some form of Shariah -- as evidence that the West and its legal systems face imminent collapse. Such polemicists predict wholesale Islamization and waves of brutal Shariah penalties, plus more so-called honor crimes, and worse abuse of women, including imposition of body and face coverings. Above all, they argue that all Muslims everywhere wish for, or are commanded to work toward, the imposition of Shariah.

Unfortunately, neither the Shariah proponents, nor the fear mongers exercised by its specter, nor the political figures eager to placate Muslim opinion seem to know anything about Shariah and its real content.

To begin with, there is no evidence that any but a small minority of American Muslims favors any form of institutional Shariah in the United States. Unfortunately, the "Wahhabi lobby" of established American Muslim communal organizations, created and financed by Saudi Arabia, is dominated by acolytes of Islamic law, who have articulated their dream of a Shariah-ruled America. But aside from rare incidents such as the Detroit shootout, agitation for Shariah among American Muslims is seldom visible in the community. On the other hand, as in Western Europe, American Shariah fanatics have their friends in high places. Dalia Mogahed, a member of President Barack Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, late in 2009 defended Shariah by claiming that her global polling, through the Gallup Organization, showed "the majority of women around the world associate shariah with 'gender justice.'" Presumably, her reference to "the majority of women" (as opposed to Muslim women) was a slip of the tongue. But there is no doubt that in her perspective, Shariah as public law guarantees Muslim women a dignity absent in the West.